It's Our Own Damn Fault

When the Supreme Court made their ruling on gay marriage, those of us who spoke out against the Court even taking the case - let alone our disagreement with the actual ruling - warned that this type of thing would come.

We said that it wasn't going to stop with owners of private companies being forced to go against their religious beliefs.

We raised the alarm and predicted purely religious organizations would be targeted and smeared for not bowing down to a micro-minority but very vocal subset of society.

"You're crazy!" we were told.

"Homophobes!" we were called.

"Bigots! You just don't want equal rights!" they exclaimed.

We were ridiculed, belittled, excoriated by the Left for raising that alarm. Yet here we are, watching it happen exactly as we said it would.

Religious liberty is enumerated as our very FIRST Right in the Bill of Rights.  It comes before free speech, the right to bear arms, petition the government.

All of them come after the right to practice your religion as you see fit, provided that practice doesn't infringe on another's rights in any way.

The Founders held this right as sacrosanct, perhaps inviolable even, which is understandable given the tyranny they had just fought a long war to be rid of.

What makes this all the worse is that the Georgia law - and here's the really important part - only protected overtly religious organizations, like churches and charities. It had nothing whatsoever to do with private companies or individuals. The scope was limited, targeted for just that reason.

In this day and age, immorality is becoming increasingly acceptable to wider and wider swathes of people who don't seem to care what problems they cause for future generations as long as they get what they want RIGHT NOW and to Hell with anyone else.

I no longer recognize the America I once knew - the America where people had the freedom to do what they wanted, act how they wanted, be who they wanted to be regardless what society wanted and within the framework of the Rule of Law.

The age of the individual is over. The Rule of Law has ended. This "Great Experiment" in self-governance is dying a slow, painful, ignominious death and it's our own damn fault.

The lessons learned by, and from, the Founders have been all but forgotten and for that we should all be ashamed. ~ Hunter

We're Running Out Of Time, America...

I have long said that the Constitution is my guide, that I will never accept another, except God. It's fortunate that the Constitution is based upon, and follows, God's Law faithfully. Well, it does when it's followed the way it was intended to be followed.

I believe that - as Thomas Jefferson stated in the Declaration of Independence, and is codified in the Constitution - that all mankind are created equal and are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - these thing mean something very real to me, and others like me. There's a reason the United States, still one of the youngest nations on the planet, became so powerful, so rich, so influential as quickly as she did. That reason - the freedoms guaranteed us by the Constitution.

No nation of which I am aware has a Constitution like ours. People flocked to our shores BECAUSE our Constitution guaranteed the rights their home countries would not. People STILL come here for that reason.

This is the only nation on Earth where someone who took the Oath of Citizenship an hour ago be considered just as much a part of the nation as someone whose family has been here since the 1600's - because America is an idea just as much, if not more, than a nation of borders.

This nation, this great experiment in self-governance, was built upon the foundation of the Constitution. On that foundation, two cornerstones were laid - individual liberty and the Rule of Law. These two cornerstones are interrelated, or they used to be, because of one thing - personal responsibility.

Sadly, however, a great number of people no longer believe in personal responsibility, individual liberty, and the Rule of Law. Where we were once a moral people, a nation based on Judeo-Christian values with a strong moral code, we are a nation of moral relativism, moral ambiguity.

More and more people have the view that individual liberty must be supplanted by the "greater good." What this means - to me, anyway - is that the many count more than the few, or the one. But who decides what's best for the many?

I utterly reject the notion that the majority is greater than the individual. In a morally strong society, what's best for the individual is also what's best for the group. When all are individually strong, the whole is made stronger. What's best for group is all too often NOT what's best for the individual.

We, as a nation, have to reestablish the principles of individual liberty and adherence to the Rule of Law. We must enforce the idea of personal responsibility - that ALL people are responsible for their own life, their own liberty, their own happiness, and not to depend on the government for everything.

We are failing the future generations of this nation. We have not been good stewards of what we were given. We have allowed too many people to muck about for far too long and change things that should never have been changed.

We stand upon the precipice. We are on the brink of losing everything. We sit on the verge of a failure so huge the world may never recover. We can either watch it happen and lament its happening, or we can do something about it.

What's it going to be, America? We're running out of time. ~ Hunter

Are You Ready For The Department Of Parental Suitability?

In addition to the pages I help run, I belong to a few private Facebook groups for conservatives. They're groups for conservatives to get together, share ideas, gather facts, and just generally have fun making fun of the socialist morons we call "liberals."


(As an aside, I absolutely LOATHE using that word for them. Allowing them to claim they're standing for freedom puts true liberals - you know, the conservatives that stand with the Founders and Framers - at an immense disadvantage. We need to reclaim that word.)


The reason I bring up the groups is because late into the night a couple of days ago, I was engaged in a debate with a fellow conservative in the comment thread of this story, which is the Chicks On The Right commentary about this story.


The subject of our debate was this conservative's insistence upon setting standards for becoming - and remaining - a parent as a way to keep people off, or remove them from, government assistance programs. He didn't just insist upon standards, though; he wants to set up a government bureaucracy - a "Department of Parental Suitability," if you will - in order to administer his "objective test" for prospective and current parents.


Yes... You did read that correctly.


I have often said that conservatives need to bring the fight to liberals using the same tactics liberals use. That means flooding liberal pages with conservatives, but instead of using "what ifs" or feelings, we need to use the facts that most conservatives usually have on hand. Overwhelm them. Get down and dirty, call the names like they do to us, It's long past time to adjust our fighting style to match theirs. I did NOT mean to use the same WEAPONS.


According to this conservative's grand plan, the idea is to establish some sort of "objective test" to determine whether one is suitable to become a parent. The criteria includes your financial situation (salary, savings, home ownership, etc.), drinking and smoking habits, marital situation. Practically every aspect of your life will be laid bare before some faceless, "objective" government worker. Sounds a little Nazi-esque to me.


Basically, his proposal means that you have to earn a certain amount, lose the right to do as you please within the law, and accede to the demands of others in how you live your life. When he made this proposal, I literally had to check to make sure right and left hadn't changed places when I wasn't looking. Fortunately, King DingleBarry was making some patently ridiculous statement at the time and Ronaldus Magnus was still credited with ushering in the single longest peacetime economic expansion in the history of the world, so I figured it out pretty quickly.


My immediate response, along with several other people in the group, was to tell him that to invite more government intrusion into our lives runs counter to everything conservatives believe, and that using his "remove people from the government dole" excuse wasn't sufficient reason to expand the government into areas it was never designed to go. Good intentions aren't enough to ensure the system won't be abused.


How long before a Lois Lerner wannabe decides to start asking, "How conservative are you" to determine suitability for parenting? Think that can't happen? I'm fairly certain that the conservative groups that filed for their tax exempt status didn't think it could happen to them, either. Can you say "unintended consequences?"


The bottom line is that doing "good" at the point of a gun - which is what government is - isn't really doing good at all. It's just doing less bad. Our position as conservatives should always be on the side of less government, as the Founders intended. When modern liberal ideas start creeping into conservatism, we might as well switch sides. It is ridiculous to invite the government deeper into our lives, especially under the guise of "doing good." It's never worked before. All one need do is review the welfare system. The poverty rate has remained virtually unchanged in the fifty-plus years since LBJ declared his "War on Poverty."


While I agree with the overall premise that the breakdown of the nuclear family is one of the central reasons for the "need" for welfare, but in true liberal fashion, welfare is a major cause of that family breakdown. I submit, however, that being single should not be a disqualifier to becoming, or remaining, a parent. I was a single father, with custody for seven years before meeting my now-wife. On top of that, I was dirt poor (another disqualifier under his proposal). I challenge anyone to find a more respectful, better adjusted child than my son. No, my situation wasn't ideal for raising a child, but it clearly worked. I've also known two parent households, in what would be ideal conditions according to the "objective test," that aren't worth a damn. The point is this: parenting situations are not static, nor is one situation identical to another.


As I said earlier, good intentions aren't enough of a safeguard against further government interference in our lives. There isn't a single government program that has stayed within its initial parameters. Ever. Why would this one be any different?


If we don't guard against this kind of thinking, we're essentially no different than those we profess to be fighting against, and this nation really will be lost. FOREVER. ~ Hunter

Remember What This Day Means, Not Just To Us, But To The World

As everyone heads out tonight for fireworks displays, please keep in mind exactly what we're celebrating today - the birth of the greatest nation ever to grace the Earth.

For all her faults and foibles, no other nation in history has been as consistent a force for good as the United States of America.

Without America's ingenuity and manufacturing might, most of Europe would be living under goose-stepping despotism, not to mention the precious blood that was spent liberating that continent. Without America's resolve, guided by the steady and worthy hand of Ronaldus Magnus, the Soviet Union would still hold sway.

How many other nations can say that they very nearly singlehandedly defeated no less than TWO of the greatest evils this world has ever known? No other nation can lay claim to saving the world from itself as many times as the U.S.

Conceived in hardship by the most brilliant minds ever assembled in a single place and time, and forged by the fires of a war it neither wanted, nor sought, the world is a far better place than it would be had she never existed.

God help us all if she falls...