Thursday, March 7, 2013

Down the Rabbit Hole...

Oh yes... this deserved a Sadie Frown...
I find myself increasingly baffled by my friends who still think that Barack Obama is a good president and who post little "isn't he awesome" memes on facebook, that basically praise him for standing up to those big mean conservatives on fiscal issues.  I love you guys, but as these most recent months slip by since the reelection I find myself increasingly confused that anyone could be excited about the unrelenting one way encroachment on basic liberties that we've seen, week after week.  

Now let me say that while my political views most certainly fall on the conservative side, I'm also not the Republican parties greatest cheerleader.  I'm a Republican, but I disagree with the party line quite a bit.  But when it comes down to it, when I have to choose between one of the two parties that will be elected, the choice, for me, is easy.

In the past I've voted Republican because I choose the party that wouldn't allow an unborn child to be torn apart limb by limb in his or her mother's womb.  I don't think that that basic protection to life is trumped by any other right (and yes, I'm also against the death penalty).  

Today, however, further cements the line between these two parties when it comes to your right to take your next breath.  Because the White House believes that it can act as judge, jury and executioner and decide who lives and dies:
“When I asked the president, ‘Can you kill an American on American soil?’ it should have been an easy answer. It’s an easy question. It should have been a resounding and unequivocal, ‘No.’ The president’s response? He hasn’t killed anyone yet. We’re supposed to be comforted by that. The president says, ‘I haven’t killed anyone yet.’ He goes on to say, ‘And I have no intention of killing Americans. But I might.’ Is that enough? Are we satisfied by that? Are we so complacent with our rights that we would allow a president to say he might kill Americans? But he will judge the circumstances, he will be the sole arbiter, he will be the sole decider, he will be the executioner in chief if he sees fit. Now, some would say he would never do this. Many people give the president the — you know, they give him consideration. They say he’s a good man. I’m not arguing he’s not. What I’m arguing is that the law is there and set in place for the day when angels don’t rule government."
I strongly suggest watching more of the speech here.  It's definitely worth spending at least a few minutes on.

This should terrify us.

We have a President who believes that he is judge and jury and holds the power of life and death over each of his citizens.  He is attempting to strip away our basic right to due process.  And we're supposed to be happy that he hasn't exercised that right "yet".  

The gun control debate has raged these past months and I'll admit that I wince when I hear people say that they have a right to guns, given by this countries founders, so that they can hunt or engage in sport.  Your right to hunt or go out shooting at the range is not why our founders made sure those rights were embedded in the bedrock of this nation.  

Our founding father's carefully placed those words, those rights, in their prominent position near the start of the bill of rights.  They knew the importance of an armed populace in protecting the basic rights of the people.  George Washington said “Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth.”

There is a reason that many in this country believe that you should have a right to own an assault weapon.  It isn't based on your right to go out shooting at the range.  It's based on the right, recognized by our founding father's, to protect ourselves from tyranny.  And no, a handful of bullets in a little gun isn't going to protect that right.  That is why the second amendment was written.  

I pray that there is never a reason for the people of this country to exercise that right.  I pray that our President sees that shredding the constitution and ordering the deaths of his citizens based only on his own judgement, or on the advice of those around him, as exactly what it is: very, very wrong.

What worries me today is that he doesn't seem to see that.  He seems to think that we should be happy he hasn't exercised this supposed power, while apparently insisting that such a power exists.  I, like, many Americans, find that sort of power, held in the hands of one branch of government, and basically in the hands of one man, incredibly frightening. 

Unfortunately, as Senator Rand Paul pointed out with his Lewis Carroll quote, it feels as if we've been plunged into the Rabbit Hole into a world where the constitution is only given lip service, and the executive branch has announced that they will play the roll of the Queen of Hearts...

8 comments:

  1. Frightening? Absolutely.

    I'm a musician, so a lot of my friends are pretty liberal. When we get into this sort of debate, something that I say that usually makes them stop cold and think is:

    "You have no problem with President Obama having the power to kill Americans on American soil with no trial. You have no problem with the fact that he can now have American citizens on American soil arrested by the American military and held indefinitely without outside contact, legal representation, or even an eventual trial.

    Fine.

    Tell me, how would you feel if President George W. Bush had such power? Eventually a Republican will be elected to the presidency, and he will have the same legal power as our current president."

    (To be clear, I wouldn't trust Bush much farther with such power than I do Obama, but it generally gets a person's attention.)

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  2. This terrifies me as well - all these dystopian fiction books that are so popular right now seem to be becoming more and more likely, and I honestly don't think anyone expected it to be the Democratic Party that started parallelling a 1984-type world!

    I disagree with both parties on a LOT of issues as well, but tend to vote Republican because of the life issue. I don't understand how ANYONE can blindly say that, simply because the infallible Obama wills it to be, the executive branch of the legislative system is not under any compulsion to obey our laws.

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  3. Also, FYI: when I visit your page, I'm getting a "Script Error" message popup. It says that the URL for the error is: http://cdnapi.kaltura.com/index.php/kwidget/wid/1_sold5rkl/uiconf_id/3775332/st_cache/90860?referer=http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/sen-rand-paul-filibusters-john-brennan-nomination-

    At a guess, maybe it's one of your widgets? Not sure. :/ If it helps, I'm using Internet Explorer.

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  4. Uh oh! I think it's actually the video since the referrer is ABC news and that's an ABC news video. I might just have to link to it.

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  5. While I have many specific complaints about President Obama, his gun policy isn't one of them.

    If a literal interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America to mean that the government cannot in any way infringe upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms, we run into a few problems - the phrase "A well regulated militia" becomes contradictory as you can now do nothing to regulate your militia.

    What's more, you also run into problem with standing US laws and regulations prohibiting:

    -The export of high-security encryption software (key size exceeding 40 bits) on the grounds that they are munitions.
    -The purchase, transportation, maintainance, and use of armoured and armed vehicles by civilians;
    -The purchase, transportation, maintainance, and use of explosives by individuals without appropriate licences;
    -The purchase, transportation, maintainance, and use of extremely-high rate-of-fire products by civilians, such as Metal Storm or the Minigun;
    -The purchase, transportation, sale, construction, and use of nuclear explosives by just about anyone;
    -The construction, deployment, and use of computer viruses and other malware (including spyware, keyloggers, and adware) on the grounds that they constitute munitions.

    As a military-trained, amateur marksman, I feel that the important phrase in the clause was "well-regulated". While I don't really believe any particular conventional firearm (including the Minigun) should be totally prohibited to the public, I believe you better have to jump through some absolutely ludicrous hoops before you can obtain one, including having a damn good reason for owning such a weapon.

    Is what I'm hearing true that most states don't even have compulsory safety training for firearms ownership?

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  6. What troubles me is the mindset that "I know best, and no one else does." And it's not a mindset unique to Mr. Obama, but to many liberals; it is the mindset taught to children in our schools. It is called relativism; this is my truth.

    An excellent article in today's Wall Street Journal gives another example, where the Administration sued to get the Southern states declared racist --- forever! And sadly, these same people doing the suing think they are being unbiased --- and you'd better not disagree! And many of the Supreme Court justices agree. (You can see the article at online.wsj.com, under the Opinion tab)

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  7. When the Patriot Act was passed I commented that some Republicans were forgetting that they might not always be the party in power. Years ago Francis Schaeffer predicted that we'd give up our liberties in favor of personal peace and affluence. Most of us don't have affluence, but we've certainly as a country rolled over and played dead as the Federal government got more and more intrusive in our lives. In fact, every liberal I know would be screaming bloody murder and calling for impeachment if George Bush had said anything like that.

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  8. It seems to me that with modern warfare technology, we have to give up on the principle that we should have whatever the army has. If that's the argument--that I need to have what the army has so I can protect myself from the government if they come to get me--then we have to allow private citizens to own tanks, nuclear bombs, etc. That is clearly not a realistic situation. So the idea that the 2nd amendment should now be used to mean no restrictions on any kind of weapons is just impractical.

    There are some bad forces that are stronger than we are.

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