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Cultivate Liberty
How was your Independence Day Celebration?
You probably never gave a thought to Hillary’s crimes, the $19 trillion dollar national debt, local unemployment, the unbridled money printing schemes of the Federal Reserve, the bad science and policy oozing from every corner of the federal bureaucracy or whether your conversations were being recorded – Good for you!
Our day was full of fun and festivities. It included family, friends and friends of friends. Our celebration, like America’s in general, was sidetracked by other details – the parade, decorations, food and drink, who picked up the sparklers, where’s the best fireworks show?
Sure Guardians of Liberty
Last week, Diane and I joined with hundreds of others to hear KrisAnne Hall in Prineville, OR.
KrisAnne is an attorney and former prosecutor who travels the country teaching the Constitution and the history that gave us our founding documents. She spent all day (in three different meetings and settings) connecting a vast array of historical events and painting a poignant picture. Her presentation did a wonderful job of “connecting the dots.” She used history to powerfully stress the fact that ideas have consequences.
It reminded me of the famous saying, “Every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.” (Mt. 7:17) And so it is with ideas – good ideas produce good results and bad ideas, bad.
It’s True – I Did
Last week a local newspaper made note of the fact that I filed as a candidate for 
Oregon’s Senate District #28. If you haven’t heard the news, it’s true – I did.
The ideals and traditions that have made America great will be the same principles grounding my candidacy. These are the principles for Life, Liberty, and the freedom of our individual pursuits.
Allowing Oregon’s citizens the right to work toward these ideals will be my goal. Pursuing these freedoms will do more to help Oregon than any of the results oozing from progressive legislators.
Government Bias Corrupts
A recent link from Dennis Prager’s, Prager University Instagram account spawned some thoughts that are worth sharing.
Politically Mandated Punishments
The idea of government in America had a glorious beginning. America’s foundational concept was that men, by right, ought to be free. Self-governance was the goal. Centralized forms of government should be pre-determined and limited. The original 13 colonies developed a compact to serve certain, specified national interests.
The main interest of that federal compact was to secure individual rights. The rights of the individual are foundational, eternal and set the stage for our nation’s premiere document–The Declaration of Independence.
These rights are self-evident endowments from our Creator. They carry enormous weight because all men are created equal. Five unalienable rights are identified:
A Warning to the West
The Gulag
In, The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 
recounts his first-hand experiences of life under the iron fist of a 20th Century government. His story records the thoroughly modernized tactics of a small, centralized group of authoritarians whose goal was total control of its own citizens. As Solzhenitsyn describes the lay of the land, we see it isn’t only about calling for tanks, guns and ground troops but it also included the bureaucratic masses. As his story progresses, the bureaucratic regulators turn out to be some of the most unprincipled and perfidious weapons.
Under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, the administrative system of the state was enriched with resources and empowered with the facade of legality. The result was a multi-tentacled Russian monster that grew from its simple task of administrative enforcement to a full-fledged police state complete with surveillance and population management.
American Similarities
The political similarities embedded in our own nation’s growing surveillance state cannot be missed. Common-place jurisdictional overreach, strangling regulatory regimes and unrelenting administrative takings all bear witness to unbalanced authoritarian rule.
Making the Case in Harney County
Making the Case
We have all heard the phrase “Don’t make a Federal case out of it!” Have you ever thought about what this means?
It means, you can’t win against the feds – so don’t even think about it. It means you can’t fight the raw power, money and monopoly interests that the federal government has ruthlessly acquired. It means that none of us can ever raise enough money to battle the accumulated wealth (originating from our own pockets) that will be ushered against our cause.
Yet, the Hammonds and the Bundys are making headlines in Harney County, Oregon because they are doing just that. These families are the focal point of the media onslaught.
Perverting the Plain Meaning
Language is an important tool of political control. In our modern Twitter-pated world where sound bites rule, words or labels do not have to be accurate. They are easily thrown about and can be applied to anything. The Twitter-narrative does not have to be accurate to be seen by millions.
Our modern technology has made it easier to spread spurious ideas around the globe. There is nothing new here. Samuel Adams, noted the same thing in 1776. He said, “How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!”
This is why we see policies emanating from Federal agencies. i.e, BLM, EPA, USFS, Public Schools and Universities that appear confused, misaligned or contradictory. The words are being manipulated based upon their value as sound bites, not their adherence to truth.
Spreading Through America’s Bloodstream
Last week, I drew a word picture about the outrageous growth of the federal government and its cadre of domineering agencies. I likened them to a bad case of acne. At issue was the BLM’s charges against members of the Hammond family who are facing sentencing under Bill Clinton’s Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.
Some people thought the word picture was too disgusting. I actually don’t think it was strong enough. After all, most of us outgrew our teenage acne problems. So my comparison makes it seem as though these agencies aren’t that bad because we all survived our adolescent bouts with acne.
It turns out acne does’t invoke the powerful imagery that is necessary to illustrate the fatal nature of these tyrannical bureaucracies. Acne is not terminal and is nothing like the plague, small pox or Ebola. Today’s federal intrusions are more serious, more akin to a metastasizing cancer.
