politics

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Treason

A prosaic dictionary definition is “the crime of betraying one’s country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government.” This is sufficiently vague that it was used through the centuries to justify vicious persecutions by the sovereigns of their political opponents. The Founding Fathers wisely wrote a more specific definition into the Constitution.

Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The section was worded in this way so as to preserve the efficacy of the First Amendment–people can say what they want, even oppose the very Constitution that keeps them safe in saying it. “Levying War” is straightforward, but “Adhering to their Enemies” may be a little more difficult to pin down. It probably includes promoting sharia law, which is incompatible with the Constitution. “Aid and Comfort” means more tangible support such as furnishing them arms in Libya, Syria, and Mexico (the so-called “fast and furious” operation). It might consist of providing billions of dollars in support including the recent $400 million “non-ransom”.

Ah, but then . . .

Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

Sir John Harrington (1561-1612)

The 2016 election, more than anything else, is to determine whether treason shall prosper.

Best Wishes.

Keep Calm
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Keep Calm

The British government during World War II popularized the slogan, “Keep Calm and Carry On,” plastered on billboards and posters throughout the country. It is a slogan suitable for our time and place as well. The world is in chaos and the self-proclaimed ruling “elites”, the political, media, and educational classes, seem helpless to improve it. Indeed, their antics and shenanigans  and false ideologies make things worse. So let us ordinary folk look to a more sensible guideline: Keep Calm and Carry On.

The thing we are carrying on with is leading peaceful, productive, law-abiding lives, individually and in our families and communities. It is striving day by day to do our best to live up to the commandments of God–let’s call them instructions for happiness in this life and in the next. It is building the Kingdom of God on earth, the creation of a Zion society. Zion is “the pure in heart.” It is proceeding with confidence that all things are in the hands of a loving God and that right will prevail in the end. It is exercising faith.

Best Wishes.

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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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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.

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A New Edition

The Federalist: Excerpts with Commentary

Authored by Madison, Hamilton, and Jay

Commentary by Roderick Saxey MD

 

 

THE FEDERALIST PAPERS were a series of newspaper articles published by Madison, Hamilton, and Jay to persuade the citizens of 1787 and 1788 to vote for the newly proposed Constitution upon which our American government is based. They were so well done that Thomas Jefferson called them “The best commentary on the principles of government ever written.”

Despite the passage of years, the founders’ insights are as fresh as the latest headlines and deal with such topics as excessive legislation, arrogance in public officials, limitations of government, multiculturalism, taxation, and more.

The problem for modern readers is THE PAPERS are long (about 600 pages) and sometimes difficult to understand. This is where THE FEDERALIST, EXCERPTS WITH COMMENTARY comes in. First published in 1994, it earned such comments as “a delectable book” (R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR) and “I will keep this important work in my office” (Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice).

This new edition of THE FEDERALIST, EXCERPTS WITH COMMENTARY brings you the best quotes from that “best commentary” along with short explanations of their importance in today’s America. Ours is an age of constitutional crisis, not just the conflicts between Congress and President or between conservative and liberal, but a crisis of understanding the basic principles and objectives of American government. Reading THE FEDERALIST can help deal with that crisis.

In the words of Mark Brunelle in THE OREGON OBSERVER, “This short book is a must read . . worth its weight in gold! . . . (A) timely work . . . a masterpiece!”

CreateSpace eStore: https://www.createspace.com/5843832
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A New Edition of THE FEDERALIST, EXCERPTS WITH COMMENTARY, to appear soon!

The Federalist, Excerpts with Commentary was published in 1994. It was kindly received with a number of good reviews by various public figures and authors, including Clarence Thomas and Pat Buchanan. R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., editor of The American Spectator, referred to it as a “delectable book”.

It is now time to bring it out again in a second edition with minor revisions. The Founding Fathers gave us splendid examples and counsel about how to govern ourselves, organize our government, and evaluate our political candidates. Following is a sample, first the excerpt in italics followed by my commentary:

  (A) dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun heir career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.

Demagoguery

The wisdom of this observation was verified again with the French Revolution in 1789, the same year the Constitution was adopted, as well as on many occasions since that time, most notably in the 20th century with its varied socialist regimes, many ironically named “peoples'” republics. The diligent student may profitably review in this context George Orwell’s brilliant little book, Animal Farm, noting the portentous year of publication, 1945.

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Another Book Review I Did Not Know About

While doing an internet search recently I found that my mission memoir was reviewed in Deseret News online back in May 2014. There is a certain irony in this–I only recently released a revised edition, available at Amazon and Kindle (prices are lower for the revised version). Not many changes, a few small corrections and a name change requested by the daughter of one of the Austrians who were kind to the missionaries. Thanks to Brooke Porter for the following:

“ALL ENLISTED: A Mormon Missionary in Austria During the Vietnam Era,” by Roderick Saxey, Haus Sachse Enterprises, $17.95, e-book $5.50, 308 pages (nf)

As it turns out, many aspects and quirks of Mormon missionary work are the same — regardless of the area or time served — and “All Enlisted: A Mormon Missionary in Austria During the Vietnam Era” is evidence of that.

Author and Washington resident Roderick Saxey crafted his self-published memoir in a way to let people inside the life of a missionary serving in 1970. The book — some 300 pages — bounces back between journal entries, factual tidbits and letters to and from family and friends, notably his brother, Edward, who was serving in the Navy in various places in Asia and Australia.

For a 19-year-old boy, Roderick Saxey’s writing was quite mature — and quite endearing. With references to J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” (as well as letters to a friend he called Frodo), Saxey draws you in with beautiful Austrian landscape and food imagery coupled with raw entries about the lack of missionary success and the all-too-often slammed door.

Saxey begins the book with a background of his family, helping readers understand where he came from, which proves helpful when reading the back-and-forth missionary letters. He was born into a part-member family — a father who was a less-active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a mother who was a Protestant. He took the Mormon missionary lessons at age 11 and was baptized, but quickly joined his family in inactivity.

That is until his faithful home teacher, Clair Cantwell, invited him to attend seminary in 1965. Soon after, Saxey became strong in his LDS faith. After receiving his mission call to Austria and delivering his missionary farewell, his mother surprised the whole family by being baptized.

She literally surprised them.

Saxey received a phone call from the bishop asking him to perform a baptism. “I thought nothing of it since our leaders often gave opportunity to priests and new elders to perform ordinances whenever possible,” he said. “Unknown to me, similar calls to attend the stake baptismal service went out to Dad and (my brother) Wayne, without explanations why.” His first, and only, baptism was of his dear mother.

It’s hard not to fall in love with Saxey’s family as well as Austria. The letters to and from his brother, Edward, are quite sweet and playful, and it’s difficult not to worry that Edward may not survive his tour in Vietnam.

Some journal highlights include a visit from then-Elder Thomas. S. Monson.

Just a handful of months before completing his mission, Saxey was sent home due to what doctors thought was a faulty liver — “hepatomegaly.” Only later when Saxey became a doctor in the Air Force did he discover that he never had hepatitis, but rather a condition called Gilbert’s Syndrome.

“All Enlisted” includes a helpful glossary of German words used throughout the book, as well as updates on the mission companions and family members, as well as black-and-white pictures. The book is self-published and the format could use a bit of polish, but overall this is an endearing look into the life of one man’s mission.

It’s free of any foul language and there was one reference where sex is implied as the elders encounter a prostitute and a man at a cafe.

ALL ENLISTED cover

ALL ENLISTED cover

This is the cover of my memoir, available on Amazon. The picture is of Salzburg in winter, perhaps the most beautiful city in the world.

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