Oct 242013
Oct 182013
Oct 182013
The Democratic Party is a criminal enterprise disguised as a political party.
I’ve read about this in history books. It’s what happened to the Weimar Republic in Germany when its currency collapsed and anarchy followed. The result was Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.
In the wake of the Great Depression, the wheels began to come off the Weimar Republic, a liberal democracy that had been in place since the end of World War One. In 1930 President Hindenburg assumed emergency powers. By 1933 three Chancellors had preceded Hitler and when the Nazi government took over it simply ignored Germany’s constitution.
A lot of scholars who know much more about the U.S. Constitution than I are increasingly speaking out about the same scenario occurring here. Radio personality Mark Levin considers President Obama a despot in light of his refusal to negotiate with the Republicans and the resulting shutdown of the government. Suffice to say, his refusal, carried out by Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, worked.
For the ordinary citizen, Obama’s actions during the shutdown have been instructive if they were paying attention. He threatened not to pay Social Security retirees, Military retirees, disability recipients, and federal retirees. The elderly and the military were the prime targets for his threats and, despite the fact that more than eighty percent of the government was still functioning, he directed that national parks be closed; most dramatically in Washington, D.C. where veterans of World War II and the Vietnam War were denied access to the memorials to their service.
The President and the Democratic Party want all the restrictions on their capacity to spend tax dollars lifted. They want an end to the sequestration that curbs the natural inclination of government departments and agencies to spend taxpayer dollars as fast as the Federal Reserve can print them. The Reserve in turn has been purchasing $85 billion in the nation’s debt every month to maintain the fiction that the nation can pay its bills despite the fact that it has more debt than the entire national economy—the Gross Domestic Product—generates every year.
And who tripled that debt in just his first term? Obama.
A new book by Clark M. Neilly III, “Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government” ($23.99, Encounter Books) says bluntly that “We are drowning in a sea of unconstitutional regulations that compel obedience, stifle innovation, and punish morally blameless conduct.”
“Heedless of the constitutional limits on its own power,” says Neilly, “and indulged by a quiescent judiciary, the federal government now spends 24 percent of our gross domestic product, the highest proportion since World War II.”
Neilly is a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice where he litigates constitutional cases involving economic liberty, property rights, free speech, and school choice. He is the modern version of the biblical Jeremiah raising his voice to warn of what is to come if Congress and the courts do not begin to obey the limits the Constitution sets forth so clearly that anyone can understand them.
“In 2013, a series of scandals involving the Internal Revenue Service, the National Security Agency, the Department of Justice, the Department of Agriculture, and other federal agencies reminded Americans about the hazards of free-wheeling government”, says Neilly.
“And in light of the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as ‘Obamacare’, Congress can even tell people how to spend their money by penalizing those who refuse to buy things it thinks they should have, like government approved health insurance. Congress has no legitimate power to do that, which is why the Supreme Court had to pretend the penalty was actually a tax.”
Suffice to say that Neilly is extremely critical of the failure of the judicial system to uphold the Constitution and the current state of government in America today. “As far as the government is concerned, it is your boss, setting policies and issuing edicts that you will obey. Between that awesome power and you stands the Constitution.”
Obamacare is despotism in action. As Neilly says, if the government can order you to buy health insurance you may not need or want and fine you if you refuse, you are no longer living in a republic with a functioning Constitution.
And this is the reason the Tea Party movement began and why a handful of Senators and Representatives, elected with Tea Party support, have been holding out, seeking to defund, delay or repeal Obamacare. If Obamacare succeeds, America will fail. It is already playing havoc with the economy.
The government shutdown was a political battle in a larger political war between the socialist Democratic Party and a badly frayed conservative Republican one. Supported by votes that have been purchased from the public treasury—the largess of welfare and a matrix of other programs that redistribute wealth—and a measure of election fraud, the Democratic Party has become a criminal enterprise.
As Ronald Reagan said in his first inaugural address, “We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.”
He said that in 1981.
© Alan Caruba, 2013
How To Become A Member Of The New Nobility
How To, Information, Political
Comments Off on How To Become A Member Of The New Nobility
Oct 142013
Even though this essay is satire, it is all too true. The author leaves out one thing that is essential for all of his categories: A blind partisan loyalty to Liberal politics.
If you want to become part of the new nobility that is emerging in the American population, the good news is that it is possible. The bad news is that it is not without cost in time, energy, money and effort.
Here are ways to become a member in the new nobility:
1. Become a police officer. A street level police officer is at the low end of the noble class spectrum. The lower end of a noble class always have greater numbers than the highest ends. Police are treated with deference and have special privileges and immunities that the common folk do not.
2. Become a tenured academic. This group contains a wide range of members of the noble class with the low end being community college professors and the high end being professors at the ivy league universities.
3. Become a lawyer. If you want to understand the privileges and immunities of being a lawyer, just casually mention to a police officer that you are a lawyer. Do the same when you are returning a product that you have had a difficulty with. Judges are a special, higher level member of this group. Tip – some low level judges are not required to have a law degree. This could be a great opportunity.
4. Money. The ability of money to buy entrance into the noble class has a long and honored tradition. In the middle ages, money could buy you a knighthood. Like most things, money can buy you entrance to the new nobility. You will be treated with deference. You will be given special privileges and immunities. You will be accepted into the club. More money equates to higher status. Political contributions are essential. A minimum arbitrary figure would be a net worth of more than 10 million dollars. For the highest levels, the numbers are in the billions.
5. Politicians. Be elected or appointed to office. This group also has a wide range of levels, but even the lowest level of elected official, such as constable, town board member, or even precinct committeeman is treated with deference by law enforcement and others, and has some special privileges. Most are not at the level of a Senator or President, but they are real.
6. Become a member of the media. Members of the media are treated with deference by law enforcement, politicians, and the general public. Experiment by letting people in a restaurant know that you are a member. You will be granted deference. Special privileges are already a matter of law. Entrance to events closed to the public is available to you. This is another opportunity for those with a little talent and an eye to advancing themselves. The media is in turmoil, and there are opportunities in the new media that offer little fiefdoms outside of the larger, main stream media organizations. The possibilities are stratospheric. Who knows? You might found the next Google, Facebook, or Twitter!
7. Combinations of the above. These offer entrance to the highest levels of the new nobility. If you are wealthy, have been elected to high political office, and own media, you are almost certainly in the top levels of the new nobility. See Michael Bloomberg. Note that these attributes tend to reinforce and build on each other. Most high level politicians are wealthy lawyers.
Your entrance to the new nobility will not result in special deference and privileges if you travel incognito. There may be good reason to do so: in the middle ages nobles sometimes did so to gauge the mood of the lower classes and to gain information.
To gain the most from your status, the lower classes have to know that you are a member of the new nobility. An American Bar Association sticker on the car might be appropriate. An official “Press” I.D. does wonders.
A surprising exclusion from the new nobility are military officers. In older nobilities, understanding that political power grows from military power was common, and either military officers were automatic members of the nobility or no one but members of the nobility were allowed to be military officers. This was reflected in the old United States where “Commissioned” officers were made a “gentleman” by an act of Congress.
This is a serious defect in the new nobility. I do not see deference or special privileges granted to military officers (outside of the military) except for those officers that have proven themselves to be astute and politically able, generally (pun intended) those above the General (0-6) level. I would advise the new nobility to revise this defect. It has a direct impact on their chances of maintaining their exalted positions and the long term survival of their class. I doubt that they will heed my advice.
If you are fortunate and skilled enough to become a member of the new nobility, I congratulate you.
Remember me and the felicity of my advice. Favors are always welcome. Perhaps there is a position that needs a well merited appointment.
In the spirit of the esteemed, late Niccolo Machiavelli, I bid you good fortune and good luck!
Note: Very rough estimates of numbers.
The members of the new nobility are a very small slice of America. There are about 900,000 sworn officers at all levels, a few hundred thousand tenured academics, about 1.2 million lawyers, and 500,000 politicians. Roughly 1.5 million Americans have a net worth of over 10 million dollars, but a great many live lives that are essentially incognito, and do not involve themselves in politics. There are About 60,000 “traditional” media professionals, though news bloggers are of an indeterminate number and growing. There is quite a bit of overlap of many of these groups.
*Satire alert
©2013 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Oct 072013
