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The Rise and Fall of The Roman Empire ... Sorry, I Mean The United States of America

The Rise and Fall of The Roman Empire ... Sorry, I Mean The Rise and Fall of "The United States of America"

History repeats itself just give it time.  I'm so sorry that I didn't believe in studying history because I felt that history 'Was the past' and that was like 'Water under the bridge' and there was nothing I could do about it.  I WAS WRONG!  At least if I had studied history I would have seen today's financial and political disaster comming.

You really need to read this article that was written in 1990 by Lawrence W. Reed.  He enlightens you to the correlation between the Great Roman Empire and the Great United States of America.

My conclusion is to send as many people this article by email as you can ... maybe we will find enough people out there in this country that will want to STOP TODAYS POLITICAL MADNESS!  "Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it."

The United States and the Roman Empire
by Lawrence W. Reed

Nearly four decades before the birth of Christ, the Roman orator Cicero offered this sound advice: "The budget should be balanced, public debt should be reduced, the treasury should be rebuilt, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall."

Well, the Romans didn't take his advice and guess what? Rome fell.

At nearly $3 trillion, our government's "national debt" represents an ominous recurrence of just what Cicero warned twenty centuries ago. If figures that large mean little to you, let's put it another way. If the national debt were in $1 bills, it would stack almost to the moon, fill 282,730 dump trucks, weigh as much as 2.14 million Oldsmobile Cutlasses, or buy enough food to feed the current population of Los Angeles for 978 years.

Government in ancient Rome grew to mammoth size for some of the same reasons ours has. The philosopher George Santayana may have had that in mind when he said, "Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it." Consider the following:
Long before Christ, a Roman politician named Clodius was elected to public office on a platform of "free wheat for the masses." When Julius Caesar came to power, he found 320,000 persons in Rome — a city of 1 million — on government grain relief.

Emperor Nero once declared, "Let us tax and tax again. Let us see to it that no one owns anything!" He may also have been the architect of the first urban-renewal program. He burnt a large portion of Rome to make way for a number of construction projects.

A few years later, another emperor dabbled in farm policy. To reduce production and raise the price of wine, he ordered the destruction of half of the vineyards in Rome's provinces.
The ancient government assumed the responsibility of providing the people with publicly funded entertainment and arts programs. One historian estimates the modem equivalent of $100 million a year was poured out in circuses and gladiator duels alone.

Welfare statists loved it in A.D. 274 when Emperor Aurelian made the right to relief hereditary and boosted welfare benefits considerably.
Businesses were pulverized under a burden of public hostility and excessive taxation and regulation. The masses demanded their handouts and the most productive in Roman society were made to cough up. Some of them, thinking they were buying time, actually supported those politicians and funded those institutions which were dedicated to their very destruction. What was left of their businesses was eventually confiscated and nationalized.

City administrations within the empire spent themselves silly and, beginning with the emperor Hadrian, were bailed out through a kind of "federal revenue sharing," with lots of strings attached. (After all, he who pays the piper sooner or later calls the tune.)
Spending to satisfy special interests and a soaring debt prompted the government to debauch the national currency. It imposed wage and price controls, seized the people's gold holdings, took the silver out of the coinage and manufactured junk money like there was no tomorrow. And for Rome, there wasn't.

The great empire expired in A.D. 476. It fell like a ripe plum to foreign enemies. When the barbarians walked into the city, many Romans actually welcomed them in the belief that anything was better than the tyranny of their own tax collectors and regulators.

It has been said that many civilizations have run their course by this pattern: From bondage to individualism to great courage to liberty to abundance, then from abundance to complacency to apathy to dependency and finally back to bondage again.

More to the point, what is called "Kershner's First Law" sums up what happened to Rome pretty well: "When a self-governing people confer upon their government the power to take from some and give to others, the process will not stop until the last bone of the last taxpayer is picked bare."
Are we going to continue letting it happen here?
Lawrence W. Reed, an economist, is president of the Mackinac Center in Midland, Michigan, and also serves on

the Board of Speakers of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
This article was published in the June 1990 edition of Freedom Daily. www.fff.org  The Future of Freedom Foundation

----ooo----

President Obama is now on the run!

Conservatives:

It is my opinion that Obama is now on the run and is worried about the ability to pass his health care initiative.  He will start doing all sorts of things to salvage the plan.  I suspect he will begin making mistakes and therefore lose momentum. 

 Does this sound familiar?  This is the OODA Loop in action.  Obama & his clan are now reacting to the conservative movement, no particular thanks to the Republican Party.  As the conservative movement makes him react they may likely win the advantage,  Possibly the fight.

 Remember the OODA* Loop.  It works!!

Republic vs. Democracy? ... That is an Interesting Question!

On the most part, in the United States today, we have stopped saying the Pledge of Allegiance of America.

The United States of America is is eroding (loosing) to the point that "Politically Correct" and or "Offending Someone" is (winning).

Has The United States of America ... "Lost" ?

 

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."  Thomas Jefferson, 1816.

"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."

This is a re-print from www.1215.org

SUMMARY
In the Pledge of Allegiance we all pledge allegiance to our Republic, not to a democracy. "Republic" is the proper description of our government, not "democracy." I invite you to join me in raising public awareness regarding that distinction.

A republic and a democracy are identical in every aspect except one. In a republic the sovereignty is in each individual person. In a democracy the sovereignty is in the group.

Republic. That form of government in which the powers of sovereignty are vested in the people and are exercised by the people, either directly, or through representatives chosen by the people, to whom those powers are specially delegated. [NOTE: The word "people" may be either plural or singular. In a republic the group only has advisory powers; the sovereign individual is free to reject the majority group-think. USA/exception: if 100% of a jury convicts, then the individual loses sovereignty and is subject to group-think as in a democracy.]

Democracy. That form of government in which the sovereign power resides in and is exercised by the whole body of free citizens directly or indirectly through a system of representation, as distinguished from a monarchy, aristocracy, or oligarchy. [NOTE: In a pure democracy, 51% beats 49%. In other words, the minority has no rights. The minority only has those privileges granted by the dictatorship of the majority.]

---

The distinction between our Republic and a democracy is not an idle one. It has great legal significance.

The Constitution guarantees to every state a Republican form of government (Art. 4, Sec. 4). No state may join the United States unless it is a Republic. Our Republic is one dedicated to "liberty and justice for all." Minority individual rights are the priority. The people have natural rights instead of civil rights. The people are protected by the Bill of Rights from the majority. One vote in a jury can stop all of the majority from depriving any one of the people of his rights; this would not be so if the United States were a democracy.

In a pure democracy 51 beats 49[%]. In a democracy there is no such thing as a significant minority: there are no minority rights except civil rights (privileges) granted by a condescending majority. Only five of the U.S. Constitution's first ten amendments apply to Citizens of the United States. Simply stated, a democracy is a dictatorship of the majority. Socrates was executed by a democracy: though he harmed no one, the majority found him intolerable.

SOME DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS

Government. ....the government is but an agency of the state, distinguished as it must be in accurate thought from its scheme and machinery of government. ....In a colloquial sense, the United States or its representatives, considered as the prosecutor in a criminal action; as in the phrase, "the government objects to the witness." [Black's Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition, p. 625]

Government; Republican government. One in which the powers of sovereignty are vested in the people and are exercised by the people, either directly, or through representatives chosen by the people, to whom those powers are specially delegated. In re Duncan, 139 U.S. 449, 11 S.Ct. 573, 35 L.Ed. 219; Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 162, 22 L.Ed. 627. [Black's Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition, p. 626]

Democracy. That form of government in which the sovereign power resides in and is exercised by the whole body of free citizens directly or indirectly through a system of representation, as distinguished from a monarchy, aristocracy, or oligarchy. Black's Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition, pp. 388-389.

Note: Black's Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition, can be found in any law library and most law offices.

COMMENTS

Notice that in a Democracy, the sovereignty is in the whole body of the free citizens. The sovereignty is not divided to smaller units such as individual citizens. To solve a problem, only the whole body politic is authorized to act. Also, being citizens, individuals have duties and obligations to the government. The government's only obligations to the citizens are those legislatively predefined for it by the whole body politic.

In a Republic, the sovereignty resides in the people themselves, whether one or many. In a Republic, one may act on his own or through his representatives as he chooses to solve a problem. Further, the people have no obligation to the government; instead, the government being hired by the people, is obliged to its owner, the people.

The people own the government agencies. The government agencies own the citizens. In the United States we have a three-tiered cast system consisting of people ---> government agencies ---> and citizens.

The people did "ordain and establish this Constitution," not for themselves, but "for the United States of America." In delegating powers to the government agencies the people gave up none of their own. (See Preamble of U.S. Constitution). This adoption of this concept is why the U.S. has been called the "Great Experiment in self government." The People govern themselves, while their agents (government agencies) perform tasks listed in the Preamble for the benefit of the People. The experiment is to answer the question, "Can self-governing people coexist and prevail over government agencies that have no authority over the People?"

The citizens of the United States are totally subject to the laws of the United States (See 14th Amendment of U.S. Constitution). NOTE: U.S. citizenship did not exist until July 28, 1868.

Actually, the United States is a mixture of the two systems of government (Republican under Common Law, and democratic under statutory law). The People enjoy their God-given natural rights in the Republic. In a democracy, the Citizens enjoy only government granted privileges (also known as civil rights).

There was a great political division between two major philosophers, Hobbes and Locke. Hobbes was on the side of government. He believed that sovereignty was vested in the state. Locke was on the side of the People. He believed that the fountain of sovereignty was the People of the state. Statists prefer Hobbes. Populists choose Locke. In California, the Government Code sides with Locke. Sections 11120 and 54950 both say, "The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them." The preambles of the U.S. and California Constitutions also affirm the choice of Locke by the People.

It is my hope that the U.S. will always remain a Republic, because I value individual freedom.

Thomas Jefferson said that liberty and ignorance cannot coexist.  Will you help to preserve minority rights by fulfilling the promise in the Pledge of Allegiance to support the Republic? Will you help by raising public awareness of the difference between the Republic and a democracy?

Obama's First 100 Days ... It's still worth looking at!

reprint from  www. our American values. org...  A great website to get input from a conservative.

Obama's First 100 Days... Still worth reviewing because he is picking up steam (so as to speak).

Values

1. Calling for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act on the White House website.
2. Listing on the White House website a call for the expansion of federal hate crimes to include homosexual behavior.
3. Calling on the White House website for policies like the “Fairness Doctrine” that could silence
conservative and Christian talk radio.
4. Repealing limitations on taxpayer-funding of human embryonic stem cell research.
5. Repealing limitations on taxpayer-funding of abortions overseas.
6. Pledging $50 million to the United Nation’s Population Fund, which supports China’s draconian one child policy.
7. Proposing new rules to gut conscience clause protections for pro-life doctors and other medical
personnel who don’t want to be forced to perform abortions or other procedures that violate their values.
8. Proposing increased funding for the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood.
9. Calling on the White House website for “a goal that all middle and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year,” (mandatory volunteerism).
10. Inviting homosexual families to the White House Easter Egg Roll.
11. Allowing his attorney general to call for the reinstatement of Clinton-era restrictions on the Second
Amendment.
12. Breaking his promise not to appoint lobbyists to his administration. He hired 17 in his first two weeks.
13. Breaking his promise to sign legislation only after a five-day period of public comments.
14. Asking that the monogram for Jesus Christ be covered up during a televised speech at a Catholic
university in which Obama quotes the Sermon on the Mount.  National Security
15. Apologizing for America in Europe and Latin America.
16. Bowing before the Muslim king of Saudi Arabia.
17. Pledging to base America’s foreign policy toward Iran on “mutual respect” in a video to the Iranian
people and Iran’s Holocaust-denying dictator.
18. Returning the bust of Winston Churchill given to George Bush after 9/11 by our British allies.
19. Giving British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the leader of America’s most loyal ally, a box of DVDs
that don’t work in British DVD players.
20. Ordering Guantanamo Bay closed without any idea of where to send the terrorist suspects held there.
21. Suggesting that some of those terrorists now at GITMO may kill again, but may also be released onto U.S. soil and set up with welfare benefits.
22. Caving to communist Cuba by relaxing travel restrictions and remittances for Cuban Americans before
any Cuban political prisoners have been released.
23. Shaking hands with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.
24. Sitting silently though a 50-minute anti-American diatribe by Nicaragua’s communist president, Daniel Ortega.
25. Releasing Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the suspected mastermind of the 2000 suicide bombing of the
U.S.S. Cole.
26. Releasing classified CIA memos outlining our interrogation techniques.
27. Telling our CIA agents not to be discouraged when he acknowledges their “mistakes.”
28. Declaring a new openness to “truth commissions” and prosecuting intelligence officials involved in
enhanced interrogations of terrorists.
29. Proposing to send a $900 million foreign aid package to Palestinians in Gaza.
30. Asking Congress to relax the law so that some of that money could go to the terrorist organization
Hamas.
31. Calling for the U.S. to eliminate its nuclear weapons.
32. Telling Russian President Demitri Medvedev that America’s commitment to missile defense is
negotiable.
33. Dropping the term “enemy combatants” for GITMO detainees.
34. Dropping the term “terrorism” for “man-made disaster.”
35. Dropping the term “Global War on Terror” for “overseas contingency operations.”
36. Giving his first interview as president to the Arab language network Al-Arabiya.
37. Telling the Muslim world that his “job” was to communicate “that the Americans are not your enemy,”  when it’s Muslim extremists who have declared war on us.
38. Proposing that military veterans use private insurance for the cost of a service-related injury before
they would be eligible for coverage through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Free Enterprise
39. Signing the trillion-dollar plus so-called “stimulus” bill, which the Congressional Budget Office said
would actually hurt long-term economic growth.
40. Saying Caterpillar wouldn’t lay off workers if his trillion-dollar stimulus bill passed Congress. Obama
signed the bill on Feb. 17th. On March 17th, Caterpillar laid off nearly 2,500 workers.
41. Hosting a “Fiscal Responsibility Summit” one week after signing the trillion-dollar “stimulus” bill.
42. Railing against “outrageous recklessness and greed” of AIG bonuses that were legally protected in
the so-called “stimulus” bill he signed four days after it passed, not five as he promised.
43. Breaking his promise on earmark reform by signing the $410 billion “omnibus” spending bill with
billions in earmarks.
44. Proposing a $3.6 trillion budget that doubles the national debt in five years and triples it in ten years.
45. Proposing a “carbon cap and trade” scheme that will raise energy taxes by hundreds of billions, even trillions, of dollars.
46. Burning more than 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to fly to Iowa for Earth Day to promote “wind power.”
47. Proposing $634 billion in higher taxes for socialized health care.
48. Proposing to raise taxes on small business owners.
49. Saying the White House is open to the idea of taxing employer-sponsored health care benefits as
income.
50. Signing a massive expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, calling it “a down
payment on my commitment to cover every single American.”
51. Establishing the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research to give
bureaucrats the power to ration health care and tell your doctors what care you can and cannot have.
52. Signing the 2009 Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which the Sierra Club praised specifically
because it “will safeguard millions of acres … from oil and gas leasing.”
53. Suggesting he has found $1.5 trillion in bogus “savings” by not spending money in Iraq that we were
not planning to spend years from now.
54. Ordering his Cabinet to “cut” $100 million in spending in 90 days, after proposing nearly $5 trillion in spending in his first 90 days.
55. Proposing to limit tax deductions for home mortgage interest.
56. Proposing to limit tax deductions for charitable donations.
57. Refusing to allow banks to repay TARP money.
58. Bailing out AMTRAK with a 10% increase in its taxpayer subsidies.
59. Bailing out the United Auto Workers Union with billions of taxpayer dollars to GM and Chrysler.
60. Bailing out the United Auto Workers by giving it a majority ownership stake in Chrysler. Yes, the union will own the company.
61. Bailing out Big Labor by issuing an executive order mandating that infrastructure projects paid for with “stimulus” funds must use union labor, guaranteeing higher costs for the taxpayer.
62. Bailing out Big Labor again by repealing regulations requiring the disclosure of how union dues are
spent. So much for “transparency.”
63. Saying, “The United States government has no interest in running GM,” then vowing that the
government will back auto warranties.
64. Saying, “The United States government has no interest in running GM,” then firing the CEO of
General Motors.
65. Allowing states to set their own fuel efficiency and emissions standards, making it harder for
struggling auto makers to compete.  Personnel Is Policy
66. Nominating Timothy “The Turbo Tax Evader” Geithner as Treasury Secretary to oversee the IRS.
67. Nominating as attorney general Eric Holder, who urged Bill Clinton to pardon tax evader Marc Rich
and 8 FALN terrorists.
68. Nominating David Ogden, a prominent attorney for the pornography industry, to be Deputy Attorney
General.
69. Nominating Tom Daschle, who owed more than $140,000 in back taxes, as Health and Human
Services Secretary.
70. Nominating Kathleen Sebelius, who is ardently pro-abortion and owed $8,000 in back taxes, to be
HHS Secretary.
71. Nominating Janet Napolitano, who said, “crossing the border is not a crime per se,” as Homeland
Security Secretary.
72. Nominating Steven Chu as Energy Secretary. Last September, Chu said, “Somehow, we have to
figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” which at that time were roughly
$8.00 a gallon.
73. Nominating Ron Kirk, who owed more than $6,000 in back taxes, as Trade Representative.
74. Nominating Bill Richardson, who was embroiled in an ethics scandal, as Secretary of Commerce.
75. Nominating Nancy Killefer, who also owed back taxes, to be the government’s “Efficiency Czar.”
76. Nominating Rosa Brooks, a leftwing acolyte of George Soros, as an advisor to the Undersecretary of
Defense for Policy.
77. Nominating Harold Koh, an ardent supporter of using international law in the interpretation of our
Constitution, to be the top legal advisor to the State Department.
78. Nominating Carol Browner, who was a member of the Socialist International, to be “Climate and
Energy Czar.”
79. Nominating John Holdren, an environmental extremist and advocate of population control, as the
White House Science Advisor.
80. Nominating Dawn Johnsen, who is so pro-abortion she once compared pregnancy to slavery, to direct
the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department.
81. Nominating Charles Freeman, an anti-Israel, pro-Arab apologist, to be head of the National
Intelligence Council.
82. Nominating Tony West, who represented American Taliban John Walker Lindh and exposed the Bush
Administration’s terrorist surveillance program, to the Justice Department’s Civil Division.
83. Nominating Annette Nazareth to be Deputy Treasury Secretary, who withdrew after a month-long
probe into her taxes.
84. Trying to nominate pro-abortion Catholics to be ambassador to the Vatican, a move even John Kerry
opposed.
85. Appointing Ellen Moran of the pro-abortion group Emily’s List as his White House communications
director.
86. Appointing Melody Barnes, a board member of Emily’s List and Planned Parenthood, as his director
of the Domestic Policy Council.
87. Appointing Harry Knox of the Human Rights Campaign (the largest homosexual rights lobbying group)
to the White House’s Faith Based Advisory Council.
88. Appointing Adolfo Carrion as Director of White House Office of Urban Affairs, even though he is under
investigation for kickbacks in a scandal nearly identical to one that cost GOP Senator Ted Stevens his
election.
89. Nominating David Hamilton as his first appointment to a federal appeals court. Judge Hamilton has
issued a number of controversial rulings, including prohibiting the Indiana House of Representatives from opening sessions with prayers in the name of Jesus.
Miscellaneous
90. Telling congressional Republicans to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.
91. Coordinating attacks on Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer out of the White House.
92. Hosting weekly parties at the White House, serving up $100-a-pound Waygu beef during what Obama
called, “the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”
93. Laughing it up on 60 Minutes as the country is mired in a recession.
94. Allowing Air Force One to buzz the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan, creating panic in New York City.
95. Disparaging Special Olympians on the Tonight Show.
96. Allowing his Department of Homeland Security to issue a report accusing pro-life, smaller government
conservatives and returning Iraq/Afghanistan veterans of being “rightwing extremists.”
97. Promising to push for comprehensive immigration reform, i.e., amnesty.
98. Killing the school voucher program in the District of Columbia, while sending his two daughters to an
elite private school, rather than D.C.’s public schools.
99. Moving the Census out of the Department of Commerce and into the White House.
100. Relying too much on his teleprompter.

KFI 640 Radio Rally "No as in No More Taxes" Are You Listining

Saturday May 16, 2009 John and Ken from KFI 640 radio hosted a rally to promote NO on all the bills to raise taxes.

This Rally was a hugh success.

 

 

 

Does America Need to Start Over?

The Declaration of Independence represents the most prominent, official, consensus position of the Founders' rational for declaring independence from England.  Do you think it might be time to start over by reaffirming our roots and reinstate the Declaration of Independence?  It seems that we have moved politically so far away from original concept.

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.......etc.

Doesn't it seem that we need to start over?  Or will it be... Just too much trouble!  My experience is that people that I talk to are very angry however when I ask them, What are you doing to change the situation?  Answer... Little to nothing!