We Know the Problem … What’s the Answer?

This weekly column, which I have been privileged to submit for your consideration for the past three years, elicits many comments and questions. The most common of which can be summed up as, “I agree with your analysis, appreciate the Historical context, but how about some practical suggestions.”

If you are one of the many who have sent me those emails, posted those replies, made those phone calls, or asked me in person this column is for you.

To fully address these questions we have to look at two levels: the macro and the micro. We need practical suggestions for the very large and the very small. We need practical suggestions for the societal and cultural level and the personal level.

First of all we need some historical context for our current situation. In some ways we are unique, we are America after all. And in some ways what is happening to us has happened many times before. As I have often said in these columns if History doesn’t actually repeat itself it does rhyme.

The French Revolution occurred between 1787 and 1799. It was the first to try to replicate the phenomenon of the American Revolution which overthrew the age old tyranny of divine right kings and landed aristocracy replacing it with a federal republic operating on democratic principles based upon limited government, personal liberty, and economic freedom.

The American Revolution inspired the French to believe they too could break free of the chains and breathe the fresh air of freedom. However, it lost something in the translation. Perhaps because the French didn’t have the centuries long tradition of limited self-government and human rights which had grown up in England since the Magna Carta had been forced on a reluctant King John in 1215. Perhaps it was because the French had endured centuries of the cruelest servitude under the most absolute of absolute monarchs.

Whatever the reason once the French broke free of the cultural, societal, and personal restraint of the Old Regime which had persecuted and exploited them for so long the French people sought to exact revenge. They sought to cut the former ruling class out of society and while they were at it establish a completely new regime in its place. The French, always famous for philosophers, had produced one who had a tremendous influence on the thinking of the Founders of our country and the Framers of the Constitution: Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

However, Rousseau had two sides. On one he eloquently expressed the idea that government was established upon a social contract between the rulers and the ruled and that to have any legitimacy government must base itself upon the consent of the governed. Thus empowering the governed to decide when that contract has been violated and giving them a philosophical basis for change. Our forefathers based their work upon this side.

On the other side, Rousseau argued against private property. And that it is the role of the state to impose freedom, equality, and justice for all within the state regardless of the view of the majority. Thus empowering a minority to decide what constitutes freedom, equality, justice, and justifying the use of state power to mold society to fit the vision of the few. On this side Rousseau is considered the father of modern socialism and communism. This is the side that the leaders of the French Revolution chose to follow.

Another difference is that by 1787 France had been a highly centralized nation for centuries. The local governments served at the pleasure of the central authority and they could be established or overthrown upon the whim of the ruler. In America we had the experience of thirteen separate colonies each with their own particular history and each with their own particular traditions. In America this led to the establishment of a Federal republic with sovereignty resting in the states and only delegated to the central government.

These differences led to the corruption of the French Revolution into The Terror. This was a period between 1793 and 1794 when France was surrounded by enemies and pressed on every side. The Leaders of the Revolution felt as if there were agents and sympathizers of their enemies everywhere and they proceeded to execute thousands of their own people in order to secure freedom. The Terror eventually led to a military dictatorship which evolved into an Empire with a monarch at least as absolute as the one they had overthrown in 1787.

Unfortunately for humanity suffering under the yoke of absolute rulers and their crony elites, subsequent revolutions have tended to follow the French model instead of the America. The Mexican Revolution (1810-1821) was part of a wide ranging revolt against the once great Spanish Empire (1808-1826). From the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego revolutions cast aside the foreign rule of Spain and established homegrown republics. All of these republics modeled their initial declarations of independence on America’s but the successor regimes all came to model some variation of the French. The people rose up in righteous indignation against an oppressive system and in the end found themselves under one military dictator after another. They fought to gain their liberty and merely traded one elite for another as the iron heel of tyranny maintained its stand on the throat of liberty.

Other revolutions, the Russian (1917) and the Cuban (1952-1959) are further examples of the trend. What begins as an attempt to bring the blessing of limited government, personal liberty, and economic freedom to people ends up bringing instead a tyranny usually more cruel than what the people originally rebelled against.

As can be seen by this litany of subverted revolutions it is usually violence that brings the fall of the former tyranny and facilitates the rise of the latter. One example of a revolution that came about through an election would be the Nazi revolution in 1932. Another would be the current regime of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. A revolution by way of the ballot box, but a revolution none the less.

Today America is in the midst of a revolution. America has elected a President who has vowed to fundamentally transform America. He promised this to his adoring supporters before his election, and he has worked tirelessly to bring it about. He is an Alinsky style community organizer who is working to organize our community by occupying the center of power and the streets at the same time. He follows the Cloward/Piven Strategy spending us into oblivion in the name of saving the economy. He has seized major portions of the economy and shoved national health insurance, a financial sector take-over, and undeclared war down the throats of a passive American public. Polls show that vast majorities do not want what he is selling but he is closing the deal anyway.

Right now Mr. Obama is campaigning day and night for another term, and a term that would be without restraint for a President who has already said he can rule without Congress. He would undoubtedly appoint at least one more Supreme Court Justice and solidify America’s passage from a federal republic to a European style social democracy.

That is the context, so what should patriotic Americans do now? As I said at the beginning to fully address these questions we have to look at two levels: the macro and the micro. We need practical suggestions for the very large and the very small. We need practical suggestions for the societal and cultural level and the personal level.

On the macro level we need to do everything in our power to make sure Barack Obama does not win a second term. We need to contribute our time, our talent, and our treasure to making sure he is defeated and defeated decisively in the November of 2012. Whom should we support? My advice is study the opposition candidates, and support the one who stands for limited government, personal liberty, and economic freedom. Choose the one that most credibly supports a return to constitutional government.

If after the primaries that candidate does not win the nomination of the Republican side of the government party, patriots will be faced with a dilemma. If we are forced to choose between Obama and the sure, sudden and, complete destruction of constitutionally limited government or a big government Republican who is in favor of more foreign interventions and a continuation of our role as policeman of the world what’s a patriot to do?

The problem with choosing the lesser of two evils is that you are still choosing evil. However in this instance with code blue on one side and a slow fall off a high cliff on the other we may want to choose the one who will drive us to the poor house a little slower. At least that way we will have more time to prepare and perhaps another opportunity to make the logical choice and vote for a return to constitutional government.

On the Micro level I am reminded of the many people I have met over the years who have escaped from any one of the hell-holes socialist revolutions have produced in the last hundred years. Whether it is Poland, or Russia, or Cuba they have told me over and over that they see the same things happening here that once swallowed their homelands. They have told me how they cry at night as they see central planning and social engineering consuming America. They have tearfully asked me, “Where can we go now? We escaped tyranny looking for freedom and now we see the same thing coming here?”

In answer to their questions I have asked one of my own, “How can we survive the coming darkness?” One by one they have all given me the same advice, “Get out of the cities, get yourself some land where you can grow your own food, and do all you can to protect your family and preserve the traditions of liberty.”

In other words, head for the hills and hunker down. Personally my wife and I have made this choice. We have decided to sacrifice whatever portions of our modern life styles and lucrative careers must be jettisoned to maintain what is truly important: our family, our lives, and our liberty. We saw this coming and made a five year plan which is now coming to fruition. Myself and many others have been sounding the alarm from the watchtowers for years.

Now is the time for all good citizens to come to the aid of our nation. We must stand up for our heritage. We must do battle in the marketplace of ideas, and we must engage in the struggle at the ballot box, but we must also prepare to save some seed corn in case the winter does descend. We must preserve what we can so we can begin again. So “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Keep the faith. Keep the peace. We shall overcome.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College. He is the Historian of the Future and the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

Positively Negative

The Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media constantly trumpets the claim that President Obama was a Professor of Constitutional Law. And when he was campaigning he charged that President Bush was not respecting the Constitution when he fired eight prosecutors saying, “I was a constitutional law professor, which means unlike the current president I actually respect the Constitution.”
In this long over looked quote from a radio interview a Pre-President Obama laments the negative liberties he sees as a flaw in the Constitution and waxes eloquent in defense of the redistribution of wealth and the positive power of an intrusive welfare state.

“If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.”

Unfortunately for this radical interpretation, liberty is a negative. Personal liberty is always and only possible when and where external control stops. We have the liberty to think as we wish because no one can control or even know our true inner thoughts. We do not have the liberty to steal; society has placed limits on that action which are enforced by external control. The Framers of our Constitution knew this which explains why our foundational document includes restrictions on the power of government not restrictions on individuals. Unless governmental control over the individual was limited there would be no liberty.

This has been common knowledge in our Republic since John Hancock signed his John Hancock and we declared to the world that the United States of America was going to be something different. We were determined to break free of the entangling state control stifling the monarchies of Europe. We would be a new type of nation where individual liberty, opportunity, and free enterprise would unleash the pent-up creativity and ingenuity would make real the genius of a free people. However, over the years many have fallen asleep, lulled into a trance by the prosperity and security this freedom from state control has fostered.

Slowly the knowledge of what gave vent to this prosperity and security has been lost and generations of Americans have been taught by state schools that free enterprise is evil and state paternalism is good. Generations have been bred to see governmental support, direction, and control as necessary and proper. They have ingested the poison of dependence metastasizing the debilitating life on the dole to the point where they see their continued receipt of stolen goods as an entitlement. So many have fallen for the licentious materialistic hedonism masquerading as life in a post-modern America that when asked, “What is the American Dream?” many will reply “To own your own home.” A response and a belief which made the congressionally mandated Fannie/Freddie induced housing bubble possible if not inevitable.

This shows the negative results of the positive reinforcement of materialism over intellectualism. The correct response to the question, “What is the American Dream?” is Individual liberty and opportunity. Once this was common knowledge among an engaged American public who realized that no one fought and died to own a home, people owned homes in America before the revolution. It was freedom that was the object of the Revolution and it is the individual liberty and opportunity that freedom enables that is the American dream. And today in America this individual liberty and opportunity has now become the object of ridicule in schools pushing a green agenda and a socialist future. The demand for a return to individual liberty and opportunity has become the disparaged slogan on signs at Tea Parties.

Our leaders have embraced instead the idea of “Positive Liberty” which is an oxymoron. By this they mean that the state should actively intervene in the lives of people to provide them with all that is necessary for lives lived as the leaders think they should be. What they are really New Speaking of is Socialism disguised as democracy. However, the increase of governmental power over people does not equate to liberty it equates to serfdom and only the progressive newspeak of a post-modern America could call this decrease of freedom an increase of liberty or democracy.

Alexis de Tocqueville said, “Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”



This positive liberty is the handmaiden of the other new positive that our progressive leaders wish to foist upon us: positive equality. The real equality, the one our ancestors fought and died for is equality of opportunity which is a negative, forcing the government stays out of the way and the people go as far as their investment of time, talent and treasure can take them. In our new progressive world government is supposed to act to create an equality of outcome so that all are equal all the time. This type of collective equality is to be advanced and protected by the all powerful state pushing down some, lifting others until all are equal at all times. This equality of outcome becomes an unlimited reality that is conceived of as the goal of society. Unfettered democracy defined as the participation of all in the political process either as rulers, dispensers or consumers becomes not only the goal but the means and the end in and of itself.

Thus our Constitutional Scholar-in-Chief is leading us step by step away from the individual liberty and opportunity that are the guardians of the American Dream and into a negative representation of our positive values. With another four years this administration will succeed in fundamentally transforming America.

One last quote from Alexis de Tocqueville "The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."

PS: Don’t take the bribe.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College. He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com View the trailer for Dr. Owens’ latest book @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ypkoS0gGn8 © 2011 Robert R. Owens dr.owens@comcast.net Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook.

I’ll See Your Hiroshima and Raise You a Nagasaki

I do not lightly use the names of the only cities in history obliterated by the use of Atomic weapons. The nature of the cause in which they forever stand as sentinels of determination precludes their use for any profane purpose. I wouldn’t use such loaded terms unless the issue at hand wasn’t equally as momentous within the flow of American History.

Hearing the voice of the people on November 3rd, President Obama ought to pivot to the Center after the coming Tea Party driven Republican resurgence. The Chat-o-crats of talk radio and the 24 hour cable news cycle debate endlessly whether he will imitate Bill Clinton who suddenly switched from his drive to socialize America into a born-again reformer bellowing “The Era of Big Government is over” to ensure that he was still relevant. However, there’s a significant difference between the man from Hope and the purveyor of hope and change. Bill Clinton is a pragmatist willing to do whatever it takes to stay in front of any crowd so he can call it a parade and look like the Grand Marshal. President Obama is an ideologue with an iron-clad agenda and, as his most admirable trait, an iron determination to stand by his convictions. Instead of pivoting Mr. Obama will unveil the Imperial Presidency hidden in those thousand-page bills no one reads.

Thousand-page bills don’t write themselves overnight. Since the people who said they wrote them don’t know what’s in them where did they come from? These bills have been waiting in the wings for such a time as this. The Progressives realized that even after their infiltration and hijack of the liberal wing of American politics, even after generations of addicting Americans to one entitlement at a time their naked grab for power during the sprint to the finish line would turn the most died-in-the-wool fellow-traveler back to American values. And they had to fear that their final push to fundamentally transform America into a social democracy might wake-up those dozing on the couch in front of the game. Realizing all along the homeowner might wake up and catch them with their hand in the cookie jar they built automatic-pilot bureaucratic nomenclature into their signature pieces of legislation.

By voting through omnibus bills without reading them the Best Congress Money Can Buy has ceded their power to the vast Federal commissariat. Since the November Revolution of 2008 this gaggle of accomplices and dupes has allowed the Commander-in-Chief to inflate the Federal red-tape machine by more than 15%. Congress rubber-stamped themselves into irrelevance. Power has been transferred to the alphabet soup of Federal agencies and bureaucrats know how to fill in the blanks.

As a case in point: The Obama administration ends their illegal Moratorium on all offshore drilling. Does this mean the tens of thousands of jobs already lost will come back as new operations ramp up to locate and exploit American energy resources? Not so much. At the same time the administration announced the end of the moratorium they also announced that new regulations are coming. This threat of new, unknown regulations discourages anyone from investing money in new drilling. Even the crony capitalists with their government guarantees and bailout cushions aren’t fool enough to invest money in a rigged game when the rigging hasn’t been decided on yet. None of this took Congressional approval or even notification. After the election look for rule by decree by any other name as the people elected to drain the new swamp learn their predecessors gave away the store.

This is what brings us full circle to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki reference. If we who believe in limited government run the board and send a significant majority to put steel in the back of John Boehner as the new Speaker of the House we must also elect a veto- proof majority in the Senate. If both of these are not accomplished the Progressives, who are masters of the legislative two-step, will thwart every attempt to roll back the coup d'état they’ve legislated for themselves and America will swirl down the drain into the historical backwaters of failed experiments. Unless the new pro-limited government majority is large enough to repeal the massive centralization of the last four progressive administrations over President Obama’s veto, they will become cast in the cement of precedent and instant tradition. A willing media and a complicit judiciary will anoint the Progressive agenda as the new normal.

Victory must be total or it will not be victory. The surrender that was signed in August of 1945 would not have been signed for months or years later unless the twin horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki hadn’t convinced even the Japanese Army who was still winning their war in China that all was lost. Likewise, we who desire a return to limited government must take total control of Congress. If the margin is only a vote or two in the Senate the Progressives, who campaign as Patrick Henry and rule as Benedict Arnold, will cross the aisle and the time for an electoral reversal of the Progressive Evolution will pass. America will still be here. The next day when we wake up the world will still be spinning and the birds will still be singing, but the America we have known will be History. Victory must be total or it will not be victory!

Now is the time for everyone who believes in limited government to come to the aid of their nation. In the past few years many who previously ignored politics have awakened to find their nation has been hijacked and they’re about to land in an America more like Cuba than a City-on-a-Hill. Those now awake must wake-up their families, their friends and their neighbors. A tsunami, an avalanche, an earthquake of voters must swamp the polls on November 2nd to overcome the reality that Chicago votes early and votes often.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College and History for the American Public University System. http://drrobertowens.com © 2010 Robert R. Owens dr.owens@comcast.net