I shudder to think these thoughts, but....does it apply?

Is the American Experiment Dead?
by Helen E. Krieble (more by this author)
Posted 03/16/2007 ET

King George III would be so proud. He and his aristocratic friends laughed at America’s quaint “experiment” with self-government. To them it was unthinkable that common people were enlightened enough to rule themselves. Today that experiment is the envy of a world where people in fewer than 100 countries live under democratic governments. Yet here in the United States, old King George may yet be right.

Astonishingly, today’s Americans expect government to care for us from cradle to grave, the way commoners once expected a benevolent king to care for his subjects. We treat people as members of groups rather than as individuals, insidiously devolving into the very class system against which the founders rebelled. In a deeply disturbing sense, Americans are voluntarily surrendering the very freedoms that millions fought and died to establish and protect. James Garfield once said the most common form of death in politics is suicide. After a noble 225 year history, is the American experiment dying at the hands of its own people?

Many of the “long train of abuses” that led to our rebellion from the British Crown in 1776 are eerily similar to our own government’s excesses. The Declaration of Independence listed a host of grievances against the King that are all too familiar today. The authors accused the King of refusing “his assent to laws… necessary for the public good,” of forbidding locals to pass laws “of immediate and pressing importance,” even of dissolving local representative bodies. How different is that from today’s “supreme” federal system that routinely over-rides local and state laws, especially by federal court orders and “constitutional” rulings based on premises not in the Constitution? The Crown had “obstructed the administration of justice” by controlling judges’ tenure and salaries; today’s government does so by empowering judges to usurp legislative powers -- to make up new laws rather than interpret laws passed by the people’s representatives. It is a more modern technique, but with the same anti-democratic result.

King George had “erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.” In 2007 the federal government has more than 4 million employees and costs taxpayers almost 3 trillion dollars a year. The King “combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution,” much as modern leaders compromise our sovereignty to institutions like the UN, international courts, and foreign trade commissions.

The founders said government should protect private property, but today’s Supreme Court lets government take private property and sell to developers, take away the value of land by denying the right to use it, and force landowners to give their land for endangered species habitat, parks, trails, and “open space.” The first “inalienable right” in our Declaration was the right to life, but today’s courts prohibit states from protecting it. If we still believe “all men are created equal,” how can we justify racial preferences in school admission, government contracts and congressional re-apportionment? Freedom of speech is central to the Bill of Rights, but Congressmen now deny that right to those who want to speak about them, or other candidates, like politically correct thought police.

“The policy of the federal government,” wrote President Jefferson, “is to leave her citizens free -- neither aiding nor restraining them in their pursuits.” Today, we are not allowed to plan our own retirement, design our own health insurance, or even devise our own children’s education. The endless intrusion reaches every facet of our lives from where we can hike in the woods to how our hamburgers must be cooked. Both parties instinctively look to government as the first answer to all problems. Even Republicans propose solving issues like illegal immigration by hiring 30,000 new federal employees.

There is one crucial difference: unlike our colonial ancestors, contemporary Americans voluntarily agreed to all these usurpations with their votes. We have been warned frequently to be alert. In 1835 Tocqueville wrote, “the American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.” Sadly, that day has long since come.

We are left with an unresponsive government millions of Americans do not recognize as theirs, or feel moral obligation to support. That trend could be the death knell of the founders’ ideas. It is not too late to rediscover our “experiment” in self-government, but Americans must first decide whether they care.

Ms. Krieble is president of the Vernon K. Krieble Foundation. Information on the plan is available at www.krieble.org

Questions Tree-huggers will never answer...

From Ker-plunk's excellent Blog, "10 Questions For Climate Fascists".
1. When did the debate end?
2. How is the science settled?
3. How do you explain this? (see picture at link)
4. What the heck has happened to the Hockey stick?
5. Why believe climate models?
6. Why is symbolism more important than effectiveness?
7. Why the IPCC censorship?
8. Why are all the predictions of only doom and gloom?
9. What caused the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age?
10. Why the hooey about sinking islands?

Censorship, refusal to debate, straw man attacks, all tell tale signs of arrogant, small minds who believe a little too much in their own press (legends in their own mind sort of thing).

Where are the men and women of science that aren't so quick to close their minds or rush to judgment? Apparently, everything really is all about politics and political agendas - even so called pure science is nothing of the sort anymore.

I told you so!

Back in November, days after the election I "pundited":
"Despite their pledges to the contrary get ready for "vindictiveness 101" in the congress. Make no mistake about it - nothing serious will get done. The democrats will mire the congress in ENDLESS "investigations" and inquiries into stuff that happened 5+ years ago. And for what purpose? To stick it to the party that used to be in power and dared to do things they didn't like. They won't solve the Social Security dilemna, they won't touch the illegal immigration problem (other than to grant amnesty so that they can paper the problem away), they won't deal with our nations over-dependency on foreign oil, they won't improve the ethics on the Hill, nor will they improve the tone of politics in D.C.
How do I know that? Because if they do ANY of those things, they will anger some chunk of their whacko liberal base (full of fanatical tree-huggers, silver spoon/limousine liberals, big union thugs, and inner city minority groups dependent upon the money and programs they are constantly promised)... Democrats, drunk with power (and mistakenly thinking the American public gave them a mandate to pursue their lunacy - NOT!), they will first turn on their opponents and eviscerate them and then will caper and cavort around enjoying themselves - all while we are forced to watch and live with their decisions. Oh yeah! I am looking forward to the next 2-4 years"
WELL, what do we see now? An endless stream of congressional investigations lining up in the wings to come out to take their place in the spotlight of infamy and lunacy. All the while, the real - critical - business of United States is left undone or worse. Little things requiring their COMPLETE attention like, oh, say, The War on Terror, an educational system sliding into the toilet, massive immigration problems that threaten to destabilize our entire economy and national character, a failing social security system, astronomically spiraling health care, a screaming need for legal reform....just to name a few minor issues.
I DO have to say that watching this insanity helps me understand why the French ran around and cut off 17,000 heads in the French Revolution. You can only watch so much "out of touch" excess, insanity, foolish primping, preening and hypocritical posturing before you realize that while they play their sick game - they are sticking it to you and everybody else and laughing all the way to the bank. You can't watch that w/out getting REAL angry - the kind of angry that keeps soaking in deep until...everyone explodes and you grab a pitchfork and storm La Bastille.
Friends, the vindictive, hypocritical and assanine investigations have ONLY just begun. The most RECENT flap about firing 8 U.S. attorneys when Bush took office. The Democrats feigning of extreme moral indignation is the biggest joke I have seen in a long time. They act like that never happens and should never happen. When their boy Bill Clinton took office he fired something like over 80 U.S. attorneys. As political appointments go, you often lose your job when the new administration comes to power - its a practice going back all the way to Jackson I think. And while I might agree with some who argue that it is a terrible practice - EVERYBODY HAS DONE IT SINCE THEN - DEMOCRATS JUST AS MUCH AS ANYONE ELSE. To sit there and get their knickers in a righteous knot and think we can't see through the bad acting and hypocrtical lying is highly insulting to the public's intelligence. I guess they really do just assume we are all half-wits who can't remember anything past a 20 second political slogan ad. But I do. Why aren't Republicans screaming bloody murder about the hypocrasy?
God help us, because I think He is the only one that can. You sure can't seem to count on the Republicans to represent the rest of us by holding loud and firm for common sense. Where are the devastatingly brilliant Republicans with strong convictions and a heart and head full of facts about how our government is SUPPOSED TO WORK. Man I miss Reagan!