Do You Understand the American Form of Government?

This well-produced video clearly explains the political spectrum and the differences between Right and Left - and how that affects the American form of government. It's more than that, really: As the YouTuber who posted it wrote, the video is "an explanation of the various forms of government, and why America is not a democracy."  (Related Video: The Problems With Socialized Government Healthcare)



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British Tea Party Movement? It's No Surprise, Really

By now, unless you've been hiding in a cave, you know about the "Tea Party movement" in the United States. It's an all-American movement, right? Yes, and no. 

Daniel Hannan, MEP explains that the Tea Parties sweeping America draw inspiration from the Boston Tea Party, which he says was actually a protest by British citizens. 

Writing on his Telegraph UK blog page, Hannan said this on February 27, 2010: Some British Lefties – and some Americans – are thrown by the idea of a Brighton Tea Party. After all, they point out, the original Boston Tea Party was directed against the British Crown. Yes, it was. But where do you think its leaders drew their inspiration from? The American patriots didn’t see themselves as revolutionaries, but as conservatives. In their own minds, all they were asking for was what they had always assumed to be their birthright as freeborn Englishmen. 

This should not surprise anybody who has a basic familiarity with American history, which is of course deeply intertwined with British history. Hannan explains his reasons for hosting a Tea Party in Britain on Fox News (watch video). 

As the American Revolution was still in its embryonic stage, circa 1774-1775, people such as Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Sam Adams, George Washington and others were Englishmen and considered themselve to be loyal to the British Crown. Their initial intentions were not to break away from England; for years they and others had tried diplomatic methods to pursuade Parliament to treat the American colonies as equals, on a par with their fellow Englishmen back in the British Isles. 

It didn't work, as you may know, and the rest is history. It's been correctly said that the grievances against King George III (left) in 1776 pale in comparison to those against the U.S. Congress in 2010. 

The Declaration of Indepedence was signed on July 4, 1776, about ten and a half months after the King George's Rebellion Proclamation of August 23, 1775, which officially declared the American colonies to be in rebellion. Keep in mind that on April 14, 1775, Massachusetts Governor Gage was given secret orders from the British to suppress "open rebellion" among American colonists by using all necessary force. 

Today, we have an American government that is taxing the people at higher rates than the British taxed the American colonists. Americans today are openly rebelling, albeit it non-violently, in hundres of groups called "tea parties." Like the revolutionaries of 1775 and 1776, the Tea Party people are not completely united. The 13 American colonies, while agreeing to cooperate in a struggle for independence, were also frequently bickering amongst themselves. As they did over 234 years ago, today's American revolutionaries will get their act together and come together as a united and formidable force. 

Back to the British Tea Parties. History and movements often move circularly. The American Revolution began as a movement by Englishmen in the British colonies of North America to be treated fairly. In early 2009, an American resistance to massive government and ever increasing suppression of financial and personal freedoms spawned the modern Tea Parties. That idea bounced over to the United Kingdom, where modern Englishmen (and women, of course) are fighting Parliament anew - and for reasons that would feel familiar to some of the most famous Englishmen in history: Franklin, Jefferson, Adams and Washington. 

Hannan and I agree, although he puts it differently: Those British Lefties who now sneer at what they regard as the Americanisation of the British Right would do well to remember their own history. They are the political heirs of Charles James Fox, of John Wilkes, or Tom Paine. I have no doubt that if the heroes of that age – Burke or Fox or Pitt or Johnson or Swift – could be transported to our own time, they would recoil with horror at the level of taxation and state intervention. 

This all comes with a caveat, however. Just as Franklin, Jefferson, Adams and Washington would find common ground with today's tea parties, whether in the United States or the United Kingdom, they would also see potential danger. King George III was, after all, rather tolerant toward the uppity American colonists for years before he ordered force to be used against them. Push any government too hard and too fast, and the resulting consequences could be dire. That's not meant to discourage Tea Parties, but to simply say that history must be used as a guide for victories that can be achieved, but also for mistakes and dangers to avoid. 

Better Than Democracy?

"A Republic - If You Can Keep It" by Belanne Pibal Those were the words of Benjamin Franklin upon being asked what kind of government the new nation had after the vote was taken to approve the Constitution. Yet, there is very little mention in the mainstream media these days about our republic. Schools for decades have taught that the USA is a democracy so maybe the media and so many of the adults who believe the same thing can be forgiven. However, it is imperative that Americans, as a nation know the difference between a democracy and a republic if we wish to keep our republic. In a democracy, the majority rules. The majority can vote each other out of house, home and freedom. The majority can vote in sharia law if they want. In a democracy, individuals have very little recourse if they want to go against the will of the majority. That's one of the reasons our founding fathers declined to make this nation into a democracy. In the words of James Madison, "Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death." How many times have Americans been bombarded by the notion of spreading freedom and democracy to other nations? In reality, we can only spread one, because freedom is incompatible with democracy. You can have one or the other, but not both. If we could spread the American form of government abroad, that would be spreading freedom, but democracy?, no. So what is a republic? If democracy is so unstable and violent, what is a republic and why is it more desirable than a democracy? The Oxford American dictionary defines a republic as "A country in which the supreme power is held by the people or their elected representatives or by an elected or nominated president." That may sound the same as a democracy, but it is not. In the case of America, it means that the people have approved a Constitution to define the powers of the government. This is one of the reasons why many Americans are upset about the president's speech to our children. The president is elected to serve America, not to turn our youngest Americans into government servants. In the debate to approve the Constitution in Pennsylvania, one of the delegates, Mr. Wilson stated that the supreme power of the uniquely American form of government resides in the people. "The truth is, that, in our governments, the supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable power remains in the people. As our constitutions are superior to our legislatures, so the people are superior to our constitutions. Indeed, the superiority, in this last instance, is much greater; for the people possess over our constitutions control in act, as well as right. The consequence is, that the people may change the constitutions whenever and however they please. This is a right of which no positive institution can ever deprive them." In a republic, we each have a personal responsibility to oversee and correct the government when it infringes on individual rights. In America, we are to do that by electing people of good character to office - regardless of their party affiliation. And "We the People" retain the right to change those legislators and even the Constitution itself. The supreme power of our government resides with the people, but not in such a way that the majority can run roughshod over the rights of the individual. That is the essential difference between a democracy and a republic. The question before Americans now is still "Can we keep it?" Belanne Pibal is a Liberty Features Syndicated Writer Cool Hats & Shirts for Cool Conservatives Leave a Comment... Chicago News Bench RSS Feed We're on Twitter...

Racist William Beavers Plays Race Card - Stupidly

If you have no valid argument, call your enemies "racists." That's what is happening in Chicago lately, from Mayor Daley's assinine charge that people opposed to the move of the Children's Museum to Milennium Park "must be racist" to the latest outrage: The Sun-Times reports today that Cook County Commissioner William Beavers said that "Cook County Board President Todd Stroger can't get his budget passed "because he's black." Huh? It has nothing to do, would it, with the fact that Stroger's monstrous billion dollar budget is irresponsible, huh? No, of course not. All those wicked crackers on the Cook County Board are just a bunch of racists! For Beavers, a clown who earlier this year bragged about the size of his testicles, to say such a thing is shameful. But Beavers himself is black. Of course, that makes him an expert on how honkies think. Right? Well, no, that's wrong. For Beavers to assume that non-black board members are being racist is itself a racist assumption. "Who's gonna control the county -- white or black -- that's all this is," Beavers said. This is ugly. Read more at the Sun-Times....

Rob Nescavil Wants His Mommy

Suppose you were a person who hates the free market. You don't like the idea of people deciding what they like for themselves, and it makes you nervous that those people then seek out what they like and - worst of all - find a provider who gives them what they want. Rob Nescavil is such a person. He does not like the free exchange of ideas. He and some leaders of the "Democratic" Party are pushing to bring back the righteously defeated Fairness Doctrine.

  

That doctrine was not fair, as it imposed the government's standards of "free speech" on the airwaves. In other words, Rob Nescavil and his ilk are pushing for dictatorial control of the media. Oh, but not ALL media. Specifically, these neo-Stalinists want to control what is said on the radio. 

They want to control what you hear, but they market this policy as "balanced" and "fair." "For some reason, partisan conservatives hate the idea of fairness and have been railing for weeks against proposals to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine," Nescavil wrote today. 

Yes, Mr. Nescavil wrote another in his long series of "Fodder for the Useful Idiot" today. His first line, quoted above, is right out of the Paul Joseph Goebbels Big Lies for Dummies handbook. It is precisely the opposite of what is factual. 

In a fashion that is extreme even for the nervous Mr. Nescavil, he resorts to irrelevant name-calling. Even as Al Gore III is being booked for driving 100 mph while in possession of drugs for which he had no prescription, Nescavil uses the now-old-news of Rush Limbaugh's resolved drug problems as a back door through which he thinks he can stage a bum rush on us. He is wrong. Such attacks only make us laugh, for we see his pitiful hypocrisy for what it is: Richly amusing. 

Nescavil wrote today, "Here’s a hint cons, if you can’t win by playing fair then the ideas you promote in order to win are of little value." Apparently, he thinks that calling us "cons" disturbs us, which is silly. 

But really, now: Conservative talk show hosts have won by playing fair. Liberal talk show hosts have not won because the market doesn't want what they're selling. That's the market, that's life. Liberals have every opportunity to sell themselves. Look, if a salesman can't sell a product because very few people want it, should the Government step and demand that his competition step aside, or that customers must buy equal amounts of products from him and his competition? Mr. Nescavil would say yes, that would only be fair! So he wants the Government, his surrogate Mommy, to step in and intervene. 

How amusing, indeed, but I am extremely flattered to be counted with giants such as John Ruberry, Bill Baar and Anne Leary, albeit by the likes of Nescavil! He is a tool of his party, not a free thinker or, worse, he is a free thinker who understands the dishonesty of the propaganda he vomits out in regular, pumping spurts. Nescavil can't even spell "Cosa Nostra" ["north coast," a nickname for the Mafia] correctly (he spelled it as "casa nostra," which would translate to "north house" or "house of the north"). The tone of his piece is so transparently one of panic. It also seems to scream that he KNOWS he is being a hypocrite. For those of us who understand the issue, his piece is an obvious piece of poorly done Stalinistic propaganda. 

What the Democrats (and little men like Rob Nescavil) want is control of the situation. They would like to use the force of government to require a radio station to "balance" its content by giving "equal time" to "opposing viewpoints." Translation: Commercial radio station owners, big and small, would be forced to schedule programming that would be guaranteed to bore the crap out of most listeners, thereby losing audience share and - frankly - wasting everyone's time. Reminder: Air America. How many listened? How many advertised? 

If you can't make it on your own, the Nescavillians believe, get the Government to force others to let you make it. We've seen them administer this philosophy for decades. It should come as no surprise that they still want to do it, or that they want to do it to free speech on radio. 

Imagine conservatives demanding a Fairness Doctrine to tone down the political slant of the majority of television outlets. They haven't. They won't. Oh sure, we love to complain about PBS, but that is not the private sector. That involved taxpayer money. Different realm, not truly relevant to this discussion except as an interesting aside. 

Is conservative talk radio "balanced?" Hell no, it's opinionated. Only a fool would think otherwise. But the last time I checked, the First Amendment guaranteed the right to be opinionated. Was Air America "balanced?" Of course not, and they didn't pretend to be. They were openly liberal, just as any conservative talk show is, well, conservative. Duh. 

Liberals already control what is said on some radio stations, those under the aegis of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), for example. Those are friendly, left-leaning stations for the most part, financed largely by your tax dollars and partly by donations from listeners. They already have most of Hollywood in their corner, most of the major newspapers, and commercial television networks. 

Then there are the commercial radio stations, the ones that sell advertising. People buy advertising on those stations because they know that people like to listen to. People like to listen to them because the stations provide information and entertainment that audiences like in large enough numbers that they can stay on the air without your tax dollars supporting them, or without long boring donation drives. 

It so happens that radio listeners, as a group, favor conservative talk shows. In other words, they are commercially viable and successful in the marketplace. You know - the complete opposite of the liberal Air America. 

Bill Press is a liberal radio talk show host and advocate of the Mommy State. He wrote a piece today as well, or as poorly, in which he unintentionally reveals his - and the Democrats' - desire to force "fairness" upon us [emphasis mine], complete with my interruptions: A new report, released by the Center for American Progress, tells why. In May 2007, listeners were offered 2,550 hours of conservative talk radio on commercial stations, Monday through Friday, but only 315 hours of progressive talk. In other words, for every one hour of liberal talk broadcast, there were eight hours of right-wing propaganda.

Of course, Press would never call the progressive talk "propaganda."

The center further found that almost 90 percent of all talk radio broadcast on stations owned by the five largest ownership groups is conservative. Most of their stations do not offer even one minute of progressive talk on any given weekday. Houston, we've got a problem. But what to do about it?

Gee, this is problematic! Did you know that most Toyota dealers do not offer even one car made by General Motors on any given weekday? Detroit, we've got a problem. But what to do about it? Well, if you're Bill Press or Rob Nescavil, you get the Government to mandate that Toyota dealers do the right thing and give GM products equal play at their car stores. Right? Sure, unless you understand (a) the free market, (b) the real world, (c) how to please your targeted audience, and (d-z) a whole lot of other stuff that any kid operating a lemonade stand would get, but Press and Nescavil don't, won't or just can't.

One answer, proposed by Sen. Dick Durbin [D-IL] and others, is to bring back the Fairness Doctrine - a possibility that makes right-wing commentators absolutely apoplectic. Calling it "an assault on the First Amendment," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich accused Democrats who seek to restore the Fairness Doctrine of wanting to wipe out conservative talk radio. "They want to kill it because every time we have an extended conversation with the American people, liberalism falls apart and its ideas collapse."

See? The Nescavil-Press-Durbin-Marx clique does not like the open market of ideas. Well, they do sometimes, like when it goes their way. Again, that's why they're not complaining about "unfairness" in TV land or Hollywood or newspapers. Only talk radio. Because that's where they are losing.

And here's the REAL bitch for Democrats: Newspaper, television and movies have proven lately to be far less effective at swaying public opinion than has conservative talk radio. This making them crazy. Crazier, I mean.

This is something that some Democrat leaders do not understand or cannot tolerate. They want control, or at least the feeling that they have not lost control.

So they ask for a "level playing field." But their idea of a "level" playing field is one like this: Imagine a level field, and on one end is a team whose players average 6 feet in height. On the other end is the opposing team, and their average height is 5 feet. The Liberals want to place a 5' 6" ceiling over the field. That's what the "Fairness Doctrine" does. It hinders fair play.

When they go up against a rival in competition, and the scoreboard is not in their favor, these "fair-minded" players demand that their Mommy tell the mean old scorekeeper to reset the scoreboard because it's not fair, it's not fair! it's not fair! It's a politically correct scoreboard, in a twisted search for fairness. But it ignores the score, it's not really correct and it is certainly not fair. 

To the politically naive, it must sound odd to hear conservatives rant that the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the majority of the "mainstream press" leans to the Left. But it's true. Democrat leaders know this, and tacitly admit it by not targeting television in their attempt to revive the Fairness Doctrine. Similarly, they acknowledge that the majority of commercial talk radio - and now we're getting into real war zone - leans to the Right. 

They cannot stand this. They are underrepresented in talk radio, and talk radio has proven its mighty reach and influence time and again. But remember why conservative talk radio has a mighty reach: It is a product that millions of people want to hear, or else they would not listen. Were that true of Air America or other leftist attempts at talk radio, the Democrats would not be trying to bring back the unfair Fairness Doctrine.

Life ain't fair. There will always be people who are smarter, prettier, funnier, richer than you or I. Most of us accept this. We don't let it bother us. But the Nescavillians amongst us never got beyond that point in their lives, about 8 years old for most of us, when you run to Mommy crying that it's not fair! it's not fair! What isn't fair is getting Mommy to intervene in your fight.

Democrats Retreat on Pullout

"Democrats Relent On Pullout Timetable," says the headline today at the Washington Post.

Democrats gave up their demand for troop-withdrawal deadlines in an Iraq war spending package yesterday, abandoning their top goal of bringing U.S. troops home and handing President Bush a victory in a debate that has roiled Congress for months.... House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was so disappointed with the outcome that she said she might vote against the Iraq portion of the package, which will be split into two parts when it comes before the House. "I'm not likely to vote for something that doesn't have a timetable," she said. FULL ARTICLE...

Couple this with the words of former Democrat Senator Bob Kerreyand it was not a happy day for the Dems. God Bless America!

Leftists Hate Democratic Process in France

First, the Socialist candidate for president of France (Ms. Royal) threatens rioting if she is not elected. Now that she lost, Lefties are rioting and burning in France. Ah, nothing like a little mayhem and destruction to show how much you love the democratic process, non? PARIS (AP) - The leader of France's defeated Socialists appealed for calm Tuesday after a second night of postelection violence left cars burned and store windows smashed. Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative who beat Socialist Segolene Royal in a runoff Sunday, is a divisive figure whose tough language and crackdowns on crime and immigration have angered many on the left - and in the immigrant-heavy suburban housing projects that erupted in riots in 2005. Some 730 cars were burned nationwide Sunday night and 592 people arrested, police said. FULL STORY... One police officer was slightly injured and eight cars and two scooters were torched, according to the Paris police headquarters. Police officials said the perpetrators appeared to be anarchists and far leftists. In Nantes in western France, hundreds gathered again Monday night, with a few dozen hurling beer bottles and other projectiles at police cordons, police said. Police responded with tear gas and arrested several people. Public buildings were also damaged. Minor incidents were also reported in Toulouse in southern France. "To all those who can hear me, I ask them to immediately stop all this behavior," Socialist Party chief Francois Hollande said Tuesday on RTL radio. FULL STORY...