If Not You, Who? If Not Now, When?

Liberty, Sovereignty, and Arizona

A superb, brief summary of the principles of our government and how those principles relate to the issue of Arizona's border security law SB1070.
American Thinker: Liberty, Sovereignty, and Arizona

By Daniel H. Fernald
The American concept of sovereignty -- as expressed in our Declaration and Constitution -- is, like that of ancient Athens, directly linked to our natural liberty. Casting a vote is an act of sovereign delegation. That is, when one votes, one says, in effect, "I am unable to discharge all of the duties laid on me by my personal sovereignty. Thus, I will, along with my countrymen, choose certain individuals to represent my interests and to discharge such duties as are beyond my ability."

Each citizen votes for a mayor, who is charged with overseeing municipal services -- police, fire, and the like. We vote for state representatives and a governor in order to accomplish the same goal at the State level. Finally, we vote for federal representatives and a president in order that our laws may be enforced, and our Constitution defended, at the national level.

In each instance, we delegate -- but do not surrender -- some portion of our personal sovereignty in order to safeguard our natural rights. We do not delegate any portion of our personal sovereignty for any other purpose. We retain such sovereignty, i.e. personal liberty, as we do not delegate.

This follows from the logic of sovereignty's origin with the individual and its partial delegation for the limited purpose of safeguarding our natural rights. The State has no other legitimate function than to safeguard the natural rights of those whose collective sovereign delegation alone leads to its creation.

For example, we waive our natural right to perfect liberty by placing ourselves under the authority of police and courts, in exchange for which we rightly demand their protection. We also allow the State to function as an intermediary between us and our neighbors in property disputes. The list goes on.

The overriding point is that, without exception, every legitimate State power has been delegated to it by the People. Citizens delegate some limited part of their sovereign rights to the State in order that the state may act as a protector from outside forces, and an impartial arbiter when conflicts occur between citizens.

The State is not autonomous. It has no source of legitimate power other than the People. Whenever it acts beyond such sovereign powers as have been specifically delegated to it by the People, its action is unlawful and indeed constitutes an attack on liberty itself.

This liberty finds its most immediate, and concrete, expression in the natural, "negative" rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" that are pillars of the Declaration and are woven into the very fabric of the Constitution. When read without the hermeneutic pink-colored glasses favored by so much of our leftist judiciary, our Constitution clearly privileges both the individual citizen and "The People" over the federal -- not central -- government created by it.

By crafting the Constitution in this way, our Founders recognized simultaneously the necessity and the danger of joining the several sovereign States together into a larger federation, a truly "federal" government.

Two points are worthy of note here. First, the several consenting States were already sovereign prior to the creation of the federal government. They were prior existing sovereign entities. Their creation predated the federal government created by the Constitution. The People of each sovereign and consenting State had delegated some portion of their personal sovereignty in order to create a collective entity, the State (i.e., New York, Maryland, Virginia, etc.), for the express purpose of defending their natural liberties -- and for no other purpose. Thus, the exercise by the federal government of any powers not specifically granted to it by the States is a usurpation.

Second, in creating the federal government, the States merely delegate some of the powers previously delegated to them by the citizens of those States. They retained all powers not granted. That this grant was limited, well-defined, and inelastic is clearly evidenced by both the plain language of the Constitution and, more specifically, by the 9th and 10th Amendments.

With this as background, the current imbroglio, including a pending federal lawsuit, over Arizona's commonsense approach to enforcing federal laws openly flouted by the federal government emerges as far more than just a jurisdictional battle. What is at stake in Arizona is the liberty of Arizona's citizens, and by extension the liberty of every American.

The People of Arizona have delegated some part of their personal sovereignty, and hence liberty, to their elected State representatives. These same representatives have voted to incorporate federal immigration law into state law (with specific prohibitions against racial profiling -- which are, ironically enough, absent in the relevant federal statutes). That the People of Arizona overwhelmingly support this legislation passed by their servants in the legislature should be cause for celebration -- a victory for representative democracy.

Instead of valorizing the process, however, the left -- led by our own president -- demonizes a sovereign State and its People in the never-ending quest to impose its predetermined positions by any means necessary. Thus do we have the sad spectacle of so-called "liberals" who hate liberty, who despise the sovereign exercise of power by the People.

We are very far indeed from Voltaire's "I disapprove of what you say, but I will to the death your right to say it." As I have written elsewhere, liberals are anti-liberty because they already "know" the truth; hence, they regard the traditional values of free inquiry -- with all of its messiness, vagaries, and inevitable culs-de-sac -- as wastes of time. They have the facts, about which no sensible person will argue. Consequently, anyone who argues with a truth-possessing liberal must not be a sensible person and is hence not worth arguing with. That such circular thinking is obviously illogical has been no bar to liberals' extensive use of it in such diverse areas as global warming, religion, and education.

The French judge, writer, and philosopher Estienne de la Boétie (1530-1563) wrote that "as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and willingly that one is led to say ... that this people has not so much lost its liberty, as won its enslavement."

Despite the left's having won its own enslavement, the widespread support for Arizona's rightful exercise of its legitimate sovereignty should give us hope that the We, The People are not yet ready to follow them, lemming-like, over the cliff to be dashed on the waiting rocks of tyranny.

There is much more at stake in the pending federal lawsuit than the immigration policy of one State. Given the current balance of the Supreme Court, we may hope for a favorable outcome; even so, it is an affront to every American that We, The People should have to trust our natural liberty to the nine Solons in Washington. On such a slender thread does that which matters most so tenuously hang.

The author has written numerous academic articles and books, including Atheism Answered. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and rhetoric from Emory University and is a professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in South Korea. professordhf@hotmail.com

We Get What We Deserve

The Obama Omelette: Euthanasia, Abortion, Obamanomics… Death is Death

When America herself legalizes homicidal intent toward her own gestating infants and her elderly, how do you expect the United States to defend herself before the similar intents of her Communist and radically Islamic enemies?
What possible moral high ground does America have left to defend?
[...]
Until America begins to overturn the Roe v Wade decision legalizing abortion, God will allow the Obama Nation to do unto America what Americans have been freely doing unto their own gestating infants.
We must realize that there have been more chefs cooking in the Obama kitchen than we ever imagined, preparing the way for The One to serve up the Obama Omelet: broken shells, broken lives and an irreparably broken America.

The Character Deficit

American Thinker: The Character Deficit

As John Adams wrote: "Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Today, the Obama administration, the majority of the members of Congress, much of the Judiciary, academia, and the media represent the culmination of the degradation of ethics and character, which has put the United States in the nearly inevitable position of joining the annals of the rise and fall of great nations.
[...]
The doctrine of "the end justifies the means" represents the epitome of corruption in any society and the ultimate demise of that same society. Any leader within government or the national community at large who is captive to this thinking must by necessity be devoid of ethics, integrity, or morals.

Such people must be willing, as was President Obama, to lie to achieve their ends, like with the deliberate falsehoods, obfuscations, and manipulation of data that took place during the passage of health care and other legislation.

They must be willing to flout the rule of law and the Constitution, as President Obama did, in the takeover of General Motors, Chrysler, the banks, insurance companies, and the appointment of numerous "czars" in avoidance of Congressional approval.

They must be willing to use the power of the government, as the president has done, to threaten, blackmail, and intimidate political and media critics, and to shake down private enterprise for support and financial contributions.

They must be willing through inconceivable but deliberate levels of deficit spending to place the country on a collision course with national bankruptcy, as President Obama is doing, in order to advance a radical agenda the citizens do not want or need.

Recently, much has been made of the lack of leadership displayed by the president. Many point to his inexperience in executive management. However, as former President Dwight Eisenhower once said, "The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity." The current occupant of the White House is bereft of that quality.
[...]
The people of this great nation must understand that they cannot turn to the White House, Congress, academia, or the courts for solutions, as these traditional sources of leadership are not only incapable of providing it, but are the catalyst for the country's potential demise.

The survival of the Republic is in the hands of the citizens. Their understanding of the future and the steps necessary to avoid disaster is critical. They must not only elect representatives with integrity and character, but recognize the importance of those traits in their own lives and in society as a whole. If they don't, then the United States will become a permanently indentured and second-tier country.

Congressman McClintock (R-CA) Rips Calderon and Anti-American Democrats

H/T Frugal Cafe Blog Zone

The Borg Conspiracy: The Symptom of What's Ailing America

The Symptom of What's Ailing America

Think about this, America...

Some people have the vocabulary to sum up things in a way you can understand them. This quote came from the Czech Republic. Someone over there has it figured out. We have a lot of work to do.

“The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president.”

“The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America . Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince.

The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.”

The Freedom of Humility

Perhaps, only the lowly can be truly humble. Those who have wealth or fame inevitably seek to become God. There are no lowly in America. By honoring God, our governing principles have set us free and allowed us all to prosper to one degree or another. Our poor are the wealthy of most of the world. So, we are free and we have been blessed by freedom to prosper, but because of our fallen, sinful nature, we are also cursed by freedom as well. We are cursed to be so at ease, so well nourished, so prosperous that we forget the source of our blessings. By ignoring God with our rebellious independence and disobedience and our abuse of freedom, we curse at God and return to the curse from whence we came.

No Means No!

The Rape of America

Still not sure that the sexualization of children, the wilding of women, the looting of the economy, and the intrusions into our bodies constitute the Rape of America?

I have one final piece of evidence. A majority of citizens are shouting "No," from the rooftops. No! to ObamaCare. No! to socialism. No! to trashing the Constitution.

And yet, to Obama and the Left, the assertion of "No" does not matter. Smug and entitled, drunk with power and giddy when they see our fear, they take what they want anyway.

Kings in the Earth and the King of Kings

I had determined not to allow the focus of this forum to be politics (or sports or video games, for that matter), but rather to focus on things that are truly significant in our pursuit of an authentic life in obedience to and love for Jesus Christ. So much so, that I have refrained to a large extent from discussing politics at all. However, this ideal does not allow me to ignore the reality that life is not compartmentalized as would be much more convenient.

Four thousand human beings are slaughtered in this country every day. This horrendous atrocity is permitted by law, accepted by so many, and even encouraged by some.

Our children are being intentionally and methodically sexualized, secularized, and segregated from their parents for the purpose of raising up worshippers for the state. This insidious social engineering is also legal, accepted, and encouraged.

Such evil must be viewed properly, lest we fall into the same trap. The government is neither our God, nor the provider of solutions. I hope you will help keep me from getting too distracted. But, undeniably, politics matters.

We, as citizens of a nation wherein we, the citizens, are the government, have a moral obligation -- not to the nation or to our fellow citizens, but to God -- to express our convictions of obedience and honor to God through our manner of rulership. For that is what we are. Our constitution makes it plain. While it is rarely, if ever, the practical reality, it is a legal fact that we, the people, are co-rulers of our nation.

Let us strive to honor our Heavenly Father by conscientiously fulfilling the role of co-ruler, thrust upon us though it may be, and by pleasing Him with the diligently informed decisions we make.

He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God. ~Micah 6:8