Tag Archives: Benjamin Franklin

Frightening Insight Into Some Of The Campaign Workers In The Bernie Sanders Campaign

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Yesterday Townhall posted an article about the videos released by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas showing some disturbing comments made by a Bernie Sanders campaign field organizer.

This is the video (warning–horrible language–the man needs his mouth washed out with soap):

The article at Townhall concludes:

Ok, so it’s not as earth-shattering as PV’s excellent series on CNN, but it shows who we’re dealing with in the trenches of the 2020 election. There will probably be more videos like this, but at the same time, you can see why the Democratic establishment doesn’t want these folks gaining more prominence within the ranks of the party. Again, we shouldn’t be shocked that a) there are nutty people out there; and b) the Sanders operations hire such people. In terms of sexual harassment, Sanders’ 2016 campaign was totally infested with such a problem. It was a den of sexism and harassment that was not really addressed, and Sanders’ excuse was that he was too busy losing to Hillary Clinton to tackle it. I doubt Jurek will be purged, but it’s always good to keep tabs on people like this. they do the same against us and our totally radical ideas about…the Constitution, lower taxes, freedom, more jobs, and a strong economy. But we’re the extreme ones, right? 

We need to remember the words of Benjamin Franklin at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, “A Republic, if You Can Keep It“. There are a number of Democrats running for President who are talking about ‘transforming’ America in ways that are totally opposed to the Republic established by the Constitutional Convention. Voters need to pay close attention to what is said openly and what is exposed about these campaigns.

When History Isn’t Taught In Schools

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Last week we celebrated Independence Day. It was the day that America declared its freedom from British rule. It was the day that Congress approved the Declaration of Independence.

The New American website includes what I consider the most important quote of the time period:

The deliberations of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were held in strict secrecy. Consequently, anxious citizens gathered outside Independence Hall when the proceedings ended in order to learn what had been produced behind closed doors. The answer was provided immediately. A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

We are an imperfect nation founded by imperfect people. However, those imperfect people relied on basic historic principles to create a land that would promote freedom. They were constrained by the customs of their time, and acted accordingly. Many of the issues they did not address (because they were not considered issues at the time) have since been addressed. Unfortunately some of our Congressional representatives do not appreciate the history that gave us our freedom or that allows them supposedly to represent us.

On July 5th, CNS News posted a tweet by Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.). This tweet was posted on July 4th:

The article notes:

Controversial Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) both “liked” and shared Pressley’s post on her Twitter page.

In her Twitter thread, Rep. Pressley argued that the “prejudices, biases & contradictions codified by our founding fathers is still felt today.” She continued to compare the detention of migrants awaiting trial to slavery, writing that “We continue to struggle as a nation to embrace our full history, one that includes family separation of black families at the auction block & today of migrants at camps.”

Writing for The Daily Wire, Josh Hammer rebuked the article, saying that its author was “profoundly ungrateful” and “affirmatively wrong to muddle and belittle the genius that was Thomas Jefferson’s drafted Declaration of Independence.”

Hammer added that the Declaration of Independence actually laid the foundation for the extermination of slavery:

“Slavery was not in any way a tenet of the American Founding; it was an institution manifestly athwart the Founding. The sagacity of the Declaration, in fact, was that it actually laid the seeds — the very codified foundation — for the eventual eradication of that most horrific of compromises of principle.”

Again, history has to be viewed in context. Slavery was an acceptable practice at the time, and women did not have rights at the time. That has changed. As for the Indians, unfortunately it is the rule of nations that since man arrived on the planet that nations have changed hands because of force. Generally speaking, the conquered people assimilated into the new nation. Look at the nations of Europe and Great Britain to find multiple examples of that principle.

America is one of the freest nations in the world–our Bill of Rights protects that freedom. If Representative Pressley thinks the nation she is supposed to serve is so horrible, I would ask what legislation she has introduced to make it a better place.

Meanwhile, let us heed the words of Benjamin Franklin and celebrate our republic.

Why We Have The Electoral College

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On Thursday, USA Today posted an article about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV). That is the proposal working through the states that would essentially eliminate the Electoral College. The article points out that the Electoral College was put in place as a part of the system of checks and balances to make sure that small, less populated states would be represented in presidential elections.

The article notes:

Rural America produces almost all our country’s food, as well as raw materials like metals, cotton and timber. Energy, fossil fuels but also alternatives like wind and solar come mostly from rural areas. In other words, the material inputs of modern life flow out of rural communities and into cities.

This is fine, so long as the exchange is voluntary — rural people choose to sell their goods and services, receive a fair price, and have their freedom protected under law. But history shows that city dwellers have a nasty habit of taking advantage of their country cousins. Greeks enslaved whole masses of rural people, known as helots. Medieval Europe had feudalism. The Russians had their serfs.

Credit the American Founders with setting up a system of limited government with lots of checks and balances. The U.S. Senate makes sure all states are represented equally, even low-population rural states like Wyoming and Vermont. Limits on federal power, along with the Bill of Rights, are supposed to protect Americans from overreaching federal regulations. And the Electoral College makes it impossible for one population-dense region of the country to control the presidency.

The article notes that the reason Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election is 2016 is that she won California and some big cities, but failed to win votes in the center of the country.

The article observes:

And the system worked. The Electoral College requires more than just the most raw votes to win — it requires geographic balance. This helps to protect rural and small-town Americans.

The article notes that fourteen states have already passed NPV. The good news is that NPV only takes effect after it is joined by enough states to control 270 electoral votes (a majority of electoral votes). At the point the Electoral College becomes moot. If the NPV reaches 270 electoral votes, what is the point of voting in a presidential election if you live in a sparsely-populated state? We will be run by California, New York, and some major cities. None of the states or cities involved are particularly well-governed–some of them are on the verge of bankruptcy. Is this really a good idea?

The article concludes:

The idea that every vote should count equally is attractive. But a quote often attributed to Benjamin Franklin famously reminds us that democracy can be “two wolves and a lamb voting on what’s for lunch.” (City dwellers who think that meat comes from the grocery store might not understand why this is such a big problem for the lamb.) And when you think about it, every check on government power, from the Electoral College to the Bill of Rights, is a restraint on the majority.

The Electoral College makes it even harder to win the presidency. It requires geographic balance and helps protect Americans who might otherwise have their voices ignored. All Americans should value constitutional protections, like the Electoral College, that remind us that the real purpose of government is to protect our individual rights.

Eventually Everyone Figures This Out

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This post is based on an article on The Federalist Papers website. It consists of two quotes about welfare and the consequences of our current welfare programs.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback explained the problems with our current welfare system:

“Welfare is failing, just not for the reason you think. For too long, conventional wisdom in Washington, D.C., has dictated the best way to move people out of poverty is to expand welfare programs so that individuals could possibly, gradually, work their way out of dependency.

Kansas’ recent reform experience turns that notion upside down.

It is now clear that welfare fails because it ensnares people in poverty by paying them to not work. Welfare fails because it discourages people from improving their lives. So many recipients don’t work and get caught on welfare, suffering in poverty for years…even generations.

Fortunately, there’s a proven way to help.

Kansas shows what’s possible when you free people from the welfare trap. With assistance from the Foundation for Government Accountability, Kansas just completed the most comprehensive welfare tracking project of its kind. We matched more than 41,000 individuals as they moved off welfare with their employment records at the state’s Department of Labor.

…When moved off food stamps, half of these Kansans began working immediately. Nearly three-fifths were employed within 12 months and their incomes rose by an average of 127 percent during that first year. Incomes kept increasing as they progressed to full-time work and increased their wages. Better still, those higher wages more than offset the food stamps lost, making them more financially secure. This is real success!

Kansas’ simple reforms have led to more employment, higher incomes, less poverty, and lower spending.

Even those still on food stamps (but now required to work to keep them) are twice as likely to be working and have also substantially increased their incomes, though their overall incomes are still not as high as those freed completely from welfare. The result is that these individuals now need less help and their average time on food stamps is cut in half.

…For too long, Washington, D.C. has encouraged states to extend food stamps and expand Medicaid to ever more able-bodied adults. They promised welfare as an economic stimulus and states – red and blue alike –bought it. The result is not stimulus, but malaise.

People on welfare are working less, earning less and as a result are trapped in poverty. Millions of them. It’s a national tragedy.

Fortunately, states have many reform tools to roll back what has become the gateway to dependency: food stamps. States can assist their citizens by restoring work requirements, time limits, asset tests, reducing eligibility loopholes, and eliminating fraud.

Once free, those previously dependent on the government are motivated to work and earn more than just money: they gain self-worth, dignity, and a hopeful future. All things a person can’t get from welfare.

Americans know the value of hard work. That’s why common-sense work requirements were core to the bipartisan 1996 welfare reform that turns 20 this year.

Now is the perfect time for Congress to expand work requirements and time limits for non-disabled adults on all welfare programs – including Medicaid, ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion, food stamps, and housing. It’s time to start holding states to asset tests for all welfare programs. It’s time to return welfare to the truly needy and stop trapping Americans in government dependency.

With these reforms, Congress can help restore the working class and give real hope to millions still trapped in poverty and a failing welfare system.”

The second quote is from Benjamin Franklin:

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

There is no country in the world where so many provisions are established for them; so many hospitals to receive them when they are sick or lame, founded and maintained by voluntary charities; so many alms-houses for the aged of both sexes, together with a solemn general law made by the rich to subject their estates to a heavy tax for the support of the poor.

Under all these obligations, are our poor modest, humble, and thankful; and do they use their best endeavors to maintain themselves, and lighten our shoulders of this burthen? — On the contrary, I affirm that there is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken, and insolent.

The day you passed that act, you took away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependence on somewhat else than a careful accumulation during youth and health, for support in age or sickness.

In short, you offered a premium for the encouragement of idleness, and you should not now wonder that it has had its effect in the increase of poverty.

Repeal that law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. St. Monday, and St. Tuesday, will cease to be holidays. SIX days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them.

We don’t do anyone any good by giving them things they did not have to work for. There is something in human nature that feels a sense of accomplishment when we earn something and feels less than capable when we have to depend on someone else for everything. We need a change of attitude in the American welfare system. It’s time to help people get back to work instead of encouraging them to take more from those who do work.

A Republic, If You Can Keep It

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A friend of mine writes a column for the Beaufort Observer. Her most recent column was particularly relevant to today’s news. Here it is:

NancyMurdock

April 21, 2015

The story goes that after the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got – a Republic or a Monarchy?” Franklin responded: “A Republic – if you can keep it.”

These days no one is openly clamoring for a monarchy, but few talk much about our Republic, other than in the pledge of allegiance to the flag. In fact, most people think we are a democracy, even though our founders went to great lengths to determine that not so. James Madison clearly spoke of the problems of a democracy when he wrote: “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths”.

The word democracy was seldom used in this country before the presidency of our old friend, Woodrow Wilson. He used the slogan “making the world safe for democracy” as a battle cry to get the US into World War I. It became such a bone of contention that the government itself through various means attempted to clarify the matter. The US Army’s Training Manual of 1928 contained a section explaining in detail the difference between a democracy and a republic in the original, historical sense. However, the cat was out of the bag as schools and the press routinely used the word democracy to identify our form of government, and now it is a generally accepted term.

James Madison explained a republic in Federalist Papers, No. 39: “We may define a republic to be…a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during [the people’s] pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior”. (That good behavior part presents a serious problem.)

The left loves to attack the Constitution by stating that at the time of its ratification our country was small and mainly agrarian, but it is no longer suitable for an industrial huge nation. Madison addressed that point specifically in Federalist Paper, No. 14: “In a democracy the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, must be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region”. How and where the people live should not affect the type of federal government required – unless the government wishes to control every aspect of the lives of the citizens.

The real reason the left does not like the Constitution is that it does not allow for a Federal government that would contain a Department of Labor, a Department of Agriculture, A Department of Education, a Department of Energy, and hundreds of other agencies not enumerated within the Constitution. The basic truth is this: the Constitution would never have been ratified if there had been even the slightest hint of a central government with one tenth the power which it now embodies. The Federalist of 1787 (those supporting a strong Federal government) would identify with those currently called strict Constitutionalist (known in some circles as far right wing nut jobs and whacky birds) and the Anti-Federalist (those wanting a weaker central power) would probably move to a South American island.

More and more it appears as we have been unable to keep our Republic. The question as to what comes next is still open to debate. Will more Americans accept slavery to the state or will a new spirit demanding liberty arise from the ashes?

Solutions That May Be Too Late

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I am sure that all of us have heard many fellow Americans say things like, “There’s no point in voting–they are all alike” or “Washington is so corrupt, it can never be fixed.” These are very discouraging statements, particularly because there is some truth in both of them. Ted Cruz is offering solutions. I am just not sure he can break through the corruption to get those solutions implemented.

Yesterday Western Journalism posted an article entitled, “Ted Cruz Unveils A 10-Step Path For GOP To Follow Into 2016.”

The article quotes a statement made by Ted Cruz that is chilling because it is true:

“If we simply settle into business as usual in this town and keep growing and growing and growing the leviathan and keep shrinking and shrinking and shrinking that sphere of individual liberty, we will demoralize the millions of men and women who came out in November and gave Republicans the biggest majority in the house since the 1920s.”

After giving a speech at Heritage Action’s 2015 Conservative Policy Summit, Ted Cruz tweeted his 10-Step Plan. Here are the highlights:

1. Embrace a big pro-jobs, growth agenda.

2. Do everything humanly possible to repeal Obamacare.

3. Secure the border and stop amnesty.

4. Hold government accountable and rein in judicial activism.

5. Stop the culture of corruption in Washington.

6. Pass fundamental tax reform, making taxes flatter, simpler, and fairer.

7. Audit the Fed.

8. Pass a strong balanced budget amendment.

9. Get the federal government out of the business of dictating education standards.

10. Deal seriously with the twin threats of ISIS and a nuclear Iran.

These are fantastic ideas. Unfortunately, there are very powerful forces at work that will oppose a number of these ideas. We need to support these ideas. If you don’t like Ted Cruz, find someone you can support who supports these ideas.

Last fall, I heard a statement from a member of Congress who was very concerned about the direction our nation has taken. I am not mentioning his name because I can’t remember how public the event was. The member of Congress stated that unless we elect someone out of the political class–someone like a Rand Paul or a Ted Cruz–we may not be able to turn this country back to its founding principles. Please keep that in mind when you decide who to support in 2016.

Remember the words of Benjamin Franklin after the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when he was asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?” He replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

If we are to keep our Republic, we need to get rid of the political establishment that has taken hold of Washington, D.C. Removing establishment politicians of both parties is our only hope.

What Are Our Children Learning?

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I have posted a few articles on Common Core and on the AP U. S. History course for high school students. There are some real questions as to what the curricula associated with these standards and programs is actually teaching, but now we have strange curriculum showing up in other areas.

Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article quoting Minnesota teachers on how their schools teach literature classes.

The article included the following description of how Edina High School in Edina, Minnesota teaches literature classes:

Acceptance and inter-cultural understanding can be fostered through the use of powerful texts, discussion, analysis, and exploration in the classroom. An English curriculum grounded in social justice rests on a belief based in equity—that each person should have access to resources regardless of race, gender, ability, age, socio-economic status, or sexual orientation.

Why is our educational system trying to divide Americans instead of focusing on the things we have in common that made this country great?

The article includes a comment from Woodbury High School:

At Woodbury High School, the [literature] course is primarily structured chronologically. Social, economic, cultural and political frameworks of the readings are sometimes explored explicitly through eight critical lenses: feminist, deconstruction, new criticism, new historical/biographical, reader response, post-colonial, psychological and Marxist theory. Students apply critical literary elements such as figurative language, symbolism, and motif to find author’s intent.

What about teaching them the uniqueness of the U.S. Constitution instead?

John Hinderaker sums it up:

This is mis-education, worse than not attending school at all. Any child of normal intelligence would gain more from staying up late at night and reading books with a flashlight under the covers than from being subjected to such cant. For many students, such palpable bullshit is likely to ruin literature forever.

After the Constitutional Convention in 1787, people gathered outside Independence Hall in order to learn what had been created. A website called ourrepubliconline.com reports:

A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Unless we do a better job of educating our children, we won’t be able to keep it.

Posted On Facebook By Allen West

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As I ponder the NSA records data mining episode here are my thoughts. This is like carpet bombing vs. precision attack. Can someone explain why we weren’t listening to Anwar-al-Awlaki and his conversations with Major Nidal Hasan? Why weren’t we able to track Carlos Bledsoe‘s travel to Somalia and Yemen to receive terrorist training? Why didn’t we pay attention to warning signs of Abdul Mutallab (underwear bomber) with a one-way ticket and little baggage traveling from Nigeria to America? Why weren’t we paying attention to the Tsarnaev brothers’ travels and connections to Chechen Islamic terrorism — heck Russia warned us? Why is it that in October 2011, 57 Islamic organizations — several with ties to Muslim Brotherhood — sent a letter to then counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan demanding we purge training materials and punish instructors they deemed “offensive” and we didn’t say “shove it” and target THEIR records? We’d rather carpet bomb Americans to cover our cowardice in confronting Islamic extremism. Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
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