Signs of Tyranny

My good friend asked me to review a public speech he was going to give in Washington State.
You must read this article in its entirety. He has quotes you MUST read!
Allen is around 60 years old, served in Vietnam and earned 2 silver stars while fighting for the citizens of this great land.
He loves this country and as all military personal, gave and oath to protect this nation against danger, foreign and domestic.

Read this whole letter and then send this blog by clicking on page (top right), send link by e-mail, and send this to your friends;

Our Constitution was crafted by one of the greatest gatherings of conservative leaders in history. They desired a form of government which would protect and preserve “individual freedoms” and which would guarantee a federal government with strict limits on what it was allowed to do, with all other powers reserved for the individual states and the people.

There are many things that differentiate between the freedoms this country enjoyed over the first 175 years and the creeping tyranny of today. We are closer to tyranny now than we are to the freedoms codified in the greatest political document ever created by man.

The three core freedoms for every person are life, liberty and property.

LIFE – Each and every living person has the right to life. No one should be permitted to take that away without due process and the rule of law.
LIBERTY - No person should be forced into servitude or slavery for another.
PROPERTY – Each person must be secure in their property.

If any one of these core freedoms is diminished, it is a sign of approaching tyranny. We have seen massive erosion of these freedoms, even if it has largely been unseen by most of the citizens of this country. This slow ‘nibbling away at the edges’ has gone on for almost 85 years. It has been so slow that several generations have gone by; each maybe with some vague unease about the direction of our government. However, because there were no close examinations of the details, or realization of the long term consequences, no alarm has been raised.

Here are a few of the disturbing sign that are now mostly overlooked:
1. During the beginning of Roosevelt’s “New Deal”, the president wanted to pass legislation to give money and benefits to a vastly expanded population of ‘deserving’ people. In order to do this, his new laws had to pass constitutional muster. The Supreme Court ruled time after time that they were not constitutional. Roosevelt threatened to ‘pack the court’, that is, increase the number of Justices from the original nine to however many it took to get a liberal majority. With Democrat control of the other two branches, the Justices caved, and allowed the new socialist laws to stand.
2. The Roosevelt administration wanted total control on wheat production, pricing, and distribution. Because most wheat was shipped across state lines, he used the “Commerce Clause” of the Constitution as an excuse to put these laws into place. When a small farmer refused to comply with the new laws, because he only grew enough for use by his own family, he was successfully sued by the government and the ruling was upheld by the courts, on the farfetched argument that the use of his own wheat somehow impacted national commerce (since he didn’t have to buy wheat – thereby affecting other commerce).
3. In the name of helping seniors save for their retirement and of ‘doing good for widows and the destitute’, the Social Security program was formed. Good intentions are never proper reasons to take by force property from one person and give it to another.
4. More recently, in the case of Kelo, private residential property was taken under the rule of “imminent domain’ and given to a developer, another private entity, under the misguided notion that ‘good of the community’ would be served, because more property taxes would be paid to the city of Kelo by the shopping mall.
5. In the Klamath basin of Oregon, the government refused water for farmers to irrigate their fields to ‘protect’ some obscure sucker fish. In California, one of the most fertile valleys in the world is drying up and hundreds of thousands of people are facing economic ruin, again because government bureaucrats have deemed some ‘endangered’ minnow species might be harmed by these farmers growing much of the vegetable crops for the United States and the world. These unwarranted actions have destroyed the economic value of the farmers’ property and forced thousands to become jobless.
6. More and more laws are passed by Congress, but the details are left to an ever expanding mass of bureaucrats, who are not accountable, who have job protection. These faceless, ‘in-the-shadows’ people essentially continue on their way to legislating ‘social justice’, regardless of what party is in power. “Social justice”, as defined in the liberal mind, can never be achieved, because it means ‘equal results’. There can never be equal results, only equal opportunity. The results are the products of many things, such as natural ability, hard work, thrift, etc. The only way ‘social justice’ can be achieved, in the liberal mindset, is to take from those who produce and give to those who do not. The only way this can be done is to use the force of government.

There are glaring differences between a democratic republic and a socialist state:
1. When President Obama declares that “We need to ‘spread the wealth’.”, when talking to a blue collar worker, he is advocating a socialist agenda.
2. When a small democratic country removes a sitting president who committed acts of treason, on the orders of its Supreme Court and Congress, but the Obama administration joins the dictator lead countries of Cub and Venezuela and declares it a ‘military coup’, he becomes an enemy of freedom and displays his strong support for socialism.

Now, with the present administration, there is a wholesale assault on our remaining liberties.

1. When the leader of a country has legislation introduced, which is not allowed to be read by the legislative body or the people, Tyranny is just over the horizon.
2. When legislation is introduced which will determine who can receive life-saving procedures or medication, Tyranny is drawing near.
3. When crushing tax burdens are levied on citizens, in the name of “Saving the Planet” from non-existent threats, Tyranny is just around the corner.
4. The Obama administration ignored the Constitution and over 220 years of bankruptcy precedent to put the UAW, and other junior, unsecured creditors ahead of senior secured creditors in the Obama-forced bankruptcy of Chrysler. When the government trashes the Constitution and the rule of law by giving a non-investor firm, Fiat 15% of Chrysler, Tyranny is next door.
5. When legislation contains over 9,000 ear-marks, giving bribes and payoff money to special interests, and making no attempt to hide the graft and corruption it entails, Tyranny is at hand.
6. When the government confiscates more and more property in the form of taxes and fees, the tax payers become economic slaves.
7. When elected government officials receive special benefits, special status, special treatment, and are not subject to the laws which apply to the rest of the nation, they become the new American Royalty, and we become their serfs.
8. When an excessive number of laws, rules and regulations are put into place, no person can be secure in his core freedoms. This allows the government to fabricate charges against anyone for almost any reason. Harvey Silverglate makes this case very well in his recent book, “Three Felonies A Day”.

There have been three great works detailing the evils of socialism, and the tendency for it to slowly encroach upon a republic until a dictatorship is formed. These are:
“The Law” – by Frederic Bastiat in 1850
“The Road To Serfdom” – by F.A. Hayek in 1948
“Liberty and Tyranny” – by Mark Levin in 2009

It is quickly seen how they all describe the same movement from freedom, to socialism, to economic slavery, even though they are written 150 years apart.

In my opinion, Tyranny has already arrived, although in a temporary ‘soft’ form. If we do not turn back the liberal, socialist, statist assault, we will soon be reduced to a ‘Banana Republic” and ruled by a dictator, because the good intentions of some misguided people to ensure ‘equality’ for all, will end up putting chains of slavery on everyone.

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"A wise prince will seek means by which his subjects will always and in every possible condition of things have need of his government, and then they will always be faithful to him." -- Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

"Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue; or in any manner affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change and can trace its consequences; a harvest reared not by themselves but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow citizens." -- James Madison (likely), Federalist No. 62

"It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated." -- James Madison, Speech at the Virginia Convention, December 2, 1829

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If `Thou shalt not covet' and `Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free." -- John Adams, A Defense of the American Constitutions, 1787

"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." -- John Marshall

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." -- James Madison


Probably most Americans would have a clearer conscience if all the neighbors were forced to put money in a government pot and a government agency would send the widow a weekly sum of $40 to hire someone to mow her lawn. This mechanism makes the particular victim invisible but it still boils down to one person being forcibly used to serve the purposes of another. Putting the money into a government pot makes palatable acts that would otherwise be deemed morally offensive. This is why socialism is evil. It employs evil means, coercion or taking the property of one person, to accomplish good ends, helping one's fellow man." --George Mason University economics professor Walter E. Williams

“Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned, ‘The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.’ The freedom of individuals from compulsion or coercion never was, and is not now, the normal state of human affairs. The normal state for the ordinary person is tyranny, arbitrary control and abuse mainly by their own government. While imperfect in its execution, the founders of our nation sought to make an exception to this ugly part of mankind’s history. Unfortunately, at the urging of the American people, we are unwittingly in the process of returning to mankind’s normal state of affairs. Americans demand that Congress spend trillions of dollars on farm subsidies, business bailouts, education subsidies, Social Security, Medicare and prescription drugs and other elements of a welfare state. The problem is that Congress produces nothing. Whatever Congress wishes to give, it has to first take other people’s money. Thus, at the root of the welfare state is the immorality of intimidation, threats and coercion backed up with the threat of violence by the agents of the U.S. Congress. In order for Congress to do what some Americans deem as good, it must first do evil. It must do that which if done privately would mean a jail sentence; namely, take the property of one American to give to another... There is no question that if one were to ask whether we Americans are moving towards more liberty or more government control over our lives, the answer would unambiguously be the latter—more government control over our lives.” —Walter Williams

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.” -Winston Churchill

“The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is... legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay... If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system.” — Frederic Bastiat

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of “liberalism” they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” - - Norman Matton Thomas, Six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America, 1884-1963

“I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democratic Party has adopted our platform.” - - Norman Matton Thomas
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." -- James Madison