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Wednesday, April 27, 2016

A Blueprint for Limiting Leviathan

A Blueprint for Limiting Leviathan

By Carl F. Horowitz 
Volume 26, Number 2 (Winter 2016) 
 Link to publisher 
© Copyright 2016 The Social Contract Press
Issue theme: "Immigration Briefing Book" 
Book Review:
BY THE PEOPLE
Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission
Charles Murray
New York:  Crown Forum, 2015
319pp., $27.00
In the world of the thinking Right, Charles Murray for at least 30 years has ranked as a top figure. A social scientist and policy wonk, he calls to mind the late philosopher Robert Nozick. He makes libertarianism fun and practical, and without reverting to the taunting, pugilistic dogmatism that renders so many other libertarians about as substantial as bumper sticker sloganeers. Murray’s latest book, By the People, embodies much that is right—and, unfortunately, wrong—with libertarianism.
Let us first examine the positives, of which there are many. By the People is an admirable work. The subtitle alone is an apt summation. Our country was not set up so that people have to ask permission from government every time they have a bright idea or a creative impulse. It’s the other way around: Government must receive permission from its citizens in order to govern. Yet for several decades we have moved into opposite territory, redefining law in highly subjective ways that blur distinctions between lawful and unlawful activities. Our “lawless legal system,” as the author terms it, now metes out punishment for the most petty and even nonexistent offenses. And equally disturbing, it causes us to apply reflexive self-censorship when contemplating a “controversial” remark. Of such stuff, police states are born.
A skeptic would respond that American has a long way to go before it becomes a police state. Formally, that’s true. Yet public policy is far more about anticipating consequences than fixing them. And given the demonstrated ease by which nations elsewhere have descended into tyranny, it would be presumptuous to say we are immune from such a fate.
The main trigger for State excess, Murray argues, was the revolution in constitutional thinking embodied in a series of Supreme Court decisions during 1937–42. By aggressively expanding the contours of contractual obligation and liability, the Court gave the executive branch, Congress, and future Supreme Courts, not to mention state and local governments, unprecedented leeway to transform law into a vehicle for political and economic advantage. This was the antithesis of rule of law, a primary principle of which is that no one class of citizens ought to be treated differently than others. The original jurisprudence superseded, the main burden of proof as to the necessity of a law or regulation now would fall upon those who object to government action rather than upon government itself. Read the entire article HERE. 

About the author

Carl F. Horowitz is a project director with the National Legal and Policy Center, a Falls Church, Virginia-based nonprofit group dedicated to promoting ethics in public life.  He is the author of Sharpton: A Demagogue’s Rise and holds a Ph.D. in urban planning and public policy.

Friday, April 22, 2016

BREAKING: Tennessee Assembly Declares War on Obama, Refugees

by MICHAEL PATRICK LEAHY19 Apr 2016

NASHVILLE, Tennessee–On Tuesday, the Tennessee General Assembly declared it will sue the federal government over its refugee resettlement program on Tenth Amendment grounds. The State Senate passed a resolution authorizing that lawsuit in a 29 to 4 vote one day after it passed the Tennessee House by a 69 to 25 margin.
“Today we struck a blow for Liberty by finally adopting SJR467,” State Senator Mark Norris (R-Collierville), the co-sponsor of the resolution who shepherded it through the State Senate, tells Breitbart News.
“The General Assembly clearly understands the importance of public safety and state sovereignty as demonstrated by the overwhelming support of this Resolution for which we are thankful. The Syrian surge heightens our sense of urgency to get this properly before the courts, and we urge the Attorney General to act without delay,” Norris adds. 

Monday, April 18, 2016

The Crisis of the American Idea

by (Senator) 

We face great challenges at this moment in history. We face cyber threats. We face a resurgent Russia under Vladimir Putin. We face a jihadi threat. We face the growing threat of nonstate actors, who now can carry out massive attacks and are as able to play on the global stage as state actors. We face the exploding costs of our entitlement programs.
All these challenges are acute, but another dangerous trend is attracting less notice: The crisis of confidence in, and the growing unawareness of, the American idea.
What is the American idea? The American Founding made the bold claim that most peoples and most governments in the history of the world had been wrong about the nature of power and the nature of freedom. Sure, there were moments in history when certain city-states advanced some conception of liberty, but most people in human history said that might makes right: If you have a monopoly on power, you can do what you want. Everyone else in those societies was not a citizen but a dependent subject. If you lived in such a society, you needed the king to give you rights. The passive assumption was prohibition. The passive assumption was that if I want to start a business, I need a charter because it is illegal to run that business unless the king has sanctioned it. Therefore, I go and supplicate before the king in his court, and he decides whether to give me the right to start that business.
Today we would say that is bizarre. The voluntary transaction between two people is the very nature of freedom. The American Founders saw that denying people their freedom is fundamentally wrong because it does not comport with the dignity of people who are created in the image of God. People have been endowed with certain inalienable rights. God gives us those rights; government does not.
Government is merely a tool. It provides a framework for ordered liberty so that free people can live fully flowering lives.
This is why Ronald Reagan said that the American Founders “brought about the only true revolution that has ever taken place in man’s history.” Previous revolutions “simply exchanged one set of rulers for another set of rulers,” Reagan said. But America’s Founders did something different: They developed and fought for “the idea that you and I have within ourselves the God-given right and the ability to determine our own destiny.”

Saturday, April 16, 2016

Freedom from Religion Foundation: “I’m Secular and I Vote” Campaign, Part 3 of 3

Debra Rae | 16 Apr 2016

“Freedom from religion” is better understood as switching religion from one brand to another. Secularism and religion sport their own distinctive vocabulary, sacred symbolism, grand metanarrative, exclusive truth exercised by faith, code of ethics/morality, creed, rituals, evangelism, and discipleship. Logically, to discard religion is to separate from all of the above, but secularism instead exhibits them.

Rituals (Superstition, De-baptism, Confirmation, Invocations and Prayer)
“Luck” smacks of superstition. Even so, Freedom from Religion Foundation co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor is named as one of the “lucky” eighteen percent of fellow members who grew up freethinking. As such, she was “spared baptism by water, fire or Sunday school.” Officially renouncing the primitive rite of baptism to which “the luckless” were so cruelly subjected, participants exchange creeds, dogmas, and alleged superstitions of one belief system with those of another. This they do by obtaining genuine De-Baptismal Certificates. (No joke!)

Extracting themselves from any claims of religious affiliation or membership based on baptismal records, secularists join and pay dues (i.e., tithes and offerings) to the fellowship of Freedom from Religion. Congregants aggressively challenge prayer spaces at the University of Iowa, for example; however, following the Supreme Court’s injudicious decision “blessing” sectarian prayer, the Foundation rewards freethinkers who ask for equal time to give secular invocations.[i]

·         Celebratory Music Ministry
At the Reason Rally June 2016, celebration of secularism at the Lincoln Memorial will be paired with entertainment and parties that draw hand-clapping, arm raising, closed-eyes enthusiasts eager to sway to the beat of hip-hop artist Baba Brinkman, songwriter-artist Sophia Kameron, and Keith Lowell Jensen of Atheist Christmas fame. This is one Camp Meeting secularists don’t want to miss![ii]

Discipleship
In accord with the Bible, “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”[iii] Even as Christians serve God, secularists are busy about the work of their master, mammon—this, by vigorously contesting what they view as unsavory practices in the public forum and bad legislation.[iv]

Friday, April 15, 2016

Freedom from Religion Foundation: “I’m Secular and I Vote” Campaign, Part 2 of 3

Debra Rae | 15 Apr 2016

Any religion, by definition, sports its own distinctive vocabulary, sacred symbolism, grand metanarrative, exclusive truth exercised by faith, code of ethics/morality, creed, rituals, evangelism, and discipleship. As is true with any worldview, secularism by nature is a religion. Logically, to discard religion is to separate from the above, but secularism instead exhibits them all. Hence, “freedom from religion” is better understood as switching religion from one brand to another.

In Part 1, we established that judicial acknowledgement, a distinctive vocabulary, grand metanarrative, and vision for the ideal accompany secularism and religion. All inform voters and influence the course of a nation.

The late journalist Christopher Hitchens reasoned, “Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.”[i] Of course, one could counter, “Since it is obviously inconceivable that all secularists (or progressives) can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.” But I digress.

Belief Claiming Exclusive Truth
Naturalists reproach biblical apologists for fortifying dogma by inserting “the God of the gaps”; however, in a letter to Dr. Asa Gray, their hero Charles Darwin admitted, “Imagination must fill up very wide blanks.” Despite these blanks, naturalists embrace “settled science” as exclusive truth.
Having studied under the famous scholar, Gamaliel, the Apostle Paul had legitimate claim to knowledge of truth.

Because experience shows God’s unfailing strength as perfected in weakness, Paul deemed God’s grace to be sufficient and chose wisely to “boast” in his own weaknesses so that “the power of Christ might rest upon him.”[ii] In Darwin’s world, to the contrary, the weakest links are expunged as “maladjusted morons and misfits.”[iii] In shunning lesser human specimens, secular elitists worship at their own makeshift altar of exclusivity.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Freedom from Religion Foundation: “I’m Secular and I Vote” Campaign, Part 1 of 3




Debra Rae | 14 Apr 2016 

Free thought and pride attract atheists, agnostics, and skeptics to the largest secular association in North America—the non-profit, educational Freedom from Religion Foundation. FFRF Co-President Dan Barker opines, "Much of the movement away from religion in America is being driven by Millennials, many of whom will be voting for the first time this year."[i] Hence, Parker adds, "We need secular voters to be vocal about their beliefs, or lack thereof, while rejecting efforts to push religious dogma on the nation."

This, of course, is no small effort. The Foundation boasts 23,500 members, 20 chapters across America, not to mention secular student alliances. Nearly 8,000 secular voters are reaching out to educate the public about their beliefs. FFRF awards thousands of dollars in prizes for winning student essays; and they distribute "I'm Secular and I Vote" buttons, T-shirts, bumper stickers, and educational material.[ii]

What Exactly is Religion?[iii]
To be freed from something requires grasp of what is being discarded. So what exactly is the illusive concept of religion? Surprising to some, whether Judeo-Christian, Marxist-Leninist, secularist, or Islamic, all worldviews by nature are religious. Each defines an ultimate point of reference that dramatically influences every possible discipline from science to the arts, ethics to law, geo-politics to economics. All speak to an ideology, or movement, that offers some overarching approach to comprehend God (god), the world, and man’s relationship to both.

“Freedom from religion” is better understood as switching religion from one brand to another. Allow me to explain. Classical orthodoxy, Christian or Jewish, broadly typifies “religion,” as most perceive it, but so does secular humanism. By definition, religion sports its own distinctive vocabulary, sacred symbolism, grand metanarrative, exclusive truth exercised by faith, code of ethics/morality, creed, rituals, evangelism, and discipleship. Logically, to discard religion is to separate from the above; secularism instead exhibits all of them.

Saturday, April 2, 2016

Council on Foreign Relations - The Power Behind Big News


This is a video on NEWS FABRiCATiON and also about the powers that REALLY run the big media. A closer look at what the C.F.R. is all about.
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