The BEST Ad for Marco Rubio

I just saw a political advertisement that is sure to be a huge boost for Marco Rubio. What I can’t understand is how the Rubio campaign managed to convince Schwarzenegger and Crist to do the ad! I hear it didn’t even cost them a penny!

When is a Recovery not a Recovery?

Listening to the Administration and the media lately one would think that the economy has turned a corner, but selectively choosing the few economic statistics that actually show some slight growth and ignoring the many indicators of trouble is just another hallmark of this administration’s determination to mislead the American people and of the media’s equal determination to be toothless cheerleaders for it. I haven’t seen anyone in the media (apart from Fox News and talk radio hosts) do anything other than parrot the messages they get from Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod, and that’s just shameful. But I digress…

But there is no Recovery. None. Even in full-blown economic depressions you often have a few economic indicators trend slightly upward from time to time. But there can be no actual recovery when there is no wealth, and the wealth has been sucked out of this economy. It’s GONE. Wealth is the fuel that powers any economic engine and America’s wealth has been slowed from a gusher to a trickle. The rest of it is gone because it’s been stolen. That’s right, it’s been stolen. And who stole it? The Federal Reserve did.

Oh, I know what some of you are thinking. ‘Ooh, boy! Get the butterfly nets and get that tin-foil hat off his head! The poor guy has lost his mind!’, I know it sounds like conspiracy theory nonsense, but it’s true. How did the Fed do it? Well, in several ways, but here are two things the Fed did to transfer wealth out of the American economy and eventually into their hands:

First, they monetized the national debt. As the recession went global and tax incomes shrank, the U.S. Federal Reserve, after assuring the world that it would not monetize the debt, did exactly that. When a government is faced with rising costs* and falling revenues (our workforce is only 65% employed) it has two choices. Drastically cut income tax rates to decrease the burden on corporations and small businesses and dramatically cut government spending to keep money in the private sector and re-grow the economy OR, it can print extra currency and use that currency to pay its debts to try to remain solvent (called “monetizing the debt”). The reason the U.S. wanted to assure the world that it would not monetize its debt is that this is an extremely risky thing to do; so risky in fact that it has never been done successfully. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke knows (and all economists know) what monetizing debt entails and they know how risky it is. The world would be up in arms if the Fed were to try this because the U.S. Dollar is the world’s reserve currency. That means, the U.S. Dollar is the currency that has been chosen to back the world’s other currencies. This is why when commodities are traded on global markets (like grain and crude oil) they are traded in U.S. Dollars.

Why is it risky to monetize the debt? Because printing all of that currency eventually injects it into the economy, but you have no control over how fast it enters the economy because the only way to measure it is by monitoring certain economic indicators that can only show you the economic conditions for previous fiscal periods. A key thing that increasing the money supply does is that it devalues the currency. With more dollars in circulation and no increase in real wealth each dollar becomes worth less than before and it requires more dollars to purchase things. This is also called inflation because the money supply and prices increase (become inflated).

As this process continues, eventually the rate of inflation has to increase in order to keep up as more and more dollars are needed to cover increasing amounts of debt and the consumer demand for dollars to pay the higher prices. The dollar becomes worth less and less, prices go higher and higher, and eventually the rate of inflation starts to increase exponentially and inflation rates can go all the way to 50% per month or even higher. This is called hyperinflation and the lack of confidence it causes in the currency is catastrophic to an economy. It’s what happened to the German economy after World War I. People literally would bring wheelbarrows filled with German bank notes to do their shopping as prices started to double every two days. (The price for a single loaf of bread eventually topped 3 Billion Marks.)

To use this method to deal with an economic crisis one must use precise timing, picking the exactly correct moment to suddenly stop printing money and raise the discount lending rate to prevent hyperinflation from occurring. The trick is, as I mentioned earlier, all of the economic indicators are showing data that could be months old, so whomever has this unenviable task is literally guessing in the dark about when to do this.

Secondly, Congress passed the TARP bill and the U.S. Treasury purchased all of the toxic mortgage assets held by Citi, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan, and Goldman Sachs. Actually, that’s what it was supposed to do, but it didn’t quite happen that way. Immediately after the bill was signed into law, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was contacted by the Federal Reserve for a meeting. After the meeting, Secretary Paulson held a press conference where he said that the economic situation had worsened so much during the legislative process that using the TARP money to purchase the toxic assets was no longer an effective use of the money and he would instead be using the money to purchase preferred stock from the banks.

Currently, the total amount of money that has been injected into the financial system, both directly and indirectly, stands at 13 Trillion dollars; and yet the economy is still listless on its best days and spiraling on its worst. Think about that for a moment. How much wealth has been removed from our economy if adding THIRTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS back into it doesn’t do anything?

By means of comparison, the best data I can find on the current market value of America’s gold reserves is about 260 Billion Dollars. What the Federal Reserve has done is the equivalent of stealing all the gold out of Fort Knox and getting away scott-free – Fifty-two times!

* $700,000,000,000.00 for TARP
$787,000,000,000.00 for Stimulus
$1,053,000,000,000.00 for Health care
(That alone is $2,540,000,000,000.00 [Two trillion, five-hundred forty billion dollars])

An important perspective on Deep Horizon

The following is a blog entry posted by Mickey Spencer, a tea party member from Central Florida. I think it has some important insights into what’s happening on the Gulf Coast right now, so I reposted it here with his permission.

On June 29, 2010 I was privileged to be given the opportunity to travel to Navarre, Florida with Patricia Sullivan (candidate for 8th US Congressional District Representative), Jason Hoyt (broadly recognized Tea Party movement leader and host of Tea Party Patriots Live radio show), and Allen Wilson (videographer). Patricia felt led to learn more about the oil spill problem beyond what the government, BP, and the media are filtering for us and she extended the invitation to us to join her on this trip so we could each tell the story from our own unique perspectives. I am grateful to her for this opportunity.

While each of us had our own particular goals with the trip, I think they were mainly twofold: 1) See the actual damage being caused and 2) talk to the people who live and work there about their perspectives on what’s happening (and what’s not happening!). An unplanned positive from this trip was that we were able to communicate to the people with whom we spoke that they’re not alone… that there are indeed people not living in their area who do indeed care greatly about what’s happening there. Yes, I’m sure we touched a few lives there by showing that we care, but that pales in comparison to how much the people there touched our lives.

We came to the general consensus that the people there all seemed to have a thousand mile stare in their eyes… as if they’re searching for answers and yet feeling that their search is in vain. They have learned though that what their government officials (local, state, AND federal) have been telling them have been lies. They’ve learned that what BP officials have been telling them have been lies as well. They’ve learned they can’t trust what the media is telling them either. They’re frustrated when they speak with friends and relatives in other parts of the nation and world that this isn’t being perceived as that big of a problem (which is how it’s being reported in the media). Even if someone from the government, BP, or the media came to them tomorrow and finally told the truth they have lost so much confidence that they would naturally assume that to be a lie as well. They genuinely feel they’re all alone and the only ones who know what they’re going through or care about it are other coastal residents. And even some of them are in denial about the problem or are blindly believing what their government, BP, and the media are telling them.

We visited the beach areas from Navarre Beach to Pensacola. The only real difference was the number of tar balls on the beach and the number of BP subcontractors working at removing the tar balls as well as the size of the equipment they were using.

In Navarre Beach, we spoke with a surfer who, based upon the fact the government had declared the beach safe and the absence of many tar balls on the beach, had decided along with some friends of his that it was safe to surf.

We ventured a little over a mile west of there to another location on the beach and got there just as some BP subcontractors had arrived to set up what looked like picnic areas so they could begin gathering up tar balls. We learned that these cleanup crews typically are allowed to work only about 15 minutes of every hour (being paid hourly of course) so as not to exhaust them in the typical beach hot sun. They were allowed to work more than 15 minutes the day we were there due to it being an overcast day with occasional drizzle… spinoff from Hurricane Alex.

The BP subcontractors have a pretty rigid procedure list that they follow when they arrive. First they lay out huge sheets of thick plastic on clean areas of the beach. On that they place their drinks, their coolers, their plastic garbage bags, their extra sets of rubber gloves and rubber boots (all disposable of course), etc. You will NEVER see one of the BP subcontractors walking on the beach without the rubber boots and rubber gloves on them. You also won’t see them venturing actually into the surf. They are there solely to clean the tar balls off the surface of the beach… clearly only for cosmetic reasons!

Also while we were there we saw an environmental engineer from their county show up wearing rubber waders that extended up to his armpits and also covered his hand and arms. He went into the shallow surf to take water samples ostensibly to see if the water was safe. However, we learned that every sample he takes requires TEN DAYS before the county commissioners will act on the results of those findings. TEN DAYS!!!

During the whole time the BP subcontractors were out there on the beach with their rubber boots and rubber gloves and the environmental engineer was out there in a virtual HazMat suit, there were still visitors to the beach going into and out of the water without a care in the world because the county commission had determined the water was safe TEN DAYS ago. And some of these visitors to the beach who were playing in the surf were little children… with their parents there approving of it because the government (and the tourist council) was communicating to everyone that the water is fine!

Keep in mind this was 4 days before the 4th of July weekend when we visited. Any other year the road running along the beach would have been a virtual parking lot with thousands and thousands of people. Traffic was not a problem on the day we went. The only parking lot with more than 5 cars in it (aside from vehicles toting BP subcontractors) was the one in Pensacola. And even that parking lot (which looked to be capable of holding thousands of cars had maybe 2 or 3 dozen cars in it. What it did have a lot of were dump trucks to carry away the polluted sand they’d carry away. What it also had were TV news trucks from Fox, NBS, and ABC from as far away as Tampa. And on the beach itself, were dozens and dozens and dozens of BP subcontractors (often relaxing under their temporary shelters on the beach) and more than a dozen earthmovers (some might call them bulldozers) scooping up the trash bags filled with tar balls that were being scooped up.

And in the midst of all that you’d see little children and adults playing on the beach and in the water, totally oblivious to the heavy equipment and all the protective clothing on the BP subcontractors. We took a handful of photos and video of the contrast between the heavy equipment filled with tar balls and the little children pulling their little beach toys all in the same photos. If you weren’t there to witness it with your own eyes, you’d swear the images had been Photoshopped. I can assure you no mixing of images took place. It was sickening to see it in person.

We learned that BP (and the government) steadfastly refuses to allow volunteers to do any cleanup effort on the beaches at all claiming there’s a liability issue and they need to make sure their subcontractors have taken classes in how to handle hazardous materials and have signed waivers holding BP and the government blameless. And yet, those same governments portray to beach visitors that the beach and the surf is just fine and to be sure to come on down and spend your tourist dollars there.

We met one incredible gentleman on the beach who told us he’d been living there since 1946. He told us we could call him Big Daddy. Big Daddy had a lifetime of experiences to tell about, but more importantly, Big Daddy knew a lie when he heard one. Big Daddy knew quite a lot about what was really going on with the oil spill and the efforts on the part of the government, BP, and the media to cover it all up. You could almost see the tears wanting to come out as Big Daddy told his story, but I think Big Daddy had already shed all the tears he could spare. That poor man’s heart was broken and continuing to break a little more daily as this problem continues to get worse and the lies to cover it all up get bigger.

Patricia spent quite a lot of time talking privately with Big Daddy. The impact that each of them had on the other was immeasurable. I think each of them will continue for a long time gaining a little more understanding of how much each of them had affected the other with their talk that afternoon.

We learned that evening that Debbie Gunnoe was going to be hosting a startup meeting of concerned residents to discuss what they could do about all this, gauge their interest, and see how many would be willing to commit to helping. We already owed a great debt of gratitude to Debbie for providing us with a place to stay Tuesday night. And we were more than happy to attend her meeting as observers and to help out with our advice along the way. Patricia, Jason, Allen and I each bring something to the table in putting together groups of people, writing letters, leading those groups of people, and defining goals. In addition to all that, Allen is an absolutely wiz with video and how to make it tell a message to further your cause.

Additionally, we learned from one lady at the meeting in particular (and there are many more stories just like this one!) about some of the other toxins in the water. Benzene is apparently one of the key ingredients in the dispersants that BP is adding to the oil at the point of the leak. We’ve all been assured that the use of the dispersants is totally safe. However, Benzene is a known carcinogen (proven to directly cause cancer). This nice lady and her family had gone to the beach a very few weeks ago after the spill. The county commissioners had declared the beaches to be safe. So she, her husband, and her children had gone in the surf to play. Her husband emerged from the water with tar balls stuck to his body and to his swim suit. She immediately came out of the water with the same results. They immediately got their children out of the water, but it was too late. Apparently some of the Benzene –infested water had gotten into their system resulting in her children experiencing several days of diarrhea. Their pediatrician diagnosed it as Benzene poisoning. Of course, there’s no telling what long term effects her children will experience as a result of that “harmless, fun day at the beach at the urging of our tourist bureaus.”

Further, there’s no telling what all of us will be experiencing for days, weeks, months, and years to come as a result of this calamity either.

Another thing we learned is that not only does water evaporate. That’s where we get rain. Additionally, oil evaporates as well. And so does Benzene. And when they evaporate along with the water, that goes up into the clouds and eventually comes down as rain. We learned while we were there that reports of oil rain in the Tampa area are already coming in. When you pour oil on vegetation, the vegetation dies. I’ve played on golf courses before where one of their pieces of equipment was inadvertently leaking oil with the end result being that everywhere the oil had leaked, the grass had died. Imagine that happening everywhere it rains where the moisture in the clouds that produced the rain originated from areas polluted by this Gulf oil spill.

And of course, vegetation takes in carbon dioxide and gives off oxygen. Humans and animals take in oxygen and give off carbon dioxide. Imagine what happens when you remove the vegetation from that equation! You’ll begin to see world-wide carbon dioxide levels going up and oxygen levels going down.

The people there are hurting. They all want to solve the problem, but they’re not being allowed to help. The answers they’re being provided are total oxymorons. On the one hand, they’re being told that coming into contact with the tar balls and other toxic substances as a result of the spill represents to high of a hazard for them to be allowed to help. And on the other hand, they and all of the world are being told the beaches and the surf are fine and everyone should come on down to enjoy themselves with a week (or more) at the beach. Those two statements can’t possibly both be true!

I want to do so much more to help the Gulf coastal residents (not just Big Daddy and Debbie, but all of them… including the ones we didn’t get to meet). But for now, the biggest help I can be is communicating to you all the message of what I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears.

Perhaps you can do something to help also… even if it’s just becoming informed about the problem and passing along the message yourself. If you know people who live along the Gulf, let them know you care about what’s happening. Contact your elected officials and secure commitments from them to do something as well. Hold our elected officials accountable!

We’ve assisted them by putting together a YouTube channel to help further their efforts: http://www.youtube.com/user/FLOILCAP

Patricia Sullivan has written an article from her perspective on what we witnessed: http://patriciasullivanforcongress.com/category/blog/

Please watch the video stories and read the accounts!

BP Subcontractors setting up their “picnic” area

Tar Balls

BP Subcontractors. Notice they’re all wearing yellow rubber boots and blue gloves to protect themselves from all the hazardous waste. And this is just for walking on the beach, raking and scooping up the tar balls, and placing them in plastic garbage bags.

Occasionally a BP Subcontractor will venture their nets into the shallow surf to gather up some tar balls. But under no circumstances will you see them actually set foot in the water.

More cleanup effort. Of course, this is all strictly for the cosmetics. They want it to appear that there isn’t a tar ball problem.

But of course once they’re done here, they’ll be responding to the next siting and then be back here again a couple of hours later when it’s filled again with tar balls.

Most of the tar balls resemble dog poop. But of course the dog poop doesn’t kill the vegetation and last for decades. And to be honest, the dog poop doesn’t smell as badly.

More tar balls. It looks like a bad case of BP diarrhea!

Pensacola Beach… with parking for thousands, there were maybe two dozen cars there. But there were dozens and dozens and dozens of dump trucks to carry away the tar balls and polluted sand.

Keep in mind this is the week before the 4th of July. This beach should be packed. Notice the earth mover. There were lots of those all over the place.

Another earth mover to capture the tar balls here… in the midst of the handful of families naive enough to believe the county and the tourist bureaus that the beaches are safe.

Oh, What a Night!

Have you ever had an evening where everything just went so right that it was all a blur of maximum sustained awesomeness? I hope so, because I would hate to be the only one. 🙂

What I’m talking about is the 2010 Primary Candidates’ forum sponsored by the South Pinellas 912 Patriots, a local tea party movement group of which I am a member. And what a fantastic group we have! What an amazing assemblage of talent and capability! I have never in my life seen an idea go from conception to planning to preparation to implementation so quickly and so successfully in my entire life. I could quite literally rave about this event in minute detail at such length and with such passionate zeal that not a single one of you would ever want to read my blog again! *LOL*

So, I’ll just cut to the chase. Every candidate in a primary race being voted upon in Pinellas County, Florida was invited and most of them participated. We structured the event so that candidates could introduce themselves and answer questions. The candidates also had tons of face time with the public and were able to address their concerns and answer their questions one-on-one. Aside from a minor technical issue or two (which were deftly handled) the evening went off without a hitch. It was also extremely well-attended. The banquet room at Tuscons holds 250 and was filled to capacity.

We had so many positive comments from people that we were just glowing. The questions asked were a mixture of questions we (the S. Pinellas 912 Patriots) wanted answers to and questions submitted by those in attendance. There were laughs and gasps, there were Progressives and Conservatives, there were incumbents and challengers. It was NOT AT ALL boring.

People came early and stayed late. Nearly everyone present was respectful (and the one who wasn’t removed herself from the room in such a manner that hardly anyone noticed her. But there’s always one, right?)

At the end of the evening I learned a lot about the candidates and that’s precisely what the forum was for. A job well done to everyone involved. I want to extend a huge heart-felt thank you to the candidates who came, and especially to the voting public who gave up a summer evening to come down and join us. I hope everyone came away with more knowledge and a positive experience. I can’t wait to do this again soon!

Progressivism: The Pitcher Plant of the Political World

A young beetle detects the succulent scent of nectar on the wind. Following the scent it arrives at a beautiful, oddly-shaped plant with the appearance of a tubular vase. The scent must be coming from deep inside. It begins the climb. Within minutes it has ascended to the top where the beetle confirms that the sweet smell of nectar does indeed come from within. The liquid pool at the bottom must be pure nectar! As it starts to make its way down, it loses its grip on the slick interior wall and falls into the pool of liquid below. It swims easily to the side wall to begin its climb up and out. Only then, does the beetle realize its mistake. It can’t grasp the side well enough to pull itself up and out. As it struggles, a different fluid is excreted into the pool from the base of the plant. The beetle’s fate is sealed. Unable to escape, the beetle is digested within hours.

Behold, the pitcher plant. It comes in many attractive colors and shapes. It looks beautiful and smells like everything an insect could ever dream of. For many insects, it is one of the most enticing things they will ever encounter, and the last thing they will ever see. To an insect, the pitcher plant is beautiful. Its promises, sweet; but it delivers only death.

And so it is with Progressivism. It appeals to so many of humanity’s most cherished ideals. It holds up the downtrodden and the destitute among us; and eliciting our good-natured sense of pity, Progressivism entices us with pleas for compassion and justice. Many follow their kind and generous hearts; and relying on Progressivism’s sweet promises of compassion and justice for those in need, they often find out only too late that those promises are an illusion and the only thing Progressivism ever really delivers is the death of civilization.

Commander-in-Chief or Petulant President?

It’s early days in this scandal which makes it very hard to know whether or not we know everything relevant about the removal of General McChrystal yesterday. As a veteran, I fully understand the need to be able to expect public loyalty to the Commander-in-Chief at all times, particularly from one’s own hand-picked generals. There is a lot that President Obama has done over the past 18 months that are far outside the powers of the Chief Executive as enumerated in Article Two of the U.S. Constitution, but (presumably) demanding and accepting a high-profile general’s resignation is absolutely within bounds; and truth be told, he doesn’t even need to give a reason if he doesn’t want to. As Commander-in-Chief, even if he wants to appoint and remove generals at whim he has every right to do so.

So, that being said, I’m not bothered by the fact that President Obama fired – oops, I’m sorry…- accepted the resignation of a general. But I might be bothered about why.

I actually read the entire Rolling Stone article that’s caused all the ruckus. The only blatantly negative comments directed at the administration come from some of McChrystal’s aides; and while the comments indicate that Gen. McChrsytal almost certainly shares those views, he is never actually quoted as saying anything disparaging, himself. Overall, the article paints a very bleak picture of the war and particularly of McChrystal’s counterinsurgency-based strategy, and is actually more anti-McChrystal than anything else.

So, why all the upset? I honestly don’t know. The only thing I can imagine is that many in the conservative media interpreted the article as an attack against the administration and liked it, as the General’s aides’ comments served to edify their own sentiments about the administration and provide something of a ‘smoking gun’, so-to-speak, for their views. Conversely, the mainstream media seemed to seize upon it as an attack on the administration which they felt ideologically obligated to defend against by calling for General McChrystal to be held accountable for the anti-Obama Administration sentiments expressed in the article.

For the record, I don’t think either side acted with much integrity here. By loudly backing McChrsytal, conservatives ended up sounding disingenuous, as if disparaging the administration was worth any cost. By removing McChrystal, the President ended up reinforcing the impression that he can’t abide dissent and is so thin-skinned that he will destroy the career of anyone who dares to speak against him at any cost. No one wins when both sides are so driven to make the opposition look bad that they lose their integrity. Mainstream media, shame on you for once again for being progressive advocates first and journalists second. And conservative media, shame on you for compromising your integrity because you thought you had an anti-Obama weapon fall into your laps and couldn’t wait to use it. Fox News, have you learned nothing from MSNBC?

About the Site

Sweet Freedom’s Song is a political weblog expressing the political ideology, opinions, and commentary of the author, William “Tristan” Berry. The name ‘Sweet Freedom’s Song’ is taken from the third verse of the patriotic hymn ‘My Country, ‘Tis of Thee’

Let music swell the breeze,

And ring from all the trees

Sweet freedom’s song;

Let mortal tongues awake;

Let all that breathe partake;

Let rocks their silence break,

The sound prolong.

The quote “How can we sing a song of freedom in a land where we are not free?” is from the book Sweet Freedom’s Song: ‘My Country, ‘Tis of Thee’, and democracy in America by Robert James Branham and Stephen J. Hartnett, published by Oxford Press in 2002. It is referring to a speech given by Fredrick Douglass on July 5, 1852 where, invited to speak at an Independence Day gathering at Rochester, New York, Douglass compares the situation of the African slave in America with that of the Israelites during the Babylonian captivity. Quoting from Psalm 137, Douglass says:

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! We wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion.’ How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

It is to this heartfelt and anguished sentiment that the authors of the book, paraphrasing Douglass’ quote of the psalm ask on his behalf, “How can we sing a song of freedom in a land where we are not free?”

Though it would be a mockery to suggest that the diminished liberties of our current day can be compared to the iron fetters and cruel tortures inflicted upon the African slaves before their emancipation, I submit it as an apt metaphor when one considers the ultimate plight of any people who lose their liberty. Though our chains would be invisible, they would hold us just as fast. Though our punishments would not be physical, they would still be an agony. A nation subjugated by a soft tyranny of restrictive laws and kept poor by excessive taxation is as effectively enslaved as any slave of any age and it matters little in the end whether one’s tyrant flashes a smile or wields a scourge.

My long and winding road (Part I)

I have followed politics since I was a kid. Over the years, my political leanings changed as my understanding of the world evolved and grew. At one or another point in my life I have been a member of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, then back to the  Republican Party, then the Libertarian Party, and now back to the Republican Party again.

But far more significant than party affiliation is ideology and the principles and values that underpin one’s ideology. I started out with no ideology at all, then I discovered the allure of liberalism and progressivism. Ahh, the heady days of championing equality and social justice. I’ll never forget the things I learned as Progressive Democrat, things that have contributed tremendously to my understanding of the world and politics as a whole. It was the days of the Clinton administration, and spiritually, I was neck-deep in a quest for understanding which led me to some very interesting places, some of them far outside the mainstream. This brought me into close, long-term contact with “the Left”, and what I find interesting (and somewhat revealing) is how tightly most of the pagan and ‘Eastern’ spiritual groups I encountered were interwoven with Progressive ideology and activism. Which is fine, of course. I just find it interesting how many of them decry the marriage of Conservatism with Evangelical Protestant Christianity as being an inherently improper amalgam of religion and politics even as they trot off to their pagan gatherings and ‘alternative spirituality’ centers where progressive politics are an assumed common denominator and activism is openly espoused, funded,  and organized to a much greater degree than anything I ever witnessed while attending Evangelical Christian churches. But it was definitely not the last time I would encounter hypocrisy in politics, and I certainly found plenty of it on ‘the Right’, as well. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself…

During Clinton’s first term in the early 90’s, my spiritual teacher at that time (quite predictably) made no secret of her Progressive ideology and she seamlessly incorporated Progressivism into her spiritual instruction. She advocated being able to skillfully debate political conservatives and to that end we were  encouraged to familiarize ourselves with Conservatism and its arguments by exposing ourselves to conservative ideology and those who were talking about it in the media. At the time, that meant Rush Limbaugh. Yes, Rush Limbaugh, the dreaded demon of demagoguery himself. At the time, he did a television show which was much more convenient for me to tune in to than his radio program, and right away I was disgusted. The arrogance, the self-righteous sanctimony, the sarcasm, I found all of it repulsive. But I was determined to watch and learn so I could become familiar with conservative arguments and engage those horrible conservatives in debate effectively.

And then something completely unanticipated happened. I don’t recall the specific details, but there were four senators who had been brought up on ethics charges and the Senate Ethics Committee was conducting hearings on them. The Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, which meant that Democrats chaired all the various committees in both houses. The four senators who were accused of the ethics violations, and they were quite serious, were all Democrats. Rush Limbaugh had a piece of video from C-SPAN which was covering the hearings (about the ONLY media covering the hearings as I recall, but I digress), and when the hearings adjourned momentarily the Democratic Committee chair, apparently forgetting that the C-SPAN cameras were still active and broadcasting (in C-SPAN’s early days this seemed to happen a lot), went down to where the four accused senators were sitting and it was pats on the back, gales of laughter, and wide smiles all around. I’m far more cynical now, but back then my jaw hit the floor. I was astonished and disillusioned. There was no way that the hearings were going to go anywhere or find anything, I now knew. The hearings were simply for show to satisfy the media and nothing more. It was the first time I had ever directly witnessed how the political elite collude with and protect each other, but it wouldn’t be the last.

And while that one incident didn’t change my ideology, it did open my eyes enough to be able to look at things with a bit more objectivity. I had just witnessed with my own eyes members of the party that I had come to associate with justice and equality, carving out for themselves an unequal measure of justice that suited themselves and denied justice to the very people they purported to be the champions of. I could only hope that I wouldn’t see any more of that.

Then a tragic event happened. Ron Brown, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and President Clinton’s Secretary of Commerce was among 35 passengers who died when their plane crashed in Croatia on April 4, 1996. Some days later, President Clinton was leaving Ron Brown’s funeral. The media was on hand, of course, and they were eager to show the president as he left the funeral. The news channels all covered it, and it was exactly as anyone would expect, a clearly distraught President Clinton leaving the funeral and walking to his limousine. Again, Rush Limbaugh had more of the story. What had not been shown on the news was President Clinton’s character before he spotted the news cameras. But Rush had the unedited tape. What America had not seen on the news was a smiling and upbeat President Clinton yucking it up with his aides. Then, spotting the news cameras out of the corner of his eyes, his demeanor rapidly shifts, his smile quickly fading into a contorted frown, his hand rising to his eyes and seemingly wiping a tear away from his cheek.

Now I was angry. No, I was furious. Four senators abuse the public trust and get nothing. Laughing and smiling, they willfully participate in hearings for show, knowing that their careers are fine. And then the President himself is shown not only unaffected by the sudden and tragic death of someone who he said was a dear and close friend, but able to laugh and joke with his aides at his funeral. And to add insult to injury, he then attempts to cover that up for the cameras, hoping that the American people won’t see how callous and unfeeling he is. The bloom had been ripped from the rose.

I was in an ideological crisis. I was numb. I didn’t know what to think or believe. And I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. All my friends were hard-core liberals and the last thing I wanted was to hear the inevitable excuses. But I did keep watching Rush. I didn’t know yet what I thought of him, but at the very least I was starting to see the humor in his presentation, and at the time I needed to be able to laugh at what I was seeing. And as I watched, I started to see the cohesiveness of conservative thought, and by that I mean that I could see the principles that underpinned conservative thinking; and while my heart was still reluctant to let go of the idea that government should help the less fortunate, I did find those conservative principles not only compelling, but familiar, and that really made me think.

To be continued…

Why do the Tea Party people keep going on about liberty? (Part I)

I know. I’ve seen the looks. I’ve heard the questions. Some of you see these weird people wearing strange red, white, and blue hats with miniature American flags grafted onto them wearing American flag t-shirts like extras from the Bicentennial episode of “Let’s Make a Deal” shouting slogans from the 18th century like “No taxation without representation” or “Give me liberty or give me death” and you think they’ve lost all grasp of reality. Clearly they’re from another planet, right? I mean, America has been a country for over 200 years now and we’re the world’s only remaining superpower, so clearly they can’t possibly have a clue, right?

And all that stuff about going back to the Constitution, what’s that all about? America never got rid of the Constitution, so obviously they’re a bunch of idiotic kooks whipped up into a frenzy by those horrible Republicans, right? Or is it those dangerous Patriot movement/fascist militia-types that got hold of them and filled their empty heads with conspiracy theories about the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations transforming the United Nations into a New World Order global government? Something like that. I mean, those Tea Party people are way out there on the fringe, right?

Well, yes and no.

Just like with most things, you can’t really put the Tea Party movement into its proper perspective until you know a bit of history. First of all, I need to say at the outset that I am not a member of any Tea Party group. That is, unless joining a couple of mailing lists counts. But back to history…

As everyone knows (I hope), before our country was formed there were no states. From New Hampshire to Georgia we were a group of thirteen colonial possessions of the British Empire. Britian was one of a number of European countries (along with Spain, France, Portugal, Holland, Belgium, and others) involved in Colonialism, competing against each other for vast resources and wealth. Often, the competition between these colonial powers would escalate into actual war, and when Britain and France sent their armies to war, their colonies sent their militias to war, as well. From New Hampshire to Georgia, regardless of why they had come to the American colonies, whether it was to partake in the colonial trade or to escape religious persecution, most of the colonial population was accustomed to British rule and had never known anything else. Even though the King of England was somewhat constrained by the English Parliament, he still had much more power to rule than the English monarch does today and was in many respects, a dictator.

In the 1770s, things were particularly tense. The British (and their American colonies) had just recently fought the French and Indian War and won decisively, effectively stripping France of nearly all of her colonies in North America in the Treaty of Paris (1763) . This left things rather peaceful by comparison in the American colonies, but back in Britain things were not so calm. The British still had many enemies in Europe and had a sprawling Empire spanning the entire globe to protect, and if King George III was going to be able to protect that empire he was going to need a LOT of money.

King George was already taxing his subjects in England as much as Parliament would allow, but he needed more. The only way he could see to get it was to impose taxes on the colonies, particularly the British colonies in North America; so that’s exactly what he did. Tax after tax was levied against the British colonists in North America to the point where the colonists were paying heavy taxes on everything from paper to paint, lead, glass, and tea. Many colonists formed resistance groups like the Sons of Liberty to oppose the new taxes, mostly upon the grounds that the British Parliament had no authority to impose taxes on its colonial subjects when those subjects had no representatives in the Parliament. Relations with the “mother country” continued to decline when King George decided to send army troops to the American colonies to impose order and enforce the taxation. Many of the Sons of Liberty were students of the works of William Blackstone and John Locke, two of the most widely-read writers on the subject of “government by consent of the governed”.

We all pretty much know what happened from there. War broke out between Britain and the colonies. The colonies convened a Continental Congress and drafted the Declaration of Independence. Those who signed the document would be regarded by Britain as traitors, and if caught they would have been executed for treason against the British Crown. Eventually, the Americans under General George Washington (formerly a colonel in the British Army who had commanded British troops during the French and Indian War) were able to force the British (led by General Lord Cornwallis) into a hopeless situation (with help from the French Navy and the French General Marquis de Lafayette) at Yorktown, Virginia. Unable to fight his way out of an inferior situation against combined American and French armies and ships from the French Navy blocking an escape to the sea, General Cornwallis surrendered and the American colonies were officially free of the British Crown at the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1783).

That’s the shorthand version of history, but underneath that is an untold number of men and women who knew tyranny first-hand. Their lives had always been ruled by the English King. As British subjects, they were in a technical sense the King’s property, and they had found out the hard way just what that meant. By reading the works of Blackstone and Locke, many of the men involved in the Revolution believed that if they could somehow win the War for Independence (and survive), they might have an opportunity to put those ideas into practice.

To be continued…