Have a Happy, Reflective, and Fruitful Fourth of July
“Honesty and uprightness and virtue“; such “trite,” old-fashioned words. “It is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it is the way in which we use it.” We became a great nation when honesty, uprightness, and virtue were not trite, archaic words. We can again find the path that led us there and follow it where it may lead. The Dakotas were a new territory both geographically and in spirit. We can become a new territory in spirit just as the Dakotas were then a new territory in spirit; spirit is the more important of the two.
Even though “we have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received,” the problems of our far more populous nation are now different and greater than then but so are the opportunities if we remember that “we have the responsibilities of sovereigns, not of subjects.” It is only necessary that we remember our past, recognize our problems, and deal with them as we must, as sovereigns rather than as serfs.
We cannot change the past, though many have tried to edit it to fit their current perceptions of right and wrong, good and evil. In recent years, we’ve come a long way, baby, and often the way has been a wrong one. The future, however, is still in our hands and we can make of it only what we will, in national sickness and in national health, for better or for worse. Nations, not cared for by their sovereigns, the people, rot because they let them.
Today, but not only today, we must remember our basic foundations, act upon them, and preserve them for future generations; soon enough it will be their job to do that, but if we don’t succeed they may well not find a solid foundation upon which to build, and themselves to pass on to their successors, a strong and good nation.
A fine essay! May I commend also to PJM/Tatler readers reflective contemplation, Abraham Lincoln’s 1959 meditation upon what we would today call the necessity for energy-independence and a green economy:
As always, Lincoln’s main object was to sustain the security, liberty, free-thinking, and personal ethic of public responsibility that are so uniquely characteristic of Jeffersonian republics. By holding this conservative objective firmly in view throughout — with everything else giving way to it — Mr. Lincoln became America’s greatest president.
Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society
URL: http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/fair.htm
Much of what TR says in this speech may be applied equally to the early Zionist pioneers, perhaps not by chance, though I wouldn’t known because my Israeli education placed much greater weight on the heritage of Europe (and socialism). This must change and, with any luck, it will.
Happy birthday America. You have been a light unto the nations and please continue to be so.
If you fail to work in public, as well as in private, for honesty and uprightness and virtue, if you condone vice because the vicious man is smart, or if you in any other way cast your weight into the scales in favor of evil, you are just so far corrupting and making less valuable the birthright of your children.
Listen up, Obama supporters.
Time to throw off an oppressor worse than George III.
“We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune.”
You know, you just have to love a guy who says things like that. I know, I know, Teddy was a progressive and he also said a lot of dumb things too. But nobody, NOBODY, talked about rugged individualism and personal responsibility like he did. If you ever want to read a very short but powerful work, get “The Strenuous Life” by Theodore Roosevelt. Trust me, if you live by its principles, it really will change your life. It will also find, deep in your soul, the inspiration to not only take on any adversity, but it will also tell you what YOU owe this country. And you don’t need to make lots of money to be a “success” in that very short book. Nope. But what you DO have to be is good, honest, and true to the basic priciples that made this nation the greatest country in the world.
Instead of the Democrats constantly telling us what government owes us and what government needs to do for us, we need to tell everyone what we owe our nation in order to be “Worthy of its good fortune.” Teddy Roosevelt also said, “Much as been given to us, and much will be expected from us.” Time for us to stand up and start making this man proud of us again. In 2012, we can start taking the first steps out of this horrible darkness and pull this country into the bright sunshine of real independence from the horrific European-style nanny state Obama is dragging us into. Teddy would expect nothing less from us and I’m not about to let him down.
Please consider also joining either of the two fine conservative organizations founded by TR: The Boone and Crockett Club and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. Both are active partners in the umbrella organization Season’s End.
Facing up to the sobering reality that AGW is no longer some “nerdy abstraction” … but instead has become a plain-as-day reality for all American citizens who love hunting and fishing? TR would approve! “Bully!”
Season’s End: Global Warming’s Threat to Hunting and Fishing
URL: http://www.seasonsend.org/waterfowl.shtml
Amendment X – Rights Reserved to States (1791)The Tenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, also known as the Reserved Powers Amendment, was ratified on December 15, 1791. The Tenth Amendment provided that those powers which are not granted to the United States are reserved for the states or to the people. The Tenth Amendment reads as follows:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”The purpose of the Tenth Amendment was to alleviate fears that the national government would seek to exercise powers not granted to it, and that the states might not be able to fully exercise their reserved powers. As a result of the amendment, it is now clear that the federal government’s powers are limited only to the extent where it is explicitly granted by Constitution, and that the government cannot claim powers which are not explicitly granted to it.
Interestingly, it has to be noted that since the Tenth Amendment came into force, several states and local governments have attempted to assert exemption from various federal regulations, especially in the areas of labor and environmental controls, using the Tenth Amendment as a basis for their claim. However, the Supreme Court has only very rarely declared laws to be unconstitutional for violating the Tenth Amendment. The Supreme Court has only struck down a federal law as violative of the Tenth Amendments is in rare situations where the federal government compelled the states to enforce a federal statute.
A physicist,
No one disputes the fact that the Earth is warming. It began warming at the end of the so-called mini ice age hundreds of years ago, and the trend hasn’t changed. The global warming trend began before the beginning of the industrial revolution and has been remarkably stable ever since, despite the rapid growth in human industrialization. Variability within the trend seems to most closely correlate to the rhythms of the cyclic patterns of the solar cycle. This ongoing trend dictates the altered migratory bird patterns you bemoan, not industrialization per se.
The blind fear of manmade CO2 emissions pales before the studious disregard that every major volcanic eruption discharges more CO2 than mankind has released in recorded history. A learned man, such as yourself, should therefore know that AGW is a myth.
Meanwhile global temperatures have been higher during the AD calendar, most noticeably during the Renaissance when three wheat crops were able to be gleaned on the steppes of Russia and vineyards flourished in the British Isles. Such an abundance of wealth was thereby produced during that solely agrarian period that the arts were encouraged and the concepts of individual liberty germinated. On this 4th of July, we celebrate that concept’s birth into an idea of governing pholosophy. Hallelujah!
This is not to say that humans should grow, produce, and pollute willy-nilly. Far from it! We must be good stewards. There will likely emerge natural limitations to what can and should be attempted and accomplished. Markets, both global and local, not top-down dictation, give the best clues as to the needs, desires, and efficacies of varied approaches. But determining these natural directives requires studious cost-benefit analysis, and the assumption of risk to concommittant reward, not elitist do-gooderism, and the repetition of mindless memes such as AGW.
A learned man, such as yourself, should therefore know that AGW is a myth.
“physicist” has an agenda in everything he writes here at PJM.
His moniker is one aspect of his deception.
American historians, conservative and liberal alike, consistently rank Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower as the three greatest Republican party presidents.
Yet surprisingly, it is characteristic of PJM/Tatler‘s peculiar brand of conservatism that the ideals, writings, and policies of these three greatest Republican presidents are reviled.
Perhaps this is because Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower were alike in giving precedence to facts over ideology?
Even in modern times, there are plenty of conservative-minded folks who agree with the historians.
The Repeal amendment would put the states back into the driver seat as our founders intended.
http://www.repealamendment.org/
“It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.” George Washington
Yeah, whatever, Teddy.
What Independence Day means to me, especially as an Independent, is now time to put into words as best as I am able.
1)It is the day that represents and reinforces the very basis for self-governing this land of ours. It is a reminder to those that are elected, selected, appointed, that they are not our masters, but our civil servants.
2)It is a reminder that tyranny always comes in a package of “good intentions” and equally with a frilly bow of “sharing the wealth” and always ends with confiscation and “redistribution” from the hands of those who have earned there little plot of soil into hands of those who wish to soil our freedoms with their disguised plots.
3)It is a day of community of brothers from different states to join in the celebration of our unity, to bind together in a show of loud noises and exploding missiles that we will not stand by idly in the face of those who mean to overthrow us, either foreign or domestic, and while these loud noises produce pretty colors, an attack on we who love this land would not be as pretty.
4)This day commemorates a spirit that will not be denied, that we are a generous, loving, soft and gentle people, until provoked. We give more than any other nation, have more open arms than any other nation, have more leniency than any other nation and are more imitated than any other nation. It is in the flattery of this imitation that puts the lie to the notion that we are anything less than exceptional. Only a fool blinded by resentment could disagree.
5) And today, 235 years after the Declaration of that spirit, I must sadly announce that we are in the process of not simply watering it down, but we are taking it back. We do not unite and Declare an unwavering pledge against tyranny, we shrink from that as the “wrong kind of patriotism”.
6)We elect, select and anoint those who would openly reject such a Declaration. We “lead from behind”. We denounce, deride and denigrate our exceptionalism. We apologize to the world for our history. We bow to despots and dictators. We hang posters to mass murderers. We soil our information stream with the venom of a million lies a day about our motives. We slander our states and we libel our liberties.
7)We have a free market enterprise system that celebrates our fairness of opportunity, our creativity and ingenuity, the creation of the highest standard of living, wealth, health and happiness. And it is under direct attack by anarchists, traitors and those whose hearts are filled with treason. And, we do virtually nothing to preserve it.
8)Today, 235 years from that Declaration, we allow our very foundational tenets to be gored and trampled by the bull of despicable infamy, radical leftism in all its inglorious forms. Independence Day celebrations, it is now said, are only for non-leftists. An Ivy Tower declaration has suggested that Democratic Party members need not appear as a show of unity, because they do not “benefit”. Indeed.
9)This Independence Day shall mark the first time that I believe that to be true. To continue down the path of the Democratic Party as it is currently compiled, is to announce in Spanish that the rest of your countrymen are “enemies”.
It is to put the U.N. ahead of your countrymen in Arizona.
It is to elevate Communists as czars for “green jobs”.
It is to remove God Bless America with God Damn America.
It is to have a billionaire who hates capitalism try to buy our information stream and tear down the free market enterprise system.
It is to declare war and peace as would a tyrannical king, not as an elected civil servant.
It is to have appointed, not elected officials ignore the Constitution as if it did not exist.
It is to confiscate all that is earned to buy fealty from workers party.
It is to grant favoritism and knock earners from their rightful place in line.
It is to announce that We Are All Socialists Now, that unvetted science is settled and that unvetted candidates are gods.
It is to weaken our will, grind down our resolve, pummel our patriotism.
And, it is working.
In summary, today is the day of our final Declaration. We can roll over and surrender our freedoms to tyranny. We can genuflect to the tyranny of a media aligned against us. We can accept the indoctrination in our schools and be shamed by the ridicule in our entertainment apparatus.
Indeed, that we can continue to do, as we have bit by bit for the last 50 years.
Or, we can Declare anew that we will not bow, genuflect and grovel before the tyranny of radical leftism in all its pernicious forms. We can bind together again as one nation, under God, indivisible. Yes, under God. We can stop apologizing for our Judeo-Christian heritage. We can stand up for our liberties and still believe in our borders.
We can demand that Our Constitution be respected. We can demand that our system of government, our free market enterprise, our way of life not be overthrown by cowards who will not announce themselves as enemies of it, but pretend to be its protectors. We can unite and not be overthrown, brow beaten, ridiculed and crushed.
Or not.
Today is the day of our choosing. Freedom from tyranny or surrender to it.
And today I will light a candle in unity with my countrymen, that we have the courage to stand and make the right choice. Let her light be seen by every patriot who shares the right kind of love for this land of ours. Let freedom reign. Let’s take back this land of ours from those who mean to destroy her. I so Declare.
The task for the current breed of Conservatives, is to hold our ground against a government that has been moving toward complete domination of it’s citizenry.
The government does not “owe” us anything but the limited services for the offices appointed to them, and a fair and just compensation for the taxes collected.
The current group of old frat boys in Washington think they OWN the citizens of the United States. And if you don’t believe me, take a look at what they get paid and the benefit and retirement package they have CONFISCATED for themselves.
And just because they conjure up some term for a TAX that is not covered by the Constitution, doesn’t mean it is not a tax.
Washington’s faithful are only loyal because they have not been taught what the United States and the Constitution are truly about. Being deferent only to one’s ethnic, religious, sexual, or political sect is not what being American is supposed to be, but, IS what Washington is trying to adjudicate, and profit from.
Most of the politicians in office and campaigning today, are NOT INTERESTED in what they can do for America; They are only pandering for the opportunity to suck whatever they can out of the American Citizen.
This has to change; WE HAVE TO CHANGE THIS.
WE, THE PEOPLE, NEED TO CONFISCATE OUR COUNTRY BACK.
Happy Independence Day to all my fellow Citizens and a most profound salute to our military, past and present.
Happy Independence Day, and on this day, some words from the Founders worth remembering.
“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.”
Patrick Henry
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”
–Thomas Jefferson (Letter to Archibald Stuart – 1791)
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
–Wendell Phillips (speech in Boston, Massachusetts, January 28, 1852, citing Thomas Jefferson, though it has also been attributed to Patrick Henry)
“When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny.”
–Thomas Jefferson (attributed to Jefferson, by his contemporaries)
“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
–Thomas Jefferson (attributed to Jefferson, by his contemporaries)
“… rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our own will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual”
–Thomas Jefferson (Letter to Isaac H. Tiffany – 1819)
“I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
–James Madison (attributed to Madison, by his contemporaries)
“On every question of construction [of the Constitution], let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”
–Thomas Jefferson (letter to William Johnson) June 12, 1823
Some more Jefferson:
The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.
When all government, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the Center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.
If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we would soon want for bread.
An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.
(Although Ronald Reagan said this relative to Jimmy Carter in 1980, I have adapted it for these times
)
A recession is when your neighbor loses his job.
A depression is when you lose yours.
Recovery is when Barack Obama loses his.
Taanstaffl, I have read a great deal of Thomas Jefferson’s writings, and so it was surprising that your quotations were unfamiliar. After a bit of research, it appears that these “Jefferson” quotes are pure fabrications … fabrications not by you, I hasten to add! … but fabrications nonetheless.
Please post your source for them … so that we can avoid that source.
URL: http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/government-big-enough-to-give-you-everything-you-wantquotation
kjatexas, with respect, several of your “Jefferson” quotes too turn out to be fakes.
… ??? where are all these fake Jefferson quotes coming from ???
Folks should have more respect for America’s founders and framers!
Spurious Jefferson Quotes
URL: http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/spurious-quotes
They are coming from posts on the internet. If you google “Jefferson quotes”, you will come up with pages of same. My Jefferson quotes are noted as “attributed to Jefferson”, so possibly they are not his. After 250+ years, it would be hard to discern the true authorship. They sure sound like something the Founders would have said though, and ring true to their ideals.
Here are two music videos that seem appropriate today, played by Vladimir Horowitz. The first is a rendition of Stars and Stripes Forever. The second is at a ceremony at the Carter White House at which, after what I consider an excessively long introduction by President Carter, Horowitz plays the Star Spangled Banner. At least President Carter stood as it was played. During the third video, Horowitz receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Reagan.
Frederic Douglass had been taught by a group abolitionists that the Constitution condoned slavery. At first, he believed them. But later, after reading and studying on his own, he reached a different conclusion, and wrote these words:
“I was, on the anti-slavery question, fully committed to the doctrine touching the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. I advocated it with pen and tongue, according to the best of my ability. Upon a reconsideration of the whole subject, I became convinced that the Constitution of the United States not only contained no guarantees in favor of slavery but, on the contrary, it is in its letter and spirit an anti-slavery instrument, demanding the abolition of slavery as a condition of its own existence as the supreme law of the land. Here was a radical change in my opinions. Brought directly, when I escaped from slavery, into contact with a class of abolitionists regarding the Constitution as a slaveholding instrument, it is not strange that I assumed the Constitution to be just what their interpretation made it. But, I was now conducted to the conclusion that the Constitution of the United States was not designed to maintain and perpetuate a system of slavery – especially as not one word can be found in the Constitution to authorize such a belief.”
“The Constitution is a glorious liberty document. Read its preamble; consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? Or is it in the temple? It is neither. If the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slaveholding instrument, why neither “slavery”, “slaveholding”, nor “slave” can anywhere be found in it? Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand, it will be found to contain principles and purposes entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.”
Frederick Douglass
Beyond July 4th, 2011, Toward November 6th, 2012
When all the Independence Day parades are over, after the hoopla and ballyhoo, the celebrations, the fireworks, the overeating and overimbibing are done with for another year, Americans have to face the reality that the United States is still in dire straits.
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan’s famous question, Are we better off today than we were 30 months ago? Only the insane and the masochistic would answer Yes.
After 2 1/2 years of Obama, the economy is still mired in the doldrums, his stimulus has cost $278,000 per job created, official unemployment is stuck above 9%, our health care system is in being socialized, post-racialism is teetering on the edge of race warfare, illegal aliens continue to pour over our border, the nation is in decline as an international power, wars and rumors of wars abound, the Islamic threat is unabated, gasoline and heating oil prices have skyrocketed, the president has declared class warfare, and we’re on the verge of economic default.
Meanwhile, our leader parties and plays golf.
Obama critics such as Sean Hannity naïvely say it’s incomprehensible that a president of the United States could have planned or desired the current mess we’re in. I beg to differ.
September 11th, 2001 was also incomprehensible. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4953
I recently had a high school friend, post on his Facebook account, “if you are a right winger or a neo-con, please unfriend me immediately”. All I could think of was how sad this comment was and how it illustrated the deep political divisions amongst Americans, divisions encouraged by cynical politicians using a divide and conquer strategy to empower only themselves.
If Americans do not wake up,come together on what is best for the country and not the respective policial parties, and refute this strategy, I am afraid that we will see Americans spilling the blood of other Americans.
Having my roots in Virginia, I particularly enjoyed this scene from the movie 1766. The Lees were, indeed, a First Family of Virginia and General Robert E. Lee was among them.
I was reading an article the other day about the depopulation of Oaxaca in Mexico. It seems they’re all here in the U.S.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2011/06/24/137218622/people-of-the-clouds-a-story-of-ghost-towns-and-great-migrations
A million legal and half a million illegals are coming here every year, 90% plus from the Third World and they are not any more interested in “leaving off” their agendas than is the Congressional Black Caucus, who are born here, or La Raza.
30,000 for every state in the union, every single year. They are taught by political correctness that they are exploited by America, no matter where they are, whether in their own countries or here when they arrive. They do not assimilate but agitate, in their own interests and consider any idea of the greater good laughable.
They don’t know or care who Roosevelt is – they have their own ideas and it doesn’t include a meritocracy or individualism but welfare from all around. Look at the millions La Raza gets in grants and multiply that by how many organizations across the country and add DREAM BS on top of it. Tax money in its billions goes to illegals and we’re bleeding.
Play your videos – Rome is burning. If you don’t have the sense or guts to call for an end to the Immigration Act that odious LBJ enacted, then continue to take a long nap. We have no independence from the Third World but instead it is being shoved down our throats in the way of the wholesale transfer in it’s millions to the U.S. Why?
Fellow Patriots:
On this day in 1776, the Continental Congress issued the “Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,” which read, in part, as follows:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
While these concepts may seem normal and natural to us, they were radical in 1776. Even today, over two centuries later, these ideas remain radical and strange concepts to most of mankind.
If we fail to hand these ideas down to the next generation, they will be lost. Please set aside some time this week of Independence Day to discuss these foundational American ideas with your family.