We now have not one, not two…but FOUR major, impeachable, indictable scandals that even the spin master Carney cannot contain.  “Bush’s fault”, “Romney’s fault”, “We didn’t know” and “The White House was not informed” have become school-yard level excuses, worthy of 6 year olds, that whatever happens, “we had nothing to do with it. Period. And you better write that…or you’ll get a visit from the IRS.”

I was 12 years old when Nixon almost got impeached. I saw what happened, and I judged it based on what I could mentally process at the time. It was wrong, but like the song “Sweet Home Alabama” triumphed, “Watergate does not bother me”.  It was a monstrous case of idiocy, stupidity, and incompetence. But what DID bother me was this:

Article 2

Using the powers of the office of President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in disregard of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purposed of these agencies.

This conduct has included one or more of the following:

1. He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.

Yeah…that.

Obama is now guilty of exactly what Richard Nixon was charged with.

The only difference is that Woodward and Bernstein don’t write and investigate anymore…they throw out a book every now and then, to keep the mutual fund and annuity payments coming in, and depending on one’s political persuasion, that book is “awesome, spot on, clearly exactly what happened” or, “utter crap, made it up, unworthy of such a noted journalist”

But Woodward and Bernstein don’t exist in the modern era. Bloggers with limited audiences might very well be the very Oracle of truth and fact, but they will be drowned out by the sycophants that Woodward never needed to shout above. Moreover, the President now has his own personal, dedicated, fearless media outlet in MSNBC (owned by Comcast, run on Windows…make a choice). Jesus Christ Himself, with the Father at His side, and the Holy Spirit embodied, could come down from Heaven, and before every man, woman, and child on this planet, denounce Obama as the Antichrist (he isn’t, by the way), and MSNBC would still cover it as “Controversy swirls, as alien beings press unfounded charges against President”. Two days later, the headline would read “Aliens still offer no proof. Obama moves forward”

In a nutshell, much as we relish these scandals, as they confirm everything we’ve every thought about this man and his administration, nothing, and I do mean NOTHING, will happen. News cycles will come and go. Jim Carney will blame everyone but himself and his boss. The reporters – who now suffer firsthand at the tyrant’s bidding – will express indignation, and then get over it. They are not nearly as important as “The Goal” – whatever that is to the socialist, Marxist, Muslim, blah, blah, blah, mindset.  (I honestly don’t know what these people are, other than supremely incompetent. FDR was a socialist…but at least he was good at it.  BHO is just an idiot.) In the end, it won’t matter because of the brilliance of their playbook. Own the media, and be as incompetent as you want: we got your back. My two year old could be President based on this level of performance expectation.  My cat, who’s dying from cancer, could hit about the same odds if she would just press a random “decision button” each morning could do better.

The wailing, the gnashing of teeth, the countless hours of Congressional hearings, the investigations of a hundred journalists, and the very intervention of God HIMSELF against Barack Hussein Obama will lead to exactly naught. Nothing, zilch, zip, nada.

Mark my words – Joe Biden will never be President (consider that your consolation prize). Obama leaves office unscathed, and the GOP looks like a bunch of whiny toddlers trying to enforce rules no one believes in anymore.

And thus, empires fall.

I’m done. Out. Screw Eric, and the lot of you. YOU are the problem. YOU are why we don’t win elections. YOU are why Democrats keep getting elected. YOU are why this country is the way it is.

I have been a magisterial district chairman, I have been a state central committee member; I have even been a state director for a major presidential candidate…..all to no avail. Why? Because of YOU. Because someone wasn’t “pure” enough.  Because someone, back in the day, supported “X”….and now they don’t meet the Reagan test…Reagan, who could not possibly meet the test you have laid forth.

You….YOU…who now insist, after the debacles of Dole and McCain, swear allegiance to “never another RINO” in the justifiable hope that it all burn down under Obama. that somehow the GOP will come out ahead.

Santorum is a big government conservative. Newt, likewise, except with more baggage. Romney is, at best, a liar. Huntsman…who has the best economic policy of the bunch, …is unelectable because he betrayed his employer, Obama himself. Perry is beyond inarticulate, and the rest have dropped out.

Everyone sucks.

And yet the man occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Ave,  is beyond incompetent…he is a traitor and a Marxist. But that’s ok, because he’s better than [insert you least favorite candidate here].

Redstate — as influential and efficacious as it is and has become — is now all about tearing down whoever is leading in some “poll” (and really, has anyone here ever been called???), and — rightly or wrongly — become the arbiter of GOP purity, elections be damned.
If YOU would rather elect Obama, than support the GOP nominee, whoever that might be, YOU are part of the problem. If YOU are tired of nominating RINO’s because the mainstream media says “this is your candidate”, then you are naive at best, because no matter whom we nominate, they will all be subjected to a level of scrutiny that would make even Mother Theresa shudder in embarrassment.

Having watched 4 frontrunners implode — Pawlenty, Bachmann, Perry, Gingrich — at the HANDS OF CONSERVATIVES,  because they weren’t perfect — P E R F E C T — I now see the Internet for what it is: an echo chamber of discontent, with no viable alternative to some Reaganesque utopia which never existed.

Ronald Reagan himself could not escape the vitriol of hate that exists in this environment. I have even see the comment “Better Jimmy Carter, than the milquetoast version of “conservatism” that the “Old Man” gave us”

Burn it all down…purity above reality. And watch the Tea Party become a footnote in history.

As William F. Buckley said, elect the most conservative candidate that stands a chance of winning (to paraphrase). No one said anything about perfection.

My guy is Rick Perry. He’s the only one fighting illegal immigration. He’s got the best record when it comes to taxes and regulation. But he can’t put two sentences together. I don’t care…I’m done with words and spin, and look at performance. My next choice is Newt. But regardless, even if my party should choose Ron Paul, I will support this party’s candidate over THE TRAITOR that now occupies the White House no matter what.

Because, at the end of the day, Redstate doesn’t elect anyone.  If anything, it has devolved into a “how to exclude a candidate from consideration” free-for-all, based on some arbitrary definition of conservatism, and purity, which only goes to ensure the election of liberal, socialistic Democrats.

WE are our own worst enemy. Democrats would never bring up the arcane, ancient, and banal history of any given GOP candidate, in large part because they, too, are guilty of the same. Yet we destroy a man’s reputation, his family, his legacy, and his possibility for greatness by determining, based on one factoid, that “he’s a squish and a liberal”.

Done and out… “X” voted this way 200 years ago, therefore I cannot in good conscious vote for him/her. Better that Obama hasten the decline so we can get about rebuilding in the image of our forefathers”

I’ve seen it a hundred times on this site.

Redstate used to be the loyal opposition…it has now become the “angry and annoyed” Internet version of MySpace…where no reason or logic is allowed, and emotion runs free.

I want Rick Perry ( or Newt Gingrich, or even Rick Santorum). And I will emphatically vote for Mitt Romney if he is our nominee. But I am done with RedState…as Erick has allowed this to become an echo chamber of hate and discontent; where even our fellow conservatives are unfit to draw breath on this planet because at some point in the past they supported [insert least favorite conservative cause here].

This has been some time in the coming. When I realized that even Ronald Reagan, based on his record as Governor of California, was no longer acceptable to the vast majority of contributors, I knew that Erick had let this place “jump the shark”. I was a state director for both Ronald Reagan and Pat Buchanan, and I now find I am in the minority…because no one is perfect. And too many here would rather see it “all burn down” than vote for another RINO.

“All burn down” sounds good on paper. In reality, it means someone’s child goes hungry, or a family gets evicted and is homeless. A liberal argument to the heartstrings, to be sure, but given the dependence that we’ve allowed this government to have in our lives, reality nonetheless.  And that anger has consequences, to the very detriment of the GOP, who will be blamed for everything.

At the end, support whoever, but do so respectfully…as the candidate you loath today, may be the candidate you must vote for tomorrow. And if your RedState inclination is to watch it all burn down, lest a less than pure, perfect candidate get nominated, then yes…you are one of us, and the very enemy we seek to fight everyday.

I have seen the enemy, and they are weak. I have seen another enemy, and it is US, where the enemy of the perfect is the good…led in large part by Erick himself, and others on his “front page” (witness the extensive and exhaustive voting record of Santorum). When we find someone with the looks. charisma, and an Obamba-esque voting record, which entails …what?….then we will have our nominee.

In the meantime, we gots what we gots. Embrace it…or you’ve got 4 more years of “The One”

Allow me to clarify,

What you and your children did in Korea and Vietnam was beyond commendable…it was f*ing awesome, on a scale that we can’t begin to comprehend. But in the aftermath of that moment in history, when everything aligned, and everyone was united, you laid the foundation for the end of this Republic.

History aside, we now reap what you have sown, from union pensions, to expectations that our progeny will do better, live better, BE better, than we were.  And now we realize there is LITERALLY not enough money on this planet (say that again to yourself – “not enough money in all the world”) to pay for all the things you made politicians promise us in return for electing them to office.

You did this.

And now you even have an ad on TV telling those same pols that if they don’t deliver, you’ll vote them out. As if that even mattered.

For you see, vote them in, or vote them out, there is no more money. Your retirement is going to suck. So will will mine. In fact, all of us who bought into the concept that Uncle Sam owes me a single nickle, are going to find that being homeless, is the likely outcome of these decisions. We KNOW that Social Security is bankrupt, yet you kept and keep voting in politicians who have zero incentive to actually fix what we all know — but refuse to call — is a big, steaming, stinking pile of Ponzi.

YOU did this. You sit in your retirement condo in Florida or wherever. YOU stormed the beaches of Normandy, and fought the Fascists of Europe, and then turned around and supported the fascists in this country (under the guise of “socialism”) and thought it was all good.

America stands at the precipice, and yet YOU claim you paid into SSI and Medicaid and you deserve a payback well in excess of anything you contributed monetarily. You STILL think this is your money, and that the guv’mint owes you.

You’ve been lied to. In SPADES. This is what socialism does. It lies. It doesn’t work, it never has, and it never will. Yet it endures because people like you — who have literally been to hell and back — think there must be a free lunch at the end of this rainbow.  There isn’t.

I am 50 years old.  I have zero confidence that there will be anything for me in a few years. And if there is, it will only be there as the country bankrupts itself to pay the promises it made.

The PARTY IS OVER. FDR is dead, and we can only hope his corpse rots in the grave, and his socialist soul is burning in Hell for all eternity. For no one is more responsible than FDR (and Wilson) for the enslavement of mankind. In each of us, however, lives a soul that yearns to be free. And ultimately, this is what will win out, if not under this government, than the next.

But as I watch the candidates debate, and a Democratic President obfuscate and openly lie on a scale unknown in any Western democracy to date, I see glimmers, and glimpses of some elemental understanding of how far we’ve strayed.

Yet these come from the younger of us, those ones paying the bills. For the older, the Greatest Generation, I see greed and entitlement. Are they entitled?  Yes, but not to the point of suicidal oblivion. And that’s where we are.

Elect whomever. Work for whomever. in the end, it doesn’t matter unless we refocus our efforts in a manner that shrinks this govenrment. Everything else is pointless.

Reality check, however.  In a time not long ago, measured in days, if not weeks, taking back control of the Senate by Republicans was a concept of whimsical fantasy on par with say…oh…President Obama coming out in favor of JFK/Reagan style tax cuts, and a big mea culpa on the whole Healthcare thingy.  Then something changed, and not a few of us, including a few in the GOP establishment, started drinking our own Kool-Aid, and believing our own press clippings, and the next thing we know — shazam — the Senate is in play.

Nevermind the fact that taking over the House was a big enough hurdle in and of itself.  Now a new bar had been set — complete takeover of the Congress. Throw in the governorships, state legislatures, various and sundry attorneys general, a few state referenda, the odd secretary of state here and there, and the whole of the Colorado Supreme Court.

With each passing day, the bar got set higher and higher so that at SOME point, the New York Times would eventually be correct and could say, at some level, Tea Partiers have failed. Frustratingly, that has not happened. Even the GOP establishment, in a perverse alliance with the Times, and everyone who works at MSNBC, and who failed in the beginning to grasp the significance of what can only now be seen as nothing short of a peaceful revolution, are flailing and looking for someone to blame, lest they too join their troubled brethren in the Democratic lifeboats. So the ever-higher-bar theme plays right into their denial.

This is the same group that brought you the concept of “electability”.  To date, those candidates with the most “electability” are the candidates who keep failing to win elections.  That would be “President John McCain”, right?  I could insert here the litany of “GOP Approved” candidates who have already joined, or will soon be joining, their fellow Americans in the unemployment line, but you get the point. As breathtaking as the disconnect between the Obama Administration and the American people may be, it is no less shocking to see the naked and raw clawing and clinging to power of self-professed conservatives in the ivory tower of GOP leadership, who have welded a looking glass to the walls of their echo chamber and who see nothing — NOTHING — in the coming wave election but an opportunity to exploit conservatives and other “unelectables” for their own ends.

“Electability” is what brought about the debacles of 2006 and 2008.  I’d even go so far as to argue that “electability” is what ultimately caused the GOP to drift so far into the progressive sewer the Left wants us all to live in, starting back in 2000.  But with results that speak for themselves, the only word dirtier than “incumbent” or “Democrat” in this election cycle seems to be “electable”.  At least among GOP voters.

How this all plays out will be decided soon, of course.  My gut, which is unfailingly right about things, even when I don’t want it to be, tells me that polling is not yet picking up the depths of anger and frustration, and which will cause voters who may not have voted since 1980 to make sure their voice is heard this time.

They’ve deemed Christine O’Donnell “un-electable”.  Given the track record so far, and I might double check with Scott Brown, I’d say that gives her a fighting chance and a better than 50/50 chance of poking one more stick in the eyes of GOP Senate leadership who have fossilized themselves in the rose colored amber of their own voices, and who can see, hear, and say nothing about the freight train that is about to rip through their little corner of the world, every bit as much as it tears asunder the house that O built.

Today we start taking names, taking our country, and taking our Constitution back. One. Precinct. At. A. Time.

“Electable” is who WE say it is — not them.

As I mentioned in one of my comments in the Texas thread referenced, my background is in both political science and in history from the University of Virginia — Mr. Jefferson’s own — and my experience has taught me that each clearly informs the other. Given that background, I noted that one of the moderators had given a clearly glib answer to a comment by another reader that Texas should secede, and whose gist was that we should just go to war against that state — as that is somehow the automatic reaction anytime a member of our American family should want to leave: we just kill them, even if that member should be one with whom we share the most in common and who’s values we ourselves hold.

It’s the “Constitution-as-Suicide-Pact” line of thinking.

While my points and the scenarios that I referenced were academic — a thought experiment in the “what to do in a worst case scenario” that is still many years and and many judicial and legislative abuses away — I asked readers to play it out, all the way out, to when voting Republican didn’t matter, and everything was run by a judiciary, and your state is no longer a sovereign.  Then what? Where do you go? What do you do?

I never was able to get a straight answer from the recipient of my query, who withdrew in a fit of “hear no evil”, and even Redstaters here were somewhat split.  All this talk of liberty and death, but several quite willing to embrace the yolk of any benign tyranny if it meant they didn’t have to watch their children die or lose their SUV, or other such comfort that makes all this talk seem so “scary”.

My point was that secession, of the likely outcomes, was the most reasoned, logical, peaceful, and least disruptive of a whole host of unpleasant choices in such an apocalyptic circumstance. To be clear, I didn’t advocate it, and in fact, made it clear that there are a lot of things we can do in the interim to return this Government to its properly constructed role. But what was “silly” and in the long term, quite dangerous, was to dismiss it out of hand as some chose to do.

So how those comments could have inspired, influenced, or in anyway resulted in the paranoid analysis that Vassar Bushmills’ diary posits, whereby November elections will somehow be canceled or invalidated, is quite remarkable.  Given the history of this country, and the apparent rancor that has at times divided its citizens, we are no where near any such effort, no matter how “deep” the Left might be, even should they actually be “all in”.  My own view is that they have in fact committed all to their cause, and have expended considerable resources and capital to arrive where they are today. But so what?

It has been an expenditure of resource, capital, and credibility that will be for naught, leaving them drained, poor, and lacking the ability to make a serious argument. Witness how much even the “racist” charge now no longer carries weight. The little boy Left has cried “wolf” once too often.

So being “all in” has only hastened their demise, a political “Pickett’s charge” that has failed, and the price for which will be paid on the first Tuesday of this November.

Being the impatient people we are as Americans. eight years of ANYTHING is about all we’ll put up with — even if it’s eight years of prosperity. After 8 years of Clinton, foibles aside, the economy had had a good run and we elected a Bush.  Eight years of Bush, another good run, given two wars, resulted in Mr. Hope and Change, who turned out to be Mr. Failure and Despair.  So now comes November, and Dems are freaking out because they’re going to take a hit, but under the most reasonable predictions available today, STILL stand to control the Senate, the Presidency, and most of the Federal judiciary, to say nothing of the Federal bureaucracy which never, ever goes away.

Yet the author of this diary gives 50/50 odds there to be a civil-war inciting, illegal, and unenforcable cancellation or invalidation of those elections (or their results) because of ….what?  They didn’t get 100% of everything they wanted??? That’s a highly unreasonable conclusion to draw from the events, especially in light of the glaring fact that there would still be a vast majority of Democratic hands at the tiller of government after the November elections.

The chasm between that objective reality, and the conclusion that events are now conspiring to create some “November surprise” is simply too vast for this reader to leap.

Instead, I was seeking to take a broader view in my comments. The one that notes quite correctly that history is very much against us, something that Jefferson and all of the Founders clearly knew and wrote about, because it is the very nature of government to grow and expand and to do so until the people rebel and toss it off to start over. And it is inconsequential whether Reagan Republicans control that government, or Marxist Democrats — Government. Will. Grow.   Eventually it will grow to the point where it no longer can feed itself, and you can use any empire in history as an example, or point to recent Grecian failures that Democrats seem intent on mirroring.

So while the November 2010 elections are critical, and may in fact be the most important of our lifetimes, they are, in the sweep of history a mere speed bump towards this government’s eventual, inevitable, and utterly unavoidable demise. And the results of those elections, whether we win or lose, does nothing to mitigate a need for an eventual and peaceful “exit strategy” — though one that our children or grandchildren will more likely require, than anyone reading this in 2010. Or 2020 for that matter.

It is hardly treason or ill reasoning to point this out, but merely historical precedence, and no less than our Founders would be shocked out of their powdered wigs to see the government they started still functioning (if bearing no resemblance to anything they intended). But if that is all true, what are we voting for?  Why fight and why defend “the United States of America” if it’s all for nothing in the end anyway?

As I pointed out in my comments, I come from a family who traces a military tradition back to 1863, and has shed its blood in every conflict this country has found itself in. But I am here to witness and testify that none of that blood was shed for a “government”, but rather for the idea and ideals behind that government. It is the liberty, equal justice, independence, values, and opportunities enshrined in our Constitution and Declaration that drives men to bleed and die, not a party or whether liberals or conservatives are writing the rules. And those values will continue to live in the hearts of patriots whether this remains the United States of America, or whether there’s a Western America, a Chesapeake Union, a New Britain, an Eastern Canadian Commonwealth, and a North Mexico as states find more in common with others than we currently find with each other.

Government is the MEANS to those ends, and countries exist to protect those interests. But I would hardly be the first to note that when government is destructive to those ends, it’s time to move on. To wit, Mr. Jefferson: “That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”

Certain Redstate readers, perhaps because they grew up in Northern states or were educated by teachers that equated “Slavery” and “Treason”, with “Secession”,  cannot countenance the very logical, very reasonable position that these 50 sovereign states did not sign a suicide pact, and that whether we allow one or another to leave peacefully or force it back into a Federal subjugation that we ourselves might be seeking to escape will determine whether that inevitable and utterly predictable “dis-union” will be bloody or not.

Secession is most emphatically NOT off the table, as Texas has clearly demonstrated.  As long as there is a Gov. Perry, Obama knows that Texas holds a hand that he cannot defeat without losing 30 more states in the process.  It is only the reality, or perceived reality, that if final push came to final shove, Texas would in fact declare its independence that will cause Uncle Sam to back down, even if it means they lose face in a red state they stand no chance of ever carrying. No one — left or right — thinks Perry is bluffing. And that’s why he’ll prevail.

Again, I repeat, and I emphasize, that we are perhaps a generation removed from ever having, or being forced, to deploy a secession “card”, and we have a million other options in front of us. But anyone who confuses secession with “slavery” or some wistful “Lost Cause” is being willfully naive. While the secession of Southern states did not result in an outcome those states hoped, colonial secession from Great Britain certainly did.

For a country, the United States, that was founded, in part, through the very strategy of secession in order to redress grievances inflicted upon it by a tyrant, for those same states, or for those same citizens now to say “talk of secession is silly”  is disingenuous at best. To remove it from civil discourse, to “take it off the table” because they were taught it equated to treason and slavery, is to remove the last, reasonable hope for a peaceful parting of the ways among the states, and a Federal government that is hopelessly, but predictably out of control.

Take secession off the table, and when all the other options run out — and they will — you’re only left with war.

And that, my dear readers, is not something I’m prepared to do, not now, not ever. In the meantime, I reiterate — vote conservative. Usually that means Republican, but your mileage may vary.

It matters, now more than ever.

P.S.  That map at the beginning of this article? From a liberal web site distraught at the re-election of George Bush.  Seems our “blue” brethren can tire of us “red” folks too.

So yeah, this is a place steeped in history, and even today, newcomers to the state are struck by how much history is a part of every day life here.

But Governor McDonnell’s proclamation, one originally proclaimed by Governor George Allen, by his successor Jim Gilmore, ignored by the two Democrat governors that preceded McDonnell, and then reintroduced this week, omitted any reference to slavery in it’s original form. The usual suspects went apoplectic and Gov. McDonnell retreated, revising the proclamation to include obligatory language about what should be patently obvious to anyone born ..oh… after 1750.  That slavery is a bad thing.

His original proclamation creating April as “Confederate History Month” angered the left, and his politically correct revision angered the right, and in the end, the whole thing was a mess that pleased no one.

But lost in all this was truly “a teaching moment” — what REALLY is Confederate history? And why on earth is it important now?

Look at the headlines: taxes, Tea Parties, lack of representative government. Then picture yourself in 1857, and you begin to understand what actually happened.

A recent discussion I had with a learned historian boiled down to one point – he had consumed nearly 3000 books on the subject, while I had not. But in all his reading, he had never asked the question if what he had read was factual — the “50 million idiots can’t be wrong” school of logic.

I freely acknowledge he was better read than I, but in this instance, it mattered not; there were objective facts he was overlooking, facts I could not fathom he’d not incorporated into his views in the course of his voluminous studies.

But this is a case where volume does not render truth. Allow me to explore an example. First, let’s assume objective Fact “A” (what Fact “A” is isn’t relative. Fact A just “is”.). Now let’s assume that only one person states “Fact “A”. He isn’t describing it, he isn’t romanticizing it, or imbuing it with evil or sinister motive. He merely states it. Then let’s assume an entire industry sprouts up, producing libraries of tomes and analyses around Fact “A”, in many cases disputing it’s objective nature, and going so far as to punish experts in the field of Fact “A” should they accept such. Does this make Fact “A” any less true? Of course not.

In the years subsequent to the War, historians wrote volumes and libraries filled to overflowing of what the war was about, and why it was fought. These historians were primarily from institutions of higher learning that were more dominant in Northern states. 600,000 people had just been slaughtered, and no one was in any mood to countenance good “intentions” on the part of the Confederate founders. The North took to “moralizing” this bloodbath on their brothers by making it about slavery. The South took to romanticizing their lost cause and their leaders. In hindsight, this was predictable, and in both cases, quite wrong.

But as noted Massachusetts abolitionist Lysander Spooner wrote in “No Treason” in 1870, “The pretense that the ‘abolition of slavery’ was either a motive or a justification for the war is a fraud of the same character with that of ‘maintaining the national honor’”.

Look at our own Revolution. We teach our children it was about Liberty and republican democracy and that Britain was an evil tyrant. Yet the fact was 80% of the colonists were more than happy staying British, if only the King would stop taxing us to death, and give us some representation in Parliament that reflected our views (sound familiar?) It wasn’t about liberty — it was about taxes. But men don’t fight and die for taxes. They will fight for higher causes, though.

During the Civil War, from the Unionists, it was the higher cause of “UNION”, to save the country. Later it was “freedom” for slaves when “union” wasn’t selling so well any more, and New Yorkers themselves threatened secession. “Liberty” was again trotted out. In the South, too, “liberty” became the cry, the irony lost on all.

It wasn’t until the North had had it’s nose bloodied and lost countless battles, two full years into the war, that Lincoln issued his emancipation proclamation, which of course emancipated no one.

In Lincoln’s own words — “Things have gone from bad to worse, until I felt we had reached the end of our rope on the plan we were pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the game. I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy.” (Paul M. Angle, ed. “The Lincoln Reader”, Rutgers, 1947).

Hardly the words of a man leading some great cause to free some oppressed minority! It was a tactic to save the union, nothing more. And a none-too popular one at that.

Even his own military was against freeing the slaves — “Fighting Joe Hooker”, Commanding General of the Union Army at the time Lincoln “proclaimed” emancipation, said: “A large element of the army had taken sides antagonistic to it, declaring that THEY WOULD NEVER HAVE EMBARKED IN WAR HAD THEY ANTICIPATED THIS ACTION BY THE GOVERNMENT” (ibid. Emphasis mine – sorry for the all caps, only way to do it).

Lost in all this until recently were all these objective facts that, given the volume of reading my friend had done, and which surely must have crossed his reading desk, didn’t play nice with the long-taught “meme” that this whole conflict was about slavery and that the South was a bunch of traitorous villains, intent on keeping a portion of their population under that boot.

Charles Adams, writing in his best selling book on the history of taxation “For Good and Evil” (1993 Madison Books), a Canadian no-less, pointed to the obvious. Why, at the 11th hour, when the South had the Supreme Court, the Congress, and even Lincoln himself bending over backwards to protect slavery, to institutionalize it forever, and to forbid the Federal government from taking any action to abolish it, would they secede?

If high school history is the last time you learned anything about the Civil War, then you’ve likely never heard this before.

Simply put,  it was about taxes. And states’ rights, but not the states’ rights that later so-called “neo-Confederates” put forth, purporting it to be a state’s right to have or abolish slavery under the 9th and 10th Amendments. No, it was the state’s right to be treated fairly when it came to tariffs, and by 1850, the tariff’s imposed on Southern planters by Congress to satisfy Northern manufacturing interests had again gotten oppressive (I say again, because the South threatened secession over JUST THIS ISSUE in 1832, before a compromise was reached). John C. Calhoun had warned of the impending crisis if this situation persisted. In fact, as early as 1850, on his deathbed, he listed it as the only concrete reason Southern states would secede.

Read Jefferson Davis’ Inaugural Address where he highlights the import tax issue.

Read Edmund Ruffin (the Virginian who fired the first shot on Ft. Sumter) and his exclamation on the wealth wrongfully redistributed from the South to the North. Oh, and what was Ft. Sumter? It was a CUSTOMS HOUSE where tariffs were collected!

Read the notes from the British House of Commons in 1862, where commercial interests which dominated Parliament clearly show it was “The Tariff” that caused the war.

So while he may have had many volumes at his disposal that would validate my friend’s viewpoint, I need only a single letter from General Lee, or a letter Jefferson Davis sent to Lincoln imploring him to end this slaughter two years before the war’s end and let the South be (slave-free at that!), or the proposal that Lincoln wrote (and which Congress adopted!) advocating constitutional enshrinement of slavery to keep the Union. It is clear this was never about slavery, and a thousand million books saying otherwise won’t make it so.

Given the mood of the country right now, the Tea Parties, the oppressive taxes, and the open and blatant redistribution of wealth in this country, I can think of nothing better than to conduct a real, and true, and thorough understanding of Confederate history, and how the very environment we currently live in is, in a very real respect, the kind of environment that gave rise to that rebellion.

If we ever hope to avoid another mindless bloodbath, an honest appraisal of why my ancestors took up arms against fellow Americans is needed. In the end, no one was fighting for or against slavery, and both sides were willing to sellout blacks to achieve their ends. Morally, both sides were bankrupt.

More to the point, though, is what the war was REALLY about. If you want to prevent another such war, then anyone interested in the history of this period needs to put aside the politically correct version of those events from both sides, and look to the economics — which is the source of every war ever fought in the history of mankind.

If Governor McDonnell’s proclamation can have this kind of impact, and we can reveal what TRUE Confederate history is, than it’s impact will have consequences far more important and far reaching than today’s soundbite from some MSNBC-type with their panties in a twist thinking we’re all eager to see the return of “Tara” and “Marse Lee” and fields of cotton bein’ picked.

Understand history, or be condemned to repeat it. — the stakes of not fully living out that tried and true expression are lethal. But I will concede this: “Civil War History Month” would have sufficed far better than “Confederate History Month”. There’s a lot to be learned from the mistakes of BOTH sides.

And while those words may seem appropriate to some given Sunday’s travesty, I find the words today of St. Thomas More even moreso:

“If we lived in a state where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us saintly. But since we see that avarice, anger, pride, and stupidity commonly profit far beyond charity, modesty, justice, and thought, perhaps we must stand fast a little, even at the risk of being heroes.”

Far more than our ability to lay down our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to defeat whatever transgressions might next befall our Constitution, now is the time to stand fast.  To let the ballot speak for us, and make certain that in the political eternity that will pass between this day and November’s first Tuesday, no one forgets what just happened.

There may yet come a time for measures and for actions we dare not contemplate. Now is not that time, even as we ask “Can this country continue as two America’s — the producers and the takers?”  Intelligence agencies of current and former enemies don’t seem to think so. Witness long range intelligence planning by Putin’s Russia that considers the U.S. no more than 15 years from dissolution.  How can it?  Our culture, our common history, our economy and every single thing that made America that shining city on a hill for all the world is under ferocious assault. Socialism is now on open display. Secular moral relativism and political correctness govern our politics, and speech codes govern the fountain of our future leaders – our universities. America is scarcely recognizable anymore. The smoke of Leftist ideology has brought us a social and political cancer that has surely metastasized.

And our leaders no longer heed the voice of the people, acting in willful and open defiance. Can we scarcely call this a Republic for much longer?

I think we can. Whatever the future might hold, though, that fight is not yet here and can well be avoided. 2010 is the turning point.

And in those words of St. Thomas, it is our willingness now to stand fast that will make us heroes, however reluctant and unwilling we might be, and patriots to a dream and an experiment in governance that is not yet ready to die.

And the result? Almost one T R I L L I O N dollars that we will borrow from the Chinese to pay for our health care that my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will be forced to somehow pay back, or work for the Chinese government in return. Or default on and turn us into Greece. (I’m banking on the latter – sorry, China. Bad investment that “full faith and credit of the U.S.” thing, huh?)

Oh, that and the CBO automagically discovered there will be $130 billion in deficit reduction. Well, at least that’s a pretty good thing…wait…wha?  OVER TEN YEARS??????

Steny “Bootlick” Hoyer says this is the biggest deficit reduction coming out of Congress in 25 years, which …god help us all…is probably true and the saddest commentary of all in this whole mess.

So let’s review.  This Congress and the Obama Administration incurred a deficit of over $250 Billion dollars.

In February.

Now, the biggest reduction in deficit spending in 25 years will return about two weeks of federal spending back to the kitty, but only over the course of ten years.  We think. Maybe. Because anything more than 10 months out is a guess anyway, and my 5 year old can “guess” more accurately than these guys, given their track record on what things will cost.

And the Blue Dogs and fiscal moderates are going to use THIS as their fig leaf to vote for health care????

Seriously guys…have some dignity.  Go out there, stark naked, vote for the bill, and at least be man enough to say that Pelosi has your nuts in a jar somewhere, and wouldn’t give them back unless you voted for this monstrosity.  That we could empathize with.  But don’t pretend that two measly weeks of deficit reduction spread out over 10 years of reading tea leaves is going to give you ANY kind of cover whatsoever.

We know you think all we conservatives are knuckle-dragging nut jobs who can’t read, but even the most “challenged” among us know that a used tissue would be more cover than this CBO report will be come election time.

End your delusion. Oh, and thanks for 18 months of political jihad just to save a couple weeks on the deficit.

Wow.  Never have so many, fought so hard, for so long, and suffered such casualty for so absolutely little.

PS.
So little, you say? Yes, because no matter what happens on Sunday, the chances of this bill actually going into effect for any number of reasons are exactly ZERO.

Constitutional, states rights, nullification…all nice intellectual cases that can be made.  But I’m banking the pols at the state level won’t be much help when it comes right down to it, and only when 30 million Americans refuse to BUY health insurance, and refuse to pay the “fine” and opt for jail time, then we’ll see what real nullification looks like.

You gonna jail 30 million, Nancy and Barry? (Harry will be gone come November)

You can bet that this is one “In Search Of” episode the History Channel will make sure never sees the light of day again!

See the post and videos at http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/10/in-search-of-coming-ice-age.html

Schneider’s position is particularly brilliant — no matter what the planet does now, he can say he was right!

Working at various levels of the party and in politics, from internships on Capitol Hill, to mixing it up locally, from watching my own congressman do everything he could to isolate conservatives he knew would vote for him anyway, to watching the failings of our national party time and time again, I can do nothing but conclude that there is functionally no difference between the parties any longer.  Both will get us to the unconstitutional socialist nanny state the Democrats would simply impose on us today. The Republicans would takes us down the longer, more scenic route, but the destination is the same.

So what to do? A third party?

The history of third parties in this country is appalling and replete with examples of political trainwrecks that in too many cases did nothing more than empower the opposing party. But there are also successes down those tracks, and they might be worth exploring now, especially in the current environment, when the American people are most in the mood to “toss the bums out”, all of them, a situation not unlike the 1850′s when the last major party came to be, coincidentally the Republican Party.

The Democrats have succeeded in pretty much transforming themselves into the Socialist Party USA without too much electoral fuss, aided in large part by their fellow travelers in the media, a luxury Republicans will not enjoy should they seek to transform themselves into anything resembling a party that possesses a SPINE.  GOP leadership has , on the other hand, sought the media’s approbation by offering “Democrat-lite” and in so doing, compromised our principles and lost us elections, while failing to secure the media approval so desperately sought. Good Republicans, in the eyes of the NYT, LAT, and WaPo, are Republicans like John McCain.  You know…the kind that lose, or who sponsor bills with Russ Feingold or Ted Kennedy.

All of that is changing, however, and the “media” who at one point could dispense their loving approval like beads at Mardi Gras if only we Republicans would debase ourselves like so many inebriated young  demoiselles on Bourbon Street, now find themselves stewing in their own pot of arrogance and irrelevance, to say nothing of bankruptcy. Democrats are virtually apoplectic as the disinfectant of sunshine is directed at their socialist/ACORN/SEIU/media/academia cabal and its liberal disease is exposed, while Republicans are just outright confused since they’re now being asked to actually BE conservative, not just TALK conservative and don’t appreciate having their feet held to the fire.  Just as they’d figured out how to play so dutifully to the tune being called by the MSM, along comes some upstart like BigGovernment.com and upsets the apple cart!

Thus we are told, that we, the little people, are just too stupid to understand how “things really work in Washington” (which is of course a complete misreading of our “angry mobsterism” — we DO know how things work in Washington, and that’s the problem. THAT is what we want stopped!).  We understand that it is only Republicans who are asked to compromise, lest we be held out as obstructionists, but never Democrats, and we’ve somehow bought into the lie.  From top to bottom, the Republican leadership is filled with those who have more fealty to the institution they serve and their colleagues, than to the people who put them there. And time and again, We the Sheeple, rather than throwing the lot of them out, have preferred to dance with the Devils we know, than risk dancing with the devils we don’t.

Of course, this has always been true of a people — witness Jefferson’s own words in the Declaration: “…and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed.”

But just as Jefferson noted that it takes a long train of abuses and usurpations in order to get people to act against their governments, so too is it with political parties.

That time is come.

A coalition of the conservative elements of the GOP (the majority), the Libertarian Party, Constitutional Party, and Taxpayers Party, Conservative Party, and Independents, under a unified new party (let’s call it the Conservative Party for now, the way it is in most other countries) is an attractive option.  Combined, these groups could swiftly and quickly marshal resources, sweeping out incumbents of both GOP and Democratic parties, and beginning the work of restoring a federalist republic, as outlined by the Founders,  Just as the Republicans replaced the sclerotic Whigs, it is well past time now to pull the plug on this charade that the GOP in its current incarnation will ever act as anything but a brake to slow down extremist elements of the Democratic Party, rather than offer an entirely new destination marked not by ever more federal intrusion and creeping socialism, but by liberty, small government, low taxes, and economic prosperity based entirely upon an individual’s abilities.

You know…that whole life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness thing everyone’s forgotten.

The Republican Party is beyond redemption if for no other reason than at its core, at its DNA level, it was never, ever really comfortable with Ronald Reagan.  And while all now pay homage to the real Great Communicator, the actions of the GOP since Reagan, at the national level, says it all: Bush, Dole, Bush, McCain.  Not a Reagan conservative in the bunch.  So if we’d really like to be the party of Reagan, we’re going to go have to start our own.  Because people like Cornyn and any number of other Washington effete elitists, every bit as much a creatures of the Federal leviathan as Nancy Pelosi, have the singular aim to make sure we NEVER become the party of Reagan again, and that we never, ever become the country our Founders intended, lest their drinking buddies over at the Washington Post object and disinvite then to the next cocktail party.

Could the coalition I described ever come together? Would it not splinter over the issues that currently separate them? Perhaps. It is just one scenario. But a center-right independent party based on low taxes and Constitutional government would OWN the next election. And run the socialists, and the enablers out on the next rail leaving Union Station.