A Historic Day

Rick Perry, governor of Texas, noted the following yesterday:

Texas is a unique place. When we came into the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that. My hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention. We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what may come of that.

I disagree with him about this "great union" business but it's a start. Naturally, some house socialists -- I mean Democrats -- aren't too pleased about this.

Notes one news article:

At the Texas Capitol on Thursday, Rep. Jim Dunnam of Waco, joined by several fellow Texas House Democrats, said some people associate talk of secession with racial division and the Civil War and that Perry should disavow any notion of seceding.

"Talk of secession is an attack on our country. It can be nothing else. It is the ultimate anti-American statement," Dunnam said at a news conference.

State Sen. Rodney Ellis, a Houston Democrat, said that by not rejecting the possibility of secession out of hand, Perry "is taking a step down a very dangerous and divisive path encouraged by the fringe of Texas politics."

The Democrats are proposing a House resolution expressing "complete and total disagreement with any fringe element advocating the 'secession' of Texas or any other state from our one and indivisible Union."

You can take your "indivisible union" and well... you know.

Perhaps these Democrats would be happier leaving the state and moving to somewhere more amicable to their dangerous and fringe political views, like, say New York, California, or Massachusetts? More power to them (to leave, that is). It means absolutely nothing to me when a group of socialists, whose political ideology should have discredited them in the 20th century alone, should call secession a fringe belief.

University Stooges Want Students to Do Their Dirty Work

It has been a breath of fresh air to see a nice sovereignty resolution passed by the South Carolina senate. Now our governor, Mark Sanford, has turned down countless millions of dollars in Nanny 'Bama's "stimulus" money.

This, naturally, did not go well with the crowd at the university which recklessly spends money on nonsense and thinks that money grows on trees, like Bernanke and Nanny 'Bama. The word cutback is not even a word found at a modern university campus. And of course, don't forget the countless professors who make a living solely on government money, pontificating on worthless topics like "Women's Studies", "Education", "Social Work", and other radical left wing disciplines invented out of thin air. And let's not forget that University money goes to further many causes that some people would blush to read.

So, in response to Sanford's fiscal responsibility, I received this email from the University:

Join fellow University of South Carolina students and alumni and friends for a rally supporting stimulus funding for higher education Wednesday, April 1, 5:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. at the Statehouse steps (Gervais Street).

If you agree with the need to accept federal stimulus money, please call or e-mail the governor immediately with the following urgent message. Below is the governor's phone number and e-mail address:

Phone number: 803-734-2100

E-mail address: mark@gov.sc.gov

Our leaders have worked hard to protect the quality of our education. However, we fear that refusing the stimulus funds will have a drastic impact on our University and all of higher education. The University of South Carolina desperately needs the one-time funding that federal stimulus dollars will provide.

Of what are we afraid here? I mean, hardly anyone can read, write, think, and add and I doubt that more funding can correct this. So what if the university looses a few dollars? They have already had to cut funding to "disciplines" like Social Work (and praise God for that). Of course, this means fewer courses designed to condition stu... oh nevermind, I know why they want the money.

Naturally, I took a few moments to write Governor Sanford and thank him for having some balls. I just wish some of these people would get out of this state and take their dung with them; I'm tired of wading through it.

I hope that South Carolina is the first state to leave this union again.

Calhoun on War

I have been fortunate to find a marvelous new blog. Today, the author posted a portion of a speech given by John C. Calhoun in 1848 on the conquest of Mexico. Polk, like many other Southerners, was a huge expansionist who had recently signed into law the bill (technically is was a House Resolution) admitting Texas and was essentially responsible for the war with Mexico which followed in 1846. Sam Houston helped Texas win it's independence from Mexico roughly a decade earlier and this, in my judgment, was flushed down the toilet when Texas joined the Union.

I find it really quite ironic that military might and the early looming's of empire were present in the South, a region that would be completely subjugated by military rule and economically ruined in roughly two decades (Richard Weaver addresses some of these issues in his dissertation). Says Calhoun:

We make a great mistake, sir, when we suppose that all people are capable of self-government. We are anxious to force free government on all; and I see that it has been urged in a very respectable quarter, that it is the mission of this country to spread civil and religious liberty over all the world, and especially over this continent. It is a great mistake. None but people advanced to a very high state of moral and intellectual improvement are capable, in a civilized state, of maintaining free government; and amongst those who are so purified, very few, indeed, have had the good fortune of forming a constitution capable of endurance. It is a remarkable fact in the history of man, that scarcely ever have free popular institutions been formed by wisdom alone that have endured.

It has been the work of fortunate circumstances, or a combination of circumstances—a succession of fortunate incidents of some kind—which give to any people a free government. It is a very difficult task to make a constitution to last, though it may be supposed by some that they can be made to order, and furnished at the shortest notice. Sir, this admirable Constitution of our own was the result of a fortunate combination of circumstances. It was superior to the wisdom of the men who made it. It was the force of circumstances which induced them to adopt most of its wise provisions. Well, sir, of the few nations who have the good fortune to adopt self-government, few have had the good fortune long to preserve that government; for it is harder to preserve than to form it. Few people, after years of prosperity, remember the tenure by which their liberty is held; and I fear, Senators, that is our own condition. I fear that we shall continue to involve ourselves until our own system becomes a ruin. Sir, there is no solicitude now for liberty. Who talks of liberty when any great question comes up? Here is a question of the first magnitude as to the conduct of this war; do you hear anybody talk about its effect upon our liberties and our free institutions? No, sir. That was not the case formerly. In the early stages of our Government, the great anxiety was how to preserve liberty; the great anxiety now is for the attainment of mere military glory. In the one, we are forgetting the other. The maxim of former times was, that power is always stealing from the many to the few; the price of liberty was perpetual vigiliance. They were constantly looking out and watching for danger. Then, when any great question came up, the first inquiry was, how it could affect our free institutions—how it could affect our liberty. Not so now. Is it because there has been any decay of the spirit of liberty among the people? Not at all. I believe the love of liberty was never more ardent, but they have forgotten the tenure of liberty by which alone it is preserved.

We think we may now indulge in everything with impunity, as if we held our charter of liberty by “right divine”—from Heaven itself. Under these impressions, we plunge into war, we contract heavy debts, we increase the patronage of the Executive, and we even talk of a crusade to force our institutions, our liberty, upon all people. There is no species of extravagance which our people imagine will endanger their liberty in any degree. But it is a great and fatal mistake. The day of retribution will come. It will come as certainly as I am now addressing the Senate; and when it does come, awful will be the reckoning—heavy the responsibility somewhere!

Rebellion!

An article by the Christian Science Monitor indicates that many States are beginning to seek sovereignty.



The CSM article begins as follows:

There's an old joke in South Carolina: Confederate President Jefferson Davis may have surrendered at the Burt-Stark mansion in Abbeville, S.C., in 1865, but the people of state Rep. Michael Pitts's district never did.

With revolutionary die-hards behind him, Mr. Pitts has fired a warning shot across the bow of the Washington establishment. As the writer of one of 28 state "sovereignty bills" – one even calls for outright dissolution of the Union if Washington doesn't rein itself in – Pitts is at the forefront of a states' rights revival, reasserting their say on everything from stem cell research to the Second Amendment.

"Washington can be a bully, but there's evidence right now that there are people willing to resist our bully," said Pitts, by phone from the state capitol of Columbia.

It really is about time. The article concludes with Pitts articulating a clear warning.

And although Pitts hails from Abbeville, the place where the South's first secession votes were cast, he insists that today's efforts to check federal power aren't limited to regional pockets or even political affiliation. "The mainstream media would portray some of us as rednecks, whether we're from Pennsylvania, Oregon, or South Carolina," says Pitts. "But this is a wake-up call. And if Washington doesn't heed that wake-up call, revolution is on the horizon."

U.S. Moon Base/Iran Invasion

Note: There is some language so be prepared.

Reasons To Secede: #957 and #12

Reason #957: New Federal Tobacco Tax

Obama signed into "law" an expansion of some child insurance program. He want's to "ensure the health and well-being of our nation’s children." Um yeah.

What's annoying about this (aside from Nanny 'Bama) is a tobacco tax which has been logrolled into this bill, "for the children" no doubt. From the CigarStore newsletter:

[T]he federal excise tax on cigars in the U.S. is going up on April 1, 2009. Yesterday, President Obama signed the proposed expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program into law. The U.S. House accepted the Senate's version of the plan, which increases the tax rate on large cigars to 52.75%, with a cap of 40.26 cents per cigar.

Tax and spend, tax and spend. Our glorious leader and savior of mankind, may his name be blessed for evermore, noted that:

It is a responsibility that has only grown more urgent as our economic crisis has deepened, health care costs have exploded, and millions of working families are unable to afford health insurance. Today in America, eight million children are still uninsured – more than 45 million Americans altogether.

Perhaps he is referring to the economic crisis that was created by the Fed and Federal tinkering with the economy as if it were a child's play thing? And what about the so-called stimulus package which was nothing but political pork/payoff and an immense spending bill? I guess these things don't mater. He really wants to fix it now. After all, we'll just print off more money. Government solutions brought to you by the idiots who created this mess in the first place.

Reason #12: Nationalization of the Papers

I learned this from the LRC Blog. Senator Benjamin "Goebbels" Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland, introduced the "Newspaper Revitalization Act."

Said Cardin:

We are losing our newspaper industry the economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy. It is in the interest of our nation and good governance that we ensure they survive.

First of all, screw "our" (or should I say your) democracy. A tragedy for "our democracy" is worth something in my book. But this is a rant for another time.

What's telling is the latter part of his statement. The October 16, 1933 edition of Time Magazine quoted Joseph Goebbels as he "consecrated" the press to the service of the Nazi state. The author of the Time article "Consecrated" Press noted that:

"The National Press Law is the most modern journalistic statute in the world!" cried Dr. Goebbels explaining it to his 300 nervous guests last week. "I predict that its principles will be adopted by the other nations of the world within the next seven years. It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion!"

Well Goebbels was certainly no good at predicting precise time frames but his prediction has, nevertheless, been a reality in some places (including the modern German state) and will soon be a reality in others...

More Progressive Fruit(s)

From the LRC blog:

[T]he "progressive" Left Coast state of Washington banning certain environmentally-"unfriendly" brands of dishwashing detergent, now comes word that it's the color of your car that is environmentally "unfriendly." From the Left Coast's "most progressive" state (Do I really have to tell you that I'm referring to Caliphonyia?) comes the possibility that black-painted cars will be prohibited:

"If California regulators get their way, auto makers may soon be forced to rewrite a cliché from the Ford Model T era and start telling customers they can have any color they want as long as it isn’t black...The problem stems from a new “cool paints” initiative from the California Air Resources Board. CARB¹ to mandate the phase-in of heat-reflecting paints on vehicle exteriors beginning with the ’12 model year, with all colors meeting a 20% reflectivity requirement by the ’16 model year...The measure is aimed at reducing carbon-dioxide emissions and improving fuel economy by keeping vehicles cooler on sunny days and decreasing the amount of time drivers use their air conditioners."

Good grief.

Texas Down the Tube

Representative Roberto Alonzo (representing part of Dallas) has introduced a bill (H.B. 188) that has the flavor of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. The text of the bill is very disturbing. The preamble begins as follows:

(a) It is the intent of the legislature to ensure that: (1)children are the number one priority of this state; and (2)parents are educated regarding their duties under law as the primary protectors of their children.

The bill enumerates a list of supposed rights that children have. You know the usual radical left wing crap such as: right to health care, right to a "quality education" (**cough**), and most notably, the right to "live in a safe, healthy, and comfortable home in which the child is treated with respect."

What is any of this supposed to mean? This is all very abstract and purposefully so. The state passes open ended laws so it can interpret them however it so desires.

Whats even more scary is this business about "educating parents." The state injects itself, like a parasite, into every aspect of our lives including the most intimate of relationships (that of parent to child). Nothing is sacred or free anymore; we are all property of the state and you are merely the "protector" or caretaker of your child.

The bill provides for a massive propaganda campaign funded by the state in an attempt to "educate" parents on how to parent (we now require "experts" to tell us how to parent). As part of this effort, a so called "Child Bill of Rights" will be provided to each parent at the birth of their children.

What's even more scary is the establishment of "Family Education Centers." These will serve to "provide comprehensive family educational activities and training to the residents of the region in which the center is located."

Representative Alonzo: with all due respect, go to hell. Why not just be a man and say what you really think? Let's create a massive dormitory system whereby the state abducts children from parents at birth and raises them collectively. Of course, I'm sure that your three children are exempt from anything you desire to impose on the remainder of us serfs.

Texas, wake up!

Update (4/1/09): The HSLDA sent a massive email informing me that H.B. 188 is dead. Representative Alonzo is no longer pushing for his bill to be read. That this type of bill should even be introduced in the first place is disturbing.