Tag Archives: DOUG SMITH

Doug Smith: A brief history lesson, and a hard reality check

16 Aug

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Doug Smith:  Author, historian and lead contributor to Free State Patriot 

 

 

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So many people in this political cycle are opting for the magical approach. Donald Trump is, well, Donald, not your Daddy’s candidate. He has an irritating penchant for speaking directly from the mouth, sans the filters most of us put on our speech. He is not a comforting, traditional GOP candidate like President Dole, or President McCain, or even President Romney. (They didn’t? Really?) Without rehashing the septicemia of the Grand Old Party that has led in cascading sequence to The Tea Party, the Freedom Caucus, and The Donald, things just aren’t what they used to be.

There are a few approaches to this new and unsettling development in American politics.

  • Hold on tight. Don t worry, the folks will come back around when they realize that their GOP liars are better than the Democrat liars. A 20 year run of blatantly broken promises, ineffectual or non-existent opposition to Barack Obama’s ideas and decisions that are abhorrent to conservatives will fade if we just let the folks see how bad it is if liberal Democrats get the reins of power.

The problem with this approach is that the folks, after a while, get tired of being the butt of that awful joke, and wonder just what difference it really made when part of their party goes along to get along, a al McConnell, while part of it actively supports the lib/Dem agenda, a la McCain, Graham, and even wonder boy Rubio. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me for 20 years? Well, first you get the rebuke of the Tea Party. Then you get the rebuke of the Freedom Caucus, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee. Finally, you get the ”Up Yours” of Donald Trump.

  • The Magic approach. Well, magic worked in literature and everyone loved it. Wave a wand (unbind the delegates), speak magic words (Romney’s a Nice Guy! David French writes for NRO, wouldn’t HE be a great candidate.) And we can FIX this.

Well, the problems with that approach are numerous. Magic doesn’t work in the real world. (Sorry, but no Merlin, and no Harry Potter. An earlier generation was convinced that Sherlock Holmes was really solving crimes. Just a fantasy. ) Besides, coming up with a candidate acceptable to the Good Ole Boys network doesn’t change the reality that for all his ( Admitted!) faults, Trump got more people voting for him in the GOP primary than any previous candidate in history, including Lincoln and Reagan. You can fix attitudes and disappointment by putting in a pinch hitter. At this dance, we are “going to dance with the fella that brung ya. “

  • The White Knight. Somebody out there is so appealing to the folks that he can ride in, say, ok, I’m here    to save you, and the folks will dutifully swoon and fall in step behind him.

Well. If such a knight existed, why didn’t he run? We have to rule out the 16 who did run, because a plurality of the folks rejected all of them in favor of Trump. (This should again tell the GOP stalwarts just how much they have to fix. But it won’t. And they won’t. ) Nor can such a mythical creature just pop into existence and enter the fray. Politics being what it is, he just cannot get from myth to votes cast in November in time.

So for you who can vote in November, a brief history lesson and reality check. You are on the roller coaster. You might be regretting it and wishing you did not have to go over the big hill, but the bar is down, the chain is pulling you up the hill, and soon, very soon, you and I are going to plunge down the big dip.

So. How many times has a 3rd party candidate done more than sway the race to ( ALWAYS) the more liberal, progressive candidate?

One. Abraham Lincoln defeated the Whigs and the Democrats on a platform of national unity and opposition to slavery. It is worth noting that the result of that was the end of the Whig party, secession, and Civil War.

Since then, 3rd parties have ended up helping to sway the outcome to Woodrow Wilson and Bill Clinton, but they have never won. Not once in a century. So if your magical hopes are pinned on Gary Johnson, you are about to be disappointed.

That leaves us, as it has since 1860, at least, with a simple reality. Absent an act of God, one of the 2 major party candidates now running will become the next President.

Donald Trump has a lot of faults, though he is not without virtue. The first article I wrote about him at the start of his campaign is unchanged: I think he is something of an ass. He is hardly the ideal candidate I would build in my Weird Science experiment. He shoots his mouth off without thinking, is brash, often crude, and reminds us regularly that a builder may end up sounding like the construction workers wolf whistling at a pretty girl who walks by. We don t know how much his move to a more conservative position will affect his judgment and actions.

Still. He is not Hillary Clinton.

And we do know with certainty what she will do. She will appoint progressive liberal judges to SCOTUS and the federal bench. She will raise taxes. She will continue the Obama war on coal, and the economy. She will, as is the wont of progressives, continue to chip away at basic rights. She will lie consistently. She will, in collusion with her husband, sell the office of the President in unprecedented ways to enrich her family.

And this one deserves a line of its own.

She will certainly involve us in at least one major war.

She will not, most likely, do so with a reasoned approach about our national security interests. Instead she will muddle along, incompetently, making misstep after misstep, until one of them lands her, and us, squarely in a major conflict.

That is Hillary.

Wm F Buckley maintained we ought to support the most right leaning viable candidate for President. To support the most right leaning candidate around, who cannot get elected, ensures that the most left leaning will win. To support a candidate who could viably win, but is markedly to the left, ensures the same. Basic logic of politics

So if you are still crying in your milk that “If only” the GOP had nominated ANYONE else, you would NEVER support Hillary Clinton, because she is dishonest and incompetent, and far left, then wake up friend. Get over it.

“If only” lost the primary. “If only” is not running against Hillary.

There are 2 choices. President Hillary Clinton. Or President Donald Trump.

Don’t let yourself be saying in a year, if Only I had helped stop her.

I’m not crazy about Trump. He is not ideal. But he is the better of the only 2 choices available. So I’m going to vote for him.

And so should you.

 

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Doug Smith: Words Matter

20 Jul

doug smith

Doug Smith:  Author, historian and lead contributor for Free State Patriot

“Don’t tell me words don’t matter.”

Barack Obama, Feb 2008

barack

Truly, they do. Would you rather have the desiccated muscle tissue of a bovine mammal which had to have feces washed off its deceased carcass before slicing it away, or a nicely marbled, juicy steak? Both statements reflect the truth, but how and what was said makes a difference.

One must marvel at Barak Obama’s fluid association with words, meanings, and truth. Hillary’s association with the truth is like that of the parents of a child who never knew his father: a brief and forgettable encounter, never to be repeated, but with lasting ramifications.

So, words. When Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali, it was pretty clear to him and the world that he had adopted Islam as his religion. The words were a clear statement of where his allegiance and sympathies lay. Barry Soweto changed his name to Barak Hussein Obama, but insists he is not a Muslim, but a Christian. Perhaps he is. But the words matter: the name he uses sends a clear message to the world that his sympathies and a romantic attachment for all things Muslim characterizes him.

When the latest Islamic terrorist shoots/runs over/blows up innocent people in a murderous rage while shouting what the entire world recognizes as the Muslim battle cry, the entire world knows who and what the murderer was. But not Barak Obama. He agonizes over what the motivation might have been. He calls them radical extremists. He calls them bad Muslims who do not truly embrace Islam. While of course the Islamic State of Syria calls them Muslim martyrs, as they call themselves.

When a Muslim extremist government arises, having had their one and only election, complete with armed terrorists to ensure the vote goes the right way, and then begins moving toward a repressive Sharia regime, Barack Obama latches onto the fact that they voted once and calls them Democratic. He supports them with money and weapons. He ignores pro liberty protestors to the Ayatollahs of Iran and permits then to be slaughtered, while making deals with Iran to ensure they get a Nuclear weapon.

With a civil war fraught with repression of Kurds, and Coptic Christians, and the genocide of Syrian Christians rages, Obama makes no provision for the Christian victims of genocide by Isis or Assad to receive asylum, nor does he press regional Muslim nations to provide safe havens close at hand. Instead he proposes to bring thousands of Muslims from Syria to the US, ignoring the terrorists sure to come with them.

Now when I was a sailor, my language could be colorfully described as salty. There is the oft told story of a young sailor coming home and asking Grandma for the mashed potatoes using his newly learned salty language to everyone’s chagrin. Some of the salt never goes away. And my language reflected my work, and my life as a sailor, and what I was. (Not just the salty and blue terms, but no sailor goes to the bathroom: we make a Head call.) So words matter. I could deny being a sailor, but it would be obvious that my words matter and that they were influenced by my time at sea. As were my actions and my choices.

They say you can take the boy out of the Navy, but you can never get the Navy out of the boy. How I thought and how I would act was reflected by my language.

So words matter.

For me.

And for Barack Obama. I don’t presume to know if he is a Muslim or not.

But his words make it clear that for him, it is Muslims first, and America far behind.

And that matters, a great deal.

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Doug Smith: Remember the Law?

8 Jul

doug smith.jpg

 Doug Smith: Author, historian and lead contributor to Free State Patriot

7.8.16

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Remember the law?

Our founders did. They saw protections of the law, and concomitant penalties of force as a means of protecting the infant United States from arbitrary use of power. Or, as Jefferson put it, Tyranny.

Make no mistake, we have experienced tyranny multiple times in recent years, though never quite as blatantly as when the Director of the FBI, days after the AG meets with the powerful husband of the target of a criminal probe, outlines a clear case for her criminal behavior, then declines to prosecute it.

Some folks like tyranny.   If the tyrant props up your business while attacking your competitor, what’s not to love? If the tyrant makes sure everyone buys your book, while banning your nearest competitor, what’s not to love?

When the Chief Justice of SCOTUS bends himself and the language into pretzels to find a way to say the President and Congress didn’t do what they did, which would be wrong, but did, what they didn’t do, which is ok, so we’ll call it what they didn’t do, and go right on doing what they did, people who love the act love the ruling. People who love the law shudder.

If the only impediment to government abuse of its subjects is the outrage of a handful of lifetime appointees, no one needs to know, or obey the law. Just find out what the judges like. When the law is no protection, we hope for a Knight, a Defender of the Weak. But that system was as flawed as the men who wore the shining, or rusty armor, and as safe as his whim while he held the only sword.

When all men agree to subject themselves, and their leaders, to a set of laws, they can live in the assurance of a mostly fair and equitable set of rules to play by. When those leaders toss out the rules, and the people permit it, citizens become subjects. Make no mistake. While tyranny may serve some for a time, it will ultimately serve only itself. Power serves power. Tyranny will consume the liberty of everyone, except those with power and money. Tyrants are not vegetarians. Their meat is the people. If not you today, then someday soon. Don’t cheer when the wolf eats your enemy. You are his prey too.

So when citizens of a free country hear see their chief law enforcement officer colluding, the head of a once respected law enforcement agency make an impassioned case for the crimes of an elected or appointed official, then shrug it off with no consequences, they are watching themselves become subjects.

There is the law for the peasantry, the varlet, the knave, then there is the law for the Lords and Ladies of the manor. Honor the King, pay your ducal tithe, (how much of the $ 200 million dollar Clinton fortune would that amount to, one wonders?), and come to do battle if your fellow Nobles are threatened. Do this, and the nobility will protect you as well.

And should one of your peons think to commit the same acts for which you are excused, why then bring back the dungeon! Drawing, quartering, the stocks, branding, none of it is too severe for an answer.

After all, who do these common folk think they are? The Queen is not subject to the same mores and strictures as the blacksmith. One would think they had held a revolution while one slept.

 

 

 

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Doug Smith: Letter to Senator Joe Manchin

17 Jun

doug smith

Doug Smith: Author, Historian, and lead contributor to Free State Patriot

6.17.16

joe

“The problem we have — and really, the firewall we have right now is due process. It’s all due process. But due process is what’s killing us right now.”

Senator Joe Manchin (D) WV 2016

“A principal source of errors and injustice are false ideas of utility. For example: that legislator has false ideas of utility who considers particular more than general conveniences,…. who would deprive men of the use of fire for fear of their being burnt, and of water for fear of their being drowned; and who knows of no means of preventing evil but by destroying it. The laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator? and does it not subject the innocent to all the disagreeable circumstances that should only fall on the guilty? It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and of the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons.”

Cesare Bonesana-Beccaria, Marquis of Gualdrasco, 1764

This 18th Century Italian jurist Beccaria had a good feel for wielding both law, and guns. His writings influenced our Founding Fathers, in particular Thomas Jefferson. We have, today, a President who finds the Constitution a bulky impediment to doing the things he wants to for “the People”, and a sitting US Senator who feels it is the Due Process clause of the 5th Amendment which is killing us.

We have had that pesky 5th Amendment since well before we had Joe Manchin and Barack Obama to look out for us. It has served us pretty well, and not killed us in all that time. The same cannot be said of Barack, Joe, and the Democrats. It is worth noting that the last time due process was suspended, another Liberal/Progressive Democrat, FDR, did so to illegally detain Japanese American citizens for the duration of WW2.

It is also interesting to note that the Senator does Not propose altering due process to let the FBI investigate potential terrorists, just keeping people from buying guns. Maybe, he notes, just for 5 years. The Left, like Joe, and Hillary, has fired at the 2nd Amendment for years. His fellow Democrat Senator Harry Reid tried to dismantle the 1st Amendment to limit a citizen’s right to criticize government. Now, Joe wants to go after the 5th.

We could repeal the 17th, Joe, which changed from State Legislatures appointing Senators to direct election. If we did, do you suppose the GOP led WV Legislature would re appoint you to the Senate?

The Bill of Rights is to protect citizens from what government can do To us, not to ensure what it must do for us. POTUS, and you, Senator, are sworn to protect it from all enemies, foreign and domestic, not attack it because it is “killing you.”

You are ready to attack the right to own guns, but you are not ready to admit that is Muslim terrorists who are killing us. With guns, with knives, with pressure cookers, with box cutters, with shoes and underwear stuffed with explosives. The common theme is not guns: it is terrorists.

You ought to respect the Constitution you swore to uphold, or resign your office if you can’t.  And recognize that Americans have been armed, heavily, for over 200 years. Taking away guns, or box cutters, does not make us safe. Recognizing who our enemy is, and going after them, does.

 

 

 

 

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Doug Smith: Anatomy of a bully

17 Apr

DOUG SMITH

Doug Smith: Author, historian and lead contributor to Free State Patriot

4.17.16

I know The Donald well. Not personally, but he is easy to identify. You see, I was always the outsider. The kid from somewhere else. We moved around a lot. Perhaps you have a memory of kids who were in school with you for 12 years. I do not. A year or 2, then on to another adventure. Why another story, but the part of my story that resonates is like the inscription on the edge of old world maps:

“Heere there be Dragons”.

Yes, beyond the familiar, if you sail your ship there, there Be Dragons. Take care. And for the kid who was forever the new kid, there Be Bullies. They would always seek out that new kid. They liked to bluster, and punch, and insult, and steal, and fight. I was never sure what pleasure they took in hurting and humiliating a shy new kid, but they surely did.

So, I know The Donald well. He was in every school I ever attended. And he sought me out. He might want to shake me down for lunch money. He might want to beat me up. He might want to sick his buddies on me while he watched and egged it on. If things did not go his way, he would be the first to cry about it and shout over the unfairness. Just like Donald. But as long as you seemed weak and a likely victim, he would take your milk money, knock your books out of your hand, knock you down, and swagger away, feeling smug and satisfied.

There were 4 ways of dealing with the “Donalds” in a new school.

  1. Avoid him.
  2. Give him what he wants.
  3. Become a toady. Praise him lavishly. Help him beat up someone even weaker. His ego is enormous and fragile, so if you learn to stroke it, he will mostly laugh at you and leave you alone. Although, if you don’t please him, he will still beat you up now and then. Because he can. For example, watch The Apprentice, or Chris Christie doing his “ Donald’s Stray Dog” act. This is the least risky course of action, although it takes a strong stomach.
  4. Having determined that you are going to get beat up regardless, and that you do not have the stomach to crawl to your own personal Donald any more, grit your teeth and say no. Then follow up with a haymaker right to the nose. And jump on him and do your dead level best to just beat the living crap out of him. If he should fight anyway, don’t stop hitting him. He may win, and he may beat you up again, but be a madman. In your mind determine that one of you is going to die, and you want it to be him. Fight till you cannot rise, or until someone pulls you off.

And an amazing thing happens. You may, indeed, get beat up. But when it actually costs him pain and blood, he loses his enthusiasm for you as a target. You figure out that for all the Donalds, at all the schools you will attend, the sooner you identify the Donald, and fight him tooth and nail ( that is not metaphorical) , and hurt him as badly as you possible can, regardless of the cost, the sooner the Donalds will leave you alone.

You don’t have to win, but you do have to fight. Because the Donalds don’t want to fight, (or debate, for that matter,) they just want to bully and beat down someone weak. When their victim chooses not to be a possum, or an old kicked dog, but turns into a tiny, snarling wolverine, the Donalds don’t know how to handle it. They move on.

A hard lesson. But a survival skill. You surely do not want your Donald to become class President, or Mayor, or heavens, President!

So well done, Colorado. Maybe there is something to that medical marijuana, after all. But the Donald did not get one Colorado delegate. He didn’t do his homework, and now he wants to copy yours. And he is whining that you won’t let him.

Colorado, you learned how to deal with the Donalds in your school. Now everyone else, you can ignore the toadies, the Christies, and the Trumpkins taking smack about riots. We do not do politics based on the bullies and the mob in this country. We are not Venezuela.

In 1968, the Democrats, ( including Barack Obama s buddy Bill Ayers) tried to use the rule of the mob and riots in the streets ( of Barack Obama ‘s Chicago) at the Democratic convention. It was ugly. The police had to deal with it and it was in all the papers. I remember reading about it and seeing the riots on live TV. Democrat National Convention Riots.

I also remember that in 1968, we elected Richard Nixon, a Republican.

Americans, for the most part, do not like a bully. Now, The Donald has his toadies, but he cannot command a majority of even the party for which he is running, in even one state. More people dislike than like him.

I stand by the article I wrote about Trump back in September of 2015. He is an ass. And a Bully. And beating up people, or insulting everyone who disagrees with him, or just being mad at the same time that I am mad, does not make him a good leader.

He sort of reminds me of Walter Matthau and Jack Lemon in Grumpy Old Men. Their characters and just what the title implies, with plenty of PUTZ! And yelling and dirty tricks on each other. They took a perverse delight in growling and knocking each other around.

But the quiet, competent son of one of the GOM was the mayor.

Perhaps Life will Imitate Art?

 

 

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Truth and Consequences

16 Apr

DOUG SMITH

Doug Smith: Author, historian and lead contributor to Free State Patriot

4.16.16

There used to be a TV game show called Truth “or” Consequences. It was around when I was a kid, and fans of Bob Barker will remember him as the long time host and face of the show.  The premise was to ask a trivial or nonsense question, which of course could not be answered, then have a “consequence of some fun or silly activity. It was fun.

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Today, we are engaged in a global game of truth or consequences, but the questions, and the consequences, are far from trivial. Now, I worry all the time about being politically incorrect, and the truth is rarely “correct” but just for fun, I’m going to try a little foray into truth.

Truth.

There is no magic. Merlin was not a court magician to Arthur Pendragon, Once and Future King. Yea, I’m disappointed too, because I loved the stories of Gawain and Lancelot and Merlin and Wart and the Lady of Shallot. But sadly, Merlin, such as he was, was a bright charlatan who used some knowledge to paint a magical picture of himself and con people, and was puffed into a lot more than he was by writers trying to sell a manuscript and earn a buck. Arthur was not turned into a bird, did not have a magic sword, and is not holding it in suspended animation till the day of England’s greatest need, when he will return to lead them once more. He is dust. Dead. Gone.

Darn.

But on the subject of magic, it is also not possible to pass a law to make water run uphill, or make wealth magically appear by ordering it to be given to a certain group of people. You cannot make a poor man rich by taking wealth from a rich man and giving it to him. History has shown that is a path to misery as the mob strips the producers of their wealth, and their ability, and motivation, to produce more, and, having eaten the seed corn, becomes an equal distribution of misery.

Truth.

Islamic people, mostly men, commit acts of terror, murder, bombings, shootings, beheadings, stabbings, at an appalling rate. I m a little tired of having to say, no it’s not all of them. But it is enough of them that reasonable people worry about Muslim enclaves in Brussels, Paris, and Dearborn.  Stop lecturing me about Islamophobia and backlash against Muslims. There has not been a backlash. If the worldwide rash of murders and atrocities continues, it is likely there will be.  And, by the way, Islamophobia: Fear of Islamists? That is not a mental condition. It is a reasonable reaction to the actions of Islamic people around the world.

 The Leftist apologists, the gutless cowards on the Right, and the endless stream of Muslim talking heads notwithstanding, you cannot, in truth, get away with saying a Muslim who hears Death to America shouted over and over, it is the West’s fault that your country is a poverty stricken sewer, and it is your duty to go kill them so you can get out of it and go to paradise, is suddenly NOT a Muslim as he shouts an Islamic call to war and opens fire on innocents.

Yes, he is. And you all know it. And you are all liars. That is truth.

And the Consequences?

147 individual acts, not counting the daily atrocities in the cesspool of the Middle East war zone, in the past 30 days. They netted over 1000 deaths and over 3000 injuries in 25 different countries. 27,000 acts of terror and murder around the world since Barack Obama stepped onto the world stage, countless, mostly ignored acts of barbarism, genocide, and atrocity in the Middle Eastern lands controlled by Muslims.

Truth

More people from more nations and more cultures have come to, or tried to come to the United States than any other country or empire in history, now or since the dawn of civilization.  Self-loathing Lefties can’t figure it out. People who escaped Vietnam in 1975 can. People who escaped the Castros can. People who made it out of East Berlin can. Millions around the world don’t risk life and limb, and run away with nothing but their lives to come to the horrible, repressive, racist, world the Left thinks we have. The do run from the Socialist paradise the think is Cuba or the Soviet Union. We have never had a problem of limiting migration into the Middle East because of people yearning to live under Sharia law and work on the oil rigs. We never will.

 Consequence

Everybody wants to come here. But not everyone can.

Truth

If we permit “Multi Culturalism” nonsense dilute or destroy who we are, and transform the US into a mix of the horrible places from which so many want to escape, there will be no escape, anywhere. There will be no shining city on a hill. There will be misery, and tyranny, or despair, and there is in so much of the world, and as has been the norm in so much of human history.

 Technology is not the key to advancing liberty.  Ask a slave who died in the arenas how much he appreciated the fine 1000 year Roman roads which brought him to his death. Rome had a towering civilization, with ruins still extant today, 1600 years after it fell. Yet they did not spread freedom, and the Republic died quickly and gave way to the Empire. It died rather more slowly.

America is a unique nation, a new concept within history. If that history is forgotten, and that light extinguished, the lives of many around the world may well become what Hobbes feared: “No arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

 Look around. How many people do you see now living precisely that life?

Are we going to be a bulwark against such a world?  Or surrender to the mob and centuries of darkness?

Wait! Don’t answer. Think about it before you do. Think carefully. Because truth, and choices, do have consequences.

 

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The 3% Lamborghini

15 Apr

DOUG SMITH

Doug Smith: Author, historian and lead contributor to Free State Patriot

 

“Tell a lie big enough, and long enough, and people will start to believe it. “ Joseph Goebbels is credited with “The Big Lie” approach to propaganda, but I doubt he invented it

Still, the Big Lie technique is around, alive, and well. And just occasionally, inadvertently, one of the Big Liars lets a big of light shine through.

In Missouri, State Legislators have subpoenaed documents relating to the Abortionists (well, Doctors, in total fairness, but abortion is their trade) who were caught on tape merrily discussing the price of a liver from a baby, cut carefully from inside his mother, so as to maximize the viable organs available for sale, in order to facilitate her purchase of a Lamborghini.

(For us folks who work for a living, and have never cut up an 8 month fetus as a down payment, and drive a Mini Van, that would be a 200,000 to 500,000 dollar Italian sports car).

Now the big Lefty propaganda machine is working desperately to get us back on the Big Lie track by calling the tapes “debunked”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjCs_gvImyw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyhz8Zjm1i0

Still, they are out there for anyone to see, and very clearly these “Doctors” are haggling over the price of livers and limbs of aborted babies. Which is a violation of federal law. (How fortunate for them, as for Hillary, that they are Democrats.

But as for debunking the evidence of the crime, well, we can all see what it is they are getting away with.

So where does the Big Lie come into this? Well, in Mo, Lefties protesting State legal actions against Planned Parenthood (how do they come up with that name? Nobody who uses their services is becoming a parent. ) noted that actions which may shut down PP of Mo would be bad, because (pay attention 🙂 Planned Parenthood of Columbia is the ONLY abortion provider in Missouri. The Big Lie? Listen to any Pro Abortion advocate, or read on PP s website, or listen to MSNBC, ( no really, Don’t listen to MSNBC, I don’t want to be responsible for you tossing your cookies, that was a figure of speech,) and they will all say , Oh NOOOOO, Planned Parenthood is about Women’s Health, not Abortion. Abortion is ONLY 3% of what we do.

But the Lefties shriek (as Lefties always do when challenged) loudest in what they do NOT say.

They do NOT say, if PP of Columbia is closed, women won’t get Mammograms. (Since, of course, no Planned Parenthood facility anywhere has ever provided or facilitated a Mammo for a woman.)

They do NOT say, close down PP Columbia, and no women can get birth control.

They do NOT say, the day you close PP of Columbia, STD s will run rampant because no woman can get tested, ever again.

What they shriek from the rooftops, (using, no doubt, only 3 % of their voices) is that shutting down PP of Columbia would mean no Abortion providers remained in the State of Missouri.

So, in deference to Joe Goebbels and Margaret Sanger, they continue to tell the 3% lie, 100% of the time. Now Sherlock Holmes indulged in the 7% solution (of cocaine) to numb his active mind. The Abortion Industry, and the Lefties, hope that the 3% solution will numb the brains of the folks to reality.

That logic breaks down, however. If Abortion is a question of right and wrong for its opponents, and a question of convenience for its supporters, then whether its price tag is 3% or 97% hardly matters.

I wonder if we would accept from Dr Goebbels the argument that the Final Solution was ok because after all, it is only 3% of the German budget, was only going to kill 1% of the population, and besides, we can recoup enough to buy everyone a Porsche by selling the Art and Jewelry of dead Jews. I hope not, but of course, I’m not a Lefty, and it is hard to tell just what they might buy.

Well, perhaps that is not precisely true. We do know they want to buy abortions. And Lamborghinis.

 

 

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Doug Smith: Thieves, Robbers and politics

12 Feb
DOUG SMITH
Doug Smith: Author, historian and lead contributor to Free State Patriot
2.12.16
I was a sailor. One thing any sailor will tell you is that we do not tolerate thieves.  A thief on a ship is dealt with quickly by his superiors, lest an accident befall him.
theives 1
Life falling overboard holding an anchor.
There is good reason for this attitude.  Ships are notoriously crowed. There is little personal space and almost no privacy. The few personal items we carried; books, letter writing material, candy, coffee cups were cherished and very precious to us. Steal from one shipmate and incur the wrath of all.  If you don’t respect his stuff, you won’t respect mine.
Throughout history, people have cherished their “stuff”.  Handmade knife, corn worked for and tended with sweat and labor throughout the growing season, a pot, a bowl, a pig fattened all year to feed the family for the winter. And just as surely, there have always been thieves and robbers.
(Disclaimer: I have heard it said “There is nothing in my house worth taking a life over.  If a thief wants what I’ve got, it’s better to let him have it. “I disagree. Come to my house to take what I’ve got, what I’ve worked and sweated and sacrificed for, and Ill “let you have it, alright.” Center mass. Two shots.)
And that is, after all, the point. My stuff is not “just stuff.” It is the result, for good or ill, of my hard work, my choices, my investments of the limited number of hours and days of my life. If you steal from me that which took me a week’s work to earn, you are stealing a week of my life. And I will defend it.
Thus it has been with thieves from early times.  A thief makes the judgement that the easiest “work” is to let you sweat and save and sacrifice and struggle for that which he wants. Then, while you rest from your labors, to come and take it, and sneak away. That the result of a week, or a month, of your labor goes with him, and hence a week of your life, concerns him not at all. You have it. He wants it. That is his entire reasoning and morality. Why he wants it does not matter, his desire outweighs your rights.
The robber is a bit more industrious, but no more moral. The robber will not sneak, but will take your stuff, and by the same extension, pieces of your life, by force with weapons or threats. He will not sneak to steal it, he will demand that you surrender it to his desires. Again, his desire outweighs your rights.
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The most energetic robbers in history, and the best, manage to wrap themselves in a mantle of respectability. Pharaoh of all Egypt (give me your corn and work on my projects, or I will send my soldiers to kill you.) King of Kings, Agamemnon.  First Ill beat Athens, then I force Athens to help me beat Sparta, then force them both to help me beat Troy. Henry Fitz-Empress, 2nd of that name, First Plantagenet, most able soldier of an able time, a King at 21, and ruled in his time an Empire greater than Charlemagne.
These energetic robber kings use a tried and tested formula. Be good at fighting. Beat someone up, but promise to let them live if they help you. Then the 2 of you can beat up on more, and rob them of gold, food, animals, labor, and daughters, whatever you wish. Eventually, you have enough powerful, but less powerful than you, robbers, who will join with you in robbing the labors of thousands, or millions, in return for a share of the booty, and support for your ambitions.
Henry II, Plantagenet King of England, was a prime example of this principle. He lived in a fine castle, but he was not a builder: he was a soldier. He ate the finest foods, which he neither grew nor killed: he was, again, a soldier. And he spawned the bloodiest royal House in British history, with countless commoners, and not a few “royals” slaughtered in the name of their ambitions. (See the Hundred Years War)
But it all came down to robbery.  What Henry and his heirs wanted, someone would provide, because his Sheriffs would collect his taxes at the point of a sword.  It was their disregard for the possessions of others that led to one major step forward in people asserting and demanding their property rights from Henry’s son, John, the Magna Carta. (See Ivanhoe, and Runnymede)
But it is all about our “stuff”. If I am free, but must give you all I earn or produce, my freedom is meaningless and my incentive to produce what I can is only as much as you can force me to do for you. Conversely, the more I am free to keep what I produce, the more I will strive to do so, for my own benefit. Free societies, thus, are always more productive and wealthy than slave societies.
So, (apologies to those who are not lovers of history, like me) what does this little history lesson on thievery do for us today?
Well, let’s see if we can find the thieves and robbers today.  If Bill Gates decides to spend a billion dollars to fight diseases among poor countries, he has the money to spend, and has a generous impulse, and does it. Bill is a philanthropist.
If Congressman Leghorn Foghorn decides to give a billion dollars to his district to build the Foghorn Leghorn Bridge, when he makes $ 150,000 a year, where, we must ask, will he get that money?  If Foggie gets $ 2,500,000 in speaking fees to talk for half an hour to the Bridge Builders Association, and the Department of Architecture housed in Leghorn Hall at Podunk State, what could make his words that valuable? If 1000 people in his district get 10,000 bucks a piece for building his bridge, (that would be $ 10,000,000)
But Foggie is sure of a few thousand votes in November because of all the palms he has greased. Palms belonging to people who said in their hearts, we need this. Somebody has to pay us.
Foggie doesn’t have to come up with the Billion.   The IRS and Sherriff will do that for him, from people who live a long way from his district, and have no interest in Foggie, or his bridge, or Local 864U of the Bridge builders, but have to pay up or the Sherriff will take their homes for which they have worked.
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So, in this little morality tale, we can find the robbers, and the thieves, and the serfs, robbed again.
Robin Hood, after all, took from the Sheriffs and John’s nobles to give back to those who had it taken from them. The Magna Carta was forced out of John to respect the rights of his Barons, because he was squeezing too much from them.
No one likes a thief. Some will not tolerate a thief. And eventually, the thieves and robbers are cornered at Runnymede and told “Enough.”
With April 15 coming, and Primaries just beyond that, and a General Election in November, perhaps it is time we all read about John at Runnymede, play a little game of “Who’s the Thief?”, and ask ourselves, “Enough?”

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Doug Smith: Age and Experience

6 Feb

DOUG SMITH

Doug Smith: Author, Historian and lead contributor to Free State Patriot

 

One of the (many, and legitimate) criticisms of Obama is his lack of experience before taking the Presidency. Many are leveling the same criticism at the top 4 GOP candidates for the replacement. It is worth noting that despite many with a great deal of experience, the folks are choosing people they think would do a better job without the experience of say, a Chris Christie or a Jeb Bush.  The founders did not include a requirement of political experience for the Presidency. Only age (which ostensibly equates to experience and wisdom, but then, they never met Donald Trump) and citizenship (which ostensibly equates to interest and loyalty to the nation, but again, they never met Barack Obama).

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Ought we to add to the requirements a demonstrated time of successful public service? Then a back bencher, who had the Gallipoli disaster on his resume, could never have become the Churchill who saved England. Perhaps it is more the nature of one’s experience that matters. Demonstrably, community organizing, encouraging riots and civil disobedience, orchestrating shakedowns of successful businesses, do not equate to preparation to lead a nation. While a failed shopkeeper may learn from his mistakes enough to lead an Army to victory and a nation to begin rebuilding.
Ought we to raise the minimum age, noting that 35 was well into the last quarter of life in the 1780s? Well, perhaps, but age, as we can well note, does not always denote wisdom or ability. Certain it is that not all our elders are men of vision or wisdom. How do we choose leaders that will make us better off than we were, who will keep us safe, who will increase our freedoms and not become tyrants?
Chances are, we will do none of these things. For we are of an era who chooses our leaders by the mob, as led by the most successful demagogues. And who has the courage to oppose the mob?
Mr. Churchill did, and the mob threw him under the double decker bus as soon as their need for a war time leader was past.

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Do we have leaders of such vision, who, knowing the will lead the people through a crisis, and then be left behind, will lead anyway? How do we as a people choose to delegate our personal power into political power to leaders of wisdom and prudence?  How do we function as a free people, and not as a mob?
Free people stood toe to toe with the British Army and forged a nation. Free people carved out a government that set the stage for the most successful nation in history. The mob?
The mob is Robespierre, the French Terror, and the Guillotine.  The mob is Ferguson. The mob is Baltimore. The mob is Melissa Glick, the Mizzou prof who assaulted a student reporter and called, like some drug addled Marc Antony for the mob to come and complete her work.   The mob is senseless violence, soiling one’s own nest, turning on one’s own, for imagined slights and a sense of entitlement. Barack Obama depends on the mob for his leadership.

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The survivors of Lexington and Concord did not expect anyone to give them anything. They did demand to be left alone to pursue their business and make their lives. They formed a government for mutual defense and common cause, to have life, liberty, and to pursue, each in his own way, and with his own effort, happiness.
If we are to be a free people, we must choose leaders who are committed to leading a free people. If we choose the loudest voice in the mob, we will become the mob. Or its victims.

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Doug Smith: Here’s to flawed candidates

1 Feb

DOUG SMITH

Doug Smith: Author, Historian and lead contributor to Free State Patriot

 

Donald Trump is a flawed candidate. Ted Cruz is a flawed candidate. But I’m not waiting for a perfect candidate. I’m ok with flawed. I am flawed. (Don’t let my wife read this!) I just want him to do a better job than the current POTUS. That is not a very high bar.

Trump and Cruz both bring a lot to the discussion, and address anger of the electorate and the fight against the decline of the country.

So I am not happy at NRO and the GOP throwing darts at Trump, and, to a lesser extent, Cruz, the number 1 and 2 candidates for our party; one in the name of Ideological purity and the other in the interest of status quo. Come on! No Republican candidate should have to run against both the Democrats and the GOP.

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So how about we stop shooting at our wounded and think of reasons to vote for the next flawed POTUS.

Let’s throw the darts at Liberal Democrat policies. Let’s blast radicals and criminals who want to rule over us. (Not govern, Rule!)

NRO and the GOP leadership maintain it risky to believe what Trump says. Yet is it less risky to believe Mitch McConnell? John Boehner? Paul Ryan? Bush 41? Bush 43?

Has Mitch “repealed Obamacare, root and branch “, as he promised, or raced with Boehner to surrender to Obama’s every whim?

George HW Bush said, ” Read my Lips: No new taxes. “ Followed by, I’m in, I can deal with Ted Kennedy, thanks for the votes, but you’re screwed.”

Dubya said “I am a compassionate Conservative.” That translated to only 12 vetoes in 8 years, and huge increases in entitlement spending.

McConnell, Boehner, Bush 41, Bush 43 were all flawed Republicans.

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I first pulled the lever for Republican Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter. Reagan was a great, though flawed, President. I have consistently voted since then, for flawed GOP candidates. Sometimes I had to hold my nose, as when voting for John McCain, then wolfing down the Alka-Seltzers.

I have been pretty consistently lied to and betrayed by the GOP who ostensibly shares and will fight for my values for a long time. We had a brief shining moment with the Gingrich insurgency’s Contract with America, followed by increasingly blatant lies from my own party. That’s right, it was mine. I voted, I sent money, I worked to see Republicans elected. I saw a GOP takeover of my home state, WV’s legislature, for the 1st time in 80 years.

And for what? Could Obama have done any better with Democrats in control? The fact that a lifelong Republican can ponder that question speaks volumes to the flaws in the GOP.

Perhaps it is a bit Nihilistic to support Trump, a flawed candidate, hoping that his words will be more true than the GOP has been, that he will act on the ” Plague on both your houses” feeling, and, emulating Jesus with the money changers, tear down some comfortable crooks in the most second most corrupt crime family in history, The US Congress. (The Clinton Foundation, of course, is number one, with the Gambinos just behind.)

I recall William F Buckley’s Dictum to support the most conservative candidate who can viably hope to be elected.

We did not do that with Bob Dole. Or John McCain. Or Mitt Romney. Or even George W Bush. That gave us several losses and liberal Presidents. And one big government Progressive Republican. (That is what compassionate conservative apparently means.)

So, what does that leave us? We have a number of flawed people running for President. One of these flawed candidates is going to be the next POTUS.

We can easily look around and know we don’t need 4 more years of Liberalism.

Here’s to our flawed candidates.

 

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