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Lump of coal?

Dec 30, 2015 — by: Dennis Linthicum
Categories: Culture, Economy, Energy, Regulations, Natural Resources, Politics

Merry Christmas America!

How do you like your lump of coal?

Once again, our Republican Congress handed President Obama everything on his Christmas wish list. They’ve done it for the past seven years. Were we expecting something different?

Obama’s Christmas stocking was stuffed with untold treasures via the $1.1 Trillion Omnibus Spending Bill. His sugar plums included the continued full-funding of Planned Parenthood’s abortion and body parts mill. It included historic levels for federal debt, full-funding for Obama’s executive Amnesty Plans, full-funding for the EPA’s Climate Change wish-list and control of the “Waters of the US”, plus more.  Sadly, and frustratingly, the list of Conservative grievances with this $1.1 Trillion tragedy goes on and on.

Obama, with his minions on the left, and their “Republican” lackeys in Congress, continually pour our tax dollars into their favorite agencies (i.e., EPA, NSA, IRS, NEA, USFW, USFS, BLM, ATF, DOJ, and this list also goes on, and on.  There are over 3500 agencies, departments or program offices using our tax-dollars to constrain our American freedoms while servicing every possible utopian dream.)

During the break between our Christmas Celebration and the coming New Year, Diane and I don’t typically make New Year’s Resolutions. Neither of us need to lose 20 pounds, although we could always eat better and exercise more.

As one considers the coming year there is always room for improvement. Whether it’s time management, financial goals, business decisions, or devoting more time to personal or family needs.  As I look at the dwindling wood pile in my yard I’m thinking that I should, “get more next time.” Yet, I’ve thought that before too.

But these examples do not represent the resolve that our Nation needs.

Our resolve, in 2016, has to be a commitment to bigger things. We can’t allow ourselves to be trapped by the minutiae that surrounds our daily lives.  Especially, because most of the areas where we are likely to dwell are areas that have been highjacked by the federal government.

Our decisions regarding our homes, healthcare, family well-being and the education of our children are all being commandeered through federal policy being made by big brother and his business cronies. Additionally, the barriers confronting business expansion, land-use, and water-use are also areas errantly controlled by the elites in Washington, D.C.

American freedom has been gutted and it ought to break our hearts.

America was created around the idea of the individual.

At it’s basis, these United States joined together to  secure every individual’s unalienable rights – Life, Liberty and individual pursuits. Our Republic was created to assure the attainment of those natural rights. The Constitutional prohibitions against bills of attainder and ex post facto laws are in place to rightfully protect the lives and property of individuals.

Additionally, after carefully enumerating the limited powers (not rights) of the central government, Congress included a bill of individual rights. In fact, these are known as the Bill of Rights. These rights belonged, again,  to the individual. They placed restrictions on things the centralized government could or could not do. Each is comprised of phrases, like, “Congress shall make no law,” or “this right shall not be infringed,” to ensure special areas of security for the individual.

In today’s America, those unalienable rights bear only a ghostly image of their past brilliance.

Today, through the unconstitutional and invalid use of Washington’s legislative authority we are being stripped of our right to self-governance. We are now in a battle for the future of our great nation. Let us resolve to do the hard work of restoring the blessings of Liberty and to once again be, as President Reagan emphasized, “a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere”.

For our 2016 resolutions, the “bigger thing” that I have in mind is a resolve to tirelessly and unselfishly turn back this tide of Federal Government over-reach and to regain our unalienable rights to Constitutional self-governance.

To help unpack these ideas I would recommend Charles Murray’s book, By the People – Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission. On the front, inside cover we read,

“In this provocative book, acclaimed social scientist and bestselling author Charles Murray shows us why we can no longer hope to roll back the power of the federal government through the normal political process. The Constitution is broken in ways that cannot be fixed even by a sympathetic Supreme Court. Our legal system is increasingly lawless, unmoored from traditional ideas of “the rule of law.” The legislative process has become systemically corrupt, no matter which party is in control.

“But there’s good news beyond the Beltway. Technology is siphoning power from sclerotic government agencies and…”  <Read more>

1 Comment

  1. Several years ago I attended a rally at the court house. While standing quietly a fellow came by handing out signs that he had made and he offered me one. I took it and read it as he moved on. It simply said, “Reelect No one”. At the time I thought it to be a cry from someone disgruntled and frustrated but not very practical. Today I am thinking that guy had been way ahead of me in seeing that continuing to play the same old game is not going to fix the problem and we have been lulled into complacency by rhetoric that sounds good at the time but is not followed up with action when it is needed. Their has to be a way to control our elected officials and restore some semblance to the beginning of this grand experiment call “these united states”.

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