Confronting The Issues of America: Commentary, Opinion, and Impressions

The United States Constitution, that vessel which contains our founding principles, limits our national government. It does not do so slightly, but fundamentally, boldly, and unequivocally: “Congress shall make no law,” “…shall not be infringed,” “…not without consent,” “…shall not be violated,” “…shall not be required,” [and] “…powers are reserved to the people.” This is the language of limitation, of constriction, and of governmental disempowerment in key areas of our lives. The fire-breathing dragon of constitutional unambiguity gave birth to history’s first truly free self-sovereign people.

From almost the start, the dragon-slayers in Congress, in the White House, and most of all  the courts have sought to slay the constitutional dragon that stood between them and bureaucratic control over the people they wanted to rule. Congress passed laws that the Constitution prohibited, presidents executed actions the Constitution forbade, and the courts far too often declared that the principles and limits written into the constitution were null and void and meant nothing more than what the self-absorbed political hacks and social crusaders in the courts declared they meant.

It is the Supreme Court and the circuit courts—partners in crime—that have been, over the course of our history, most responsible for rendering the roaring dragon of our constitution a dying and wounded causality of American politics. The courts were supposed to be the guardians of constitutional integrity, the keepers of the vision of limited governmental intrusion into our civil society. The federal judiciary was to be the Constitution’s protector but in the end judges often acted like child molesters left to care for young children. They abused and raped the principles of constitutionally limited government intrusion into our daily lives and confiscation of our property.

These are strong words but I make no apology for them. Those who have knowingly and gladly strangled our constitutional republic and allowed us to be placed at the mercy of the tyrants inside the Beltway deserve more than a bit of vitriol spit in their direction. The times call for holding the courts to unadorned accountability for their destruction of the principles they were empowered to protect.

Despite the darkness of the hour, despite the fact that we have an self-serving Congress, a President that knows no limits and a government that spends us into bankruptcy against our will, despite the fact that our President seeks a Federal Civilian Security Force on the scale of the U.S. military, despite the fact that the defenders of the constitution are seemingly outnumbered in the courts, we can bring the constitutional dragon back life. To this end, we must swear an oath to cast no vote for any candidate not demonstrating clear allegiance to the constitutional limitations on the power that our national government wields.

The People on the Trains

one train every day

I have given the massive influx of Central Americans, especially the unaccompanied children, a lot of thought, not just recently but over the years. Before I retired as Court Administrator from the Immigration Court in San Diego, I saw many such children put in removal proceedings. I met monthly with political activist groups and Department of Health and Human Services officials to discuss our handling of these cases in San Diego. The HHS and NGO’s mostly wanted toys and dolls for the kids and the judges to speak to them, even the M 13 teenagers, with the greatest of gentleness. I mostly wanted the custodians to get the kids to court on time.  I believe there are several actions that need to be taken in the invasion of 2014. Following the law and returning the illegal entrants to their country of origin is the responsible decision. In the rare instance that government persecution can be proved by a preponderance of the evidence, asylum should be granted.

But legal and rational solutions to are not on the minds of many if not most leaders in Congress, the White House, or the Federal Departments. These professional political operatives are busy trying to exploit the situation for short term and long-term political gain. They are focused on maintaining their political power and administrative authority.  They are busy shifting the labor cost curve or creating a new dependent political constituency . There will be wonderfully creative cover stories to the contrary but underneath the propaganda puff pieces and pompous posturing, true Machiavellian power politics is at work.

The average citizen may ache for these border crashing children even as we want the kids sent back home.  I suggest little such compassion and caring is present in the loud activities of far too many of our national political factions, right and left.  The right seeks in the short term to embarrass the Obama Democrats for their apparent incompetence and, in the long run, flood the labor markets and drive down the cost of labor. Evidence suggests that the progressive left on the other hand seeks, in the short-run, to accrue a reputation as compassionate lovers of children and in the long-run seeks to further dilute the institutional memory of, and allegiance to, the country’s constitutional republican form of government. There is also a concerted effort on the part of many to use this event to create more cultural and social divisions in the United States thereby making it impossible for broad public consensus to form in the United Sates. Union managements seek potential future expansion of their dues base and heightened ability to bring liberal victories at the polls. The far left wants to destabilize the operations of the Federal government as a means of justifying fundamentally changing our form of government to a full blown authoritarian state. All factions have their cover stories but underneath they seek primarily to acquire political wherewithal.

Sadly, this massive illegal flow of unaccompanied Central American children, their families, assorted criminal gang members and terror operatives is a well-orchestrated government setup. It was planned and intentional. The flow of illegal entrants did not just jump from a few dozen a day to well over a thousand a day by chance. Behind the scenes powerful political and administrative players deliberately made it happen and are continuing to make it happen. A careful six-year examination of the Obama administration leaves little doubt what happened. Regular normal illegal entry had drastically diminished due to the economic turn down and the Central American Train Plan was a cynical effort to restart the massive illegal flow. The fact that the plan feeds the organized crime cartels in Mexico is considered, by far too many, a necessary cost of political business. The players are many and include the Obama Administration, open borders political activist groups like La Raza, unions like SEIU, International Chamber of Commerce lobbyists, the American Bar Association’s Immigration Law Committee and several law firms practicing immigration law that have sent teams of hawkers to Central America in search of future clients. The ABA seeks to reward its members with loot from the public treasury in the form of government paid lawyers for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens. The leftist ACLU seeks to exploit the situation to collapse the courts and unwind the rule of law.

Large numbers of the American public will not see beyond the cover stories, thus empowering the Machiavellians in both parties to continue their pursuit of power to the detriment of the greater good of the country. The media “human interest”stories about “the poor children” have already rendered return to Central America politically incorrect and practically out of the question, even for the adults and MS 13 members.

If we continue to open the border to all the worlds billions of poor, we only bring on the further weakening of our own financial condition, erode the political system and ensure cultural instability. Where is the virtue in that I wonder? What will these train people ultimately cost in lifetime welfare checks, food stamps, subsidized housing, emergency room care, schooling, and crime costs? Here is a tip in making the calculation:  They are never going to leave. How many of them are M-13 gang members? Answer: No one knows. How many speak English? Answer: Almost none. How many of our tax dollars will be diverted from helping our own needy American citizens in order to feed, clothe, “educate”,  medicate, arrest, try, imprison, and and rehabilitate this recent round of third world illegal entrants? Answer: Tens of billions of dollars. How many Americans will lose low wage entry level jobs to these people? Answer: Tens of thousands.

The word “children” conjures up warm visions of our own beloved children in all their innocent glory. But these train children are not our innocent children, they are a varied mix of poverty stricken, damaged children their personalities already informed by a hard and difficult life. Some of them, at age 12 are already members of M-13 and other gangs. Some, many perhaps still retain more than a bit of innocence but most have been damaged. The children, with all their inherent deficiencies will have to stay. Political correctness demands it. Political correctness now trumps common sense in America. We are gong to be forced to make the billions of dollars in lifetime welfare payments and public support requiring yet more debt and the fiscal ills that debt will bring. We will have to accept an enlarged underclass that will contain not only these children but their children as well. We are going to have to accept yet lower standards in public schools, accept the increase in crime that is sure to come in the years ahead along with the increased costs of crime and punishment. We will be forced to accept a shift in the American culture and sensibility that always comes when a society is invaded or invites-in massive numbers of people with radically different value systems and frames of reference. Our leaders, in desperation to retain their political power, continue to steadily march the country in the direction of decline and decrepitude.

Media pundits and politician speak of a humanitarian problem, of a moral responsibility to the families of illegals sweeping across the border and immediately presenting themselves to border officials demanding care and support. There is flaw in the moral argument. Moral codes, particularly Judeo-Christian principles teach how we should treat one another in our individual human exchanges. Virtue that one possesses by the act of helping another human being accrues only from entering into person-to-person transactions. A person-to-person exchange results in virtue earned, in good reputation acquired but such virtue cannot be obtained by delegating the virtuous action to a government bureaucracy then claiming virtue as one’s own. That is a trickery and falsehood that washes the transaction of all its virtue. I am not saying that government assistance is not good policy, under certain circumstances it is good policy, but it does not convey virtue on the remote, passive individual taxpayer.

The future of our own children has been damaged. A lifetime of Treasury Department checks drawn on tax collections confiscated by politicians seeking favor and re-election does not make for responsible adults. True morality would be a willingness on the part of individual Americans to step forward and adopt one of these children or invite them to sleep and eat in our own houses. Adoption is the virtuous thing to do, the moral thing to do. But this is not what most Americans have in mind when they say save these children. The child saving is to be delegated to the Administrative State. Unfortunately, checks and bureaucrats do not raise a child to responsible adulthood, parents do.

Most of the media, seeking to be admired, portrays these children as innocents in need. There will soon be a hundred thousand, then two hundred thousand, then three hundred thousand, none speaking English, few having relatives. All are destined for HHS facilities, serial foster care, and public schools where they will be far behind and too many will gravitate toward Hispanic gangs. A few will find paths to prosper and that will be beautiful but most will languish and become part of the underclass. Then it is only matter of time until another massive onslaught of illegal entry occurs with the entrants expecting the same flow of government checks and assistance plus jobs to supplement the income.

There are hundreds of millions of third world poor around the world awakening to this grand opportunity awaiting them by simply walking across our border. At some point government action to limit the flow will become necessary but what will be the total damage by then? Will a majority of the next generation have no memory or awareness of American principles? We are now 18 trillion dollars in debt and borrowing an additional 1.4 trillion dollars every 12 months just fund the Warfare / Welfare State. What happens at the Treasury Department bond auction when lenders demand an extra percentage point of interest? The ultimate catastrophe looms in the future.

Despite their deficiencies, the children fare far better than they would have in Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador. Here, they will face several months in the custodial care of the DHS bureaucracy, followed by several years in the custodial care of the HHS. The luckiest ones will get serial foster homes. All will receive welfare and food stamps most of their lives. All will attend public schools. Some few will find relatives to attach to. Eventually most will drop out of school and find various ways to feed, clothe, and house themselves with considerable and ongoing assistance from the government. Not a small number will join gangs and become lifetime criminals. A tiny fraction will break out to become educated successful citizens. One might be the founder of a chain of highly successful grocery stores. This is the future wrought by this debacle.

Much of the third world’s people are in sad shape. And all decent hearts break for them. Yet, are we able to dissolve our borders, surrender our sovereignty and support the poor of the entire planet Earth? Apparently, our leaders, in pursuit of yet more power and an easily manipulated dependent citizenry, think yes as they abandon the rule of law and destroy border integrity. What is next? The millions of poor children of the African Continent followed by the millions of poor children in Asia? Continuing on the path of unobstructed unabated illegal entry, I can see no future other than a painfully slow descent into increasing chaos and national decrepitude.

Animal Farm, George Owell’s dystopian novella portraying Stalinist Russia is a passable allegory for what has happened in the United States under the Obama administration. Orwell’s Farm is transformed from a productive, well functioning political enterprise into a fear-driven authoritarian state. The farm’s pigs, obsessed with obtaining power, use propaganda, constitutional slight of hand, secrecy and a reign of intimidation to seize power and rule over the farm. President Obama and his appointed bureaucrats are similarly strong-arming our political system. Admittedly, this transformation to American authoritarianism has been brewing for thirty years and Obama’s New Left is using a softer form of threat and intimidation than Animal Farm and Stalinist Russia. Nevertheless, the results are rapidly evolving toward a similar Orwellian conclusion. We continue to deny this reality at our own peril.

The Orwellians in the current regime have crept off the pages of Animal Farm and into every facet of American governance and the general culture. The observable evidence supports a reasonable conclusion that Obama and his army of authoritarian appointees are the slightly more moderate descendants of the socialists who gave the world the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and Cuba. Who can honestly deny that Obama, his senior administrators and his supporters in the Congress have, for all practical purposes, declared the Constitution irrelevant, dispensed with the rule of law, and voraciously looted the public treasury to payoff public employee unions and corporate cronies. These new Orwellians routinely and unashamedly use the Federal bureaucracy to frighten and intimidate politically disagreeable citizens. Government agencies target citizens holding different political views, conduct politically motivated tax audits, intimidate and threaten citizens who attempt to ensure integrity at the polls, and abdicate law enforcement in favor of politically motivated prosecutions, raids and investigations.

Citizen’s complaints of intimidation, threat and punishment at the hands of Obama’s Federal Government are vetted on TV and in newspapers with regularity. Government whistle blowers are severely punished by the administration being summarily demoted or fired. The frequency, consistency and apparent veracity of these complaints establish a worrisome and convincing body of evidence against Obama and his people. Secret VA doctor’s appointment lists, IRS interrogations of conservative organizations (often demanding the organizations provide the content of any prayers, thousands of key evidentiary emails being destroyed, Senior Obama management officials invoking their fifth amendment rights before Congress to hide crimes, phone taps on journalist James Rosen and his parents. The evidence accumulates virtually everyday. The sheer weight of the information and the growing number of horror stories speak for themselves.

These unsettling events and the facts surrounding them make Obama’s summer of 2008 pronouncement “we gotta have a civilian national security force just as powerful as the military, just as strong and just as well funded” all the more frightening. Careful analysis of these words would be prudent indeed. The impact of all this is precisely the one I think Obama and his administration intended: Citizen fear of the Federal government and the creation of a soft Stalinism.

We can pretend that the American Animal Farm does not exist and that Obama is just another hyper-liberal democrat. We can put our head down in fear and hope that the new Orwellians in the authoritarian administrative state will leave us alone. Or we can admit the reality unfolding before our very eyes, rise up in widespread opposition and eradicate it. The choice is, for a brief time, ours to make.

The secular leftists continue their relentless quest to eradicate God from American discourse. They seek to refuse God any existence at all. They want the removal of the Creator from all discussions within the public square. For the leftists, God must remain the mathematical equivalent of the empty set. The 21^st century Left finds references to Christian deities so dangerous to their agenda that they object to any and all displays of the accidental cross from the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Accidental 9/11 Cross – The New Left has filed law suits to prohibit its display

Atheists are led by academicians, postmodern intellectuals and bestselling writers such as the late Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. Most of them tend—in my personal view—to belittle those who postulate the possibility of a universal Creator of any kind.

These champions for eradication of God from public discussion would have you believe that it is their outstanding intellects alone that should sell you on the truth of such an atheistic proclamation. Their pitch is that modern science has proven to all intelligent life the foolishness of the belief in an intentional Creator. The universe is a random accident over which a select group of self-anointed earthly humans must preside.

Although such a conclusion can be reasonably challenged by the logic of the scientific method and statistical analysis, I believe leftist political ambitions and quests for political supremacy, as much as the pursuit of scientific truth, are at the root of this obsession to outlaw a Creator from public acknowledgment. The Left must eliminate the concept of a universal Creator and kill off the idea of any power higher than that of the leftist themselves. This is a necessary step in removing a key political obstacle between them and absolute leftist control of America. The words “Our Creator and natures God” embedded in the Declaration of Independence block their vision of a rights-granting all-controlling authoritarian government. Specifically, the Declaration of Independence establishes the origin of the rights of citizens of the United States with the words:

…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The penning of these words, along with the constitution that followed them, gave birth to the American Ideal. The words are clear and unarguable. The American Ideal, the genius of the founding fathers and the hope of mankind going forward into time, is quite simple: The Creator of the Universe endowed all men with a select few unalienable or fundamental rights. Or if you prefer, the natural universe endowed all men with these few basic rights.   Political functionaries, left or right, have no basis on which to endow us with these fundamental rights; rather, the governing class derive their temporary and provisional authorities for simple policy making solely from the consent of those of us who enter into brief and temporary contracts to be governed.

The postmodern atheists want to rule and will not stand for their imagined right to rule to be abridged by any mere Creator. In order for leftists to dictate to us through their central bureaucracy from whom all rights and blessings flow, God the Creator as found in the Declaration of Independence must first be eliminated. Thus, anti-constitutional leftists on the Federal bench, in the universities, and entrenched in the federal government are busily deconstructing the very constitutional foundation upon which our individual rights, responsibilities and freedoms stand. Should they succeed, the source of liberty—the very headwaters of our rights and freedoms—will flow from central government bureaucrats rather than the Declaration’s universal Creator and constitutional limitations of bureaucratic power. Then America will have vanished with the winds of time.

Critique of the history and culture of the world’s religions is the appropriate purview of intellectuals such as Hitchens and Dawkins. However, when they seek to drive out public acknowledgement of the universal Creator as found in the Declaration of Independence, it is time to call them on their hubris. When the leftists seek to install themselves as the replacements for the Creator who endowed us with unalienable rights, it is time to stand and fight.

You awake to face the day. Throughout the day you have a reasonable expectation to be unencumbered by bullies, criminals, and thugs. This expectation of safety is the result of the Rule of Law. The principle is simple: We have laws. Failing to follow them always has serious negative consequences. These serious negative consequences motivate criminals, thugs, and bullies to leave you alone. It’s no more complicated than that.

Thugs, bullies, and criminals are more and more everywhere. Bernie Madoff, Enron, unconstitutional Obamacare, club wielding Black Panthers at the polls,  Acorn pimps, SEIU intimidators, illegal aliens storming unchecked over the border, two year sentences for murders, Presidents and Governors commuting the sentences of violent criminals, multimillion dollar judgments to customers for spilling their hot coffee, let a murdering O.J. go, fraudster CEOs acquitted, and slaps on the wrist for law breaking Congressmen. On and on and on it goes. The current Mobster Socialism and postmodern doctrine of radical egalitarianism are destroying the Rule of Law.

The national government and its Empire of agencies, offices, and boards whimsically rule the land with near impunity. Remember how EPA administrators descended on the Sacketts in Idaho and terrorized them for years. With bold flourishes of swagger and smarm they laugh at Congress as if they were a joke. In the midst of this sad soap opera one might, if one weren’t in the media, pose the question “what ever happened to that thing called the rule of law?

The Rule of Law, like its siblings Limited Government and Fiscal Prudence, is increasingly being ignored by our governments and constitutional interpreters. In its place they have inserted the brave new world of postmodern relativism. Postmodernism is simply an intellectual euphemism for  an “Alice in Wonderland Society” where up is down and down is up. A society where criminals, thugs and bullies are the victims and peaceful productive citizens are the oppressors.  A society where the rules are always fluid and depend on ones point of view, ones opinion, ones emotions, and more importantly the personal ideology and emotions of the moment.

What the law is not, under our progressive postmodern relativist society, is what is written on the page created by lawmakers. In post modernism, words no longer mean what words mean. They mean only what anyone may “feel” or desire they mean. Up means up only if one “feels” it means up or desires it to mean up. Up could mean down, or sideways, or mountain.

It is the progressive liberal politicians and their activist henchmen that are largely responsible for trying to convince American society that the rule of law is hopelessly passe.  Adhering to the rule of law is not  “cool” not “hip” to the progressive sensibility. This is what they tell us and teach our school children. For you see, in the liberal postmodern mind the criminals, the thugs, and the bullies are not responsible for their acts. Society is responsible. In their view it is bigoted racist, rich white men, and an ignorant society unenlightened by progressive insights who are to blame for all crimes committed by criminals. Rarely can progressives bring themselves to blame the actual perpetrator. So, liberals seek to punish the larger society by confiscating money from it and bludgeoning it with Political Correctness. In doing so, they lift up the criminal as yet another poor victim needing progressive rescue and protection from a bigoted and unenlightened society that, in its ignorance, still believes that consistently applying the rule of law protects society. In the progressive view, moral and legal infrastructure is to be replaced by the vacillating feelings and transient opinions of elite rulers. Behavioral cause and effect established by the lessons of a long and painful history are to fall prey to the whimsical declarations of new age Federal policy experts and university intellectuals.

If we allow this march of post modern progressivism to continue unchallenged,  America will no longer be able to assert that it is a society governed by the rule of law. America is increasingly ruled by the socialist ambitions of Progressives, ambitions that are increasingly enforced by  the their intimidating street thugs in SEIU, their minions in the media, the Democratic Party, Federal Bureaucrats, and their Acorn soldiers-in-waiting. And soon to be enforced by what the President Obama calls his Civilian Security Force equal in size, scope and budget to the U.S. Military.

Regardless of how weakened and warped democracy and the Rule of Law has become under the relentlessness of the doctrine of political correctness and socialist progressivism and regardless of  how many progressive thugs now wield bats in the street and at the polls there is still time, precious little time, for the majority to stand, fight and defeat liberal post modernism and its Alice in Wonderland view of  human history and human reality.