Washington's Wake

Posts Tagged ‘Liberty’

It seems freedom from governmental tyranny is for everyone as the Billings Gazette reports.

Calling for new tribal leadership and a break from the federal government, founders of the first Crow Indian Tea Party movement rallied Monday in Hardin.

Leading the new Crow Nation Tea Party was Adrian Bird Sr., a former tribal chairman candidate…

But wait, I thought the Tea Parties were nothing but a bunch of right wing racists that hate and despise minorities in this country?

Other Tea Party members from across the state joined the Crow Nation Tea Party in demonstrating at Hardin’s only downtown stoplight. The groups gathered at every corner of the intersection with placards denouncing health care reform, climate change legislation and excessive federal government.

They elicited honks from passersby during the noon rally.

“We just wanted to be supportive of these people,” said Ken Champion of Bozeman. “Anybody who stands for freedom and liberty and opposed to unrestricted government spending, we want to support.”

Got that right. We need more people like that.

Reason has a review of a new Ayn Rand book. It’s a decent review of a book written by someone that wasn’t either an acolyte of Ayn or someone who hated her.

Sources from The New York Times to the United Kingdom’s Guardian agree that 2009 is the Year of Ayn Rand. Fortuitously surfing the wave of Rand fascination is the first thorough and largely unbiased book about her life and ideas by a serious American academic, one neither a personal friend nor a bitter enemy of the controversial Russian-born novelist and philosopher.

Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, by University of Virginia historian Jennifer Burns, delivers a smart assessment of Rand’s life and ideas and how they influenced each other. On what her book’s title promises—the connections between Rand and the American right wing—Ms. Burns is less convincing, though she does provide enough data to make it clear why Rand has never really been a “goddess” to the American right.

It does sound like an interesting book and one to take a look at.

In the end, the Verucacrats (aka Democrats) are going to get what they want, and we are going to pay.  There really just aren’t enough votes to block it, and I believe the damage of doing nothing will be too great. So, some how, they’re going to push their agenda through, whether by reconciliation or not.

But there is hope for conservatives.

Though this battle might be completely lost, barring a miraculous Leonide’s shot with a thundering spear through the head of Obama’s administration,  the war can be won here and now by standing firm on the principles of freedom.

“Remember us.” As simple an order as a king can give. “Remember why we died.” For he did not wish tribute, nor song, nor monuments nor poems of war and valor. His wish was simple. “Remember us,” he said to me. That was his hope, should any free soul come across that place, in all the countless centuries yet to be. May all our voices whisper to you from the ageless stones, “Go tell the Spartans, passerby, that here by Spartan law, we lie.”

The 300 Spartans are remembered thousands of years later, not for victory, but for courage and principle that won out by the inspiration they gave with their bravery. Perhaps, conservatives will be able to say after the loss, that their point was made. Though vastly outnumbered, they were remembered. They were heard. Their voices were strong and their cause just.

A new age has begun, an age of freedom. And all will know that 300 Spartans gave their last breath to defend it.

It seems to me, that even in loss, the conservative movement can win by being true, and hard, and strong.

America needs a new age of Freedom, and Emanuel is right – no crisis should go to waste. Though we didn’t create this crisis, though we didn’t want it, the liberalism has forsaken liberty and it is an opportunity to remind the citizens what that means.

Freedom is not free, the cost is blood. Conservatives have the chance to show that their courage and principles can bond us together, that we can be stronger by these actions, and that these choices today can reflect the bravery and sacrifice it takes for freemen to be free. Losing this battle is far less important than losing the point.

It seems to me we forget. We forget not only the 300 Spartans, but the 3million men and women who have given their lives under our banner. That banner that so many forget is not made of woven thread, but instead the fabric of our ideals.  A nation is not the land, a nation is the values, the principles and the customs that make us one people. When conservatives conserve those things that unify us and make us all more free, then they are unbeatable.

So, conservatives must remember that freedom is more valuable than life, that we rally beneath a banner of honor and blood, of truth and justice. As Conservatives we must rally the people to the absolute right to be who we choose, where we choose, what we choose – without any entitlement to success, or station, or property.

If we do not strip down these notions of liberty to their essence, and continue to allow liberals to define the playing field in base Marxist notions of relativism and fairness,  then this loss WILL destroy this society.

So, Conservatives, Remember Sparta.

I really like the idea behind the Tea Parties planned for April 15th. Good choice of days. One thing I have always found discouraging, why is it in discussions when you are promoting liberty and freedom, you get those looks? I get asked if I should be living in a shack in Montana (Think Sam Neil on that one!). So why is it considered passé, quaint, or just loony to be concerned with liberty and freedom?

Anyway I think BOTW has some interesting points regarding this story in the Washington Times. That is worded so broadly in spots as to cover many regular conservatives and libertarians. Some interesting comments here, and the full report is available from DHS. This does cover some very unpleasant characters (to put it mildly) but I get concerned about overly broad characterizations that conflate decent folks and some real scum. It all brings to mind Hoover and the 1960′s but from the other ideological direction.

I actually don’t really care about this issue much at all, but I find, particularly as more states adopt it, it really has no place in government.

Marriage is a religious sacrament. No one is entitled to it if they don’t follow the doctrine of the church they’re a member of.  Which is to say government has no place deciding what a church can or can’t bless, AND the blessings of the church have no legal standing. I don’t care if that’s Islaam, Judeaism, Christianity, Buddhist, Hindu or Satanist.

That said, I also think anyone should be able to enter into any kind of contract that they want with any other person, with the sole exception being slavery. Though you do own yourself, you are self-sovereign, the law will always recognize, first and foremost, your own responsibility for your own actions and situation.

Of course, that is a pipe dream. The law does no such thing. In fact, it does quite the opposite. The laws of the United (socialist) States of America are now inclined to a concept of state ownership – thus the state has responsibility for the citizens.

It is this fascism above all that has sapped the will and liberty of the people. Security in exchange for liberty. (Thus, as warned, we are left with neither.) For example, the arguments for programs such as medicare and medicaid lead to ideas such a fat-taxes, or legal requirement of heal insurce (see Massachusetts) and lead to laws such as helmet laws on motorcycles and seatbelt laws. Until the government – and thusly the taxpayer – was paying for the wellbeing of the citizens, the citizens had the freedom to make choices about their own safety and security.

Now though, the government owns us. Therefore it may tell us what we can and can’t eat. can and can’t wear. can and can’t own.

The vast majority of the citizens are warm and fat and happy and more than glad to give up such paltry freedoms. What sane person would want to ride a motorcycle without a helmet? What sane person would want to eat transfats? Smoke cigarettes?

No siree – taxpayers are paying for your healthcare – so you don’t have a right to suck up more of OUR rescources.

Since the state has ownership of we the sheeple, the state, above the church and above the individual must cast it’s imperator upon each and every contract – including marriage.

How disturbing is that?