As the nation directs its attention to the events taking place at the United States Supreme Court, specifically, the oral arguments surrounding the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, now may be a good time to evaluate some of the “progress” we have made, both as a country and as a culture, where the Progressive Movement’s efforts are concerned.
I say that now may be a good time for this evaluation because, as the Justices of the Supreme Court debate the merits of the case before them, we stand on the precipice of the largest expansion in government authority since the institution of the income tax. And while both Republicans and Democrats, Conservatives and Liberals, have all had a hand in the expansion of government, no other group has celebrated that expansion over our liberties, over our freedoms, more than Progressives.
Now, I am not an overly religious man. As regular readers understand, my mother would be very happy if I attended church more often. But even I can see that, at the hand of the Progressive Movement, the idea of secularism has become totalitarian. In a nation built, in part, as a sanctuary for the religious (this is the onus behind the First Amendment’s right to “Freedom of Religion”), people of the cloth are being placed under arrest for preaching on public grounds.
In Hemet, California, the Rev. Mark Mackey, a preacher with the Calvary Chapel, was arrested for “preaching to a captive audience” as he read passages from the bible outside a still closed Department of Motor Vehicles building. The arresting California Highway Patrol Officer said to Mackey, as he was leading him away in handcuffs, “You’re not allowed to preach here because this is a captive audience…You can preach on your own property.” One so-called constitutional attorney said Mackey was “creating an intimidating situation.”
In Florida, as the details of a highly publicized crime are still coming into focus, a volunteer neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman, is in hiding because the New Black Panther Party has put a $10,000 bounty on his head, along with a “dead or alive” precursor, for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin (and we all thought vigilantism was a thing of the past). And as race-baiting activists – the likes of self-anointed Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, both whom have become quite wealthy in their pursuit of keeping the nation divided along racial lines — and elected officials call for (incredibly) the arrest of a man before an investigation into the event is even concluded, racist organization La Raza (“The Race” in Spanish) has issued a statement questioning his ethnicity. “His background is not clear…Is he Latino? Is he white? Is he both? Who knows?,” La Raza spokeswoman Lisa Navarrete said in an interview with The Daily Caller. Zimmerman’s Mother is Hispanic.
Speaking of the New Black Panthers, as the men and women of our military fight and die to liberate whole national populations from the tyranny of Islamofascist oppression, our own Justice Department, led by Eric Holder – who is turning out to be not only a racist but a racial activist by proof of both his actions and inactions — refuses to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law paramilitary-clad, night-stick wielding New Black Panther racists who stood outside a Philadelphia polling place during the 2008 General Election intimidating every Caucasian voter who tried to enter. J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department Voting Rights Section attorney, who served in the Holder regime, has testified that orders were given not to prosecute any Black defendants…period.
Take a walk on any college campus, and the cultural decay envelops you at almost every step — as Progressives blanket each square inch of every campus in an effort to register as many college students to vote as they can. Militantly Progressive professors, protected with tenure status, spew hatred of the Founders and Framers while juxtaposing the “benefits” of Socialism and Socialist Democracy against the “evils of Capitalism” to terminally half-hungover students in Ché Guevara t-shirts.
And then we have politics…
Throughout history, Progressives and Liberal Democrats have existed in the seat of power each and every time that the government has expanded power. Whether it was the creation of the New Deal entitlement of Social Security, the Medicare entitlement of the Great Society, or the now constitutionally challenged entitlement of mandated Health Insurance under the Obama Administration — each time Progressives have been elected to the seat of power, they have connived their way to the expansion of government. They have done so with little regard for the limitations placed upon them by the United States Constitution and the total of the Charters of Freedom.
In fact, two of the most revered Progressives ever to inhabit the Oval Office, Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt, literally despised the Charters.
Wilson is quoted as saying, “If you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface.” The preface – or Preamble – is the part which states that the only legitimate purpose of government, regardless of time, place or circumstance, is to secure the natural rights of the individual:
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
According to Senator James Watson’s memoir, Teddy Roosevelt, in response to criticism that his Pennsylvania Plan regarding the Coal Strike of 1902 was unconstitutional, is quoted as saying, “To hell with the Constitution when the people want coal!”
President Bill Clinton is quoted as having said, in an August 12, 1993, speech:
“If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government’s ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.”
And today, we have a President in Barack Obama who views the Constitution as flawed — and through eyes tainted by the teachings of not only Socialism, via his childhood mentor Frank Marshall Davis — but the racism of Black Theology, via Trinity United Church and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Regarding the Constitution, Mr. Obama has stated:
I think it is an imperfect document, and I think it is a document that reflects some deep flaws in American culture, the Colonial culture nascent at that time…
African-Americans were not – first of all they weren’t African-Americans – the Africans at the time were not considered as part of the polity that was of concern to the Framers. I think…it was a ‘nagging problem’ in the same way that these days we might think of environmental issues, or some other problem where you have to balance cost-benefits, as opposed to seeing it as a moral problem involving persons of moral worth.
And in that sense, I think we can say that the Constitution reflected an enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day, and that the Framers had that same blind spot. I don’t think the two views are contradictory, to say that it was a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now, and to say that it also reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.
Regarding his racist tendencies, in his book, Dreams from My Father, Mr. Obama wrote:
That’s just how white folks will do you…It wasn’t merely the cruelty involved; I was learning that black people could be mean and then some. It was a particular brand of arrogance, an obtuseness in otherwise sane people that brought forth our bitter laughter. It was as if whites didn’t know they were being cruel in the first place; or at least thought you deserving of their scorn.
Today, as the United States Supreme Court contemplates the constitutionality of yet another Progressive expansion of governmental authority – and, yet again, another diminishing of our individual liberties – and as we can clearly see the fomentation of a potential race war in Florida at the hands of Progressive race-baiters, we have to ask ourselves some important questions: Do we really approve of the government and society that the Progressive Movement has delivered to us? Is this the government we want to leave to our children — a government that tells us what we have to buy and eat, who are privileged and who are not, what we can say and where we can acknowledge our God?
The question put to all of us this coming election is not whether we are Democrat or Republican, Liberal or Conservative. It is whether we embrace liberty and freedom or cede both to further governmental encroachment upon individual sovereignty. Truth be told, our Founders and Framers started a revolution over this very question. I wonder if we will make them proud, or further disappoint them with our abdication of constitutional stewardship.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin
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