Gun Control Laws are Unjust

For those of you waiting patiently for a post, I have just posted over at the Free Liberty Writers. Go on over they, and check it out. While you are at it, check out the other Liberty Writers.

It's not just me saying it. Here's a police officer saying it.

So, you don't believe me that the only person who will be there to defend your life is yourself. You don't believe the Supreme Court.  Well, then, take if from a police officer himself over at Officer "Smith".

Buy a gun. Get a bat. Own some weapon and have enough skill to use it to save your own life and the lives of your family members. DO NOT RELY ON THE POLICE TO SAVE YOUR LIFE FOR YOU.

Wait. What's this? What heresy are you speaking of? Officer Smith, are you really telling me not to rely on the police to protect me? What about that "Protect and Serve" horse shit plastered all over the sides of their patrol cars? Aren't they SUPPOSED to protect me?

Go read the whole post, as it is an eye opener. The bottom line is that the police won't be there to defend you if you find yourself under attack. They also won't be there to defend your children or grand children should someone try to take them. It will be you, and probably you alone.

There is also the moral question one has to ask: how moral is it to demand that someone you pay, say $48,000 per year, defend your life even though you yourself are not willing to defend it? Officer Smith:

The bottom line is this. If you're depending on us, the police, to save your ass in any foreseeable situation, you're deluding yourself. You need to be able to protect and defend YOURSELF. Then, after you have taken care of business, you can call us to come clean up the mess. That way it'll be the person who attacked you who is bleeding in your driveway, instead of you.

Folks used to understand this, once upon a time. There has never been a time when the police would magically appear at the snap of your fingers. In fact, modern technology has made police response MUCH faster than it was at any time in the past. But people have somehow forgotten over the years that it is first YOUR responsibility to protect yourself. People have gotten soft, and come to the conclusion that any violence on their part is a bad thing. They don't want to be responsible for an injury to another person, no matter what that other person is doing unto them.

So, why don't people still understand this?  Could it be that anti-gun Mayors, police chiefs, sheriffs, and news papers have convinced a wide swath of the American public that the government should have a monopoly of force?  Could it be that at the same time they are decrying crime in the streets, they are sending a message that the average citizen is safe, and should rely on the police for self defense?  Some people I talk to seem unaware of what could happen.  "Well," they will say, "I don't need a gun here."  But crime happens when you least expect it, where you least expect it.  Perhaps as you are going into the office, a fleeing felon will come up the driveway in a bid to out run the police, see you there and decide to take you hostage.  The police will ultimately get their man.  But whether you live or die that day will depend on you.  Got Gun?

I really only have one bone to pick here with Officer Smith, who seems like a hard working, stand up guy. But he seems to be located in Kalifornia, a State where, depending on the County, it can be almost impossible to obtain a permit to carry concealed. In the scenario outlined by Officer Smith, the victim was attacked in his driveway. It does little good if his gun is in his house, stored in a safe and unloaded. Few criminals are willing to wait while you go in the house, open the safe and acquire the gun, then find the ammunition and load it into the magazine, to return to say "Alright, I'm ready now!" Of course, Officer Smith points to bats and other things that are also useful weapons, but if you are small, or disabled, any contact weapon may be problematic.

Thanks to Sean Sorrentino for the link.

Rest in Uneasy Peace

The Canadian Parliament has repealed the Long Gun Registry, as reported in the National Review by John Lott and Gary Mauser in an article published February 20, 2012 entitled Death of a Long-Gun Registry. The passage of the repeal represents a small victory for gun owners, and a small set back for the gun grabbers. But left in place are all the goofy laws that dictate which weapons one may own. An example is provided in the comments to this over at Sebastian's new blog Shall Not Be Questioned. Lott and Mauser make the point that the Long-Gun Registry cost Canadian taxpayers $2.7 Billion over its 14 year life while producing zero results. That is, if the results were to be a reduction in crime.

Read the rest at here.

Postmodernism: An Essential Tool of the Left

On a recent episode of the Stossel show on Fox Business Channel, Stewart Varney was debating a person from the Center for American Progress.  Varney became more and more apoplectic as the progressive offered irrelevancies and non sequiturs up as "debating points."  Red faced, Varney finally blurted that there was no way to debate this guy.  He was, of course, correct.  For those not familiar with Stewart Varney, his biography can be found here and here. Varney has his feet firmly grounded in the real world, where causes have effects that can't be ignored.

Read the rest of the article here

Shamelessly Glombing onto Fellow Blogger

So, what does a blogger do when he is out of ideas of his own? Of course a blogger who just can't think of anything to say, and who has any integrity at all, will just say nothing. The rest of us will try link into another blogger's work in hopes of getting a little reflected light.  That's what I am doing today with fellow blogger Sean Sorrentino over at An NC Gun Blog.  Sooner or later, the temptation to shamelessly glomb onto other's work is bound to strike.  

I have made the point many times that gun control does not control crime, or criminals. Criminals can get whatever weapons they want, any time they want. Further, while you and I are forbidden from carrying a firearm into schools, banks, theatres, some restaurants, hospitals, and ...well, you know the list is long, a criminal carries wherever he likes, whenever he likes. If he is planning on committing a crime, what is one more charge against him?

Sean Sorrentino makes exactly that point every day in his blog An NC Gun Blog. When he can't find a good story from North Carolina, he is not above pointing out that places like Australia, (The Formerly) Great Britain, New York City, and other places where the gun grabbers have had their way with the populace (and are therefore that much closer to Utopia) have a surprising amount of gun crime. Guns are banned, but people intent on committing a crime get them anyway.

To hear a gun grabber whine about gun crime, as if bat crime, knife crime, screw driver crime, nail gun crime and so forth, aren't quite so bad, sometimes makes a person grounded in reality want to throw up his hands. It is as if they believe in the instrumentality theory of crime. That is, the gun sends out signals that cause normal, everyday people to go out and murder others for no reason whatsoever. Such people also have to believe that lamp posts jump in front of cars, or that cookies magically appeared in the child's mouth.

So called "journalists" often foster a belief in the instrumentality theory of crime by the way they write news stories. How many times have you read a story about a man killing his his wife that reads like a gun just went off? The poor victims: the gun jumped out of the holster and into his hands, and then pulled its own trigger, killing his wife. Then it turned on him, and shot him too. His neighbors report he was a quiet person and a good family man. If only guns were banned!

But here in the real world, guns are just a tool, like bats, knives, screw drivers and nail guns. Sean takes a given story, and shows you that these guys have a long and sordid history of committing crimes. These are not cases of innocent victims being led astray by bad guns. These are bad people, who use guns (or bats, knives, screw drivers, or nail guns) to do bad things to their wives, girl "friends," children, and anyone else that happens to get in their way. The outrage is not that you and I have guns to defend ourselves from these animals, the outrage is that the "Justice" system allows them to roam our streets.

Government in a Box

Today's American Thinker has a thoughtful article entitled The Rising Fever of Despotism by Lee DeCovnick, that captures several of the themes I have been writing about in three and a half years this blog has been in existence. First, that we have been heading towards an ever more tyrannical government for years, but this regime has pressed the throttle to the floor, and is already a fascist regime. Second, that a lot of the blame can be placed at the feet of Congress, who should be writing the laws, not the executive agencies.

Going back to first principles, DeCovnick writes:

Two hundred and thirty-six years after it's signing, the Declaration of Independence shines forth as one of mankind's greatest intellectual achievements. Radical then as now, the Declaration upended the relationship between a monarchial government and the people. So profound are the principles and moral beliefs laid out by Jefferson in 1776, that they still continue to enrage our 21st century's dictators and despots.

How radical is the Declaration of Independence? Here are the epochal ideas that Jefferson postulated. The Creator endows men, not governments, with certain unalienable rights: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. These rights exist independent of government. So even when a government fails to uphold these rights, the rights endure because they are preexistent to the government.

Here is the heart of the matter. Our rights, as human beings, come from God (or if you don't believe in God, from our humanity. Certainly, human nature can be taken as axiomatic by an observation of history.) Therefore, governments do not "grant" anything. Instead, they exist at the sufferance of the individual. To give to one, governments must take from another, an act which would be called theft if you or I did it. The entire "entitlement" state and its "social safety net" is built on theft, and is therefore illegitimate. ObamaCare is, of course, another theft by government.

I could detail the ways in which our government has become destructive of our rights as individuals. Some recent examples include portions of the Patriot Act, the creation of the TSA, the NDAA, ObamaCare...need I go on? Older examples include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid...again, need I go on?

Then there are the so called "Czars" running around the Executive branch. These advisers to the President have powers to make things happen, yet are not vetted by the Senate in its roll of providing advise and consent. They often work in secret, behind the scenes, so that nobody knows who is influencing these people and what policies they are promulgating. What is the source of their funding?  Can not Congress defund them since they offend the Constitution?  At one time, Glenn Beck listed 32 czars, but admitted that we don't know for sure the real number. The title, Czar, comes to us from Russia, where it was the title of the Imperial Crown head of State, and is a corruption of the Roman name Caesar. Julius Caesar was the first Roman dictator, and his name became synonymous with all the dictators that followed.

We can largely thank Congress for giving up power to the Executive over time. Whether it is out of laziness, partisan fervor, or that they someday hope to wield some of that power as President, the Congress has given up powers to the President, to the point that they are in danger of being seen as irrelevant.    Perhaps the Congress feels they just don't have time to write every law.  But here again, Congress has taken on far more than it has the power to do.  DeCovnick, again:

Nowhere in the Constitution do we find that Executive branch appointees, such as those comfortably ensconced at HHS, EPA, or Treasury may write laws that the people are expected to obey. Congress and her law-writing committees were once responsible for actually writing all the Federal laws and regulations, down to the smallest detail. Now Congress passes two thousand pages of overview legislation that specifically permits the unelected, unappointed, and unconfirmed bureaucrats to add cauldrons full of the devil brew to the details of new legislation. The Founders of this country would be aghast at the powers so easily forfeited by Congress and hoarded by the Executive branch.

It is not just that the Executive gets to write the regulations, then interpret what they wrote. In certain instances, they also get to pass sentence through their Administrative law judges. Clearly, the Executive branch of government has become too powerful. It used to be that the only contact a person typically had with the Federal government was when the mailman came around. Today, one must be on constant guard lest one find oneself breaking some rule or other that one doesn't know about. For instance, you would think that raising a few rabbits for sale would be a good thing, a harmless way to teach the kids about entrepreneurship. You would be wrong.

We can strike at two objectives at the same time.  If Congress takes back its legislative powers, then a huge number of bureaucrats are no longer needed.  If the Courts take back their powers, we can pare that down even more.  At that point, we will have a more balanced government, and we will save billions of dollars every year.  Our liberties are at stake, and the only way we will retain them is to put government back in the box designed for it. 

The Regime Offers a No Compromise Compromise

The President, after indicating he would not back down the other day, yesterday offered what he called a "compromise" to the Catholic Church and other Christians. His so-called "compromise" took this form, as reported at Fox News:

"Under the rule, women will still have access to free preventive care that includes contraceptive services, no matter where they work -- that core principle remains," Obama said. But he added, "Religious organizations won't have to pay for these services, and no religious institution will have to provide these services directly."


The change would allow religious organizations to refuse to cover contraceptive care. It would also require insurers to offer a plan that does not include contraceptive care in their contracts with nonprofit religious groups. But the insurers would be required to make contraception available free of charge to women anyway.

So, Obama violates Christians' right to freely practice religion as acknowledge in the First Amendment, then he offers a so-called "compromise" that leaves Catholics paying for contraceptives and abortificients anyway. Of course, he has no legal authority to do that either. By doing so, the President is asserting a right, totally foreign to American political thought, but familiar to Europe not only to tell private companies which services to offer, but also how much they will charge for those services. This is Fascism at its purest.  Fellow Christians, do not be fooled by this man. Glenn Beck has called this a "Niemoller moment," referring to German pastor Martin Niemoller, who after World War II penned the famous poem "First they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew."  The poem describes the way that the regime steals your liberties by dividing and intimidating you.  We must stand together.

Let us learn from history.  We must speak out, and we must resist. If you wanted to know where my line in the sand is, I draw it here. Here is where I turn and fight. "Here I stand.  I can do no otherwise." (Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms.)  In Jesus name, I pray oh Lord, that I will have the strength. I know that I have not been a good man, or a good Christian, but I pray for the strength to carry the fight to your enemies, and to defeat them, Amen.

Still contemplating the above, I found Fay Voshell had an interesting think piece over at the American Thinker yesterday entitled The Church, the Military, and the Descent into Tyranny. I recommend you read it all. A couple of quotes to whet your appetite:

In a republic committed to freedom, the church and the military, two of the country's most powerful organizations, must be allowed to construct and to follow the ethical guidelines, codes of conduct, internal rules, and hallowed rituals they themselves create without interference from the federal and state governments.

In other words, the military --with self-limiting exceptions its specific duties and focus may require -- and the Church must have the freedom to define themselves, and must have the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights without qualification to all Americans.

I am most familiar with Navy, and the Marine Corp, as an outside observer looking into these institutions. The Marine "culture," if you will, was not developed and promulgated by politicians, but grew organically out of the practical need to turn callow boys into hardened young men with the courage to take the fight to the enemies of this country, many times facing overwhelming odds. Every Marine from the Commandant on down carries a rifle. The Marines never leave a man behind. The uniform, the symbol, The Eagle, Anchor and Globe the motto, "Semper Fidelis, the Marine Corp Hymn, all work to that end. The goal is to make of these people, not killers, but warriors, a distinction that Hollywood and the media often do not get.

One of the things that used to be taught to Marine recruits was the distinction between a legal order, which of course he was obligated to obey, and an illegal order, which he was equally duty bound not to execute. Each man is understood to have a conscience of his own, and must consult that conscience at every point in his life. Saying "I was just following orders" is no defense when the order is illegal. Ms. Voshell again:

The mentors of the spiritual ethos of the individual soldier are its commanding officers and, perhaps more especially, its chaplains. Chaplains in particular are the spiritual guides of the soldier's individual conscience. They are the ones who share the soldier's hardships, providing spiritual strength and comfort in times of duress, whether it is on the beaches of Normandy, in the jungles of Vietnam, in the deserts of Iraq, or in the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan. Chaplains are with America's warriors in life and in death...

But the conscience of people of faith, including military chaplains and members of our military, is increasingly threatened by the anti-religious sentiment of our current administration, which is seeking effectively to silence chaplains who are speaking out about the overreach of the government's health care mandates concerning birth control and sterilization.

I have been calling this administration a Fascist one for three years. Let us recall that Fascism is a secular religion in which the people worship the State and its Leader. Like most religions, Fascism makes a claim of exclusivity on its adherents. "You shall have no other god before me." That is what this naked attack on the Roman Catholic Church in particular, and on the small 'c' catholic church is all about.  Our Fascist regime thinks it is a jealous god, and must bend people of faith to its will.  Think I am being alarmist here?  Read on, as Voshell explains:

The attack on Catholic chaplains, and by implication on every other chaplain who dares resist government directives against conscience, is especially ominous when viewed in combination with the recent National Defense Authorization Act. As Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi points out, the law allows "seditious" Americans to be detained indefinitely if they fit the fungible and vague definition of "terrorist" as outlined by that law.

No American can walk free when "terrorism" and "sedition" are so broadly defined that to call a measure "unjust" is viewed as seditious and as an incitement to insurrection. No citizen dare speak out against the current administration, including matters of faith and religious practice, without fear of repercussions that include condemnation without trial and incarceration without an end.

The noose is tightening around the necks of Americans. Our liberties are being stolen by a thousand cuts. Now you begin to see what the loss of even just one of your liberties entails. Accept it no more. Speak out, and resist.

I am convinced that the regime can find me any time it wants to, but I'll make it easy for them,

Wade Jensen
Raleigh, NC
aka "PolyKahr"

Molon Labe

Update: Mercer Tyson has a piece in the Sunday edition of the American Thinker that parallels what I said Saturday. The article, entitled The Contraception Commandment and the Progressive Religion is written by a self admitted agnostic and social liberal. None the less, he sees the same issues, namely that the State is trying to make of itself a secular religion, and thus able to countermand the commandments of other religions.  His solution?  Force Progressives to register as a religion, putting them legally on the same footing as ever other religion.  Interesting.

Two from the War on Guns

In Virginia, the Senate has passed a bill that would eliminate the one gun a month law. Typically, a Senator on the opposing side, that is the gun grabbers, took to the Fairfax Newsto express her outrage. But then there is this little item in the report:

She said that evidence is mounting that Virginia is already falling into favor again with drug and gun cartels. In December, ten residents of Manassas, Virginia were arrested in a “three-year investigation of interconnected cocaine and firearm distributors.” In June, The Virginian-Pilot reported, “five men funneled guns from Virginia’s Eastern Shore to New Jersey and put them in the hands of gang members, murderers and drug dealers.”

Over the last several years, more than 60 people have been arrested in connection with bulk firearms distributio (sic), Favola said.

So, here Senator Favola is admitting that the law, on the books for the last 18 years, does not work to stop gun runners from getting guns, or from selling them to felons. What it does do is prevent legal collectors and peaceable armed citizens from acquiring guns in quantities exceeding one a month, and prevents legitimate businesses from selling more guns.

We often talk about something called "unintended consequences." Unintended consequences are things that result from passing a law for other reasons. In many cases, unintended consequences can be predicted if one assumes that people who do not want to be bound by the law will adapt and find a way around the law. Because of the ability to predict unintended consequences, I don't believe they are unintended. I don't believe that our politicians are that stupid.  In this case, I think the law does precisely what it was intended to do. But that infringes on the rights of peaceable armed citizens. So, to deflect attention away from the fact they are deliberately infringing on peoples rights, they instead natter on about gun traffickers. Nonsense! Virginia should repeal this law as a total failure.

Meanwhile, there are laws on the books to deal with illegal arms traffickers, that don't burden peaceable armed citizens in any way.

In North Carolina, Grass Roots North Carolina is preparing to sue the City of Winston-Salem to force them to comply with the State law passed in July of last year. The Winston-Salem Journal reports approvingly, and no wonder. They had an editorial back in January praising the City Council for passing the new ordinance. But as I note in that post, the Journal gets it wrong on all counts.  Now, it looks like a court will decide.  What a waste of money in difficult times.

A hat tip to David Codrea over at the War on Guns for pointing to both articles.

The War on Guns: Mexican Standoff

The War on Guns: Mexican Standoff

I don't have much time, but wanted to highlight this post from David Codrea at the War on Guns.

First they came for the Jews...On Speaking Out and Sticking Together

The First Amendment to the Constitution states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

One of the things implied in the wording of the First Amendment is that the State can not intrude into the religiously held beliefs of the people.   Thus, anything the State does must make room for a "conscience clause."  But as Francis Porretto points out at Eternity Road in a piece entitled Freedom of Religion, that wall has already been breached by the Supreme Court:

The expansion of federal power past the explicit bonds of the Constitution was the cleavage point. A federal court case of great importance for this proposition was U.S. v. Valentine Y. Byler.

Go read the whole piece, and the links in the piece as well.  Apparently, when taxes are involved, our Constitutionally protected rights go out the window.

Michelle Malkin, writing in yesterday's Townhall.com, in an article entitled First They Came for the Catholics sounds a call to arms for all Christians to come to the aide of our Catholic brothers and sisters in their fight with the regime. The title itself alludes to a German pastor, Martin Neimoller, who survived Nazi Germany.  He is said to have formulated the famous saying "First they came for the Jews, and I said nothing, because I wasn't a Jew..."  It is a fact that either we all hang together, or we will surely be torn apart.  Now is not the time for divisions.

As you may know, it is Catholic doctrine that contraception violates God's command to be fruitful and multiply, and that abortion is the equivalent of murdering your own child. I am not a Catholic, but I agree with both doctrines. To quote Ms. Malkin:

President Obama and his radical feminist enforcers have had it in for Catholic medical providers from the get-go. It's about time all people of faith fought back against this unprecedented encroachment on religious liberty. First, they came for the Catholics. Who's next?

Of course, with the constant focus on Fast and Furious, the lawless gun running scheme run by the ATF, and the Presidential nomination, this seemingly came out of the blue, but as Malkin makes clear, it has been in the works for some time.

Fay Voshell, always a thoughtful writer, also has a piece in yesterday's American Thinker entitled The State Ruling the Church which notes that if the regime gets away with this intrusion into the consciences of Catholics, they will take even more bold steps. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but as noted above, the government has already breached that wall; this is the next bolder step. But Voshell is right to fear the State none the less. The picture in Voshell's article is that of priests and bishops giving the Fascist salute in Nazi Germany. It will get uglier as the State presses to ensure that every individual bows at the alter of its power. In Fascism, the State is the religion, the Leader is its god, and the State must eventually crush any competition for loyalty under its heal. If you recognize a higher power, you will be crushed as well.

Francis Porretto again:

Now that a "compelling government interest" can be asserted to override any claim of rights, it becomes quite clear that freedom -- of any variety, not just religious freedom -- no longer exists in these United States. We have no rights as such are properly understood; we only have permissions, or perhaps the temporary forbearance of a Leviathan that hasn't gotten around to shackling us yet.

We still have our rights, of course. They exist independently of the government, having been granted to us by a power higher than government.  Our rights are neither granted by the government, nor can they be taken away by the simple expedient of claiming a "compelling government interest."  There are no "compelling government interests" which can override our fundamental rights, especially our right to freedom of religion.  Our problem at the moment is getting our government to acknowledge and respect our rights.

Francis asks "what can we do?"  I would advise the first thing is to pray, ask for guidance.  We all must be on the side that God is on, mustn't we?  Then, follow your own conscience as to how much, and in what ways you can resist, but resist.  We are in the midst of a cultural cold war, in which at the moment the other side holds all the cards.  But we can still resist.  We can make it so expensive to enforce their so-called "laws" merely deemed to have passed by a body that did not pay any attention to us, that they are forced to give them up, or at least to make concessions with us.  But the moment they do, they have lost.

Update: Hugh Hewitt, interviewing Rick Santorum, seems to have come to the same conclusions: this is a cultural cold war, and we must resist using civil disobedience. See his article at Townhall.com today entitled Memo to the Catholic Bishops.

Keeping the Uninformed Blissfully Ignorant

The President ripped away whatever is left of the mask he has worn since the 2008 elections. What he articulated in the State of the Union show fits the classic definition of Facsism. Jonah Goldberg, who also wrote Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, writing in the National Review Online, in an article entitled Obama's Vision for a Spartan America is disgusted.  And with good reason.  The United States is the one nation on earth where each individual has been allowed to pursue his own vision of the good life.  Not anymore.  It is only a short step from where we are to some bureaucrat deciding where you will live, what you will do for a living, and how much you will be paid.  It is a short step to some bureaucrat deciding how warm to keep your house, what appliances you may have, what food you may eat, and all the other decisions you make now.  As it stands, bureaucrats are deciding what health care you will receive, and when that becomes too expensive, when you will die.

This is not a vision of America, it is a vision of Mussolini's Italy, or Hitler's Germany.  It is the vision of a Fascist America that the Progressives have been working towards for over 100 years.

Meanwhile the Republican elites are doing their best to see that Obama's vision comes true.  They don't want ordinary Americans making their own decisions any more than the Democrats do.  In Our Elective Despotism, (American Thinker)  Lawrence Sellin explains that the only thing the Republican establishment wants is to get their hands on our tax money and distributed it to their friends. The only thing they don't like about ObamaCare is that they were frozen out of any decision making. By way of illustrating his point Sellin writes:

One of the most honest and courageous members of Congress in decades, Rep. Allen West (R-FL), is about to become a sacrificial lamb of the collusion between the Republican and Democratic establishments in the state of Florida.

And what is West's crime? He is an independent thinker and a rising star of the Tea Party movement.

The Republican establishment hates the Tea Party because it has the audacity to suggest that American citizens should have a voice in their government.

Reading between the lines, both political parties want to transform the United States into a Fascist State, with, of course, the elites of either party at the helm. Interesting, he is backed up by Steve McCann, also writing in the American Thinker in an article entitled The Republican Party's Strategic Blunder.

The overriding interest of this cabal has been and continues to be: the accumulation of power through the control of the income, borrowing and spending by the Federal Government. Thus, with the exception of the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the Republican controlled House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999, the Republican members of the Ruling Class have been content since 1952 to merely slow down the big-government policies of the Democrats while publicly decrying their tax and spend policies.

This insider apparatus has been the primary determining factor in whom among those choosing to run for office will receive the financial, media and logistical support so vital for any political campaign, but particularly for national office be it the Presidency or either house of Congress. It is this cabal that has given the nation Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush and John McCain in the presidential sweepstakes and innumerable go-along to get-along members of Congress.

And that is why we have either had to hold our noses and vote for the Republican, who promised to take us there slower, or vote for the Democrat who promised to take us there faster. But neither one promised us the liberty to live our own lives.

McCann posits the death of the Republican party, and I agree. But what will replace it? If whatever replaces it must use the same politicians, with the same prejudices, to win office, are we any better off?  Unless we can reverse the leftward drift into fascism that the nation is taking, a second party will be pointless, only serving to keep the uninformed blissfully ignorant.  We will have simply two wings of a single party.