Category Archives: Progressivism

Repost: Teddy Roosevelt’s Legacy

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All too many today appear to think the left’s attacks on our Constitution and federal republic form of government is recent, something that started with Johnson’s “Great Society” or even earlier with FDR’s “New Deal.” Both answers are wrong. There was nothing great about Johnson’s welfare state society nor with FDR’s attempt to impose a leftist dictatorship by packing the Supreme Court. No, it started much earlier, decades earlier with Teddy Roosevelt and his progressive movement in the first two decades of the 20th Century.

Here is a repost of an article I wrote a few years ago before the ‘Pub 2012 convention in Tampa. Many conservatives denounce the 16th Amendment’s imposition of the income tax. Few give thought to the implication of the passage of the 17th Amendment.

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The Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell made my daily task easy today. It’s a short history lesson on Progressivism. 

If you ask a sampling of High School graduates, or even some college graduations today, the question, “When did the election of US Senators start?” many would give you a blank look assuming that the direct election of Senators was in the original Constitution.  They’d be wrong of course. It started with the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution and Teddy Roosevelt was one of several who helped pass it.

The 17th Amendment to the US Constitution was passed by Congress on May 13, 1912 and was ratified on April 8, 1913. It replaced the appointment of US Senators by the state legislatures with a provision for the direct election of senators.

Text of the 17th Amendment

Section 1.
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

Section 2.
When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of each State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.

Section 3.
This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.

The push for this constitutional change started in the first decade of the 20th century.  Supposedly, it was to “enhance” democracy.  In reality, it was another step to grow and strengthen the central government at the expense of the States.  The checks and balances in the original constitution balanced power between the States and the Federal government. The original design of our government was almost that of a confederation with power sharing between the states and the central government. The aftermath of the Civil War began the process that upset that balance. The early 20th Century Progressive movement further upset that balance.

Wiki has a reasonably balanced writeup on the 17th Amendment and the history that led to its adoption. Teddy Roosevelt was also involved along with William Jennings Bryan. Roosevelt, along with Taft and Wilson were the three Progressive Presidents between 1901 and 1920 that brought us the 16th and 17th Amendments that has directly led us to our current fiscal crises.

Now we get to today’s Morning Bell from the Heritage Foundation.

Political Convention Drama Begins

This week’s Republican National Convention is already experiencing its own drama thanks to Tropical Storm Isaac, which has postponed most of the events until tomorrow. But this year marks the 100th anniversary of another Republican Convention embroiled in political drama of a different nature.

Unlike today’s conventions, which are little more than multi-day campaign rallies, at the 1912 affair in Chicago, 1,000 policemen stood by to make sure the delegates didn’t get out of hand. Strands of barbed wire lay concealed beneath the bunting on the speaker’s platform to keep disgruntled delegates from charging the stage.

The very nature of our Constitution and our democracy was at stake, as William Schambra explains in a new First Principles essay from The Heritage Foundation.

On one side was Teddy Roosevelt, who ran for President that year aiming to reshape American democracy. He thrashed lackluster incumbent William Howard Taft in the primary contests, declaring, “I believe in pure democracy.”

But his definition of “pure democracy” included upsetting the Constitution. He endorsed “certain governmental devices which will make the representatives of the people more easily and certainly responsible to the people’s will.” These reforms included the initiative, the referendum, the recall of elected officials and even judicial decisions, and the direct election of U.S. Senators.

On the other side were Taft (Roosevelt’s hand-picked successor in the White House just four years earlier) and the Republican leadership, including Senators Elihu Root of New York and Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. They stood for the Constitution. Root and Lodge were great admirers and longtime friends of Roosevelt, but Roosevelt had sent shock waves through the Republican Party. Roosevelt had proposed a dramatic constitutional change that, according to Schambra, “posed the danger of undermining popular confidence in the institutions of government.” Therefore, Root, Lodge, and Taft were determined to deny Roosevelt the nomination at the 1912 Republican convention.

Unlike the typically bland convention keynote speeches designed to smooth feathers ruffled by the nominating contest and unite the party for the main event in November, Root’s keynote was a call to constitutional conservatism.

As Schambra notes, Root grounded the Republican Party in the Constitution, since it had been “born in protest against the extension of a system of human slavery approved and maintained by majorities.” After all, the GOP was the party of Abraham Lincoln, who had declared in his first inaugural address that “a majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations…is the only true sovereign of a free people.” The party’s duty, therefore, was not to reform the constitutional system but to “humbly and reverently seek for strength and wisdom to abide by the principles of the Constitution against the days of our temptation and weakness.”

Preventing Roosevelt from winning the Republican nomination, these first conservatives saved the party from a platform of radical constitutional reform. But it also meant losing the general election. Taft won only two states, and Democrat Woodrow Wilson became President, with Roosevelt coming in second.

“The result of the Convention was more important than the question of the election,” Root later said. Losing the general election did not supplant their “duty to hold the Republican Party firmly to the support of our constitutional system. Worse things can happen to a party than to be defeated.”

Root, Lodge, and Taft sacrificed their friendship with Roosevelt and victory in the general election to save the Constitution from a proposed overhaul. Constitutional conservatism began with saving the Republican Party from Teddy Roosevelt. It continues today with the fight to save America from a deeper descent into progressivism. Members of the Tea Party movement are the intellectual heirs of Root, Lodge, and Taft.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that “it is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor.” In a new essay in Heritage’s Understanding America series, President Edwin J. Feulner explores the ways the American people are bound to preserve our republic.

It is up to us to ensure that we remain a virtuous and free people, Feulner writes, and to make sure our government stays faithful to the principles on which it was founded.

“This is partly a job for the free press and the ballot box,” Feulner writes, “but we will not be able to speak and vote in support of America’s founding principles if we forget what those principles are.”

As we watch the political party conventions, we have a duty to educate ourselves on the constitutional role of government and to compare that with what the candidates are saying. As Feulner says, “we have always an obligation to pass the inheritance of freedom on, unimpaired, to the next generation.”

While the ‘Pubs in Tampa wait out the passing of Hurricane Isaac, contemplate what changes to our government has been inflicted on us by Progressivism and how we might reverse or mediate those impacts.

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Friday Follies for May 29, 2015

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This story could correctly be entitled, “Cycles.” For most of the 20th Century and the first decade and a half of the 21st, we’ve watched this cycle occur in our foreign and defense policies. It began with Wilson, continued with FDR, Carter, Clinton and now Obama. Each iteration of liberal polices led to disaster. It always seem to require a conservative administration to put our house back in order…until the next liberal administration betrays us once again.

Disavowing the appeal of the appeaser

The next president will be forced to face down tyrants whom Obama ignored

By Victor Davis Hanson – – Wednesday, May 27, 2015

For a time, reset, concessions and appeasement work to delay wars. But finally, nations wake up, grasp their blunders, rearm and face down enemies.

That gets dangerous. The shocked aggressors cannot quite believe that their targets are suddenly serious and willing to punch back. Usually, the bullies foolishly press aggression, and war breaks out.

It was insane of Nazi Germany and its Axis partners to even imagine that they could defeat the Allied trio of Imperial Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States.

But why not try?

Hitler figured that for a decade America had been unarmed and isolationist. Britain repeatedly had appeased the Third Reich. The Soviets initially collaborated with Hitler.

Hitler met no opposition after militarizing the Rhineland. He annexed Austria with impunity. He gobbled up Czechoslovakia without opposition.

Why shouldn’t Hitler have been stunned in 1939 when exasperated Britain and France finally declared war over his invasion of distant Poland?

Six years of war and some 60 million dead followed, re-establishing what should have been the obvious fact that democracies would not quite commit suicide.

By 1979, the Jimmy Carter administration had drastically cut the defense budget. President Carter promised that he would make human rights govern American foreign policy. It sounded great to Americans after Vietnam — and even greater to America’s enemies.

Then Iran imploded. The American embassy in Tehran was stormed. Diplomats were taken hostage. Radical Islamic terrorism spread throughout the Middle East. Communist insurrection followed throughout Central America. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. China went into Vietnam.

Dictators such as the Soviet Union’s Leonid Brezhnev and Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini assumed that Mr. Carter no longer was willing to protect the U.S. postwar order. Or perhaps they figured that the inexperienced American president was too weak to respond even had he wished to do so.

Then, Ronald Reagan defeated Mr. Carter in 1980 on the promise of restoring U.S. power. At first, both America’s friends and enemies were aghast at Reagan’s simplistic worldview that free markets were better than communism, that democracy was superior to dictatorship, and that in the ensuing struggle, the West would win and the rest would lose.

Foreign media damned Reagan as a warmonger for beefing up the U.S. defense budget, reassuring America’s allies and going after terrorists with military force.

The column continues onto a second page with Hanson’s analysis of Obama. The pattern is well established. Liberal, i.e., democrat administrations, weaken the nation, creates choas within our military with massive cuts and misappropriation of funds, thus allowing our enemies to become emboldened. The problems resist until a conservative administration is elected to fix the problems the liberals have created.

The column ends with this final statement:

The Obama foreign policy cannot continue much longer without provoking even more chaos or a large war. Yet correcting it will be nearly as dangerous.

Jumping off the global tiger is dangerous, but climbing back on will seem riskier.

Now you know why I said this section could rightfully be titled, “Cycles.”

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Here is an item where the ACLU and Missouri conservatives agree. The use of ‘StingRay’ technology should be banned within the state. The St Louis Post Dispatch published this editorial on Wednesday.

Editorial: Secret use of StingRay technology could backfire on St. Louis police

May 27, 2015 4:07 pm  •  By the Editorial Board

http://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/stltoday.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/e/1e/e1e8581f-afef-5885-bf81-13720cd549d9/55319997d8573.image.png?resize=620%2C368

Last summer, as the American Civil Liberties Union was standing side-by-side with Missouri Republicans supporting the passage of a constitutional amendment that sought to protect “electronic communication and data” from unreasonable search and seizure, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department was sitting on a secret.

In cooperation with the FBI, the St. Louis police had been using a cellphone tracking device known generically by the brand name of one such device: StingRay. The high-tech gadgets allow police to mimic a cell tower. They screen and track nearby digital data, determining the specific location in a building, for instance, of the cell phone they are tracking.

Last month, as first reported by the Post-Dispatch’s Robert Patrick, prosecutors dropped more than a dozen charges against three defendants in a case where the technology was employed. Defense attorneys believe the charges were dropped because police don’t want to reveal details about their new high-tech toy.

But in Missouri, there may be a bigger problem. It has to do with that constitutional amendment that the strange bedfellows of the ACLU and Missouri Republicans were promoting.

A plain reading of the language of Amendment 9, passed by 75 percent of the voters who turned out on Aug. 5, suggests that it is now unconstitutional in Missouri to use a StingRay device — at least without a warrant that offers significantly more detail about the data being sought.

The column continues at the website. As the editorial admits, the Post-Dispatch opposed the passage of Amendment 9 last year. They are reconsidering that opposition now that it appears the St Louis Police Department is actually using StingRay technology in defiance to Federal, and now, Missouri law.

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Petty Tyrannies

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One of the legislative bills that passed this session and is sitting on Jay Nixon’s desk, is a bill that would place a cap on the amount of revenue a city can collect from traffic fines. This has been a problem with some municipalities for decades, Ferguson, MO, being one.

Some cities anticipate Nixon’s signature. They have chosen a different path to collect revenues from their citizens. Instead of issuing a high number of traffic tickets, they issue tickets for a plenitude of other reasons…like allowing your grass to get too high, allowing toys to be scattered across your lawn, having a BBQ pit that doesn’t comply with city codes or is visible from the front of your house. In some cases, allowing your children to play outside the house unsupervised will lead to a yellow ticket on your front door.

Municipalities ticket for trees and toys, as traffic revenue declines

May 24, 2015 12:15 pm  •  By Jennifer S. Mann

A ticket written by the city of Pagedale dated May 1, 2015 is pasted on the front door of home in the 1500 block of Engelholm Avenue on Thursday, May 21, 2015. The ticket cites the property for having high grass and gives the property owner one day to get it cut. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com

PAGEDALE • Drive through this working-class suburb filled with 1950s cottages and you will see many edged and weeded lawns. You’ll also notice orange sticky notes on the doors — at least one or two per street in many parts of town.

They are warnings the city gives to residents who violate local ordinances. And in this community of 3,304 residents, the list of what earns a ticket and fine is long.

Among the things that will be “closely monitored” through the spring and summer, according to a newsletter that recently went out to residents:

Pants worn too low or grass grown too high. Children riding bikes without helmets. Barbecue pits or toys in front yards. Basketball hoops in the streets.

There’s no loitering — described in city code as “the concept of spending time idly” or “the colloquial expression ‘hanging around.’” And, despite a citywide 20 mph speed limit, there’s no playing or walking in the street.

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Pagedale handed out 2,255 citations for these types of offenses last year — or nearly two per household. That’s a nearly 500 percent increase from five years ago, according to an analysis of state court data by the Post-Dispatch.

And yet none of the fines and fees from these offenses count under the Macks Creek Law. The law is the state’s one tool for keeping cash-hungry municipalities from relying too much on court fines for revenue.

But it has a major blind spot: Its revenue limits apply only to traffic cases.

Cities and villages have no restrictions on raising revenue from other types of tickets.

In Pagedale, 40 percent of last year’s citations were from nontraffic matters, according to the newspaper’s analysis. More than half of tickets in Ferguson and four other communities were for nontraffic violations.

You can read the entire column on the Post-Dispatch’s website.

Not all of the petty tyrants live on the eastern side of the state. Sly James, Mayor of Kansas City, pushed a ban on open carry knowing full well the legislature would pass a measure allowing open carry in Missouri. One exception that Sly James and other petty tyrants in Missouri lobbied for and succeeded, was that only licensed CCW carriers could carry openly in cities and counties that had ordinances against it. Mayor James rammed his ordinance through the Kansas City Council before passage of the Open Carry bill for nothing more than pure spite.

Missouri’s pre-emption of these petty tyrannies is a continuing thorn in the side of liberals and statists across the state. The Columbia Daily Tribune, a well know democrat house organ, bemoaned the loss of ‘local control’, the pre-emption of the state over local ordinances that run contrary to state law.

Locus of control

Overruling local prerogatives

By Henry J. Waters III, Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 12:00 am

By nature, when cities pass laws in conflict with the general statewide status quo, local rules are more progressive. Of late, state legislatures politically dominated by conservatives have passed laws prohibiting actions by cities disapproved of by business interests.

In Missouri the General Assembly passed a law prohibiting city laws banning the use of single-use plastic bags at grocery stores and requiring businesses to pay employee sick leave, vacation or health disability and retirement benefits. Missouri has become one of 15 states that ban local minimum wages. Oil-rich states ban local restrictions on drilling. Farming states ban local restrictions on types of seeds used to grow crops.

Other states won’t allow cities to ban sugary drinks, toys in fast-food meals or to enact gun restrictions. Utah forbids city laws requiring businesses to serve bicyclists in drive-through lanes.

One might wonder why conservative state politicians would contradict their movement’s antipathy toward centralized control, but when conservatives live at the state level, they hold the reins. The U.S. Constitution says powers not specifically given to the federal government reside in the states, and cities are creatures of the state. Sen. Kurt Schaefer, running for Missouri attorney general, said city councils and mayors “don’t have some kind of organic legal authority to do whatever they want. It would be absolute bedlam what some of these communities would do to their citizens if they had that ability.”

Schaefer is right about constitutional law, but he might misread the sentiment regarding local citizen prerogatives. What if local citizens here and there would like to deviate from state dictum — by paying a higher minimum wage, for instance? Or banning plastic bags? Or … ? Schaefer & Co. justify their override in the name of statewide consistency, a powerful argument in some cases but not others. At the moment, state assumption of control is done mainly at the behest of influential business interests that don’t like certain city laws. They like their kind of uniformity.

Often state law should supersede, and with standards set by state legislatures. It makes sense for the state to have uniform gun ownership laws, for instance. In most of the other categories usurped by state lawmakers, a more open-minded debate at the local level would be reasonable – from the standpoint of political science, that is.

Apparently, Mr. Waters is fully satisfied with more regulation, more ordinances, more impositions on life and liberty, more nanny state oversight. Fortunately for the rest of us, we have conservatives in Jeff City who work to protect us from petty tyrants like Henry J. Watters, III and Sly James. If allowed, these two tyrants would no longer just be petty. No, they’d would grab and much power as they could. Petty, they would be not.

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Bits ‘n Pieces

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Missouri Secretary of State, Jason Kander

Jason Kander, our democrat Missouri Secretary of State and scion of the Kansas City democrat political machine, has announced he will run against Senator Roy Blunt in 2016. Kander received the endorsement of the entire Missouri democrat team as well as from the KC ‘Red’ Star. Surprise, surprise!

Attorney General Chris Koster, who is readying to join Kander on the statewide slate in his own run for governor: “Every day, Jason Kander uses the lessons he learned serving in the Army in Afghanistan to do what’s right for Missouri. He doesn’t care who gets credit for an idea, he just wants to get the job done for our state. We need that approach in Washington, which is why I am supporting Jason Kander for United States Senate.” — PoliticMO Newsletter, February 19, 2015.

So it will be Turncoat Koster running for Governor teaming with Kander running for Senator. All in all, Kander has a better rep than Koster. Still you have to wonder, in this ‘race of the Double-Ks’ who is helping whom?

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An idea whose time has come? Missouri already has a Voter-ID law on the books. There are a number of acceptable forms of ID listed on the Missouri Secretary of State’s website.

ACCEPTABLE FORMS OF VOTER ID:
  • Identification issued by the state of Missouri, an agency of the state, or a local election authority of the state
  • Identification issued by the United States government or agency thereof
  • Identification issued by an institution of higher education, including a university, college, vocational and technical school, located within the state of Missouri
  • A copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, paycheck, government check or other government document that contains the name and address of the voter
  • Driver’s license or state identification card issued by another state

If you do not possess any of these forms of identification, you may still cast a ballot if two supervising election judges, one from each major political party, attest they know you. – http://www.sos.mo.gov/elections/govotemissouri/howtovote.aspx

This new effort will add a Constitutional Amendment to give more teeth to the existing law which has a number of exceptions that still allow people to vote without proper ID. The existing law is a good first step, but, reviewing the documented acts of vote fraud in St. Louis and Kansas City, it isn’t enough.

Missouri House endorses voter photo ID requirements

By MARIE FRENCH, Associated Press, Feb 18, 6:21 PM EST

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri House is once again pushing forward with a Republican priority to require photo identification at the polls, after similar measures were stymied by the Senate or courts in recent years.

The House gave initial approval Wednesday to a proposed constitutional amendment that would go before voters in 2016 and also endorsed a bill that would institute the voter photo ID requirements if the constitutional amendment is approved.

Both measures need a second House vote and also would also have to pass the Senate, where Democrats have previously blocked the proposed photo ID requirements.

Supporters say the requirement is needed to ensure the integrity of the election process. Rep. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, said the measure would protect individuals’ voting rights by making sure someone does not try to vote for another person.

“It ensures that someone did not take their vote and steal what is rightfully their vote,” Brattin said.

If you read the full article at the website, you will see, as usual, democrats, abetted by MO Secretary of State Jason Kander, protesting the measure because it would make their continuing vote fraud schemes more difficult.

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Have you heard the term, Social Justice Warrior? It’s all the vogue on university campus across the country and in other segments of society (see my post concerning the SFWA and the Hugo Awards.) Social Justice Warriors have become the progressives’ front-line troops in their battle against free speech and expression.

Social Justice Warriors Come to Campus

By Robert Weissberg, February 19, 2015

Since the late 1960s, radical students have periodically taken over the university president’s offices to propose a laundry list of “non-negotiable” demands. Early takeovers tended to be about their school’s cooperation with the military during war in Vietnam; today, however, “social justice” is the aim so let’s call these office occupiers Social Justice Warriors or SJW’s.

Back in February 2014 a group of 30 Dartmouth students commandeered the president’s office to  announce a “Freedom Budget”:70 specific calls for greater diversity, eliminating sexism and heterosexism, an improved campus climate for minorities and gays, banning the term “illegal immigrant,” offering a class on undocumented workers in America, creating a professor of color lecture series, and harsher penalties for sexual assault, among many, many others.

More recently, Clemson University SJW’s demanded that the school provide a “safe” multicultural center for students from “under-represented” groups, employing more administrators and faculty of color, a more diverse student body, mandatory sensitivity training for faculty and administrators, and increased funding for students organization catering to under-represented groups.

Then there are the University of Minnesota students who seized the President’s office to demand a bigger budget for the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies Department, removing all racial descriptions from university police reports, offering gender-neutral bathrooms at all college facilities and, of course, recruiting more faculty and students of color.

Fortunately, this is the U.S., where such political histrionics are greeted with mild amusement. Ironically, school officials typically welcome “meaningful political dialogue and change,” the need for “hard work” to achieve progress and then conclude by thanking the Social Justice Warriors for their assistance in moving forward. Though police may remove protestors, criminal charges, let alone violations of campus rules, are rarely pursued and the moral buzz for these SJW’s may last weeks. In fact, I suspect some warriors honestly believe that their achievement will burnish their resume when applying to a second-tier MBA program. Imagine if these SJW’s tried this in Russia or China?

Such incidents are easy to pooh-pooh as the politically-correct version of Animal House. But that said, they nevertheless offer important insights into today’s college activist’s thinking and why university administrators tolerate the foolishness.    

Most evidently, the Social Justice Warriors totally disregard the costs associated with their self-righteous crusades. Everything is single-ledger accounting. Will the tooth fairy fund Dartmouth’s proposed $3.6 million dollar Triangle House, the “safe haven” for LGBT? Yes, high-school dropouts may believe that government benefits are “free,” but youngsters admitted to top colleges? No wonder the U.S. sinks deeper and deeper into indebtedness — even among the smart, costs are invisible. Picture a Warrior taking Econ 101 and hearing for the first time that there is no such thing as a free lunch. What a shock!

The shallowness of these demands is breathtaking and suggests that these activists are just winging it. The Dartmouth students are surely among America’s brainiest but why do they denounce “ableism”? Are they suggesting that acknowledging variations in ability is morally wrong and if differences are to be abolished (hopeless anyhow), how would society function? Why must the campus offer gender-neutral bathrooms? Keep in mind that in a few decades such folk may be among our national leaders.

Particularly troublesome is how these presumptuous, self-centered warriors think that if they think something is good, it must be good, so case settled. For example, they glibly assume that academically challenged black and Chicano youngsters really benefit by attending schools that would never admit them in a merit-based admission process.  Have these young do-gooders considered the downside of this generosity — schools will fake the numbers by creating easy-to-pass courses in dubious ethnic-studies departments, steering them to easy grading instructors or just tolerating rampant grade inflation. Or, more important, that these in-over-their-head youngsters may be better off in community college acquiring well-paying skills like welding?

Closer to home, have these SJW’s calculated the link between achieving their vision of “social justice” and tuition? Attracting minority students, addressing their academic deficiencies, creating a nurturing environment and all the rest costs money, and this will inevitably push soaring tuition even higher and, since there is no Santa Claus, a college education will be yet further beyond the reach of many poorer students while saddling graduates with yet more debt. In effect, these idealistic protestors are demanding a tax on those who are not members of their version of “under-represented.” Imagine if these SJW’s had to hold jobs to pay their own tuition?

Do these Social Justice Warriors realize that their demands will require administrators to break the law to achieve this multicultural Utopia? That is, under today’s judicial guidelines it is almost impossible to admit students solely on the basis of race or ethnicity. California, Michigan, and Washington (among others) have state laws explicitly banning racial preferences.

Why do schools tolerate such idiocy, including ignoring violations of campus policy? The answer is that no matter how imprudent the demands, they help drive the university’s bureaucratic expansion, and in today’s campus life, size matters. A symbiotic relationship exists between the children’s crusades and yet more bureaucratic bloat. Universities are not the profit-driven private sector. Absolutely everything, everything in every one of these SJW catalogues entails spending more university money, hiring more personnel, and creating yet more rules and regulations and the apparatchiki to monitor and enforce them.

It is a long article and I urge you to follow this link to the website and read the entire piece. It may be an education for you; make you aware of another insidious attacks against our liberty by ‘progressives.’ Joe Stalin and Adolf would be proud of them.

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Wow! What a weekend.

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I had a real busy weekend. I had a real busy week. My shootin’ buddy and I spent Thursday at the range practicing for a pistol match coming up next month. Saturday night was a Friends of the NRA dinner and auction in H’ville. Then Sunday afternoon was the Western Missouri Shooters Alliance 25th Anniversary picnic.

I’m pretty much whooped.  Still…I’d do it again in a second.

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The Kansas Senatorial race continues to be in the front of the news. I’ve had some friends ask me what the controversy is all about. It’s this, as briefly as I can explain.

There are (were) three candidates running for US Senator; Pat Roberts, the incumbent on the Republican Ticket, Chad Taylor on the democrat ticket, and Greg Orman, a democrat who the democrats wouldn’t let run against Taylor in the primary. Orman decided to run as an ‘independent.’ In reality, it’s two democrats running against one ‘Pub. Ordinarily, this would be a shoo-in for Roberts because Orman would split the democrat votes with Taylor.

Suddenly, the environment changed. Polls indicated that Orman was running better against Roberts than Taylor. To the democrats, this meant one of their candidates was a possible winner, especially since Roberts pissed off much of the grass-roots conservatives who had backed Milton Wolf. A significant percentage of those Wolf supporters declared they would either vote for Orman or stay home.

The democrats were now in a dilemma. Orman, a democrat in an independent’s costume, was ahead of Taylor. They decided to have Taylor quit. That would allow the democrats to vote for Orman instead of splitting their votes between the two democrat candidates.

The Kansas democrat leaders forced Chad Taylor to quit.

After a series of legal shenanigans, with the aid of their left-leaning KS Supreme Court, they got Taylor off the ticket. Bad news for Roberts. But Orman isn’t the clean-cut, scandal-free candidate the democrats and he projects. He is being sued for failure to pay royalties to another company for the use of their patented technology.

The establishment ‘Pubs are rallying around Roberts and Orman is facing more scrutiny from the national press. Surprise, surprise! Orman is keeping closed-mouth about what his political views?

Greg Orman, a political enigma, faces growing scrutiny in Kansas Senate race

By Philip Rucker September 28 at 8:53 PM

WICHITA — Greg Orman, the upstart Senate candidate threatening to unseat longtime Republican incumbent Pat Roberts in Kansas, says it’s liberating to run as an independent: “I can go to Washington as a problem solver, not a partisan.”

But not having a party also liberates Orman from taking positions — especially on controversial issues that might alienate partisans.

Greenlight the Keystone XL pipeline? Orman said he doesn’t have enough information to say yes or no.

What about gun control? He said gun restrictions should be “strengthened” but would not specify whether he backs an assault-weapons ban.

And on the biggest question of all — Would he caucus with Democrats or Republicans? — Orman insists he’s not sure.

Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, left, and independent candidate Greg Orman talk after a debate at the Kansas State Fair Saturday, Sept. 6, 2014, in Hutchinson, Kansas. (Charlie Riedel/AP)

“It’s not in the best interests for us to say that,” Orman said in an interview here last week.

Orman has said he would caucus with whichever party has the majority after November’s midterm elections. But what if the Senate is evenly divided and Orman’s decision swings the balance? He said that would be “a wonderful opportunity for Kansas.”

Orman’s rise has transformed deep-red Kansas into the year’s unlikeliest political battleground. Many voters say Roberts has lost touch with the state he’s represented in Congress since 1981.

Since Democratic nominee Chad Taylor withdrew his name from the ballot this month, Roberts has been in a two-man race with Orman, who has previous ties to the Democratic Party but preaches independence. Public polling has been unreliable, but both sides believe the race is very tight.

Orman, who entered the race in June, has surged on the strength of his pitch to fix a broken Washington without any allegiance to a political party. But now the enigma is under increasing pressure from voters to provide a clearer sense of his ideology and politics, while facing attacks from the Roberts camp over his business ties and Democratic past.

“I’ve been impressed with Greg so far, but we’re still in the ‘I’m an independent’ stage,” said Lynda Neff, 68, a retired teacher. “I’m ready to move past that and hear about some issues. . . . I will support him if he gives me a little more information.”

Perhaps the biggest test for Orman, a multi­millionaire investor who is partially funding his campaign, is surviving the intensifying public scrutiny of his business and personal relationships with Rajat Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs board member who was convicted in 2012 of insider trading and is serving a federal prison sentence.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dre/politics/election-lab-2014

Election Lab: See our current forecast for every congressional race in 2014.

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Roberts and his Republican allies have launched a barrage of attacks designed to make Orman appear untrustworthy. On the campaign trail in Kansas last week, a parade of top Republicans alleged that Orman is a liberal Democrat in disguise.

“Anybody with a liberal record like Greg’s . . . that’s not independence. That’s someone who’s trying to snooker you, Kansas,” Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential nominee, said Thursday in Independence.

Palin’s 2008 running mate, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), told voters a day earlier in suburban Overland Park: “Let’s be honest — he’s a Democrat. He walks like a duck and he quacks like a duck and he is a duck.”

Robert J. Dole, a former Senate Republican leader and 91-year-old Kansas legend, said Monday night in Dodge City, “There’s a multimillionaire who claims he’s an independent, but really [he’s] in the other party.”

In Kinsley on Tuesday, after reporters asked whether he trusted Orman to govern as an independent, Roberts said, “All of a sudden, if there’s a metamorphosis and the caterpillar changed — why, I just don’t think that’s in the cards.”

Orman argues that the Republicans are reading him wrong. He said he voted for Obama in 2008, and public records show that in the middle of that decade he made donations mostly to Democrats, including Obama and Sen. Al ­Franken (Minn.). In 2008, he briefly ran for Senate against Roberts as a Democrat before dropping out.

The column by the Washington Post is long. You can read it completely on their website.

I was surprised that the Washington Post says the new Senate will be ‘Pub controlled, 62 to 48 given their history of biased reporting. Joni Ernst now leads Braley, 44 percent to 38 percent. Most of the polling over the last month or more has Ernst in the lead but the MSM claimed otherwise and called Iowa a ‘leaning blue’ state.

Des Moines Register: “The ground under Bruce Braley has shifted. The Democratic U.S. Senate candidate is 6 points behind his GOP rival, Joni Ernst, according to The Des Moines Register’s new Iowa Poll of likely voters. Ernst leads 44 percent to 38 percent in a race that has for months been considered deadlocked…. One potential reason: Two-thirds of likely voters who live in the country are bothered by a remark he made about Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley that’s been perceived as besmirching farmers.”

Braley should have known that dissing farmers in Iowa is not a career-enhancing tactic.

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Property: What do we own?

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I read an interesting article today in The American Thinker. It asks a question, “Do we own ourselves?” Now, many people would consider this a rhetorical question. “Of course we ourselves,” they’d say. It’s obvious.

Personally, I agree with them. But not all do. Statists, as Mark Levin and others like to call them, don’t—and they have historical examples to prove their point. The examples they use, people as subjects (UK), as citizens (FR), as serfs (RU), as peons (MX/SP), are examples that drove us and our forefathers, to create this nation, the United States.

Those who would agree with me—those who believe we own ourselves, have historical examples, historical heritages to support our views as well. We have our Judeo-Christian heritage. The Bible and the Talmud document Man’s relationship with God—a personal relationship, not a collective one. If we concede ownership of ourselves to anyone, it is to God, not a secular state.

Timothy Birdnow, writing in The American Thinker, has an article in the most recent issue that demonstrates the divergence of views on people as property. Too many believe the Civil War and the 13th Amendment, Article I, ended slavery. That Amendment may have ended “legal” slavery, but not the philosophy nor the concept of people as property supported by centuries of European thought and writings from Rousseau to Marx to Benito Mussolini, to more modern writers of the Progressive movement.

The Individual as Property

By Timothy Birdnow, May 1, 2013

…

What is the nature of the relationship between the citizen and the State? America was founded on principles found in the Bible and in the writings of 17th century philosophers such as John Locke.

John Locke pointed out in his First Treatise on Government:

Though the Earth… be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself.

So, all men have first and foremost the right to own themselves.

This is of critical importance because it is this most fundamental principle that the modern Left and Right part company over. Liberals do not believe this basic assertion, preferring to believe that we as a collective own each other. This distinction is absolutely critical, because it informs our beliefs in terms of actions.

The English Philosophers Hobbes and Hume argued that property was a creation of the State, and were not held in high regard by the Founders of the United States. If property is a creation of the State, then one can argue that the State has sovereignty over the individual.

…

As in communism and fascism, the entire undercurrent of modern liberalism is anti-individualism. Even the Anarchists, though they may seem to be radical individualists, ultimately seek the collectivization of property as a means to grant themselves the individualism they seem to believe in — making them as statist as any other leftist branch. Without property rights one cannot have individual rights.

It is no surprise that the general degradation of property rights should coincide with the rise of statism and the devaluing of the individual. Either we own property — including ourselves – or we do not.

Rousseau, Marx, Mussolini all disdained the concept of personal ownership or personal sovereignty. To them and modern progressives, the individual must be subordinate to the state. 

This is the concept that allows Mayor Bloomberg to issue his edicts to govern our personal lives, what we eat, how much, what we do, and may or may not own. Bloomberg believes he can issue those orders because the “citizens” of New York City are property of the state, in this case New York City. The City (State), therefore, can impose its collective will on their property, the residents of the city.

A more recent example was the Siege of Boston and pillaging of personal rights from the residents of Watertown. In their search for the Marathon Bombers, the State, ignored the 1st and 4th Amendment rights of the residents of Watertown because as property of the state, those residents had no rights not allowed by the state. History shows us that what the state has given, the state can take away. View those photos of people being rousted from their homes at gunpoint, look at them being forced from their homes, hands raised, helpless before armed troops.

Do we own ourselves or do we not? The progressives say no. That is why they wish to disarm us. An armed populace has the ability to resist the state’s effort to make us their property.

I invite you to read Birdnow’s article. It does invoke thought.

Monday Moments

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Phhhbt! to Algore and his Globull Worming fraud. There are two articles in the news today that oppose the global warming acolytes. First item is that this Spring has been the coldest on record since 1975—well before the start of the so-called warming, and, coincidentally, both periods were at the bottom of the 11-year sun spot cycle.

The second item appeared in reports from Russian researchers monitoring Arctic sea ice. Instead of growing thinner as claimed by global warming frauds, it isn’t.

“Journalists say the entire process is very simple: once solar activity declines, the temperature drops. But besides solar activity, the climate is influenced by other factors, including the lithosphere, the atmosphere, the ocean, the glaciers. The share of solar activity in climate change is only 20%. This means that sun’s activity could trigger certain changes whereas the actual climate changing process takes place on the Earth”.

Solar activity follows different cycles, including an 11-year cycle, a 90-year cycle and a 200-year cycle. Yuri Nagovitsyn comments.

“Evidently, solar activity is on the decrease. The 11-year cycle doesn’t bring about considerable climate change – only 1-2%. The impact of the 200-year cycle is greater – up to 50%. In this respect, we could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years. The period of low solar activity could start in 2030-2040 but it won’t be as pervasive as in the late 17th century”. — The Global Warming Policy Foundation.

It appears that the solar cycles have more to do with the earth’s temperature than any man-made activity.  The 11-year cycle is well known. It directly affects radio/TV transmissions. At its peak, broadcast TV stations have far greater range than usual. Amateur radio operators know these cycles well. The troughs, however, when sun spot activity is low, TV/radio transmissions have much less range—and the weather is often much cooler as well.

What is coming, is multiple cycles bottoming, the 11-year cycle, the 90-year cycle and the 200-year cycle, at the same time. When the convergence of those cycles happened last, about 400 years ago, the period was known as the Little Ice Age.

Hey, Algore! Real science will always beat pseudo-science. You can only fool libs all the time.

***

Another item in the news today is now many Americans now fear or mistrust their government. Fox News published a poll recently that surprised many. To some, the poll was a confirmation of viewpoints wide spread across the country but never reported by the media. While this is reported on the WND website, the data is from FOX.

Americans fear government more than terror

Astonishing poll results for 1st time since 9/11 hijackings

According to a pair of recent polls, for the first time since the 9/11 terrorist hijackings, Americans are more fearful their government will abuse constitutional liberties than fail to keep its citizens safe.

…

A Fox News survey polling a random national sample of 619 registered voters the day after the bombing found despite the tragic event, those interviewed responded very differently than following 9/11.

For the first time since a similar question was asked in May 2001, more Americans answered “no” to the question, “Would you be willing to give up some of your personal freedom in order to reduce the threat of terrorism?”

Of those surveyed on April 16, 2013, 45 percent answered no to the question, compared to 43 percent answering yes.

In May 2001, before 9/11, the balance was similar, with 40 percent answering no to 33 percent answering yes.

But following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the numbers flipped dramatically, to 71 percent agreeing to sacrifice personal freedom to reduce the threat of terrorism.

Subsequent polls asking the same question in 2002, 2005 and 2006 found Americans consistently willing to give up freedom in exchange for security. Yet the numbers were declining from 71 percent following 9/11 to only 54 percent by May 2006.

Now, it would seem, the famous quote widely attributed to Benjamin Franklin – “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety” – is holding more sway with Americans than it has in over a dozen years.

A similar poll sampling 588 adults, conducted on April 17 and 18 for the Washington Post, also discovered the change in attitude.

“Which worries you more,” the Post asked, “that the government will not go far enough to investigate terrorism because of concerns about constitutional rights, or that it will go too far in compromising constitutional rights in order to investigate terrorism?”

The poll found 48 percent of respondents worry the government will go too far, compared to 41 percent who worry it won’t go far enough.

And similar to the Fox News poll, the Post found the worry to be a fresh development, as only 44 percent worried the government would go too far in January 2006 and only 27 percent worried the government would go too far in January 2010.

The Fox News poll was unique in that it further broke the responses down by political affiliation:

  • Bucking the trend, 51 percent of Democrats responded they would give up personal freedom to reduce the threat of terror, compared to 36 percent opposed.

  • Forty-seven percent of Republicans, on the other hand, opposed giving up freedoms, compared to only 43 percent in favor.

  • Yet independents were the most resistant, with only 29 percent willing to sacrifice freedom, while 58 percent stood opposed.

I’m not surprised all that much with the results of this poll. It mirrors sentiment I’ve observed over the last decade. The most tragic datum in the poll is this: 51 percent of Democrats responded they would give up personal freedom to reduce the threat of terror. We saw this in Boston where the populace gave up their 4th and 1st Amendment rights in the search for the remaining bomber. He was eventually found—outside of the search area by a resident who WASN’T quivering inside his home as ordered by the State.

The divide across the country continues to grow. The statists, those who depend on government for their security—economic, physical and political security, are content to give up their liberty. In past centuries, we called them subjects, peons and serfs.

Then, there are the rest of us who, for the most part, are the antithesis of those who would submit.

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