“Liberty, like equality, is a word more used than understood. Perfect and absolute liberty is as incompatible with the existence of society, as equality of condition.” And… “If newspapers are useful in overthrowing tyrants, it is only to establish a tyranny of their own.” – James Fenimore Cooper
If you read part-1 of “Following the Trail from Sustainability to Tyranny“, you would have seen a list of “What If?” questions. The third question reads: “What If you could not grow a vegetable garden without a permit?“. Some people might say these are pie-in-the-sky questions, or conspiracy notions, simply because they are not necessarily happening today. Well, you’ve been warned!
This is part-2 of a series that breaks down the “sustainability” movement, and explains how some in NH are working to constrain individual liberties with it. Read part-1 here.
The consummate community organizer, President Obama, knows the value of urban voters. He knows that urban living, with its clustered, infrastructure-heavy, and herd-like nature, depends on government more than suburban life, and far more than self-sufficient, independent rural living. He knows that more urban (or urban-like) voters mean utter dominance of the Progressive political class, at all levels.
He also knows that people have flocked away from cities, especially since the 1970’s, forming concentric suburban rings, referred to as “sprawl” (a word you will hear used quite a bit), which provide resistance to his urban, democratic-socialist ideals.
“The suburbs will define the outcome of the 2012 Presidential election”
Continuing to use the environmental movement as cover, and using the Presidency for credibility and funding, Barack Obama and his fellow community organizers are advancing the simmering ideology of “sustainability” by attacking the suburbs.
The ‘Grok is doing its part on exposing what has been run on a semi-stealth process here in NH – the Federal Government’s implementation of President Obama’s promise made just before his inauguration: “We are five days from fundamentally transforming the United States”.
As Tom’s post / series thus far has been pointing out (Part 1, Part 2), there appears to be an effort by HUD / EPA / DOT to subvert local control and local zoning for environmental and “sustainable” reasons only. But the real story is not just subverting local control with Federal control of the Environment.
This caught my eye as one of the things that Romney said after announcing that Paul Ryan was to be his Veep pick:
“I love America. We’re going to restore American principles. We love this country. We don’t want to change it. We don’t want to transform it. We want to restore the principles of America that made us the hope of the earth.”
Again, I ask you, loyal reader, to compare that, going back to our Founders vision, to what Obama has said:
Abortion is an act of tyranny. It is the expression of legal force against another life that denies that life the right to the property of living and every expression of existence that follows from it. It denies these rights solely for the benefit of another (others), who have exchanged the risk of creation for their own pleasure.
Denying life for your own selfish pleasure; even excusing it because the state has made it legal? How is that not tyranny?
The pursuit of pleasure is a function of human existence–an animal instinct. And the promise of physical pleasure drives us toward intimate human contact. Societies try to manage this relationship with institutions like religion, marriage, even our government, but in recent decades the government has viewed these institutions as inimical to “personal freedom,” and sought to enact laws that prevent these social or cultural institutions from functioning as a brake on the unbridled human weakness for sexual pleasure. While the state should have a very limited if marginal interest in managing the terms of otherwise natural and productive human relationships, somewhere along the way the State has legalized a form of tyranny.
OK, Steve beat me to it here, but I had my own thoughts of the accident in Pelham that I started on last night but as you will read, similar.
There will be those out there that will react in horror to what I am about to write ( “BUT CHILDREN GOT HURT – BADLY!”). The news is coming out from Pelham that 11 people were hurt when a years long homeowner’s fireworks tradition went awry. The latest from both NECN (New Englan Cable News) and WMUR says that two children were severely burnt and medflighted to Boston. Of COURSE this is a tragedy, but I grimaced when I heard the Fire Chief’s pronouncement:
I’m not a fan of fireworks. This is a perfect example [of] what can go wrong. Well meaning people trying to have fun and an accident happened and caused a great deal of injuries to children and adults.”
The NECN newscaster said what I expected about Chief Midgley of the Pelham Fire Department:
He wants to work with lawmakers to make sure this never happens again.
Of course he does. Again, this has been a long standing tradition of this homeowner, and thus far, no news accounts have brought up any earlier accidents. No one else in Pelham had any reported serious injuries anywhere else in town (not that I’ve looked, but on the idea of “IF 1, then the news will report it as “AND! over here”). But here it seems, the Chief has decided that it is his business to force all others to comply with his viewpoint and morality, and no longer let people decide for themselves. Is that the role of an Government employee (no matter how good he is in performing that role)? Is the purpose of an appointed employee to lobby the Legislature against what many voters want to be able to do? And do it on TAXPAYER funding (isn’t there a law against that)?
Freedom. Versus the Safety & Security (the first Commandment of the Nanny-Progressive State)
Any story like this has to begin with our hopes and prayers for all the injured. A Fireworks accident at a private residence in Pelham New Hampshire resulted in 11 injuries, 5 of those being children, one as young as 8 month old–according to this morning’s Union Leader. So please take a moment to offer your thoughts and prayers for their quick recovery.
Now, let us ready ourselves for the sound of creeping tyranny…
“Every lazy nation is grave; for those who do not work regard themselves as sovereigns of those who work.” – Montesquieu For those who do not work regard themselves as sovereigns of those who do work. This could not be more true. It also occurs to me that this also applies to public sector union … Read more
On their site, they have a page of “FAQs” about why you can’t believe any who is a “climate change denier”, and this page is calling Exxon their personal bogeyman (I notice that no mention of ClimateGate and the MBs of emails and bad data is mentioned – and I just giggled when I read … Read more
Update and Bumped: Well, I just saw over at Michelle Malkin’s place that Capital One has pulled their ads. Well, I have just “pulled (re: cancelled) my credit card with them. And TMEW will be doing the same later on today. My message to the polite young lady (who said she’s been getting MORE than a few calls similar to mine) is: “put the ads back, and I’ll come back. Not until – pass that upward to the Chuckleheads upstairs”.)
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Just as it isn’t about getting free contraceptives – it’s about standing up for the Constitution. Slutgate is the excuse for the Left’s faux outrage to pummel a single person – but that is the distraction the Left wants you to believe. It is not about civility – the Left has spewed far more vile at far more women on the Right over far more years. Why? To insult and to intimidate those on the Right, to force us to think that it is time for us to dejectedly leave the field of political / philosophical battle on our own. And then they win and then they have a clear road to continue to dismantle the Rights given to us by our Creator. To Progressives, ‘inalienable Rights” are simply an alien idea that has to be put down – for they have no God but Bigger Government. Freedom is what they would have us believe we get from men – in the political scene, they wish to believe they have the right to act as gods to determine how we shall run our lives.
And we see them, via Media Matters (funded by George Soros) and Van Jone’s Color of Change working behind the scenes, trying to achieve the real goal – seeing their political opportunity to silence Rush Limbaugh. Thus far, they (the tip of the spear of the Left, to give them their due) have convinced 22 advertisers to leave Rush Limbaugh. They have orchestrated a massive turnout of emails and calls to those companies to “leave Rush, or we leave you”: 400,00 have signed a petition to get Rush yanked.
Steve said it was time to stand a post(“I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post.“); our Founders did far, far more. Well, my friend, Warner Todd Huston (he who can be seen almost at every big site), has weapons for you to wield: he has compiled the contact list, your WEAPON, for you to do the same as what the Left has done:
The single greatest shortcoming among the secularists, the non-religious right, most of the left, the social justice “small ‘r’ religious left, and the mass of humans too confounded (or disinterested) by it all to be called anything but in the middle, is that humans are essentially selfish and immoral creatures whom–if left unchecked–will inevitably devolve into tyranny.
If given an opportunity to take advantage they do. And more often than not, if there are obstacles, be they divine commandments or temporal statutes, people find a way to not just break them, but to justify breaking them. We are lazy. The lowest common denominator is not beyond a single one of us. And not to put too fine a point on that but we currently live in a country where executing an infant at birth, simply because that child’s mother said they did not want them, is a major feature of one of the two current political parties in America, while most of the people in the other one, are afraid to bring that up.
Jack Lew used to be Obama’s Budget Director – well, given that the Democrat controlled Senate has now gone 1,100 days since passing a budget (as the law requires), methinks he has had little to do. Now given that Daley didn’t make nice (or couldn’t) with Jarrett or Michelle, he was elevated to The One’s Chief of Staff and he made the rounds of all of the major Sunday talking head shows. Pretty much, same speech, same words…
… and each and every time, Sherlock’s dog wasn’t barking. Good thing he wasn’t testifying in court, as he would have been held in contempt for not “telling the whole truth”. Just like Jeanne Shaheen, it is obvious that the values we hold dear and can plainly read in the Constitution are not those of Lew or Obama. In this, Lew is helping Obama to “…fundamentally transforming the United States of America” in arguing for Obama’s HHS rule to establish primacy of Government to determine what is a religious organization or not (and therefore, which falls under First Amendment protection or not).
He pretty much made the same argument using pretty much the same words on each and every one of the Sunday talking head shows. The only one that tried to challenge him was Fox News Sunday (and even at that, I think that Chris Wallace did not have his finest game on tap). It was obvious that Lew was spinning as fast as a windmill in a hurricane – and it was obvious as he tried to defend Obama’s “conciliatory” redo of the religious exemption of institutions being force to provide employees with contraception services (including sterilization, abortifacients, and abortion) and thus, violating their core theological tenets and morality. Simply stated, he would not allow that this is a Government overreach into the heart of religious theology and governance – simply “why can’t you morons understand this is ‘for the women’ with our revised policy?”
“The President has a very deep belief that every woman right to all forms of preventive healthcare including contraception. He also has a very deep belief that it is one of our core principles of our country that we have to respect the religious liberties of this country is built on. The solution we have reach is consistent with those core principles.”
The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.”
– President Barack Obama, Inauguration, 1/20/09
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
That would be the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for the clueless (or graduates of the Government school system). Alternative titles:
Obvious, both of them believe that Government is not big enough!
We have certainly seen lately that Shaheen decided to shred the idea of Federalism when she used the force of The Feds to override the NH elected Executive Councilors in funding Planned Parenthood. And now, it seems, she not only has joined and gone all in with Obama with his assault on religious Liberty (Liberty – you know, the foundational philosophy of our country in all things personal, economic, and religious?). It seems that as well sneering at the five Republicans on the Exec Council (“Look at me, you puny people – *I* can use the force of Bigger Government to tell NH how it will be run!”), she’s also been in forefront of getting Obama to throw Catholics onto the tracks as the Progressive train runs the US away from the idea of individual Liberty to that vaunted goal of
“we’re all in this together – whether or not you want to!“
“…a power grab as Government is reaching into yet another part of our private lives to force us to fulfill the selfishness of Progressive politicians such as yourself, putting your ideology ahead of our freedoms”.
From her own official US Senator website and the transcript of her Senate floor address from Feb 7. Read through it – how often do you read the words “freedom” or “liberty”? Does she quote one of the Founders? Does she reference the Constitution? Does she talk about Government overreach? Does she talk about freedom of choice for all people, regardless of any special identity group?
What is her highest value?
…I also commend the President for standing up for women’s health and reaffirming the recommendation of the Institute of Medicine to protect access to affordable birth control for all women. The decision to require health plans’ coverage of contraception with no copays or deductibles will change the lives of millions of women and their families for the better.
Ah yes, the Institute of Medicine – this batch of unelected bureaucrats have decided, in all of their fantabulous wisdom, that their pronouncement of a “want” (or even a “maybe should have”). Look, in terms of actual medical advice, they certainly should give it. But the United States is neither a hospital or an academic Ivory Tower. Instead, this is a political matter, a cultural matter, and one that should be rightly measured against the timeless principles of the Constitution.
What Jeanne has shown us, however, the game plan is plain from a Progressive’s standpoint: consult “the experts”, do not question them, and immediately put their expert recommendations into policy. After all, they know better what we need than we do.
My questions is, how long do the Progressives think that they can play King Canute and believe they can tell the Laws of Economics to suspend themselves (“with no copays or deductibles”).
It is easy enough to see why progressive doctrine should be attractive to our masters. Tyrannical ambition is nothing new, and throughout human history it has nearly always presented itself to men in the guise of idealism. We are all inclined to meddle in other people’s business; we are all inclined to think that we … Read more
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Mark 8:36 (H/T: Big Government)