Analyst's note: Absolutely must read. I join my friend Will Dell in expressing my love this country as we celebrate her birthday! Today, we do not know how long this great nation will endure. Let this fact sink in ..... should this country fall, there is no where to run.
"I pledge allegiance to the Flag
of the United States of America
and to the Republic for which it stands,
one nation under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
Our Pledge of Allegiance was written by Francis Bellamy in 1892 in preparation for the 400th anniversary of Columbus discovering America. Initially, two sets of words were not included in the Pledge. The words “of America” were added on Flag Day in 1924 and the words “under God” were added thirty years later on Flag Day in 1954.
As I write this article, I am returned to the days of my youth and elementary school. There each and every morning, we would stand by our desks with our hands over our hearts as our teacher led us in the Pledge, a practice that continues to this day. It was however disheartening to learn that in our High Schools today, unlike my High School days, the Pledge seems to only be required once a week.
The decade of the fifty’s seems to have much more love of country than there is in today’s America. The crowds that attend patriotic celebrations are very much diminished from the crowds of my youth when it seemed as if the whole community turned out to celebrate Freedom, Liberty and our America.
It was reported on the news today that at least in one city, Eugene, Oregon, the reciting of the Pledge is said to be divisive. So divisive that the Mayor and City Council have voted to only require it four times a year near patriotic holidays. This agreed upon practice it was reported was a compromise with those who did not want to recite it at all!
Why is it that “citizens” of our great Constitutional Republic find it difficult to pledge their allegiance to our flag and our nation? As part of the Citizenship Ceremony those immigrants who would be citizens must do so. Yet some of those who were born in the greatest country on earth, those who have benefitted because of its exceptionalism, and politicians sworn to defend its Constitution, at least in Eugene, Oregon think that the Pledge is divisive and should not be required at all!
We, in this great nation, need to return to the values of our forefathers when God, Family and Country meant something. Of a truth, the majority of the ills in our nation today can be traced to the neglect of these values. We, as individuals and as a nation, need to once again stand for something, because for more than fifty years we have been falling for anything. It is the lack of the values of our forefathers that have divided rather than united us as a nation. It is “the hyphen” that has made America a sectioned plate of ______ – Americans rather than the great melting pot of our ancestors.
Since the early 1960s, we, as a nation, have denied the God that caused this nation to rise. It was then that the courts, without citing a single precedent, began to remove God from the public place denying that the United States was established as a Christian nation. Having accomplished that, the next assault began on the family and the destruction of all its traditional values. The wanton murder of unborn children and same-sex unions are but two examples of this. Lastly, for seventy-five years the inexorable efforts of our politicians to destroy our Constitutional Republic by diminishing the freedoms of We the People and our unalienable rights from God to Life, Liberty and Property. They continue this effort for no other reason but to garner power for themselves by the enslavement of a free people in a Welfare Socialist State.
God, Give Us Men!
Josiah Gilbert Holland
God, give us men! A time like this demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honour; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty and in private thinking;
For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds,
Their large professions and their little deeds,
Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps,
Wrong rules the land and waiting Justice sleeps!
One can only hope and pray that the words of William Culllen Bryant shall come to pass, “Truth crushed to earth shall rise again, the eternal years of God are hers; but error, wounded, writhes with pain, and dies among his worshipers.
May God Bless and Save the United States of America!
Our Constitutional Republic"
I share with you a few thoughts for your consideration relative to our national security as we enjoy yet another "4th of July."
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death."
- Patrick Henry
"Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again."
- Ronald Reagan
"To preserve the independence of the people, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. Considering the general tendency to multiply offices and dependencies, and to increase expense to the ultimate term of burden which the citizen can bear, may it never be seen here that ... government shall itself consume the residue of what it was instituted to guard. To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "the guaranty to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it."
-Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Samuel Kercheval (12 July 1816).
"Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it political? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular – but one must take it simply because it is right."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Anyone who says that economic security is a human right, has been too much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting disease and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god – Society, The State, The Government, The Commune – must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is."
- Rose Wilder Lane {1886-1968 American Author and Journalist}
"There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal."
- F.A. Hayek
"The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster."
- Ludwig von Mises
"There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse."
- Thomas Sowell
"Politicians, like diapers, have to be changed frequently – and for the very same reason." Anonymous "The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly" "A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice." The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-union-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline. "Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." "The public school system: "Usually a twelve year sentence of mind control. Crushing creativity, smashing individualism, encouraging collectivism and compromise, destroying the exercise of intellectual inquiry, twisting it instead into meek subservience to authority." "In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." "Democracy – A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic – negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard for consequences. Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy." "Arms are the only true badge of liberty. The possession of arms is the distinction of a free man from a slave." "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies." "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence – it is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." Definition of Politics: "Poli" in latin meaning "many" and "tics" meaning "blood-sucking parasites." "... it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds ..." "Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened." "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it." "Where liberty is, there is my country." "Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches." "A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trust either of them." "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." "The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills." "The elementary truth is that the Great Depression was produced by government mismanagement [of money]. It was not produced by the failure of private enterprise." "I shall exert every faculty I possess in aiding to prevent the Constitution from being nullified, destroyed, or impaired; and even though I should see it fail, I will still, with a voice feeble, perhaps, but earnest as ever issued from human lips, and with extinguish, call on the people to come to its rescue." "The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks ... It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men." "The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home." "The officers of Congress, may come upon you now, fortified with all the terrors of paramount federal authority. Excisemen [taxmen] may come in multitudes; for the limitation of their numbers no man knows. They may, unless the general government be restrained ... go into your cellars and rooms, and search, ransack, and measure, everything you eat, drink, and wear." "You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves." "Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation." "A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away." "But how is ... legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals." "When the federal government is held to its proper constitutionally limited functions, tax reform will take care of itself."
- Thomas Sowell
- Thomas Paine
- Milton Friedman
- Ronald Reagan
- Walter Karp, Editor Harper's Magazine
- James Madison in "The Federalist"
1928 U.S. Army Training Manual
- Andrew Fletcher 1698
- C. S. Lewis
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.
- George Washington
- Samuel Adams
- Winston Churchill
- Thomas Jefferson
- Benjamin Franklin
- Will Rogers
- P. J. O'Rourke
- George Bernard Shaw
- Thomas Jefferson
- Milton Friedman
- Daniel Webster
- Samuel Adams
- James Madison
- Patrick Henry
- Abraham Lincoln
- James Madison
- Barry Goldwater
- Frédéric Bastiat
- Rep. Ron Paul
