ARE WE AMERICANS SUBJECTS OF THE GOVERNMENT?

Authored by William Robert Barber

“Government is the problem,” recalling the quintessential conservative Ronald Regan’s famous line when advocating the righteousness of limited government. But as with President Jefferson, Reagan once elected went on to gainsay his own statement by enlarging and enhancing the power of the federal government. Today however it is not just political leadership crowing the cock-a-doodle-doo of populous sentiments. Today, a plurality of Americans, even those of conservative persuasion, view government as more than just a necessary utility, but a symbiotic dependency effectuating a guarantee for everyday essentials. For these citizens government is the reason, the cause, and the solution.

Subtly spread over a number of generations, the societal ideal that government can resolve the problem has taken firm root in the American psyche. Though this belief is opaque in contextual clarification, short on evidence, and often nebulous in form, the trust in government’s omnipotence has been ubiquitously disseminated and for the most part positively received. In an almost devilish sort of enchantment the idea that government knows best has captured the mind-sets of many citizens. Compellingly, a significant portion of citizens, from wide and varied demographics, to actually openly accept that government is or should be directly responsible for their liveliness.

Proportionate to this belief that government is the end-all solution to one’s life is the emergent cultural degeneration of American societal principles. Values such as self-reliance, work ethic, self-discipline and the acceptance of personal responsibility for ones actions are now, and increasingly so, the exception rather than the norm. The most outstanding results of this degeneration of once distinctly American societal principles are the attitudes, collective victimization complex, and the pervasive amongst the younger persons, a “you owe me” mentality.

The reasoning of such acceptance on or dependency for a government solution for what historically was considered common societal or individual aliments was the contrivance of liberal progressives; progressivism is an affiliate that flies under the flag of socialism. It was the post-WWII babies that grew up in the USA orb of plenty. It was this generation fueled by high-tech inventions that injected the concept of instant satisfaction. Inclusive was the benefit of instant communications seamlessly linked into a media industry that intensified not just the distribution of news but formed (for those too lazy to think) at-the-ready opinions of what is news-worthy, as well as, its meaningfulness. These children of WWII veterans were taught by the brethren of father FDR; they were taught that it was FDR and his progressive agenda that retrieved the nation from the despair of the “great depression,” and defeated the fascist in Germany and Japan. They were taught to believe in government. Interestingly, they were also schooled that Republicans were rich and Democrats worked in the interest of the poor and the middle class.

Their children those born in the 70’s and 80’s were led to believe that America is a nation of wrongdoers, often imperialistic in foreign policy, and that America had a long history of violently acting out its warmongering inclinations.

The latitude and longitude of government authority and its resulting imposition upon the populous has abated individual liberty and freedom; nevertheless, even when acting counter to the words if not the spirit of the constitution, government ignores and disregards lawfulness in favor of its power. The populous seem cheerfully willing to trade individual liberty and freedom for even the pretense of governmental guarantees. Disconnected notions such as blindly trusting government’s competency in lawmaking (considering the lawmakers rarely even read the bills presented) while idly permitting the ballooning of government pension obligations and blindly allowing the creation of an entrenched public service union bureaucracy to run rough shod over prudence, when such behavior is predominate it is likely that government has meandered over the abyss. When courts consider governing under the concept that the constitution is susceptible and wholly pliable to the whims of man or societal discretion, and when the governed believe government is the only true arbitrator of the public good. Our republic has, at that point, been transformed into an autocracy of progressive-elitist; a form of governing that Plato and Marcus Arilleus would consider advisable.

Quantitatively and disturbingly, (for me) government is a cell dividing multiplier. Government is a liberty and freedom eating monster. The idea of an ever expanding all-powerful government is allied with many elected representatives who believe governance is best when its grasps include every aspect of one’s liveliness. They also consider such governmental ingress an eventual constitutional right; i.e. sixteenth amendment.

The resilient once proudly existential traditional American has evolved into an American who increasingly relies on every level of governments as their raison d’être. A significant percentage of Americans are willingly, at least ostensibly, “in the land of the free and home of the brave,” to trade their individual liberty and freedom, for the sake of certain guarantees.

Well, we have federal guarantees for entitlements, social security, even public employee pension funds, including all of the military health, welfare, and retirement promises to pay. How has the government preformed on these guarantees? I wonder how those within the ranks of those who voted for and will continue to vote for liberal progressives feel about those guarantees.

Are we Americans now subjects of the government? Yes, increasingly so. I see and hear news stories wherein the protagonist notes that he or she is a college graduate, then the question: Where are the jobs? As if it is the direct responsibility of the elected or some government agency to secure a job for that college graduate.

I think Reagan had it right…we Americans had better get our act together and retrograde back to our ancestral traditions as such regress applies to a principled life wherein blaming, lamenting, and figuring how to take from the more to give to the less is discarded as un-American. Withstanding the question more government is hardly ever the answer and often enough never the solution.

BEWARE OF THE FEDS – THEY ARE ARMED AND DANGEROUS!

Authored by William Robert Barber

Noting the maxim (of my originate) that wisdom can only be measured in arrears, history has validated that those Americans that congregated in Philadelphia for the purpose of forming a more perfect union were very wise. They were not simply wise men for their time but wise men since their time as well as into the technologically enriched present.

Their legacy for wisdom is so dominate that the mainstream political parties of the present era each insist that the Founders’ ideals of liberty and freedom are their very own raison d’être. Interestingly, each party considers the Constitution of 1789 the very basis for their exceedingly diverse ideologically enhanced political manifestations.

Although it is also understood that there has been, is now, and more than likely will always be impediments, constitutional usurpers, disfigurements, and exceptions that work, for reasons purposeful, as well as unintended to diminish, abate, or subtract all together the Founders’ original ideals.

Regardless, the legacy of those Founders is so profound that the conceptual given amongst most Americans is that our government functions as a democratic-republic. Americans believe this conceptual given even if there is evidence to the contrary. The myth of America being the “land of the free and home of the brave” is so overwhelming that when the republic is seriously challenged, as for instance by the Obama administration’s most recent corruptive embarrassments, or when the meaningfulness of individual liberty and freedom are abated by statute, the populous prompted by a disengaged media, turns their attention to other less threatening concerns such as the corrupting influence of special interest — or whether a particular poll favors or disfavors some sort of popular ideal.

Humankind’s propensity for dysfunctional behavior is witnessed daily; history has documented such identical behavior for thousands of years. Either by purposeful design or by the naivety that prompts unintended consequences, people, possibly encouraged by a cause delusional and manufactured, or by some unrequited perception seeking restitution, will behave badly, even at the price of their detriment.

It is people that make up the pieces and parts that create, establish, and manage government. But then in my view, people have the right to self-destruct, it is equally understood that people will violate the law. But the government, although made up of people, must rise above the commonness of human failings, of personal regard; government must service the ideal that this country is a land of law not of man.

Our Founders understood the meaningfulness of such issues and concerns; therefore, in the interest of individual liberty and freedom, they founded a constitutional government. The Founders created a government of limited means, a government of checks and balances, a divided government wherein State sovereignty was a functioning part of keeping the central government in a place of restriction and constraint.

Well, less a few remaining vestiges, there is no limit to the power of the federal government. If the Supreme Court rules ObamaCare constitutional the populous can no longer pretend that there are any limits to the authority of the federal government.

In today’s news we have the Attorney General circumventing the truth before the House of Representatives, we have cause to believe that the Department of Energy, in cahoots with the Executive, breached the covenants of a contractual agreement so to service an ideological affiliation that should have been distanced by more than just protocol. Indeed, prudence suggests that when private enterprise is funded with taxpayer monies, politically motivated encouragement should have been deemed wholly inappropriate at inception.

The bequeath of a republic by the Founders to the people of the United States was and is a solid beginning; however, this history-making beginning cannot stand alone. The Constitution of this nation will always be under the siege of interpretation and implementation. The by-word for citizens when surveying and monitoring the workings of government is askance.

Remember, it was — until President Obama — the most liberal of progressives, Franklin Delano Roosevelt that by executive order locked up Americans of Japanese descent for the duration of WWII; he confiscated all their real property, denied them the right to vote, but not to die, fighting for the very nation that violated their rights as American citizens. Beware of governments, their power and prestige… all governments are lethal and they will bite…

THE OBAMA BELIEVABILITY CRISIS

Authored by William R. Barber

President Obama’s most recent rendition or brand of progressive socialism intended for injection into the American system of governess is not gaining popularity amongst the electorate. Specifically, he needs to convince the so called “swayable ideologically pliable independents” to accept this half-a-stimulus as the solution to this country’s economic malaise. In order to gain such acceptance he will need to enhance his present economic jobs policy with Republican principles. But he just cannot force his left hand to grasp that notion into affirmation.

I believe Obama is in the throes of a self-made dilemma; no matter which direction he turns the effect will have the same result.

Nevertheless and respectful of his failures as president, in relationship to the 2012 elections, the Republicans must get through the primary without drawing more blood from the faithful. Accusations delivered by fellow conservatives that bring into play social or religious issues, only arsenals, bullets, and grenades to the Obama camp; if such collateral to the central issues of tax reform, national GDP growth, cutting the deficit, and substantially reducing government spending does not take center stage the Republican candidate that will NOT decisively trounce Obama.

There is a strong conservative principled wind building up in this nation state; the young, the old, the naïve, and the hip, all are sobering up. All are recognizing this nation’s fiscal fix as a huge issue, a monstrous problem that must be firmly addressed. Everyone but the dire hearted progressives believe that government action is not the answer when the question is how to stimulate jobs and provide prudent fiscal responsibility. Indeed, Ronald Regan’s “government is the problem” has resonated anew as a validated political truth.

The Democrats’ policy mantras since FDR have always been the repetitive: tax and spend, overwhelm private enterprise with administrative-bureaucratic nonsense, regulate-regulate, at every opportunity scoff the very people that are financially successful, and scurrilously attack private corporations for making too much money as if such was a moral crime.

Lenin would be very pleased to hear the president’s bombastic endorsement and day-to-day critic of America’s obvious and prevalent unfairness. In the mind of the liberal progressive, Obama being the hero-protagonist, America has by purposeful neglect (turning a blind eye) and a willful tax-policy of enriching the rich enacted a tiered inequitable playing field that results in the enabling of social injustice. The Obama domestic doctrine is founded on class warfare and in the name of enabling fairness and social justice he wages this war with weapons of income redistribution schemes and in effect pro-union affirmative action.

Interestingly, according to Obama it is not the American people that are to blame for all of these detriments to society; factually, Obama suggests, even the Republican Party is only in part responsible. The blame for America’s societal disregard is squared directly on the Tea Party activists. Progressives want to believe that these Tea Party provocateurs of social injustice have signed a secret alliance with the far-right and neo-fascists ideologues. The mission of this hypothetical alliance is to rid the country of all welfare programs, social security, Medicare, government designed fiscal safety nets, and unions. The motivation of this alliance is racist in scope, Christian evangelistic exclusive, and xenophobic in character.

Well, I left out some blame set aside for former President Bush; of course Obama does realize that without Bush and the Arizona Senator there would be no Obama presidency.

I wonder how Obama’s and Biden’s investment in green energy is doing???

THE GREAT PRETENDER

Authored by WIlliam Robert Barber

The liberal progressive assumes that bigger government is better government. Likewise, all tangibles and intangibles that sustain and embellish the bigger in order to originate the presumptive better, progressives endorse; conversely, any and all ideas, legalities, or regulations that limit, restrict, shrink, or retrograde from governmental empowerment, the progressive is against. President Obama is the ideal of the modern progressive.

Obama and his acolytes within the liberal progressive movement have discerned, after vigorous erudition, consultations with Socrates and Apollo’s Oracle at Delphi that their socio-economic-political philosophy is morally righteous. As a consequence, progressives have developed an innate, determined, and focused iteration of preconceived notions that do not require principles of deduction. Nor does their ideological perspective demand comparative analysis, the circumspect of contrary evidence, or doubt; their notions only require faithful adherence. In sum, their determination to fit their ideal of square into the round of the real is commensurate with ideologically prompted behavioral dysfunction.

President Obama has a diminished view of any political, economic, or societal counterview other than his own. His professional image has oscillated from the professorially induced naïve Senator from Illinois with charming ideas of change one can believe in to an arrogant, condescending, and most egregious of distasteful traits: President Obama is a pretentiously insincere politician.

His most recent address to the nation was simply a reelection speech; it was blatantly hypercritical, patronizing, deceitful, and by his own admission wanting of the details of how to and by what means. One can fool a part of the people all the time; but not all of the people part of the time; right now he is fooling less than a majority of the people. Obama has run his course; spirited style, a youthful smile, hopeful promises, and pretty phrases do not build substance, statesmanlike objectiveness, or good sense.

Respective of the pull and push of liberal progressives since and probably before Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to mold America and Americans into benign socialist or in today’s context into a European model; the effort has fallen short of pure attainment.

Government is not to be trusted. How many times do we citizens need to relearn this political constant? Unions and government will never create a job other than by utilizing the charge of nepotism. Only private enterprise will create jobs… it’s that simple.

THIS BLAME STUFF IS A WASTE… LET’S GO FISHING!

Authored by William Robert Barber

I have been, for the last week, on business in Ireland. Today after frisking about with the Irish people, gazing and stomping on their generously forested land of gently rolling green country-side, driving through narrow village streets dotted along the hill and dale; enjoying many a stimulating discussion intertwined with good food and ale. I am heading home.

Interestingly, the economic concerns of Ireland and indeed all of Euro-land, are about the same as they are in America. Everyone I met and every publication I scanned emphasized the painfully high unemployment, the lack of bank-funding, dismal economic growth, and the sad, bitter effects of the almost complete devastation of real-estate value.

Entertainingly, the blame-story is similar to what we Americans channel. When the marketplace puts money or even the illusion of putting money in peoples’ pocket, everyone is unquestioning and quite pleased. However, when money has stopped flowing in and in fact starts to flow out or not flow at all, well, fault is seeking a dance partner. The people negatively affected point the finger at any and all except their own blindly excessive spending indulgences. The Irish – just like us Americans – readily exclude their most recent willy-nilly mindless behavioral addiction to a belief and practice in nonrecourse consumption.

When specifying the present American financial and real estate downturn I suggest that one should review the fuel that created the economic boom-cheap money and debt. The collateral was a commodity known as real estate and equity market trades and holdings. When private enterprise is managing its own risk and the speculator-public accepts their own risk, individually, the winners and losers suffer or gain. But when government and their cohorts public-private unions gets in the middle to install a “fair playing field,” to “protect the worker or the investor,” or enact by law a third-party ideal of fairness, the taxpayer pays excessively for the governing service.

There is an ancient adage that runs parallel to the biblical saying, “God helps those that help themselves,” inclusively, one cannot by edit nullify stupid or criminal behavior nor can government by legislation bind or mandate the practice of good sense and morality.

Of course these well-known adages do not stop the elected from their task of constant governmental interference. This is best evidenced by the government’s insistence on retaining an ambiguous federal tax code, enacting the excessively expensive regulatory dud Sarbanes-Oxley, the retention of duplicating departments and agencies, the persistence of continuing federal policies that bully risk-takers and reward losers. The systematically applied coercive pushing and pulling by several Congresses since the Eisenhower administration has driven private enterprise straight to attorneys, litigation, and bureaucratic discombobulating.

The liberal progressives in line with congress’ Barney Frank have for years forced private banks in the direction of mal-ginned imprudent lending practices. For the elected, evidence to the contrary of their ideal, be damned; the policy of government in their eye’s is as a matter of policy, to taxpayer finance a seemingly never-ending series of perverse societal contrivances that have, in the present, after decades of persistence, finally, impaired the nation.

When one combines such governmental action with a popular consumption frenzy stirred and prompted at every opportunity by a political leadership motivated solely to attain or maintain public office; the tangibles of sensible and pragmatic are pushed into the delete file in favor of the intangible and deceptive. These rascals, the elected Noblesse oblige, and their allies such as public employee unions, the New York Times, National Broadcasting Company, all liberal progressives, and labor lobbyist in general, are consistently remissive of applying prudent real-world principles to the issues and concerns of governing the peoples’ money. Either consciously purposeful, or permissively naïve, political leaders have, for many years, mislead the voting public as to the nation’s economic disposition. Experience has documented, the elected class will lie, cheat, and steal to and from their constituencies.

When reviewing the governing of particularly democratic-republics one is inclined to believe in the governing tenants of righteousness, particularly in these countries the predominately sane champions the irrational. Corruptive behavior in and by government is assumed to be spotty at best. After all, one is led to believe that in democratic-republics reason dominates the unreasonable, but low and behold, instead we find the non-sensible overwhelming good sense.

Upon surveying the historically documented factual pieces and parts that lead to the 2008 recession one could conclude that it was if the world of the otherwise prudent and rational was managed from the Emerald City by the hedge fund wonk, The Wizard-of-Oz.

Bloated property assessment permitted the government to tax and squanders more of the people’s money; equity pricing egregiously mismatch derivative to market value, and the wholesale of government policies explicitly designed to give away other people’s money. Could there have been another outcome? If governments’ print money, if fiat currency is forced into acceptance, if tax revenue lags behind governmental distribution of that revenue how could there actually be a functioning economy? No one with enough political juice considered the cost verses the benefit; everyone was chasing the butterflies, enjoying the rainbows, and receiving their pot of gold.

Captivatingly, the financially affected, withstanding the history of government stupidity, the government’s culpability in a total lack of sensible, rational, prudent, and reasonable governess, these persons, still contemplate government as the quick and easy solution. I am particularly astounded by the incredulous insistence of not just the financially affected populous but institutional leaders from bankers to insurance executives, economist, and broker-dealers they all create a novel wherein they write-in, admittedly, in degrees of measurable variance, governmental agencies and departments as the solution-protagonist.

The solution to our economic malaise is simple. Learn to find the bait, fancy the bait onto the hook, choose a line and pole; discover a place where fish are to be found, throw the baited line into the water, catch the fish, prepare the fish, cook the fish and eat it. Now all of this is to be done without paying a licensing fee, and entrance fee, a poundage tax, governmentally assisted learning, or some federal agency telling you how to eat the fish.

In other words, government shut up, do less, and stay out of my business…

PROFESSIONAL GUESSERS AND FEARFUL INVESTORS

Authored by William Robert Barber

As the stock markets of the world kinetically vibrate, setting a pace of newly found extremes for sell-off and buy-in, investors surrender to the bafflement of two offers: The first is to accept the blindfold, and the second is to stare-down the oncoming bullet as it races for the spot just above one’s nose.

Speculators of genuine risks are buying gold futures, coin, and billion by following the golden rule for speculation: Prices rise when buyers significantly outperform sellers — of course the opposite rings just as true.

Remember! The purchase of gold does not add capital to a company’s balance sheet; these treasures will not fund research of discovery or invention. An ‘investment’ in gold is a bet founded on the principle of hoarding.

King Midas regularly counted his gold; but he gained no material benefit from the gold until he made a purchase. Obviously, as soon as Midas transacted a purchase, he not only had less gold but the price of gold as a necessity of market dynamics depreciated. When one sells ones — gold which is a requirement in order to attain a product or service — one does so by a conversion to fiat currency. In other words, eventually one is going to sell gold for legal tender; otherwise, there is no benefit to holding on to gold. If I was a holder of gold I would want to be first in line on the selling side because if I am not in the front, the price of gold will be far less valuable to me standing somewhere in the middle of the sellers pack.

Licensed professionals bandy about their theories and conjecture their forecast. All of these suit-and-tie personalities act as if they were/are the bona fide harbingers of repute, each exuding the confidence of an “I knew my horse would win” bettor; of course this is only after the horse race was over.

It is my belief that genius, like wisdom, and luck are results that can only be accurately measured in arrears. No one knows — one only guesses that one knows.

A hypothesis, a tentative explanation of a phenomenon, is a best guess effort to explain what we do not know for sure. I believe all of these professional guessers are sincere hypothesist striving to analyze and present a reasonable rational commentary on an event that quite possibly could be wholly unreasonable and irrational.

The statist that occupy the White House lament that the Stimulus was too small, not big enough because they miscalculated the enormity of the economic Bush debacle. Their premise of finding the economically viable light and the way has not moved one iota from their insistence that Keynesian economics is the answer to the woeful status of present US economic ills.

In keeping with that belief they also believe that the federal government can directly create private sector jobs. Well, the certainty is that the federal government cannot directly create jobs. Other than covertly enhance or overtly embrace governmental bureaucracy, possibly bedfellow, even more openly the unionization of America, government involvement in private business can only increase the cost of doing business, stymie productivity, and – when coupled with Obama’s resolve on super-regulating enterprise – government can only belay growth.

I have no idea why we need to relearn the simple and palpable over and over again. Capitalism is the most potent of economic methodologies/systems. Currently, the federal government is managed by progressive persons who depend on an ever-increasing manifest for governmental largeness; they depend on the viability of increase taxation as a matter of policy. Factually, liberal progressives could not sustain their raison d’être, their howl in the light of a full moon if government is limited in operational scope. Progressives require a big fat bureaucratically enriched government in order to inhale their brand of oxygen.

This American economy will overcome the Keynesian policy of where-for-naught as it intersects with the Obama administration’s design of social justice and class warfare; it will rise above the ills of the EU malaise, it will, with the aid and assist of the Supreme Court, withstand the costly breach of good sense by rescinding ObamaCare. All is to be rightfully settled in the election of 2012.

ARGUMENTATIVE GOVERNMENT BY DESIGN

Authored by William Robert Barber

Obviously, the goal of the fathers (of this republic) was to design a governing body founded on the principle that competing political elements expressed in variant policies, ideologies, and personalities, (often articulated by intense bickering) could find a forum for unfettered discourse. In the interest of achieving such a goal they created a republic that allowed and reflected, within the confines of the constitution, the means and inspiration for competing political ideals.

The principle of stimulating competing ideas is the essence of freedom and individual liberty. The governing of the republic was inextricably tethered to democratic values and such are wholly dependent on the right of discourse. The laws of this republic armed the people directly, and through their elected representatives, indirectly, in the pursuit of consensus with the efficacy of persuasion. In other words, the effectiveness of citizenry persuasion is the merit that prompts consensus; knowing, by design, that without consensus persuasion has no practical application. So to insure tolerance for and of another’s perspective the founders took into account a lawful process that permits multiple “bites at the apple” whereby failing to harness the required consensus is not necessarily fatal.

This lawful process was integrated within the constitution wherein the binding arbitrator is regular elections. In addition to elections and as a stand-by supplement to abate populous agitation there are petitions, referendums, and the specific right to recall an elected official. Matter of factually; there is a real, within the grasps, reasonable alternative for redress from the losing side of a debate for a particular consensus. Elections vent frustration, discombobulate the empowered, and empower the electorate… well, that’s the intent.

There are many differences of approach between this nation’s political parties; but the one commonality that both political parties have promoted is the expansion of the federal government. Proportional; some would evidence as disproportional to governmental expansion, is the coercive means that government has at its disposal to willfully impose it power upon the people. The Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice are only two examples of very intimidating governmental agencies. Since the administration of John Adams the executive branch has by means within the constitution and by means contrary to the constitution the underlying result as always been the unyielding growth of the federal government. The Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 were passed by the Federalist-controlled Congress to weaken the Democratic-Republican Party by restricting speech. No citizen could express in any form a scurrilous accusation against the president or congressional members; interestingly, the Vice President (Thomas Jefferson of the opposing party) was fair game. By 1802 the act was repealed or allowed to expire at term. The point being that politician(s) are not to be trusted with power; they will betray the meaningfulness of the constitution is it suits their perception of need.

For years the conduct of government was to spend more than it receives in revenue. Only through other than GAPP accounting did the Clinton administration demonstrate a surplus.

So now this run-away-with-the-people’s-cash government has run out of allotted funds. Naturally, this has happened over and over before. Indeed, each time the elected would use the forum to spat out accusatory accusations at the party in power for increasing the national debt. This phony nonsensical disingenuous plays well in the capital; that is until spending extended over 14 Trillion. Now the political parties are requiring an additional 2 trillion; that served up some attention.

The concept of competing ideas has run into a brick wall; the idea of compromise has evolved into political steadfastness. The Democrats want to find the money to keep their entitlements alive by increasing taxes; the Republicans say the problem is not one of taxing to little but spending too much. The progressives want a European style governing entity while the conservative want limited government. Legislatively there is a very real impasse. This impasse can only be settled by the 2012 election until then the party that controls one-third of government must negotiate with the party that controls two-thirds of government. Both parties have worked very hard to put this nation’s finance in its current placement; hopefully, the conservatives will get as much as possible in spending cuts with no increase in taxes. The progressives believe that fighting entitlement reform and enabling class warfare will help them in the next election… indeed, it just might.

PRESUMPTIONS AND ASSUMPTIONS

Authored by William Robert Barber

There is this Marine Corps saying, “Presumptions and assumptions gets you killed in combat.” The accurate transference to civilian life of this saying is attained by merely substituting the action word “killed” with expressions such as: A waste of time and money, a distortion of original intent, the replacement of the tenets honesty and truthfulness with immoral or amoral.

Our United States of America has over the last century (or more) developed and in the main established a government whose process of operational scope is not of the people, by the people, nor for the people; indeed, there is evidence that the 1789 constitutional intent has perished from reality. We the people can no longer presume or assume that our representative republic is in fact representative, that our federal system of power sharing between the government of central and state is intact, or that our republic functions within the lawfulness of the constitution.

We citizens have been bewitched into what cognitive scientists have described as “existence bias;” which is the persistent suggestion that the status quo is so prevalent in thought acceptance that its continuance cannot be denied. Interestingly, while believing in the power of incumbent thought citizens act on the razor’s edge of disingenuousness. They will entertain almost any antithesis of the status quo. Even when details are omitted…a declaration by any politician of an alternative to the prevailing has popular appeal.

A perfect example is the election of President Obama. Obama’s message was viciously anti-Bush. With complicit aid of the national media and the entire Democratic leadership President Bush was bludgeoned by personal attacks. Obama’s most pronounced antagonisms were for Bush’s foreign and domestic policies. Now after holding office for more than two years Obama has mimicked more of Bush’s policies than not. We now know that President Obama is evermore the status quo politician. We now understand that his battle cry of “Change we can believe in,” was nothing less than words empty of belief.

Possibly the continuance of the status quo was a more accurate descriptive of Obama’s administration after all, it was Obama who declared the simple answer to an ancient riddle of politics when he noted that if the ingredients stay the same how could we citizens expect a difference result. He pledged different! Well, his actions proved him to be the same; the same as any other politician seeking to achieve and now sustain power.

If that is so how is it that so many Americans still maintain a positive sentiment for his presidency? Often our eyes deny us clarity. We discount the actual with the utility of self-serving contrivance. The same occurs on what we hear or read. We have sentiments that can with some artful prompting discombobulate the meaningfulness of the palpable and evidentiary.

Besides the effective of self-serving contrivances, there are certain words, subjects, and phrases that mindlessly spin the minds of the normally rational and reasonable into a metaphoric array of self-determined illusions. These certainties that prompt one’s mind into the illusionary are disjointed from sensibility but not from effect.

Let me name a few of these certain words, education, fairness, level playing field, and social justice. For example let’s take education. A very powerful stand-alone word that entails passionate conjectures, even some facts, but do bridge to other descriptions such as teachers’ unions, school bonds, subjects taught, parental influence, sin and property taxes. Who in their right mind would be against education? But of course the real question is more of a definition along cost benefit analysis then the generalities of education on a per se basis.

Assumptions and presumptions are dangerous means…illusions of blissfulness and wisdom are not automatically encased behind a pretty face or beautiful words. And without a doubt assumption, and presumption gets one killed in combat.

THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER

Authored by William Robert Barber

Although sobriety has many intrinsic values, one of which being clarity of cognizance, when the subject is the present status of US governing and governess, alert awareness does have its negatives. For example, consider the diverse problems that face this nation state of ours: Three wars, two of which have lasted nearly a score of years. Interestingly, the preeminent analysis (by the best military minds) is that meaningful withdrawal from one of these wars will not occur until 2014 and withdrawal is subject to that nebulous dictum, “depending on the situation on the ground.” The issues and concerns of our nation are numerous: Immigration, ObamaCare, raising the debt ceiling, entitlements, the seemingly never reversing high unemployment, securing the border. Obviously, without neglecting those peoples that blatantly just want to kill Americans, I could go on and on… but I think my point has been made. The price one might pay for soberness could lead to frustration at a minimum, even depression. So to those that believe I am drinking too much vodka these days I say firstly that the vodka is Belvedere and secondly Newt Gingrich’s most recent behavior is that of a sober man. Oh and so was that Wiener fellow… he was sober when he initiated, over many years, such extraordinarily stupid behavior we are now so overly familiar with.

Logic dictates that once a problem is realized one must find and implement a solution. This is the rational of western thought. So in order to solve the problems defined in the latter paragraph I need to find a perpetrator, a rat, a dirty no good to harness the blame. After that, if I was a progressive or a social worker, I could spend some time empathizing with the rat’s issue, finding the rat, the appropriate taxpayer funded therapy, and finally blaming Bush for creating the policies that drove this individual to act out such heinous anti-social behavior. But since I am not a progressive I can, without hesitation or concerns over the violation of civil rights, move into direct prosecutorial mode. So I charge the blame onto political ideologies that are purposefully manifested into the potent delivery systems known as the Democratic and Republican parties. These political parties have willfully, in the interest of power, prestige, greed, and let’s not set aside the overwhelming power of stupid, perverted the constitution of 1789 solely for the perceived benefit of their party.

Well, I have enjoyed the swallow of several vodkas. I can now read the comings and goings of the political sway that lies within the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal. I might even tolerate an English interpretative analysis of American wherewithal enclosed within the Economist. But most importantly, my Belvedere has dulled my sensitivity to the reality of what’s happening. I still have a tough time tolerating what is tolerated by so many. On the other hand, them, the others, and those out there in the great Hinterland, despite the efforts of forces counter to my interest, I am still putting one foot in front of the other….

Clearly, the default position to not winning the presidency is to dominate the senate… we must stop the liberal progressivism of President Obama. There is no Plan B.

IN MEMORIAM

Authored by William Robert Barber

There has sprouted up a stylish must-do, a societal nicety, a gesture that seems to beget other gestures of the identical meaningfulness, and frankly, juxtaposed with a bit of simpatico I do understand the why fore. Nevertheless, I take issue with its explicit and implicit implications.

Firstly, I best reveal the irritant: “Thank you for your service…” are the words uttered as they reach out either by hand or sentiment to congratulate the service member or former member. Normally, such a thank is extended from those fellow citizens that have not (for whatever reason) served in the armed forces.

Surely, by now the reader is befuddled by my peeve and a bit perplexed as to why. The answer is quite direct: Undertaking service to my country is nothing for my fellow citizens to thank me for. Service is an obligatory of citizenship and a common virtue that does not warrant adulation. Certainly, I am not suggesting that a citizen of this country must or even should serve in the armed forces — not at all; I am suggesting that if my fellow citizens believe that common virtue is extra-ordinary and deserves special attention, then the common denomination of virtue is directly abated.

I served the interest of my nation state in times of peace as well as war; I am proud to be a United States Marine. Withstanding, I am just as proud of those fellow citizens — whether they served in the armed forces or not — that pay their taxes, vote, harmoniously keep their families together, recognize and maintain their fidelity to community, obey the laws, and purposefully strive to strengthen the wherewithal of not only American values but also note their obligation to express responsibility for humankind.

This nation functions by fields and networks of symbiosis; one feeds upon and relies upon the other. Respective of the forces of counter, of the anti, and the converse we are all tied together in one effort. We are bound together as dependants and interdependent. Each individual is important to the whole. Indeed it is the idea of an individual’s value the make us so exceptional a nation.

Soldiers serve and like the police, fire, and many, many, other professions that are so very critical even dangerous they make their contribution. But I think, in the interest of every citizen, that the common denomination of citizenship should be extraordinarily high.

For me, my service was an obligation and a privilege; my countrymen owe me absolutely nothing, not even a thank you. I owe my country everything…for me it is an honor to call myself an American.