Conservative Refocus for July the 4th

By Barry Secrest

Isn't it ironic that our most patriotic holiday, aptly called Independence Day, now comes to us at a time when the very fabric of society is trying to determine whether or not they truly wish to be free and independent?  The choice unmistakably exists at present, and yet a large number of confused individuals, it seems, actually lack the forward thinking capability to see the ramifications of their choices.

The core idea from the Liberal Utopians, i.e. Progressives, suggests the desire for a world completely without natural risk, a thing which is totally at odds with Natural Law.  The rueful truth to the Progressives' aims, however, is the greater truth that speaks to the usurpation of a mass grouping of useful idiots and the insidious machinations of a multi-generational Globalist movement which touts a new age, while actually hearkening back to the Dark Ages.

The Leftward would have the Civil Society embark on a journey that will ultimately allow a centralized power the ability to dictate both fairness and outcomes.  Further, this centralized power seeks to supposedly redistribute equalities, as well as to facilitate the supposed smoothing out of wrinkles in both our financial economy as well as our family economies.

In essence, Authoritarianism, often defined as Statism, which is a contrived state of dependence administered by a powerfully centralized Government, would be the natural offshoot of  this simplistic but oft-repeated and yet fatally flawed historical design.  The problem with this line of humanistic thinking flows from a history that is filled to this day with poverty which feeds into hunger, illiteracy which feeds into slavery in all of its myriad forms, and tyranny, being the jealous parent of each.

The US Constitution Versus Globalism

The one foundational precept which an outrageously successful America has based the largest part of Her success upon is a document that sets down as inalienable the rights of the individual in pursuit of his or her free will against a centralized Government's designs.  These rights flow directly from the edicts of none other than man's Creator.  As a universally revered document, the US Constitution, as many have surmised, has been under all forms of assault of late, and these assaults both should and have sounded an alarm to a large number of Americans, while a lesser but very vocal number, many in leadership positions, have sought to intensify these often ad hominem attacks on individual rights.

In fact, the US Constitution, in this modern day of Globalism, has rarely seen such an unqualified disregard of the sovereignty of the individual and God's greatest gift to mankind--that being free will.

As Ronald Reagan so eloquently once stated, the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: "I'm from the Government and I'm here to help."  As most of us can plainly see, Reagan was correct in so many ways that even many Liberals will seek to outrageously compare him to the most radical of Leftists in an effort to deflect from the  sobering truth of converse.

This singular truth speaks to the fact that America currently finds Her weakened standing in the world economy as a direct result of Government meddling and excess.  Social justice aims that would take property from one and give it to another, and an overall design that appears to be patently derived from the Cloward-Piven strategy, which seeks to overwhelm the system in demands, is now clearly in play.  Entitlements and all manner of mysterious expenditures are deluged increasingly on the system in order to bring the current form of our economy and Government crashing in on itself, which is precisely what we are seeing right now, be it unwitting or otherwise.

Free And Independent

So, has our Independence Day been supplanted by what we should now be calling our "Dependence Day," or have we already averted that potential outcome with the 2010 electoral refutation?  To answer that question, first we should take a look at what Independent, or the State of Independence, actually means.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Independence is defined as the following:

a(1): Not subject to control by others: self governing, (2):Not affiliated with a larger controlling unit; b(1): Not requiring or relying on something else: not contingent, (2): Not looking to others for one's opinion or guidance on conduct.

Simply fascinating.  These definitions never cease to amaze as to how powerful the actual meanings are when set against our own modest expectations.  It has been my personal observation that when most Americans celebrate their Independence Day, they are not so much celebrating America's breakaway from King George's Britain, which happened nearly a quarter millenia ago, for Heaven's sake, but rather they are celebrating an ability to live in a Nation so great that each individual largely considers themselves to be a free and independent entity.  But has our Civil Society's powerful appreciation of being free and relatively wealthy been recently abated, and if so, why?

In partial answer, it was none other than President Barack Obama who, in October 2010, stated:

"Belief in Capitalism is blind faith; this philosophy of letting people fend for themselves has failed."

Of all of the many and varied utterances from Obama over these many years, this one quote in particular speaks unlimited volumes on both where the President and his colleague's ambitions lie and why America's mighty economy has remained stalled, and in decline, throughout the Obama Regime's entire tenure.  You see, each one of America's Freedom Charters had one particular idea embedded so deeply within its foundational core, that the actual word itself was never considered necessary to either include or define, and that word is capitalism.

Government As God

Capitalism, which is the free flow of commerce and trade between individuals, unimpeded, along with the integralized values and rights of property ownership and Liberty, was the one all-encompassing principle that the US Constitutional precept of Freedom was based upon.  Further, with this one hair-raising utterance of the President as stated above, We The People, no matter our politics, should therefore always stop and carefully consider each imposition that the President would ill-thoughtfully deploy to this nation's industriousness and well-being, in that regard.

In essence, the Statists, such as Obama, would seemingly construct a Centralized Bureau of Man in order to take up the functions of a province formerly belonging to God.  What was before an act of God would now become an act of the Central Bureau with all of the nefarious mishaps in between consigned to mere bureaucratic oversight.

But, as the disastrously contrived safety net manufactured by our government over the last several years already threatens to bring down the largest economy in the world, the argument has as of late been deflected by none other than the almost comically abused debt ceiling.

To wit, in order for a Statist establishment of Government to achieve its fully desired redistributionist powers, it must have the ability to procure property and to do so lavishly and without impunity, and therein lies the rub for our self-styled American Statists.  The American people have had enough of an outrageous debt and will have nothing further to do with out of control spending and borrowing by the self-adulating elites and their power-cliques.

The Tea Party To The Rescue

The Progressive regime that came into full power on January 1, 2009 embarked with what seemed, at the time, to be a tremendous mandate for a nation transformed.  But, while the Regime moved forward and began centralizing its power and increasingly usurping individual liberties, the Civil Society's initial reaction of fear and confusion elicited a transformation that no one saw coming.  Out of that transformation, the Tea Party movement came into existence and the people stood up in multitude and stated powerfully and with one voice "No."  The true numbers of those either identifying with the Tea Party or counting themselves as members of the Tea Party have never been accurately tabulated, and there is a reason for that.

The actual number would most likely total well over 130 million Americans.

The subsequent election of 2010 saw the snowballing power of the Statists hit a wall of impenetrable zeal and Tea Party outrage.  From that moment onward, the nation began to take full interest and view of what exactly Obama, the Leftist legislators and the Axis Press were trying to accomplish.  The American people, in short order, witnessed the supposed fruits of the Progressives' labor in Government whither on the vine of failure as America's debt and the insult of Statism's angst entangled trade, defeated consumer confidence and slowed economic activity to a literal crawl.

A Bit Of History

In 1776, the Second Continental Congress commissioned Thomas Jefferson to author a Declaration of  Independence from Great Britain and approved the declaration on July 4th,1776.  The United States then fought a Revolutionary war against Great Britain under daunting odds.  During that same period, the Articles of Confederation were drawn up in what could be called a precursor to the US Constitution.  The articles essentially conferred a tremendous weight of rights onto the States of the time in an effort to avoid a behemoth centralized Government, which might transform itself into an assemblage of tyranny against these same states.  But problems between the States grew and after the victory over England, in 1783 the Founders knew that something must be done to strengthen the US economy and spark activity.  The meager central Government of the States was actually hampering trade and did not even have the capability of funding itself.

In 1787 the Philadelphia Convention was held, and it was during this meeting that the US Constitution was drawn up and ratified.  The main impetus of this effort was to create a foundation of principles which would confer a strong elected Government for the People, which was superlatively responsive to the will of the People.  While there were many points of contention to iron out, the one prevailing principle that all could agree upon came down to the preamble, which read:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The overriding principle that was ever-present spoke to the sovereignty of the people.  The principles of John Locke's Two Treatises of Government, which espoused three branches of government with the appropriate checks and balances, would be the largely agreed upon model after hundreds of forms of Government had been both studied and argued. It was also during this time that the Federalist Papers were written in which three leaders of the day essentially argued via public consumption both the pros and the cons of Federalism and how it could be properly undertaken. Later, one of the most important of all the additions to the Constitution was the Bill of Rights, which was authored in large part by James Madison and added to the Constitution by ratification in 1791.

This is what we celebrate when we celebrate Independence Day.

The Power Of One

In all of this wonderful history, the thing that stands out are the names of just a few individuals in a sea of millions, who, by the power of their ideas, forged a Nation of unprecedented impact on world history.  The principles of the nation as founded fueled an impetus in defense of a global population of individuals who had previously known nothing but tyranny, poverty and illiteracy. Even so, it would be another one hundred years before the State would fully recognize the equality of women and Blacks, which would then transform the Nation and the world as nothing ever had.

This is why we as a people can never accept a weakening of the Constitution and its principles.

Many of us seem to identify ourselves as one tiny individual among several hundred million, with little if any power, in a huge sea of our nation's historical years.  We seem so inconsequential to ourselves.  Yet, it has only taken one individual, just as comparably diminutive and with no less of a presence within that sea of years, to project his idea of this nation onto those several hundred million and effect a change that few, in relative actuality, could agree with, even in part, and in a mere three years.

In that vein, we would do well to remember, that in that sea of years ,which seems daunting, certain facts stand out that are not so terribly obvious to many.  A Great, Great Grandmother, who I knew well and who lived to be 98 years old, could recall the days shortly after the Civil War to me from her youth and the war itself from her parent's recollections.  In turn, her Great, Great Grandfather, who was born in the late 1700's, could remember the early days of this nation and recount them to her just as my Grandmother had to me.  In other words, when I was but a child, I was only once removed from the memories of my forebears who could recount in person the dawning events of this Nation's founding, and I was only born in the early sixties.

So we are not so terribly removed within the sea of years of this nation's history as we might indeed think.

And just as in that endless sea of years, which can be quickly winnowed down by our collective familial memories, so it is with the sea of ideas that can change or even reboot a nation's greatness.

It only took one man's ideas a scant three years to alter the nation's course down the path of hegemony, and it will only take one other individual's ideas, of an even lesser duration, to bring the Nation back onto its proper course of liberty, and with the full mandate of the People.

There will be many more Independence Days if we but continue to stand and deliver, and after all of this... they might be the greatest of all.

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