Fwd: The Watchman

[yourp...@aol.com]

It's been a long time since I've see anything from Neal Ross.  As usual, he is spot-on in his observations.

Bobby

 

The Watchman

Neal Ross

6/2/2013

 

For nearly 35 years I have served my country in some fashion. I served in the United States Air Force for thirteen years, then another ten as a military contractor working with the U-2 reconnaissance program at Beale AFB, California. For the remainder I have found myself fighting a losing battle against the ignorance of the American populace. I say losing because I have found that most people would rather accept outright lies than face the truth that their own government has become their worst enemy.

 

You can't possibly imagine the sadness, and anger, I feel when I watch the country that I love go down in flames because the people living in it refuse to see what is happening right before their very eyes. Thomas Jefferson was right when he said, "Freedom is lost gradually from an uninterested, uninformed, and uninvolved people..."

 

For a time I had almost given up as I felt that I had said all that needed to be said and if the people did not want to hear it, then so be it. But then someone suggested I read Ezekiel 33:1-9, which I did. I then realized that God had given me this gift to write in a manner that is both enjoyable and informative, and also the ability to see, somewhat clearly, the problems facing this nation. Call it what you will, but I consider it my calling, or my purpose in life to be that watchman spoken of in Ezekiel, to warn people about what is happening. If they refuse to heed my warnings, then my conscience will be clear when the end of our Republic finally comes.

 

Nonetheless, it still boggles my mind that people cannot see that, in regards to our system of government, there are simple truths that cannot be denied. One of these truths is that our government is not one which was bestowed with unlimited power to do whatever it thinks is best for the general welfare of the people, and the nation. In 1794 James Madison, the father of the Constitution, stood before the House of Representatives and said, "[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general."

 

Another truth is that our rights are ours by our virtue of being human, they are unalienable, that is they are unable to be taken, or given away. Relatively recently, in 1943 in fact, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson ruled, "The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal precedents to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections." Source: West Virginia Board of Education vs. Barnette

 

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution defines the specified powers that Madison spoke of. There are no hidden, or implied powers with that document, whatever powers granted our government are clearly defined right there.

 

The Bill of Rights contains a list of certain rights that the Founders felt were so important that they be specifically listed so as to ensure that they be retained by the people. But there are many other rights that are not included among them, which is why they included the Ninth Amendment, which states, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

 

Do you understand the meaning of retain? It means to continue to have (something); to keep possession of. Our rights belonged to us BEFORE the government ever came into existence and it was the protection of those rights for which our government was established. Yet you, the people of America, are so unlearned in these simple truths that you, either through ignorance or through fear, are willing to see these rights trampled upon without uttering the slightest protest.

 

In 1776 the state of Virginia drafted its own Bill, or Declaration of Rights. Section 1 of their document explains it much better than I, "That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."

 

Let's take a moment to discuss that last sentence, particularly where it says, "... with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety." What exactly is property? Is it your home, your car, the clothes that hang in your closet? Noted Frenchman Frederic Bastiat wrote, "Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property." Therefore, property is anything that we have acquired by our labor; it can be the abovementioned things, or it can merely be the money you earn at work, otherwise known as the fruit of our labor. Virginia's Bill of Rights ALSO declares that it is our inherent right to have the means to pursue and obtain happiness AND safety. Safety is equally applicable to the protection of our lives, and our property.

 

When our government takes from us the fruit of our labors, under the guise of taxation, and spends it upon programs which are not among the specifically enumerated powers granted them, it is theft, plain and simple. It then becomes our right, and our duty, to defend ourselves against such theft. As Bastiat goes on to say, "Each of us has a natural right—from God—to defend his person, his liberty, and his property."

 

Noted English political philosopher, whose works heavily influenced our Founding Fathers, once wrote, "The great chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property." However, Locke goes on to say, "Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience,..." John Locke's 2nd Treatise of Civil Government, (1690)

 

These are the simple truths upon which our entire system of government was founded. Yet, did you know, that according to data by the Heritage Foundation, upwards of 62% of all spending by our government goes towards entitlement programs of some sort? I'll ask you but one time, find me where in the Constitution that it is specifically authorized that the government take money from you and give it to someone else, no matter the reason. I'll wait...

 

Can't find it? That's because it does not exist, it is not within the power of the federal government to take your earnings and redistribute them to anyone else, and this applies equally to entitlements and benefits at home, and to foreign aid.

 

Numerous Presidents in the past understood this simple truth. In 1794 President James Madison vetoed a Congressional appropriations bill to assist refugees. In his veto statement he wrote, "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that Article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

 

In 1854 President Franklin Pierce vetoed a bill to help the mentally ill, saying, "I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity .... [this] would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded."

 

During his administration President Grover Cleveland vetoed an Appropriation bill to provide disaster relief aid to victims of a Texas drought, wherein he said, "I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan to indulge in benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds ... I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution. The lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people should support the government, the government should not support the people."

 

Yet, as stated by the Heritage Foundation, 62% of our governments spending goes towards these very entitlement programs that earlier presidents clearly understood are not among the powers granted government. What has changed? Ben Franklin once warned, "When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." He did not mean that the land and the people will simply vanish. What he meant was that our government, built upon the rule of law, would vanish.

 

You might think that it is the purpose of government to do all these things for the people, and the country...you would be wrong. You might think that since the majority wants these things, they can elect individuals who will provide them for you...you would still be wrong.  In a 1786 letter to James Monroe, James Madison wrote, "There is no maxim in my opinion which is more liable to be misapplied, and which therefore needs elucidation than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong... In fact it is only reestablishing under another name and a more specious form, force as the measure of right..."

 

If a gang of armed men forced their way into your house and demanded that you give them your property would it make it right just because they outnumbered you? No, it would not, it would be criminal, yet that is exactly what you are doing to the strict Constitutionalists in this country by your continued voting for representatives who overstep their authority and plunder the people of their earnings. And let us not forget about the irreparable damage to the Bill of Rights shall we.

 

I understand that you have been not taught these things in school, but it does not excuse you from accepting them as truths when they are presented to you. The least you could do is to research them to see if I am telling you the truth. But no, that would simply be too much to ask, wouldn't it?

 

Science Fiction writer Isaac Asimov once said, "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." I find that to be true when discussing politics with someone who has absolutely no clue as to what they are talking about. It does not matter that they cannot back their claims up with facts, they believe that they are right and nobody has the right to disagree with them. Maybe van Loon was right when he said, "Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession - their ignorance."

 

Yet the majority of you reading this is are Americans, why don't you start acting like one? Do you care so little for your country that you would rather flood your mind with trivial nonsense while your nation goes to ruin around you?

Theodore Roosevelt once said, "I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit. " Roosevelt ALSO said, "If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs."

 

I know there is a good chance that I have pissed off a good many people with this. Too bad. To justify myself I leave you with one last quote by Teddy Roosevelt, "I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!"

 

 

 

 

 

Comments will be accepted if they are well

thought out and based upon fact.

 

bon...@syix.com

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