Hate

The fundamental rights guaranteed under the United States Constitution are under assault and the electorate at large is aiding and abetting that fact by a woeful lack of understanding on what their rights truly are. The Constitution was written and enacted to limit the power of the government and to guarantee the citizens the right to free expression, be it by speech or publication.

In the name of ignorance and fear, those precious rights are being surrendered under the guise of tolerance.

The terms ‘hate crime’ and ‘hate speech’ have become part of the accepted lexicon of the self described but self delusional ‘enlightened’ political class. The support of these terms is in fact nothing more than ignorance run amok and the American people must stand firm against this sacrificing of their rights.

Consider exactly what has happened under the guise of ‘hate speech’ and ‘hate crime’.

“Hate speech’ is currently the accepted vernacular to dismiss unpopular points of view. If a citizen of any status takes an unpopular position on a political class and accompanying media flacks sacred cow, they are not debated on the merits; they are labeled as purveyors of hate speech. This is nothing more than intimidation and low level thuggery. It exposes the lack of intellectual heft by those who choose to inject fear and hatred into the discourse of the body politic. Hate by definition goes to an internal mental process; labeling speech as hate goes to the arrogance of declaring that ones knows the working of another’s mind. It also signals to those who would defend the minority opinion from doing so, lest they find themselves tarred and feathered by ignorance. Free speech is a basic tenet of American democracy and in the name of political correctness it is being sacrificed on the altar of ignorance. The question begs to be asked; how soon until there is no longer any dissent in the national discourse, lest it be deemed to be hate speech. The arena of ideas is indeed a fierce competition, but it must be fought amongst equals, not the lions against the Christians.

The even more alarming precedent being set is that of ‘hate crime’. The act itself is apparently not enough to warrant sufficient punishment; the government has now decided that if it can show ones mental intent, there will be additional punishment levied.

In short, thought itself is sufficient grounds for additional punishment. The narrow minded and ignorant amongst the electorate feel that there is some manner of justice is labeling crimes as “hate’ crimes.

Is there such a thing as a loving or friendly crime? We should look instead to increasing the punishments for crime and remove the governmental thought police from being involved in the prosecutorial process. How soon will it be until those in authority will add “hate” to any legal infraction solely in order to breed fear amongst the population?

This is not mere rhetoric; every tyrannical government in history has sowed its seeds of gaining power by first creating fear of prosecution against some manner of societal undesirable.

The American people must thwart this attempt of circumventing the Constitution for short term political correctness. The framers and the founders entrusted us with the responsibility of defending our freedoms; we must not betray that trust, or surely our ancestors and our posterity will never forgive our collective cowardice.

Nazi

A Personal Commentary

As has been previously mentioned, there occurs from time to time an event that does not specifically deal with issues directly tied to the intent of the Madison Conservative, but nonetheless demand to be addressed in the form of a personal commentary. This week is just such an instance.

The actress Susan Sarandon this week referred to the Pope as ‘that Nazi’. While indeed a wholly inappropriate and insipid statement, the widely held principle of “I may hate what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it” must be adhered to. Ms. Sarandon has the right to express herself in any manner that does not put the public at large in danger – the “you cannot yell fire in a crowded theater” limitation on free speech.

This week also saw the death of Libyan dictator Muammar Kaddafi, one of the few remaining despots in power. Kaddafi was in the mold of previous mass murderers who ascended to power for personal glory, wealth and power and saw their people as merely tools to maintain their stranglehold on that power.

Kaddafi was a heinous human being who slaughtered tens of thousand, but he was no Nazi.

In recent years, President Bush has been labeled as Hitler, and President Obama has been displayed in caricature with a Hitler mustache. Opposing members of both political extremes have labeled their opposition as using ‘storm trooper’ tactics, or using “Gestapo” type methods in attempting to push through a specific piece of legislation.

This is beyond absurd and borders on the sickening; if we do not learn the lessons of history, we are sadly bound to repeat them.

General Eisenhower, when entering liberated concentration camps, allowed the press to take as many pictures as needed and forced the inhabitants of the neighboring towns to come through the camps to see what had occurred directly in their midst. He did so with the specific intention of forcing history to acknowledge what had happened, so that no one could ever claim the camps had not happened, or were not as bad as had been claimed.

He was a man wise beyond his time.

The Nazis collectively descended to the lowest form of humanity; they created the methodology of the furnaces to help exterminate an entire race and any person they felt was an undesirable was sent to their death in the hope of ‘cleansing’ the state. Hitler had people executed slowly and films taken of the torture so that he could watch them at his leisure. The Nazis and the Gestapo in general, created a wave of fear and oppression not seen previously for millennia.

They butchered human beings for sport; they desecrated the human body under the guise of ‘medical experiments’.

One may disagree with another’s politics or feel the need to make some manner of political statement, as in Ms. Sarandon’s’ case, but can the case of equity be made that President Bush or President Obama have done anything to warrant the comparisons to the Nazis?

Language is a delicate thing and those in a position of using it to a mass audience must be wary of how they use it.

We as a people must speak out against the flip manner that elected officials disparage each other; we can disagree on policy but how does one walk back a comparison to a Nazi with the full understanding of what that means?

Imagine the current “ Occupy Wall Street” protests under a Nazi regime. The protesters would be carted away and butchered for the ‘good of the state’.

Freedom comes with responsibilities and we must hold people accountable for their actions and their words.

We owe our posterity no less and must accept no less from ourselves.

The Lesson to Learn

“Congress shall make no law …abridging …right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Benjamin Franklin once wryly observed that in describing and defining a populist uprising it was only in the third person, their revolution, that such an event was illegal and should be dealt with harshly by the subject government. It was in the first person, our revolution, that such movements were legal and justified and thus by definition were to be embraced by the population at large.

The founders and the framers of the Constitution had seen the effects firsthand of a government attempting to thwart a revolution by the populace and insured, by the implementation of the Constitution,  that no such action would ever befall the citizens of their fledgling democracy. The hard fought lessons are there within our founding documents; we must, as history tells us, remember to learn its lessons or fall victim to those same lessons.

In was passes as the cockeyed world of political reality, the protests currently under way nationwide beneath the umbrella of “Occupy Wall Street” are endlessly labeled as either crackpot anti-Tea Party movements or heralded as true populist uprisings looking to shine the light on the inequities of the American capitalist society.

While there does indeed  exist  intelligent, supportive arguments on both sides of this nonsensical debate, there has been an almost complete absence by the body politic and the media as a whole shedding light on what should be the corollary argument to both sides. The current state of discourse on public policy has descended into nothing more than shrill shrieking blather on both sides and their co-conspiratorial media flacks; the commonality in this debate should be a point that reaffirms our unique solidarity as a nation and act as a fresh starting point in doing the peoples business.

To wit:

The rallies in support and opposition that are being held both in lower Manhattan and simultaneously nationwide are being held and therein lies the historically wonderful truth of America.

That fact does not seem to resonate with either the participants themselves or the electorate watching the events unfold on the televisions. These are not riots; the military has not been engaged to suppress the marches. Pundits are free to support or condemn the protests without fear of government retribution. The citizenry are free to publicly express their position on the issue without fear of disappearing in the night.

There are protests currently underway in Syria; they are marked by blood in the streets. The images from Libya show not a peaceful populace protest, but rather tanks and mortars in the streets.

The founding fathers gave us a most precious gift within the first amendment; the right to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for a redress of their grievances against that government.

“We the people” and “of the people, by the people, and for the people” are not simplistic slogans or mere political catchphrases. They are our birthright, and if we do not honor and protect them, and allow them to live and thrive, we shall surely lose them. We have evidence today around the world that speaking out can come with the ultimate price being paid; America will not join those ranks, but we must be ever vigilant to actively protect and exercise our freedoms.

If we do not, they shall surely perish from the face of the earth, and that must not be our epitaph to our posterity.

The Clinton War On Terror

The recent killings of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki coupled with the tenth anniversary of the September 11^th terrorist attacks created a flood of political and media focus on the presidency of George W. Bush. There was a common thread attached to the discourse; President Bush had somehow been derelict in assessing the potential impact al-Queda could have upon the American homeland.

The now popular myth is that the war on terror began on George W. Bush’s’ watch and that he was ineffective in its prosecution.

This is not a defense of his administration or its policies, but the now accepted mythology must be addressed.

The first acknowledgement is that his decisions brought us to the point that, a decade later, allows us to be in a position to evaluate our recent history. In the aftermath of 9/11 our future was uncertain; the potential unknown of further attacks and greater devastation was a very real possibility. His leadership in this area must be commended.

This week will mark the eleventh anniversary of the commencement of the war on terror and as such is an appropriate time to clarify the record and correct the accepted perception on how we arrived at this point in history.

The war on terror began on October 12^th, 2000 with a direct assault on our military.

A 35-foot boat laden with the explosives RDX and TNT with two bombers on board rammed the USS Cole port amidships while it was refueling in the Aden, Yemen harbor, ripping a 32-foot by 36-foot hole in the hull and causing extensive internal damage.

It cannot be argued with any degree of seriousness that a direct attack on a nation’s active-duty military is not an act of war. The Clinton administration and President William Jefferson Clinton specifically, however, attempted to make that very argument. Their stance was that the perpetrators of this attack would be brought to justice under the principle that this was a legal issue that needed to be resolved within the court system of the United States.

There was no reciprocal military retribution taken by the Clinton administration, and no legal prosecution evolved.

Declining action after active duty personnel were murdered can best be described as giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The legal construct of that argument is the definition of treason. The political reality of that path is best described as nothing less than cowardice.

The question now is that after a specific, unanswered  attack on an United States naval vessel, what must have been the mind set of al-Queda; that America would not fight back. At that point, the 9/11 attacks were inevitable.

President George Bush did not let the terror attacks go unanswered.

We were not attacked again during his administration.

The historians will make the decision on the Bush administration policies and decisions, but we must not allow the fog of history to cloud the reality of history.

We must never forget.

To that end, herein are the names of the first seventeen heroes lost in the war on terror:

Petty Officer 2nd Class Kenneth Eugene Clodfelter, 21, a hull maintenance technician from Mechanicsville, Va.;

* Chief Petty Officer Richard Costelow, 35, an electronics technician from Morrisville, Pa.;

*Seaman Lakeina Monique Francis, 19, a mess management specialist from Woodleaf, N.C.;

* Seaman Timothy Lee Gauna, 21, an information systems technician from Rice, Texas;

* Seaman Cherone Louis Gunn, 22, a signalman from Rex, Ga.;

* Seaman James Rodrick McDaniels, 19, of Norfolk, Va.;

* Petty Officer 2nd Class Marc Ian Nieto, 24, an engineman from Fond du Lac, Wis.;

* Petty Officer 2nd Class Ronald Scott Owens, 24, an electronics warfare technician from Vero Beach, Fla.;

* Seaman Lakiba Nicole Palmer, 22, of San Diego, Calif.;

* Seaman Joshua Langdon Parlett, 19, an engine room fireman from Churchville, Md.;

* Seaman Patrick Howard Roy, 19, a fireman from Cornwall on Hudson, N.Y.;

* Petty Officer 1st Class Kevin Shawn Rux, 30, an electronic warfare technician from Portland, N.D.;

* Petty Officer 3rd Class Ronchester Manangan Santiago, 22, a mess management specialist from Kingsville, Texas.;

* Petty Officer 2nd Class Timothy Lamont Saunders, 32, an operations specialist from Ringgold, Va.;

* Seaman Gary Graham Swenchonis Jr., 26, a fireman from Rockport, Texas;

* Ensign Andrew Triplett, 31, of Macon, Miss.; and

* Seaman Craig Bryan Wibberley, 19, of Williamsport, Md.

Their deaths must be answered for, lest we lose our sense of national self.

A Constitutional Threat

The fundamental recipe for tyranny begins with equal measures of apathy and ambivalence by the electorate at large and ignorance by the elected officials entrusted with the responsibility of governance. In recent days, there have been two examples of a flagrant arrogance by Americans who should know better and the American electorate must not stand idly by and consider these incidents as nothing more than mere trivialities; these are serious issues that must be properly addressed.

These two events, while seemingly individual in nature, do indeed speak to a growing apathy and ambivalence by the electorate and thus are tied together as emblematic of a serious threat to what Thomas Jefferson referred to as the ‘great experiment’ – American self rule.

In the first instance, a Texas school suspended a 14-year-old boy for two days for telling a classmate he thought homosexuality was wrong. The student was in a German class at the high school when the conversation shifted to religion and homosexuality. At some point during the conversation, he turned to a friend and said that he was a Christian and “being a homosexual is wrong.”

The issue here is not the question of sexuality, or even pursuing why the topic shifted during a German language class. Both questions can and should be debated, but such discussions occur only within a healthy body politic. The fact that a school district would suspend a student for expressing a thought is terrifying; the government should not act upon thought, for once it does, under the guise of doing the ‘right thing’, there is no limit to what can be considered the right thing. The United States Constitution is not a document that restricts the citizenry; it is in effect to limit the power of the federal government.

To quote from that august document:

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. (emphasis ours)

There does not seem to be any ambiguity in the first amendment. There are of course limits to free speech – the popular understanding that you may not yell ‘fire”, absent one, in a crowded theater is a valid restriction.

It is incomprehensible how what this particular student said would be acted upon by suspending him. We are close to crossing the Rubicon on political correctness at the cost of liberty. This is not hyperbolic rhetoric; a student was suspended for expressing an opinion. This should cause a hue and cry from the American citizenry, yet the muted outcry is sadly deafening.

The second event is equally troubling, but in a different manner. North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue this past week proposed suspending congressional elections for a cycle so legislators could focus on fixing the economy.

"I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover,"

 "I really hope that someone can agree with me on that. You want people who don't worry about the next election."

To again quote the United States Constitution:

Article 1, Section 2

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature. (emphasis ours)

The fact that Governor Perdue is her states highest ranking elected official and she is suggesting dismissing the Constitution due to its being, apparently, an inconvenience should alarm the American people. The question needs to be asked: what is her understanding of the Constitution, the governing document of the United States, that she could so glibly suggest abandoning it?

Her office subsequently attempted to claim that the governor was speaking in jest, but the audiotape of her speech shows no level of jocularity, and the audience was silent, suggesting they were on some level in agreement with her suggestion.

The Constitution must be defended if we are to remain a free people. Regulating thought, expressed as speech, and glibly discussing insurrection should be a warning to the American people.

They risk the loss of their liberty if they do not heed the alarm.