Month: July 2016

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The Parties

President Washington warned the nation of the dangers of political parties and their potential for disrupting the system the Founders had created. Nevertheless, it was built into the structure of the Constitution (not to mention the human psyche) that parties would exist: there is naturally a Federalist and an Anti-Federalist party, one in favor of a stronger and the other in favor of a weaker central government. These have had various names through the centuries, and our two current parties of reversed roles from time to time.

Years ago I wrote with sorrow of the degeneration of the Democrat party under the corrupting influence of the so-called progressives. It has become the party of “kooks, crooks, commies, and cronies.” Dinesh D’Souza’s latest book and movie, Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party, demonstrates that most of that description goes back to the beginning of the party (not Jefferson as the Democrats claim, but Andrew Jackson). Following is an excerpt from the first chapter, courtesy WND:

 

In this book I expose this progressive narrative as a lie. In reality the Democratic Party is now what it has been from the beginning – the party of subjugation, oppression, exploitation, and theft. The Democrats are not the party of justice or equality, but rather, of systematic injustice and inequality. Far from championing the cause of women, blacks and other minorities, Democrats have historically brutalized, segregated, exploited and murdered the most vulnerable members of our society.

The Democrats are the party of slavery, and the inventors of the “positive good” school that held slavery is not merely good for the master but also for the slave. After slavery, the Democrats attempted to block the Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment granting equality of rights under the law, and the Fifteenth Amendment securing for blacks the right to vote.

Democrats also invented and enforced segregation laws. A former delegate to the Democratic National Convention founded the Ku Klux Klan, which for decades served as the domestic terrorist wing of the Democratic Party, not just in the South but also in the Midwest and West. The Democrats also promoted forced sterilization and race-based exclusion of immigrants from this country.

During the 1930s, a young JFK went to Germany and praised the accomplishments of Adolf Hitler, noting that opposition to Hitler mainly came from jealousy. As president, FDR admired Mussolini and sent members of his brain trust to Italy to study fascist programs and import them to America. Mussolini for his part reviewed FDR’s book for an Italian publication. He loved it. FDR, he concluded, was a fascist, just like Il Duce himself.

All of this has been buried by progressive scholars and pundits. Also concealed is that fact that during all this time, the main opposition to the horrors on the part of the Democratic Party came from Republicans. This book makes an astonishing claim: of all Americans, Republicans are the ones who have the least reason to feel guilt about slavery or racism.

From the beginning, Republicans have been the good guys, fighting to stop Democratic schemes of exploitation, murder and plunder. Republicans fought a great war, and hundreds of thousands of them died, to thwart the nefarious practices of the Democrats. Even after slavery, Republicans fought vigorously though not always successfully to defeat Democratic schemes of segregation and racial terrorism.

Democrats are the ones who bitterly resisted the civil rights movement’

The bad guys – the Democrats – put up a great fight but the Republicans won in the end. It was Republicans who made possible the Civil Rights Laws that finally and belatedly secured equal rights for blacks and other minorities. Democrats are the ones who bitterly resisted the civil rights movement, and had the Democrats been the only party in America at the time, none of these laws, from the Civil Rights Act to the Voting Rights Act to the Fair Housing Bill, would have passed.

.  .  .

Of course it’s not just about the power; it is also about the money. Here Hillary has already shown her talents. Her achievement as secretary of state has been to carry the corrupt operations of the Democratic Party to a new level. Hillary herself described what she did as “commercial diplomacy.”

It certainly has worked out commercially for her and Bill. In the words of Peter Schweizer, author of Clinton Cash, “No one has even come close in recent years to enriching themselves on the scale of the Clintons while they or a spouse continued to serve in public office.”

By contrast with the Clintons, earlier Democratic scam operations seem like petty thievery. Previously Democrats specialized in big city machines a la Tammany Hall in New York and the Daley machine in Chicago. These were local rackets that looted the city treasury. The looters – such figures as William “Boss” Tweed – made off with a few hundred thousand, perhaps as much as a million. Hillary, however, figured out how to take her racket national, indeed global.

Never before has anyone figured out how to rent out American foreign policy, how to convert the position of secretary of state into a personal money machine. Hillary, with Bill’s help, figured out not only how to shake down Russian oligarchs and Canadian billionaires by offering them control of America’s uranium assets; she also figured out how to rob the island nation of Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake. It’s one thing to rip off the world’s rich; it takes a special kind of chutzpah to steal from the poorest of the poor.

‘Imagine what Hillary would do with her power if she went … to president’

Imagine what Hillary would do with her power if she went from secretary of state to president of the United States! Previously she at least had to answer to Obama; now she would be a power unto herself. Hillary has already shown how indifferent she is to the interests of the United States, selling American influence to the highest bidder. I dread to think how much havoc – how many Benghazis – are in store if we elect this woman in November.

Who is going to stop Hillary, and how? Who will block the enslavement of the American people that is the political program of the Democratic Party? The situation, at first glance, seems desperate. The Republican Party seems confused, bitterly divided, unable to contest the Democratic social justice pitch and articulate a rival vision. Can we really count on the bewildered elephant to chase down and trample the Democratic donkey?

There is no one else. The GOP has, from the beginning, been the team – and the only team – that can stop and did stop the marauding Democrats. The Republicans have done it for 150 years, from slavery through the Ku Klux Klan through eugenics and forced sterilization through the civil rights movement. Why don’t we have slavery today? How has the Klan gone from a massive organization to a joke? Why do blacks and other minorities today have equality of rights under the law? The answer in every case is: The Republican Party.

Republicans can come together and do it again. While the threat is real and this will be a tough election, there is no cause for dispiritedness. With clear thinking, political creativity, and simple hard work, we can meet the challenges that are before us, working together, as we must, because our nation’s very future seems to be at stake.

The GOP nominee, Donald Trump, is both colorful and controversial, but this is not an election about Trump; it is an election about Hillary. She is the one who embodies the debased soul of the Democratic Party. And she is the corrupt, exasperating, tenacious, malign spirit looming over the United States in the fateful year of 2016. It’s time – actually it’s past time, but better late than never – for all good Americans to come together and perform an exorcism.

America once again is at a crossroads.

Best Wishes.

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Making America Great Again

There is much to like about Donald Trump’s campaign theme, “Make America Great Again.” That America is great has been observed since the very beginning, and only the wretched leadership and constitutional apostasy of the past decade or two have brought us to the point of needing to make it great again. The question then becomes, “How?”

Reinvigorating our economy by lowering taxes and reducing regulations, improving education by getting the federal government off the backs of state and local schools, rebuilding our military, supporting our police by enforcing the laws, protecting our culture by regulating and assimilating immigrants, protecting the integrity of our nation by properly guarding the borders, and renewing legitimacy of the central government by strictly adhering to the Constitution and appointing like-minded judges—these are all important steps that a new administration can take. But isn’t “greatness” more than that?

Although incorrectly attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville, the thought remains poignant that “America is great because America is good. If America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to great.” That goodness is not in the federal or even the state and local governments; it is in the hearts and thoughts and words and daily actions of the people. In other words, restoring American greatness requires humility, repentance, and renewal of faith.

Again, all of the above measures and more will be important to bring back under control a bloated and tyrannical federal government, but making America great again is fundamentally a religious project, a revival, a conversion. As correctly attributed to John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Best Wishes.

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The Federalist

As the current election cycle proceeds, I am ever reminded of the importance of returning to and adhering to first principles. For purposes of government, those principles are best illuminated in our founding documents, to which may be added The Federalist Papers. Following is an excerpt from my recently published 2nd edition of Excerpts with Commentary (first the quote, then the commentary):

LXXXV. CONCLUDING REMARKS

(There is an) utter improbability of assembling a new convention, under circumstances in any degree so favorable to a happy issue, as those in which the late convention met, deliberated, and concluded . . .

The establishment of a Constitution, in time of profound peace, by the voluntary consent of a whole people, is a prodigy, to the completion of which I look forward with trembling anxiety.

85. Renewing The Heritage of the Founding Fathers

. . . Renewal requires education of young and old, re-examination of the founding documents and the arguments for and against them, and a thoughtful rejection of so-called “progressive” doctrines which at their heart are anti-American, meaning opposed to the principles that made Americans uniquely distinguishable from others around the world. Progressive has been revived as a label, borrowed from the turn of the 19th century to replace the discredited term liberal; it is an unexamined term that assumes “progress” is an ideal, without consideration of what one progresses toward; it is a godless millennial term that supposes mankind can create a perfect society of perfect people in a modern Eden, but in practice is always an excuse for an elite few to rule without restraint over the non-elite many.

On the political level, renewal can be effected by the states reasserting their individual and collective authority not only over themselves, but over the Union itself in those matters not delegated to it. This can be accomplished only by careful selection at state and local levels of candidates who understand and are committed to the principles of individual liberty and federalism, as well as by promotion of like-minded people on the national level.

 

Best Wishes.

 

 

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Blessed Are The

Someone was recently quoted saying, “We should abolish the police.” I try to think kindly about people, but it seems about the only ones who would favor such a position are either criminals or stupid. Perhaps instead of calling them “police” we should use the more old fashioned term, “peace officers.”

Dad often spoke fondly of the sheriffs and deputies he knew while growing up in Price, Utah. They included Matt Warner, the reformed outlaw and crack shot, who as Deputy Sheriff and Justice of the Peace used to tell the children stories of life on the outlaw trail with his friend, Butch Cassidy, and others. The stories always concluded with an observation that it was not worth it and an admonition to do what is right. Dad’s experiences in those days included seeing several mobs up close. He hated mobs for their utter mindlessness, unpredictability, and uncontrollability.

Mobs are what we are seeing around the country these days, incited by scattered anarchists and rabble rousers (“community organizers”) for their own nefarious purposes. Surely there are few jobs more difficult than that of being a peace officer in a time when so many are being stirred up to anger and contention. Hats off to these courageous and dedicated men and women. Let us also remember them in our prayers. If Peacemakers are Blessed, then certainly Blessed are the Peace Officers, as well.

Best Wishes.

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Another Go At It

A great deal has happened since my earlier blogs, not least of which is our move back to Orting after three years away for work. Orting is a beautiful little town at the confluence of the Carbon and Puyallup rivers not far from the foot of Mount Rainier, surrounded by farms and woodland. It has been gratifying to reunite with our many friends as well as to be back in our home.

The new title of this blog, Be Useful For Good, is a quote from my great grandfather, Friedrich Raile. He was a multi-talented man, a German from Odessa who migrated to Utah via Jerusalem in a remarkable story of faith and courage which was recounted a number of years ago in a book titled The Joppa Door (written in the language and from the viewpoint of his wife, great grandmother Elisabeth). Among other things, he was a skilled herbalist. “Be useful for good” was one of the admonitions he put on the boxes of herbal tea he sold in Utah during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has become a family motto.

Surely, in this day of turmoil, to be useful for good is not only worthy advice for each individual man and woman, but for the nation and world in general as well. As part of my effort to be useful for good, I will be more consistent about blogging. Perhaps a word or two will prove helpful to some reader or another.

Best Wishes.