Heil Obama

The knock came on the door long after we’d put the children to bed. I’d been expecting it. To me, caring for my family was far more important to me than obeying arbitrary laws. Nodding to my wife in a prearranged signal, I walked over to the door as she hurried to the back of the house. The bags had been packed since that terrible vote by Congress last year. I hadn’t expected it to be the last thing Congress would ever do, but there you go. Some say a dictatorship is more efficient.

I chuckled sourly to myself as I approached the door. Who ever thought that Canada would be considered a freer country than the USA? I hoped the tunnel into Alberta was still open.

Twin silhouettes against the door’s glass panel blocked the view of the sidewalk. The new IRS personnel had to have been hired by the pound. My papers were where they were supposed to be, in their clipboard by the door. The knock came again, slightly louder.

I opened the door and said the approved rote phrase of greeting, “Heil Obama.”

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Last night the liberal wing of the Democrat Party took the first step in Obama’s planned transformation of the United States into a progressive dictatorship. If any of my readers find this statement to be over the top, think for a moment. When has Obama done anything but continue to assert that this has been his agenda all along? Does the phrase, “This is just the first step,” or “This is what change looks like,” sound familiar? The ultra-liberals who desperately desire the sort of world George Orwell envisioned are still disappointed. Some have actually chided the House Democrats for “not going far enough.”

What none of them understand is that this entire process is one big lie. Obama lied when he promised transparency. He lied when he said this bill would reduce the deficit and he lied when he promised at the last second that federal money would not be used to fund abortions. The only time he hasn’t lied is when he pontificates about his dreams of a socialist dictatorship replacing our democratic republic.

2.4 trillion, that is our current deficit. The healthcare bill adds another trillion over the next decade. Pelosi and Reid call that “deficit reduction”. Doesn’t that seem just a bit slanted?  In Orwellian newspeak that would be “doublenotgood”.

About 38 states have filed their suits against the feds to opt out of Obamacare, basing their suit on the 10^th amendment, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Catherine Cortez Masto, the Nevada Attorney General, a Democrat, has refused to join in on the suit. No surprise there.

Now some, especially those who believe in the nanny state will claim that the Commerce Clause gives Washington the right to ride roughshod over the states. Oh really? First, look at the phrase, “by the Constitution”. The Slaughter Rule, which I wrote about in a previous column, violates the Constitution and can easily be challenged in the Supreme Court. Secondly, look at this Commerce Clause:

The clause, article I, Section 8, Clause 3,  states that the United States Congress shall have power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes".

Can anyone who isn’t a mushy-brained liberal read these words and claim that this clause gives the federal government the right to tell a private citizen what type of insurance policy they are allowed to buy?

Regulating commerce, based on the understanding of trade when this article was written, meant allowing free trade, not constricting it. Again we are back to the Obama version of newspeak.

Back when the Articles of Confederation were first written, states were able to erect barriers to trade with other states and foreign countries. This caused a number of problems, one of them the formation of monopolies within some states. The Commerce Clause was added to the Constitution so that true free trade was able to flourish. The liberal definition of the Commerce Clause is a polar opposite of the original intent which should come as no surprise to anyone. You should go back over all of the archives where Obama is describing his plans for our nation. By compiling them all together they form a chilling vision of a socialist workers paradise…without any of the checks or balances we used to have.

Those who claim that only by controlling the people can we insure freedom have already been brainwashed by the liberal big brother.

Free Speech

The First Amendment to the US Constitution reads,

“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.”

The second clause in the First Amendment has no title like the Establishment Clause, but in spite of that, this short string of six words has garnered more print, debate and utter hostility than any other portion of our constitution.

“or abridging the freedom of speech,”

Again, we see that this is not specifically spelled out as a right, but as a restriction on what the government can impose upon its citizens. Again there is no specification as to where or when such free speech is to be exercised and there is no specification as to content. There is also no mention as to whether or not this applies to individuals, groups or even corporation. George Carlin’s prohibited television words are not mentioned and there is no difference specified in the differences of speech whether they be religious, political, romantic or inflammatory. The clause simply says that Congress cannot make a law that restricts free speech. Abridging means to restrict or prohibit. Therefore, every law that the United States Congress has proposed and/or enacted since December 15, 1791, has been done so in violation of this clause. link

Now some may bring up the old argument of the changing times and the need for the government to ensure security. Those points have merit for the purpose of debate, but they mean nothing in the face of original intent and the laws governing grammar. Because of the British Crown’s sedition laws, the framers of our constitution made sure that the newly formed congress could not become an imperialistic body. If they were brought forth in time to see how that body has metastasized, I imagine several members of congress would be challenged to a duel.

We have to remember, what someone says means nothing until those words are acted upon. If Van Jones were given a soap box so he could harangue the folks in the public square about the glories of communism, which would be his right to do so, he has every right to not be prohibited from speaking. He does not, however, have a right to expect anyone to stand there and listen. The clause says nothing about the audience of that speech. Nowhere in the constitution does that document mandate or even mention that an issuer of an opinion has to be heard. Listening, by extension contains the same personal freedom as speaking. The government and the speaker have no right to expect an attentive audience, except where the government is the audience. The men who wrote our constitution were not fools. When we get to that clause we will look into that part in more detail.

This all means that by extension every time some Washington functionary with an inflated sense of their own importance attempts to shut down speech or censor speech through some form of law, that law being used is wrong. Congress, the highest law-making entity in this country is forbidden from making such a law. However, the 10^th amendment muddies these waters because in that amendment everything not specifically placed into the hands of Congress is left to the states. And that means that by a strict reading of the language in the first amendment, the states can restrict speech. This is why it is so important that we the people pay attention as to who we elect into government office. This is also why is it so important to pay attention to the lessons of history and to understand the principles under which we live.