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I just read this piece by Myron Magnet at National Review – a short history of why self-government was so important to our Founders.  What struck me after reading is how fragile our Liberty is even with the SO high of an expense with which it has been bought through the centuries.  Yes, we consider it our birthright – but even with payments already, it demands even more.  These are the most salient ‘graphs from the post (emphasis mine):

The Founders believed that the purpose of government was to protect life, liberty, and property from what they called the depravity of human nature— from man’s innate capacity to do the kinds of violence that slave-owners, to take just one example, did every day. But government, they recognized, is a double-edged sword. You arm officials with the power to protect you; but those officials have the same fallen human nature as everyone else, so who is to say that they won’t use that power to oppress you, as European governments had oppressed the colonists’ forebears? From Pharaoh to Nero to the Stuart kings, history teems with examples of such despotic governments. Even the democratic republic the Founders created had to be run by imperfect men, and thus even it could turn into what Richard Henry Lee called an elective despotism. So the second great Founding idea is this: The mere fact that you elect representatives to govern you is no sure-fire guarantee of liberty. Or, as Madison saw it in Federalist No. 10: Taxation with representation can be tyranny.

Even if it is done with the “best of intentions” – elective despotism is still tyranny if it oversteps it bounds in “helping people” by taking away others’ freedoms.

This danger worried the Founders constantly,

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(re: Bluto).  From Andrew Klaven: “Cowboy Up, Conservatives – And Happy Fourth”

Recently I’ve been hearing a lot of conservatives saying things like, “It’s over. The left has won. This is no longer America. I’m not even going to celebrate the Fourth of July this year.” I confess this disturbs me. I expect feminists to squeal like hysterical little girls.

Second Kings, Chapter 6, contains one of my favorite Bible stories. The King of Aram (which was more or less Syria) is waging war against Israel. But every time he sets up an ambush, the prophet Elisha tips off the Israelites and they get away. Because Elisha is a prophet! So he knows what the Syrians are planning. Mightily ticked off, the Syrian king decides to take Elisha out. So he sends his army to surround the city of Dothan where Elisha is staying.

The next morning, Elisha’s servant steps outside, looks up and sees that the city is surrounded by Syrian horses and chariots. Panicked, he cries out to Elisha, “Oh no, my lord! What shall we do?”

The prophet answers calmly, “Don’t be afraid. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”

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It seems that commenter Bruce Currie took offense to my post that spotlighted Ted Olsen ( gay marriage lawyer), kept refusing to answer Chris Wallace’s question of does this Supreme Court decision open the door for polygamy (emphasis mine).  His comment was:

“Polygamy is historically a feature of patriarchal societies in which women are treated as property with few or no legal rights of their own. The SCOTUS decision on marriage equality elevates the individual’s wish to marry whomever they choose to a constitutional right–in keeping with the Constitution’s focus on individual rights. Marriage equality means just this; a partnership between TWO people who choose to marry. It dovetails perfectly with the evolution of women’s rights to (in theory) legal equality with men. Those who claim this ruling opens the way for polygamy are introducing a red herring that is 180 degrees from the point of the decision–and the arc of history.”

Wrong.  Short and pithily, my response was if gender is now irrelevant, what’s so special about TWO?  Er, nothing at all, given how “marriage” has just been royally redefined.  Once opened, dude, that barn door isn’t ever going to get shut.  And besides – here’s that polygamy news I KNEW was coming right behind:  Polygamous Montana trio applies for wedding license

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We’ve commented before that the Republicans CHOOSE not to attack the Democrats the way that the Democrats attack them – or are they just incapable of defending themselves (and, er, us) because they are just the equivalent of the proverbial 98 lb dorky schmucks who haven’t figured out how “lead” to save themselves?  Case in point has been the Senate filibuster.  Harry Reid certainly decided to nuke it when it fit his needs.  Republicans under McConnell’s “leadership” to get rid of Obamacare?

Shot:

Senate Republicans slam the door on scrapping the filibuster.

Chaser:

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This from Ben Shapiro at Townhall (emphasis mine):

No, the gay rights movement and the broader American left celebrated the same-sex marriage decision in wild fashion because the decision established two fundamental notions: First, that government has replaced God in the moral pantheon of the United States; second, that the new god-government has the power to root out and destroy any God-based institutions, destroying the social capital and fabric that holds together the nation.

With God safely shunted to the side in favor of Justice Kennedy, the next step in the gay rights movement will be the smashing of idolators — namely, those who cling to their religion and church in spite of Justice Kennedy’s New New Testament. Leftists have already moved to ban nonprofit status for religious institutions that refuse to acknowledge same-sex marriages; leftists have already sued into oblivion religious business owners who refuse to participate in same-sex weddings. It will not stop there. Religious schools will be targeted. Then, so will homeschooling programs. The secular religion of the left has been set free to pursue its own crusade against the infidel.

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Well, after I wrote this, I saw this excerpt from Senator Ted Cruz’s new book giving us an inside look at DC Republicans.  It isn’t a pretty picture and seeing that they believe us to be Big Time Chumps for believing them, I can see why some of them have steam coming out of their ears for having the Big Flashlight shined upon them – for it shows their true nature.  And basically validates what my post (and all of the previous ones like it) said – they lie to us and want us to believe it’s rain:

“During my time in the Senate, I’ve been amazed how many senators pose one way in public—as fiscal conservatives or staunch Tea Party supporters, for example—and then in private do little or nothing to advance those principles.

“Indeed, if transcripts of our Senate lunches were released to the public, I think many voters would be astonished.”

Why wouldn’t we believe it??  Their own actions have shown us even as they have said otherwise.  RESULTS are what we ALL should be looking at as well as the FIGHT IN THE DOG.  Have they been willing to use every tool at their disposal, made EVERY EFFORT?  A political Party is supposed to be in opposition in a two party set up – and this shows us not that there’s no fight in the R dog, they’re happy for any scraps they get from the other Party’s table.

Following, advocating, fighting for Principles – on our side? No, not even close.

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If I ever get involved in one of those surveys, even as I have been the one to put up most of the Chris Christie YouTubes, that asks which Republican candidate you would never vote for, THAT’S when he would get my vote.  Why?  I detect Scott Brown with a wider waistband – from The Corner, a recounting (in part) of Christie’s sneers at the Second Amendment (emphasis mine):

The governor not only supported the 1994 federal “assault-weapons” ban, but he did so with an unlovely zeal. While running for the state assembly in 1995, candidate Christie described those who opposed Bill Cinton’s crime bill as “dangerous,” “crazy,” and “radical” peoplewho “must be stopped.” For good measure, he then willfully mischaracterized the soon-to-be-prohibited weapons as “automatic assault weapons,” which they were not. When the worthless federal ban expired in 2004, New Jersey retained its own version. Christie continues to support this, affirming in 2009 that he “supports all current gun laws” in New Jersey.

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Take a read on Lisa Schiffren’s take on last week’s decisions and on the Culture War.  I do agree on with her on this:

It’s been an unhappy week in conservative America. I won’t lie. Last week’s three big SCOTUS rulings on Obamacare, gay marriage and housing, and the race to destroy Confederate statuary—because bringing down the flag over the South Carolina statehouse isn’t enough—have been dispiriting. The dawning awareness that we no longer live in a Constitutional Republic, and that we cannot count on the rule of law or the plain meaning of words in legislation, is dive-under-the-covers depressing. If you believe, as I do, that liberalism unleashed has a lot in common with fascism, some dread accompanies evidence that constitutional restraints have been cut. The temptation to hide was strong.

And that’s just the set up.

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What can we do when we depend on honesty in the beginning (like NH’s Kelly Ayotte campaigning that she was ABSOLUTELY against illegal alien amnesty) and once in their office, they do the opposite?  A snippet of history on now Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan has ruled on the issue of same sex marriage.

Then:

In response to a question from Sen. John Cornyn (at page 28 of her Senate Judiciary Questionnaire), Kagan stated flat out that there was no constitutional right for same sex couples to marry (emphasis mine):

1. As Solicitor General, you would be charged with defending the Defense of Marriage Act. That law, as you may know, was enacted by overwhelming majorities of both houses of Congress (85-14 in the Senate and 342-67 in the House) in 1996 and signed into law by President Clinton.

a. Given your rhetoric about the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy—you called it “a profound wrong—a moral injustice of the first order”—let me ask this basic question: Do you believe that there is a federal constitutional right to samesex marriage?

Answer: There is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

Now:

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From Erick Erickson at Redstate – he points out what a lot of us are thinking, that the fundamental transformation has taken root and a big part of it is the turning upside down and inside out of both our public policy (which WILL be enforced as YOUR new private morals (and what you have now be damned) as well as our public officials no longer just giving lip service to the Constitution (re: their oaths) but racing past ignoring it to now trying to get rid of it.  His thoughts, in part (reformatted, emphasis mine):

For those of us of faith, it appears society has collectively lost its mind. Madness has set in. Yes, in fact, we see what Paul warns of in Romans 1. The people have been handed over to themselves and we are caught in the middle. It is a wildfire of the mind and society.  A lot of you want to check out of it. You want to take refuge, hide, and protect your families. You want to go for the Benedictine Model that Rod Dreher hints at — take shelter in the monastery and wait for the fire to burn itself out.

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Next, remember that life is not easy for any of us. It will probably not be fair, and it certainly is not all about you. The gray hair and wrinkles you see on older people have been earned the hard way, by living and dealing with the challenges of life. When I was a young adult and labored under the delusion of my own omniscience, I thought I knew more than I actually did. That is a function of youth.

With the wisdom that only comes with the passage of years, the older folks warned me presciently and ominously, “Son, you just live long enough and you’ll see.” They were right; oh, so right. Life is humbling and can be hard, very hard. It is a series of decisions, some harder than others, some good and, unfortunately, too many of them bad. It will be up to each of you to make as many good decisions as possible and to limit the bad ones, then to learn from all of them. But I will urge you to resist when those around you insist on making the bad decisions. Being accepted or popular with those doing wrong is an awful Faustian bargain and, as with all Faustian bargains, not worth it. It is never wrong to do the right thing. It may be hard, but never wrong. . . .

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“Choose his father well.”

As Grokster Susan (and my Youngest) say often: indeed.  Forget about that pop culture is now telling us – raising a son, even a normal one (with both sons being ADHD, I’ll never know what the “easier side” of raising such was like) is not easy.  Pop culture says to indulge YOURSELF – and let them do what they want.  Nonsense!  When you and your husband made to decision that could lead to having a baby boy, you owned that responsibility come hell or high water (or sometimes, both, and more).  I came across this post a while ago on what I considered a good start of raising that son, and this lady said it well: best results start with choosing well with his father (emphasis mine):

Lately on Facebook, several versions of what it means to be a little boy’s mama have been circulating. They are touching, and bring a smile to your face, a touch of nostalgia, and perhaps even a tear to your eye. You are exhorted to have lots of energy, be ready to put up with bloody noses and reptiles in the house, see movies you don’t like, and various other true things.

We mamas of little boys have a tough job. We deserve a little smile as we ponder our muddy offspring. As I type this, my just recently de-mudded grandson is graciously allowing me a few minutes to recoup from a busy day of swimming, mud bogging, dump trucking, and hugging stinky dogs. His sister hung right in there with him. So, yes, we even need these moments that tell our hearts that our efforts are special moments that will unfold in a story book life for our beloved sons.

However, we also need some harder truths, and now is a good time to take a look at that. So, here’s my version, for what it’s worth.

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