Thursday, July 4, 2013

Tocqueville's Warning to America: The Dangers of Despotism

First off, who was Alexis de Tocqueville, and how do this Frenchman's words relate to America, of which he was writing?
"His most famous work, Democracy in America (1835), continues to be regarded as the premier commentary on American government and society written by a foreigner."
Tocqueville's insights into what made the United States successful have proved informative to the general public and to scholars alike. His observations represented the excitement of sociological discovery, made by, and for (for he wrote for his French compatriots) the eyes of those for whom this style of democracy was entirely novel. ....
Big Government
"As Americans gather to celebrate the anniversary of our nation's freedom, we contemplate, on the one hand, the revolution in Egypt, where people crying out for freedom could only appeal to the military, having lost any power of self-government; and, on the other, the slow imposition of Obamacare in the United States, delayed only so that it might never be defeated, creeping gradually into every aspect of life, administered by agencies already shown to be hostile to freedom. We have much for which to be grateful--and much about which to be warned."
Quoting Tocqueville's conclusion:
A constitution which should be republican in its head, and ultra-monarchical in all its other parts, has ever appeared to me to be a short-lived monster. The vices of rulers and the inaptitude of the people would speedily bring about its ruin; and the nation, weary of its representatives and of itself, would create freer institutions, or soon return to stretch itself at the feet of a single master.
 

Americans Who Don't Know WHY We Celebrate the 4th of July or WHAT COUNTRY We Declared Independence From!

"Mark Dice talks with California beach goers about the 4th of July and finds that many Americans simply don't know WHY we celebrate the 4th of July or what country we declared independence."

Hat tip to Clinton Brownell

Should you wonder what Westboro Baptist church plans to do next, here's your source

Westboro Baptist Church Picket Schedule
Photos from godhatesfags.com

"Where people signed petitions to name the church a hate group."
"A new GIF from the White House shows the Westboro Baptist Church is most resented in its home state of Kansas and in Newtown, Conn., where it threatened to picket the funerals of children killed in the December massacre. The map, which comes from a White House response to several petitions to classify the group as a hate group, shades ZIP codes by the number of people who signed those petitions."....
 
While I find this info of interest and this church to be reprehensible, does it bother you just a teensy bit that the map comes from the White House?

Coulter: "I Got 30 Million Reasons"

Ann Coulter  "We keep hearing insistent claims that if Republicans don't pass amnesty yesterday it will be the end of the party.

"Can I see the math on that? I can see why bringing in 30 million new Democratic voters would be good for the Democrats, but how does it help Republicans? Maybe conservatives shouldn't blindly trust the calculations of the guy who graduated fifth from the bottom of his class at the U.S. Naval Academy.

"If I were a Democrat, I would have tried to sneak this bill past Republicans by proposing amnesty only after reaching some easily rigged benchmarks. But, apparently, Chuck Schumer knows elected Republicans better than I do."

Here comes the math Ann Coulter uses:
...."Step One: Everyone's amnestied. Step Two: After they're amnestied, they can bring in all their relatives."....
 obama, obama jokes, hope n' change, hope and change, stilton jarlsberg, conservative, tea party, prison, immigration, 4th of july

Bill Whittle on "Dependence Day"

PJTV  "Bill Whittle thinks that the Freedom of Speech is in peril, and so is the Freedom of Religion. Hear why on this Afterburner as Whittle reminds you of the importance of our most important civil liberties, and how each is threatened by the expanding welfare state."

A comment to this video:
The sad truth is Bill, that while I loved my father (who passed away last year), he and many in his generation that fought for freedom in WWII are the authors of the problem we face today.

After the war, he finished school, eventually obtaining a Masters in physics, and after achieving Lt. in the reserves post-war, went on to a long civil service career working as a civilian arms researcher. Sounds ok to that point.

However, my father was a Democrat. He has never till his dying day, seen or had a problem with the shenanigans perpetrated by the liberals in the country up to and including Hussein. Paradoxically, he was very religious having tight moral standards (didn't drink, smoke etc).

Now being raised in that house, I wound up supporting Democrats from 18 to roughly 30 when I'd been gone long enough to get dose of real world and see what was afoot, it was 2nd Amendment issues that really first caused me to examine my political leanings instead of accept the crap I was spoon fed.

My father listened sympathetically to the hysterical insane rants of Cindy Sheehan against Bush, ignored that his own party supported going into Iraq, that the WMDs were found in some quantity and convoys were seen going into Syria while we came into Iraq. Of course he's gone to see the end result with Assad using those same WMDs on his people now. But my father couldn't bat an eyelash with the government takeovers of industry, finance and medical services much like the Nazis he fought 60 some years ago.

The Greatest Generation sacrificed and fought a lot, but they failed afterward to preserve what they fought for. They got soft, and allowed the enemy to creep in and subvert them with promises of ass-wiping for life when they got old. As young men they fought tyranny; as old men they voted it into power.
 

Political Cartoons by Henry Payne

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Pickett's charge at Gettysburg in the American Civil War


The 1922 anniversary re-enactment
A better view from the Ziegler’s Grove/Cemetery Ridge Observation Tower of the Pickett’s Charge Fields. The Codori Farm is in the right background along the Emmitsburg Road. Webb Avenue (no longer existing) circles towards the “Angle” of the stone wall. Hancock Avenue is in the foreground. This view was taken facing southwest in 1903.

Fight for the colors

Union Counterattacks Part 7    "In today’s Union Counterattacks’ post, Licensed Battlefield Guide Rich Goedkoop shows us the area where the 106th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment charged from Cemetery Ridge to the area of the Codori Farm on July 2, 1863."
Panorama of The Angle
 First Minnesota - July 2, 1863
"Overlooking the battlefield at Gettysburg the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry could see their lines crumbling under Confederate attack. At that moment, Union Second Corps Commander Winfield Scott Hancock galloped up, and in desperation ordered the Minnesotans forward."

The Declaration of Independence

Political Cartoons by Nate Beeler
Here is the complete text of the Declaration of Independence.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.  
 
He has forbidden his governors to pass
laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
 Political Cartoons by Chip Bok
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
 
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
The names of the signers here.
Political Cartoons by Steve Breen
Declaration of Independence for Kids

Ominous outlook for the Zimmermann trial.

The US population seems more third-world than ever.
 
More Americans View Blacks As Racist Than Whites, Hispanics  "Americans consider blacks more likely to be racist than whites and Hispanics in this country.
"Thirty-seven percent (37%) of American Adults think most black Americans are racist, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Just 15% consider most white Americans racist, while 18% say the same of most Hispanic Americans. (To see survey question wording, click here.)"

Sanford Police Chief Fears “Violence” in Response to Zimmerman Verdict   "City Manager Norton Bonaparte is similarly on edge, fearing a Rodney King-style riot if Zimmerman is found not guilty."
Can Zimmermann get a fair trial with pressure like this?
From Drudge:

Tea Party Members Fit Profile of Domestic Terrorists, Obama Claims

Liberal cartoonists join with Obama in demonizing the TEA Party:
National Report   "A short time ago while addressing a CEO roundtable and Business Forum in Tanzania, President Barack H. Obama, told reporters and attendees that today’s Tea Party members in the United States very closely fit the U.S. government’s profile for domestic terrorists. The President’s response came after a Tanzania businessman asked if civil unrest in the U.S. is likely to affect doing business with American companies."
....
..."Obama responded by saying, “Typically domestic terrorists in the U.S. are people who cling to obsolete beliefs from the time of the American Revolution. They are conservative Christians, reactionary Republicans and conspiracy theorists many of whom belong to racist hate groups.” "
(Emphasis added.)
Hat tip to Julie Grace Foster at Conservative Bloggers on Facebook

Pro-Abortion Protester Has Young Girl Hold Sign: “If I Wanted The Government In My Womb, I Would F*** A Senator!”…

Weasel Zippers  "Really not all that surprising people who support killing babies in the womb have no class."

Breaking: Morsi under house arrest; 15 Photos From the Tahrir Square Protests You'll Never See In Legacy Media.

Report: Morsi Under House Arrest  "Al Hayat TV is reporting that Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi is under house arrest.  However, Morsi's spokesman denied the report to ABC News."

Doug Ross   "Curiously, a massive wave of anti-Obama sentiment in Egypt has been utterly ignored by vintage media, even though the protests may be the largest in all of human history."

'The Lone Ranger' Follows P.C. Narrative, Smites Greedy Capitalist

Big Hollywood   "The Lone Ranger opens with a sly storytelling device that acknowledges Hollywood's checkered past regarding the depiction of Native Americans. That apparently wasn't enough for the new Hollywood reboot, which mocks the "white man," targets a capitalist and casts aspersions at the U.S. military in true modern fashion."