The immigration policy of the US is easy to understand.  In fact, it can be summed up in one word “NO.”

Control the border to prevent a flood of illegal workers — NO

Control the border to control drug traffic — NO

Control the border to block the entry of terrorists — NO

Control the border to control violent gangs and kidnappings — NO

Control the border to prevent the spread of swine flu — NO

While grilling outside yesterday, I lay down and watched the clouds drift by overhead with a warm breeze on my face.  I thought it’s great to be alive, even with all the rabbit-brains in Washington.

After dinner, I sat down to read a book I found at the used book store.  It was called The Statist Review of History.  After reading this, I understand at last the administration’s policies.  For example, in the section on European history:

War was averted by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s agreement with Adolf Hitler.  Europe has existed in peace ever since, with Chamberlain serving three terms as Prime Minister using the slogan “Appeasement Works.”

And the discussion of the Soviet Union:

The Soviet Union remains to this day the strongest economic power on earth, providing an example for the world on how to manage economic growth and provide security and liberty for its citizens.

The section on Asia states:

After the US withdrawal from Vietnam, the area became a beacon of democracy.  Cambodian leader Pol Pot, adored by his people, went on to be Secretary General of the United Nations.

The last chapter, called “Recent Developments” states:

After the famous meeting in Damascus, where the former US President profusely apologized for US arrogance, the attendees (Assad, Ahmadinejad, Omar H.A. Al-Bashier, and Ismail Haniya) were so impressed they formed the group, Committee for the Reform of Anti-freedom Policies, in order to promote freedom throughout the region.

and later in that chapter:

Recently university professor Albert Noncerveau in his book Merde-Pensee proved in a brilliant argument that reality is determined by the views of the majority of scientists, using as his example global warming where the result of the majority opinion was that the scientific models indeed showed the majority right.  He argued that any dissent from the majority could not be tolerated as it weakened the subsequent “reality” produced.

These revelations were a great relief, correcting my previous misconceptions.  Undoubtedly, this is the reference for the Obama foreign policy meetings.  Don’t you feel better now?

In the spirit of Francisco D’Aconia.

Dear Senator Reid,

I am now 63 and counting.  I can’t seem to find that Reset button anywhere!  You are a bit ahead of me, but the difference between you and me is that you have been in Congress for the last 26 years while I have been in the real world.  The Reset button I would really like to find is for Congress, a body that is beyond doubt the most radical, arrogant, incompetent, and corrupt I have ever seen in my 63 years.

I find the situation today much like Colonial America before the Revolution.  The Colonies were governed by elitist aristocrats in England who saw the colonists as just a bunch of lower class wilderness settlers.  The anger at such treatment boiled over on several occasions, such as the Boston Tea Party, which was more about arrogance than taxation.  The tax on tea had remained unchanged for six years before the tea party.  The real beef behind the tea party was Parliament’s attempt to save the struggling East India Company at the expense of colonial tea importers, you might say, “the first American bail-out.”  It was an accumulation of these kinds of slights that affected George Washington personally and convinced him to lead the Continental Army in its unlikely struggle.  This is the same kind of elitist arrogance that drives the present day tea parties and objections from the states, such as from Texas Governor Perry:

The federal government has become oppressive.  I believe it’s become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of its citizens, and it’s interference with the affairs of our state.  Millions of Texans just like yourselves that are tired of Washington, DC, trying to come down here and tell us how to run Texas.  We think it’s time to draw the line in the sand and tell Washington that no longer are we going to accept their oppressive hand in the state of Texas.  There is a point in time where you stand up and say, “Enough is enough,” and I think Americans and Texans especially have reached that point.

It is you, sir, and your party who are treating we the American people as if we couldn’t tie our shoes without your Benevolent Elitenesses.  You will force us all to be “unselfish.”  Never having run a business yourselves, you will tell us how to run ours.  Having no concept of the meaning of money, you trash the nation’s finances.  You flaunt the Constitution, imagining yourselves to have unlimited and unrestricted power.  The Democrats in Congress who have never worked (nor never will) in a union, want to allow union thugs to force others to.  You seem to be intent upon telling us how much money we can make and whether we can keep any of it or not, what kind of car to drive, and whether we can see a doctor or not.  Your party sees the fruits of our labor only as something to be plundered.  Members of your party take large political donations from entities they are supposed to regulate, and evade taxes yet maintain their chairmanships.  Members of your party involved in corruption always seem to stay in power, mistakes you call them.  Yours is the party of ACORN, using government funds to register Democratic voters, and the favorite of the parasites trial lawyers, for whom tax breaks were inserted in the stimulus package.

Now that your party is running the country, what do we everyday Americans see?  We see a government more concerned about Rush Limbaugh, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and returning veterans than Islamic terrorists, a government redefining the War on Terror as “Overseas Contingency Operation,” a title so absurd only an intellectual could come up with it.   We see a government with an Easter Bunny foreign policy, whose Iran policy is to warn Israel to do nothing.  An administration who followed through with “serious consequences” after the North Korean missile launch by the dreaded referral to the UN.    We see a President who thinks a nation achieves respect through apology on the very grounds that our fathers and grandfathers liberated, some of whom are buried at Normandy.  We see a government where the appointment of radicals, anti-Americans, and tax cheats to high offices in the administration is OK.  This is a government of university elitists with no concept of the real world, no sense of ethics or morality, and who apparently haven’t read many history books.  I prefer the thoughtful common sense of my parents, graduates of the University of the Real World.

My father often voted Democrat, but were he still alive, would be appalled at the party today.  I can almost see that disgusted look on his face as he angrily turns off the TV.  Nancy Coppock states it most eloquently in an American Thinker blog:

The Democrat Party has gone off the edge of the world. The party is incapable of being reformed. The party needs to go the way of the Federalists and decline into ancient history. Any person still manning the Democrat Party at the local level should have either his ability to discern reality or his ability to read documents like The Constitution or The Declaration of Independence and get the main idea questioned. Those two thoughts make those still manning Fort DNC unworthy for public service. They may be really nice people, but all the same, incapable of smelling the bean pot scorching on the back burner of reality.

Your party has become what Jonah Goldberg has aptly called “liberal fascists,” a modern day version of the Brown Shirts running around to assassinate the character of anyone who dares oppose them. Just ask “Joe the Plumber,” or Cindy McCain, or Sarah Palin.  You somehow have managed to use most of the media in these smear campaigns, and as a propaganda arm of your party, a media who never asked a Presidential candidate about a list of questionable radical and corrupt associations as long as Paul Bunyan’s arm!

Remarks about the tea parties from your party’s leadership reveal what you really think about most of us.  You Benevolent Elitenesses in Washington treat the rest of the country like helpless “hillbillies” or peasants that you have to take care of, you know, the ones that smell bad.  Well, I am proud to call myself a “hillbilly.”  My hillbilly ancestors built this country from before the Revolution.  A few fired their militia muskets at Guilford Courthouse, so bloodying Cornwallis that he retired to Yorktown.  They were never university elitists, just simple farmers who would have never taken a handout, much less forced someone else to give them one.

Senator, if you sense anger or disrespect here, you and your party have earned it!  I predict you will be gone in 2010, along with many others.

Gary Horne

The last few years I have been seeing this bird on my TV screen.  It used to appear rarely, when the parasite trial lawyer ads or the trial lawyer candidate (the one with the expensive haircut) came on.  Also on the one occasion during the Presidential campaign when my wife turned on the CBS Evening Propaganda Hour News.

Lately, I have been seeing it a lot more often, when the Teleprompter King is on, or Rangel, or Reid, or Pelosi, or Gibbs, or………….  Wait, it’s just the reflection of my own finger (the middle digit)!  How foolish of me not to notice before.  I wonder how many reflections are seen on how many TV screens across the nation now?

Watching the Horror Show on the Potomac is getting depressing.  If this were a movie, the audience would be running out screaming.  The Marx brothers couldn’t top this one.  So I want to do something a little more uplifting.

These are my American Heroes.  I’m sure you can come up with more, but these strike me as the best.  It lifts my spirits to think of them.

George Washington

In the darkest days of the Revolutionary War, General George Washington stood before his army whose enlistments were up and ready to go home.  Alone, General Washington convinced them to stay.  Though he won few battles, he, more than any one, was responsible for the eventual victory at Yorktown.  He presided over the Constitutional Convention, and of course served as the first President trodding on ground no one had ever walked before to set up a workable federal government.  He was a man with no illusions about the nature of reality, who fully earned the love of his countrymen.  A man with legendary self-control, tears rolled down his cheeks as he waved to the crowds on the way to the first inauguration.  The Father of our country indeed!

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson could have easily considered himself an aristocrat, yet he wrote the most famous and beloved words in American History, “All men are created equal,”  and he meant it.  He believed no man was born higher than another.  Yes, he had slaves, and even children from one, but that was a different time.  Even then, he often wrote against slavery, even in his draft of the Declaration of Independence, a portion taken out by the Continental Congress before adoption.  The words “All men are created equal” were the basis for the later freeing of the slaves.  They were the basis for Martin Luther King’s remarkable “I Have a Dream” speech.  Those words form a fundamental principle of our nation.  Ten days before his death, he wrote, “…for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”  Father of the Declaration of Independence indeed!

James Madison

George Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention primarily at the urging of James Madison.  Chances of success would have been slim without Washington’s stature there.  James Madison’s Virginia Plan formed the basis of the Constitution that was subsequently adopted.  Madison’s concept of a strong federal government with limited powers prevailed.  This man worked tirelessly  at the Convention to reach agreement and aggressively argued, campaigned, and convinced until ratification.  Father of the Constitution indeed!

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin left home at 17 to make his own way in the world and would have had a remarkable life even had there been no American Revolution.  He was everywhere;  in England trying to resolve colonial grievances before the Revolution,  in America laying the groundwork for it and helping draft the Declaration of Independence, in France raising money for the war, negotiating with the French to bring them into the war, negotiating the treaty granting American Independence, and hosting the Constitutional Convention where he proposed the compromise resolving proportional vs. state representation.  When asked by a European about Americans in 1784, he answered, “People do not enquire, concerning a stranger, What is he? But, What can he do?”  A Founder indeed!

Nathanael Greene

Nathanael Greene volunteered in a local militia as a private, rising to brigadier general within a year.  A Quaker, he was cast out of the Society of Friends because of his support for the war.  One of Washington’s senior officers, he was the choice to take over command should Washington go down in battle.  He successfully advised Washington to avoid needless open fighting with superior British forces, a strategy that ultimately succeeded.  In the south, Greene conducted what historians have called the most brilliantly conducted campaign of the war, so bloodying Cornwallis that he retired to Yorktown.  As they say, the rest is history.

Ronald Reagan

I cried when Ronald Reagan died.  I lived through that time and am grateful for what he did.  When he entered office, the country was dispirited, depressed, weak, unsure of ourselves, and in an economic mess.  Despite the media’s attempt to portray him as not very smart , he was quite the opposite.  A well-educated and well read man who understood the nature of the real world and worked from a firm foundation of principle.  He was a man of integrity and character.  He gave us back hope and confidence in ourselves, and pride as a nation.  He defeated the Soviet Union (as he said he would when he took office).  He (with some help from Paul Volker) put the economy back together.  Hated by the statists, he could cut through their bull with a smile.  He stands far above any other President in my lifetime.  To the extent we are that “Shining City on the Hill”, he was holding up the lantern.

Ayn Rand

Of all the philosophers I have ever read (or tried to), Ayn Rand stands out.  University Philosophy departments generally refuse to acknowledge her as a philosopher, for reasons like, she never wrote a learned volume on her philosophy. (Neither did Socrates, boys!)  Barbara Branden writes in “The Passion of Ayn Rand” that when philosophy professors visited her New York apartment, they would leave having to totally rethink their positions.   In fact, her writings cover all the aspects of philosophy; metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and esthetics.  The philosophy of Ayn Rand is comprehensive and clear.  Her ethics is based on life as the standard of value, that the individual should be free to live his own life and not be forced to sacrifice for others.  No one should be forced or cowed into giving up what he or she has honestly earned.  According to a Library of Congress survey in 1991, Ayn’s book “Atlas Shrugged” was the book that made the most difference in Americans’ lives, second only to the Bible.   If we can avoid the fall to statism, the additional weight of Ayn’s influence might be enough to make the difference.

Walt Disney

What would our culture be like without this man?  A true individualist who pursued his ideas despite all the blank stares and you can’t do that ‘s he encountered.  No better example of  his optimism and positivism exists than Mickey Mouse.  In the foreword to the book “Remembering Walt” Ray Bradbury says, “Walt Disney was more important than all the politicians we’ve ever had.  They pretended optimism.  He was optimism.  He has done more to change the world for the good than any politician who ever lived.”

The American Soldier

To mention only a few would be a travesty, there are so many.  Some are unknown as knowledge of their acts of heroism died in battle.  Many young soldiers never knew the sweet life of home and family.  Many returned crippled.  Some were forgotten.   We are only the nation we are today because of them.  History tells of many battles turned on the actions of a handful of individuals, either the decisions of commanders or simply the acts of individual soldiers, Gettysburg  being one example.  The fate of this nation as we know it often hinged on the actions of that handful.  When I see the veterans lead the July 4th parade, tears come to my eyes.   Heroes indeed!

This letter was sent by me to our local Obama supporting senator here in Missouri:

Senator, perhaps you are puzzled by all the tea parties springing up.  I’ll clear it up for you.

The tea parties now happening across the country aren’t really about taxes.  Neither was the first tea party.   Contrary to popular belief, the tax on tea had remained the same for six years before the tea party in Boston Harbor.  Parliament had recently enacted a law rebating the tax on tea for the East India Company (a favorite of Parliament) and allowing the company to compete with local colonial importers.  This was just one of many examples of the corrupt Aristocrats in London treating the colonists like lower class frontier yokels.

Such is the situation today.  Instead of “no taxation without representation,” we have “no representation after election.”  Once elected, they promptly set out to tell us what to do, as if we couldn’t tie our shoes without their Benevolent Elitenesses.  They will force us all to be “unselfish.”  Never having run a business themselves, they will tell us how to run ours.  Having no concept of the meaning of money, they trash the nation’s finances, flashing the bird to their own grandchildren.  They use the Constitution like toilet paper, imagining themselves to have unlimited and unrestricted power.  They take large political donations from entities they are supposed to regulate.  They evade taxes yet maintain their chairmanships.  They called President Bush all kinds of slanderous names (an honorable man whether you agree with his policies or not) yet complain if Obama or one of them is asked a probing question.  They smear the armed forces who are still in the field fighting for us.  Their immigration policy is to hound any official who dares to enforce the immigration laws.  They want all the illegals now here to be legalized so they can remain in power.  They, who never have nor never will work in a union, want to allow union thugs to force others to.  Their environmental policies place obscure mice and tortoises above human beings. They intend to tell us how much money we can make and whether we can keep any of it or not, what kind of car to drive, and whether we can see a doctor or not.

Now we have a President who is one of them, the most unqualified  person ever to occupy the White House in my lifetime, with a list of questionable radical and corrupt associations as long as Paul Bunyan’s arm!   A man who thinks a nation achieves respect through apology.  A man who has appointed every hate-mongering, anti-American, anti-Christian, pro-gay, pro-abortion far-left radical he can find to positions in his administration.  A man who continues to try to send pro-abortion ambassadors to the Vatican.  A man whose Easter Bunny diplomacy prompted a British reporter to call him “President Pantywaist.”  An administration populated with University elitists who have no concept of life outside the campus.  An administration whose Iran policy is to warn Israel to do nothing.  An administration who followed through with “serious consequences” after the North Korean missile launch by the dreaded referral to the UN.  A President who snubbed Israel and bowed before the Saudi King.  A President who said nothing about the kidnapping of an American ship captain, while sending “negotiators.”

These are people who cling to power by cheating, lying, intimidation, and smear.  If you don’t believe it, ask the Clinton campaign about the tactics used in the primary caucuses.  Look at all the Obama volunteers who voted in more than one state.   Ask “Joe the Plumber”, who had the nerve to ask Obama a simple question, and was smeared, threatened and investigated.  Ask Sarah Palin and her family, who continue to be smeared by the left.  This is what Jonah Goldberg has aptly called “liberal fascism,” a modern day version of the Brown Shirts running around to assassinate the character of anyone who dares oppose them.  These people don’t love the country, only themselves.  They think the rest of us are lowly peasants in need of their elite guidance.

That, Senator, is what the tea parties are about.  And you are one of them.  If not, you are a fool for supporting them.  I assure you, you will be gone in 2012.  Anger in the real America is growing.  A few more years of Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Schumer, Frank, Dodd, Boxer, Kerry, Murtha, Rangle, Feinstein, Waters, and all the rest, and you will see some real anger.

Signed,

Angry in Missouri

Gary Horne

The amount of money being spent and borrowed by the current Democratic Congress is accelerating at a jaw-dropping rate.  Continuing on this path guarantees economic collapse.  The absurdity of this brings up my favorite beef, the unlimited power of government to tax and spend.  Presently, we have no protection against a Congress which can tax us at whatever rate it pleases, to spend for whatever it pleases.   There is nothing to stop them from taking 100% of what we make, and giving it to whomever they want.

If you think 100% is far-fetched, just witness the attempt to tax the AIG bonuses at 90+%.  Ronald Reagan entered politics when he discovered himself in the 90% bracket.  The 16th Amendment gave the Congress the power to tax income, but set no limit.  Specifying a limit would not be needed if what the Congress could spend for was legally restrained.  The Constitution does provide such restraint:

The powers of the Congress are specified in Article I, Section 8, which concludes with:

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States…

This clearly limits the power of the Congress to only make laws to carry out what is defined in the Constitution.  If that were not enough, Amendment 10 states,

The Powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution , nor prohibited to it by the States , are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Now, I am not a Constitutional lawyer, but this seems clear and unequivocal.  Either lawyers have found a way around the language (what is says is not what it says), or Congress is just ignoring it.  In any case, it has not protected us.  More is needed.

Therefore I propose a Constitutional Amendment which I call the “Horne Amendment”  (Hey, it’s my post!)   Such an amendment would of course have to be carefully crafted, but I think it should be something like this:

The power of Congress to lay and collect taxes shall be restricted to that necessary to perform the duties of the government as expressly defined in the Constitution.  No citizen or private enterprise shall be taxed except in proportion to the benefits received as a result of the Constitutional duties of the government.  No public expenditure shall be authorized without a corresponding exchange of goods or services.

This would accomplish four things:

1.  The Congress would be prohibited from using tax money for extra-
Constitutional things, like funding ACORN, or bailing out companies, or
sending 900 billion to HAMAS.  The budget would get a severe haircut!

2.  No one could be taxed at a high rate just because the are “the wealthy.”
No more playing the class envy card.

3.  Tax money could not be given away in order to pander for votes.  No more
rewarding irresponsible behavior.

4.  The government would have to stop stomping on our freedom.

I would also amend Section 8 of the Constitution as follows:

To borrow money on the credit of the United States only for emergencies such as war or disaster, and such borrowing to be repaid within ten years.

Now we all know Obama and Pelosi and Reid are not going to give up all their social engineering tools.  Boy would they ever squeal if this become possible!  This is not the kind of change they have in mind!  As they continue on their irresponsible path, they may actually be working to bring about the conditions under which such an amendment could be proposed.  The chaos they will bring about will require this kind of charge.   We can wait until the time is right.  To paraphrase John Galt, “The road is cleared, … We are going back to the Constitution.”

Gary Horne

You don’t think the new Government Motors (aka GM) will succeed?  Here’s how:

1. Take over the management.  This of course is already in work, CEO Wagoner has been ousted and the “auto experts” in the oval office are busy replacing the board.
2. Make little green cars.   It is clear from statements by the administration that this is the goal.
3. Make gasoline so expensive that there is demand for the little green cars.  Don’t allow any energy exploration, off or on shore.
4. Mandate that car companies can only make little green cars.  All that is needed is an update to CAFE standards (where in the constitution is the authority for this?).  Once that is done, the company making the little green cars can make money.

When questioned by Congresswoman Michele Bachmann in a March 24th hearing about what provision in the Constitution gave authority for the actions of the Treasury, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s response is worth a few thousand words.  Not only did he not have an answer (there isn’t one), he seemed confused that such a question would be asked.  As if the Constitution was somehow irrelevant, just an ancient document that draws tourists to Washington DC.

The Obama administration would like to think it irrelevant, and obviously doesn’t hold it in high regard.  Obama said as much in his 2001 public radio interview in Chicago.

..reflects a fundamental flaw that continues to this day.

Obama supporters say this is a reference to slavery.  Have they forgotten the slaves were freed, and civil rights laws were passed, and the basis for these were the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence?  What is it that continues to this day?

Perhaps it is his complaint that the Warren Court

…didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution

in order to bring about “redistribution of wealth.  Even Obama seems to concede that the Constitution doesn’t allow spreading the wealth, yet plunges full speed ahead to do it anyway.

Even the most cursory reading of the Founders reveals that the Constitution was to give limited powers to the federal government.

James Madison, justly called “father of the Constitution,” stated,

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.         [Federalist Papers #45]

and Thomas Jefferson,  February 15, 1791;

I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition.

and Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 32, January 3, 1788;

But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States.

It seems that the intent of the Founders was that powers of the federal government are only what is specifically defined in the Constitution.

That is how they wrote the Constitution.  The preamble of the Constitution lists the reasons for its being: to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty.  The powers of the President are specifically defined in Article II, Section 2 and the powers of the Congress in Article I, Section 8, which concludes with,

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States…

This clearly limits the power of the Congress to what is defined in the Constitution.  If that were not enough, Amendment 10 states,

The Powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution , nor prohibited to it by the States , are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

If Constitutional “scholars” dispute this, they are saying what is says is not what it says, turning the English language inside out.

There is no provision in the Constitution allowing redistribution of wealth.  If fact, such an action would violate the stated reason for the Constitution, i.e. to promote the general welfare.  Harming one individual to benefit another does not promote the general welfare since it punishes some.

The Founders clearly did not want redistribution of wealth:

[A] wise and frugal government… shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.
Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

Benjamin Franklin, commenting on the new Constitution, said,

Once the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the Republic.

Nor did they care for deficit spending:

The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Taylor, May 28, 1816

The President and the leadership of the Congress obviously have no respect for the Constitution.  Secretary Geithner’s reply to Congresswoman Bachmann seems to indicate if Congress says it is OK, that is enough.  That reminds me of the Bob Dylan song where he tells someone to rob a bank and “tell ‘em I said it’s alright.”  Reid and Pelosi, and a lot of others, think it’s all right as long as they say so.

History, for those in power today, doesn’t exist!  The Constitutional Convention, the American Revolution, the debates of the Founders have no lessons for them.  They behave as if the Soviet Union is a raging success.  They never heard of the many historical examples of socialism or communism failing under excess taxation, corruption, and tyranny.  They don’t see how life is (or was) in the nations that adopted their way, like Cuba and East Germany.  For them, the tanks never rolled into Poland, or Hungary, or Tianamin Square.  They overlook the outcome of the champions of “fairness” who carried it to its logical conclusion, like Pol Pot and Stalin.  They never learned the lessons of Jamestown.  A President who fancies himself to be a Constitutional scholar seems to have learned nothing about it, or worse, knows but says “to hell with it.”

A Letter to Joe Conner

I was profoundly touched by your letter to your father “Dear Dad,”

redstate.com/2009/03/20/dear-dad/

Words are not adequate.  Just understand that you have connected to me, and to many others, on a heart-to-heart basis.  I too am deeply disturbed and angry at our present situation.  I too evoked the memory of my father, starting a website in his honor [barbershopvalues.com].  If our fathers’ values were still the values of our country, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

If it is any consolation, YOU ARE NOT ALONE.  We are but candles in a hurricane of hate, class envy, and character assassination.  The Founders would be horrified to see the gallery of embarrassment that populate the Congress and the Presidency.   Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, Frank, Rangel, Schumer, Murtha, Feinstein, Waters, Boxer, ………….. The list is too long.  The words I would choose to describe these people wouldn’t be fit to print.  I don’t know what we can do, but I for one will go down fighting.  Most of my ancestors were here when Independence was achieved, a few fought in the Revolution.  As I look at them and their descendants, all the way down to my parents, I see a people for whom personal responsibility and hard work were solid virtues.  None of them would have ever have accepted someone else’s charity, much less allow the government to force others to benefit them.   I think my mother and father would have starved rather than demand welfare for themselves.  My father would have turned off the TV in anger after watching the nightly news, just as I do.  Actually, I refuse to watch what has increasingly become statist propaganda.  We now face the absurd situation of the media and politicians condemning the very values that have made us a great country.

Our fight is discouragingly uphill.  The universities and most of the media are already under control of the radicals.  But compare it to what they faced in 1776-1781.  It would have been easy to give up then.  During the worst days of the Revolutionary War, George Washington stood before his army whose enlistments were up are ready to go home.  General Washington alone convinced them to stay on.  The actions of one person can make the difference, sometimes in unexpected ways.

For one, the media needs to be held accountable.  They betrayed the American people in the last election, abandoning any claim to journalist principles.   I refuse to watch the major TV news outlets, except for Fox News which is relatively unbiased.  I have started my own personal boycott of GE and have told them so.  If such boycotts could be organized, they might have some effect.  I canceled my newspaper subscription after the St. Louis Post Dispatch endorsed Obama for President, a piece full of contradictory rubbish.  They had the nerve to say that what he learned as a community organizer trumped  his inexperience.  After claiming Obama was foregoing the politics of smear, promptly smeared Sarah Palin in the next paragraph.  The media  painted Obama as a great orator, a man who can’t get out a coherent sentence without the teleprompter.

For what it is worth, bug our representatives.  It doesn’t seem to be worth much as my attempts to communicate might as well have been thrown in my trash can, since they seem to have ended up in theirs.  But I make the effort.  The failure of the last so-called immigration reform was due to massive complaints from constituents, and the complaints about spending are making some in Congress nervous.

Most of all, see you in 2010.  I can’t wait to see how many of these _______s get thrown out of office.  I will certainly participate.  We can only hope the Constitution protects us in the meantime.  The hurricane will rage, damage will be done, but hurricanes spend themselves.

Joe, I am with you 100%!  My parents didn’t raise a quitter either.   If there are enough candles, they can light the world after the hurricane passes.

With great respect,

Gary Horne