We heartily agree with Ron Paul with regards to the poisonous effect that the Federal Reserve has had on our monetary policy. Opposition to a national bank has deep roots in American history, and it is telling that such a position has been relegated to the fringe of public discourse. It is imperative to our present economic health to retreat from the 20th Century ideas about currency that was never truly sustainable even when it took hold.

We heartily agree with Ron Paul with regard to limiting the federal government. Mr. Paul’s proposals to cut government have been the boldest and most refreshing of any of the candidates vying for the Republican nomination. A minimalist approach, such as has been proposed by former governor Mitt Romney, will fail as it has in the past.

On foreign policy, we yet again agree with Ron Paul. Mr. Paul does not propose authentic isolationism, but an end to an empire that has military bases over the entire world and has involved us in virtually every foreign entanglement imaginable. Mr. Paul seeks to restore the wisdom of George Washington’s farewell address to our foreign policy. Back when we were truly a republic, this was not only plausible, but universally lauded. Why it is so radical and roundly criticized now is astonishing.

The time has likely past for a candidate such as Ron Paul to rise to the presidency of the United States. But the fact that the discussion is even taking place is encouraging. We suspect most Americans do not possess the foresight or historical perspective to make the choice, but we can hope.

IF CONGRESS SETS THE PRECEDENT of conceding to the executive branch the authority to raise the debt ceiling, it will have ramifications that will impact the United States for centuries. Republics almost always experience decline when the legislature parcels out its authority to a single individual. But this is never more true when matters come to the purse-strings. 

In the seventeenth century, Oliver Cromwell and the ”Round-heads” were only relevant in the discussion of public worship and the proliferation of the Bible because Parliament possessed the power to cut off Charles I’s funding of the wars he wished to fight. With that power, Cromwell and the Puritans were able to force the issue to the front and center of Charles Stuart’s political (and actual) life. 

Granting Barack Obama authority to raise the debt ceiling means Congress must be prepared for other presidents to do the same. Mitch McConnell’s gamble is that the president will raise the ceiling, Republicans will vote against it, and Mr. Obama will absorb the full impact of the negative political consequences in November 2012.

It may or may not work in the short-term. But it will almost certainly weaken Congress in the long-term. No wonder President Obama is so eager to accept Senator McConnell’s plan. That alone should indicate to the senator that there is more at stake than the next election.

The sun has long set on Washington's America

THE FOURTH OF JULY DOES not belong to the Yankees though the American government and culture today largely does. The entrenched myth heard yesterday and every year at this time is that Indepedence Day is ”the birthday of the nation.”

Nonsense. Few Americans after 1776 and even after the signing of the Constitution in 1789 ever saw themselves as part of any “nation.” The Founders saw their independence from England as the opportunity to allow all the colonies the enjoyment of liberty from a hegemonic, condescending “mother-country” that considered itself wiser and better equipped to govern them. Americans, they believed, were capable of self-government. Was not this the entire argument of the Declaration of Independence when it said that “all men are created equal”? English and Americans being equally capable? 

Yet see today how Washington, D.C. lords it over the whole country in a way that would have made George III’s head spin. Yesterday it was only stamps on legal documents and taxes on tea and sugar. Yet now the mandates come down from Washington regarding how much water should be in the toilets, how many miles to the gallon automobiles should get, who banks can make a loan to and by what terms, which types of people the local police prosecute for crimes, which types of people should be in your child’s classroom, etc., etc.

In one sense, Americans are bizarre because they celebrate the freedom of a country that no longer exists. The Spirit of 1776 is as stiff in the grave as George Washington himself. It is buried under the bureucratic control of a federal government that pays homage to the Constitution while a large part of it works everyday to undermine it under the pretense of equality.

148 years ago today.

Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.

IF ANYONE WONDERS FROM TIME to time (as we occasionally do wishfully) whether or not the Republican Party has fundamentally changed since those early radical days in the mid-19th Century, Tim Pawlenty is ready to disappoint. The candidate for president (assuming he has formally announced) is chiding the Republican Party for an isolationist tone. This is only because some Republicans have expressed reservations about the ill-conceived meddling in Libya and the U.S.’s continued presence in Afghanistan.

Mr. Pawlenty says that the country already has one major party committed to the decline of America, and doesn’t need another one. Note well this vague term “decline.” Would the Republic really decline? Or is it America’s influence as a global empire? But we would like to ask Mr. Pawlenty exactly why he thinks the United States would decline if it severed its foreign entaglements abroad. What he is really concerned about is Washington’s diminishing power to dictate its will to every nation on the planet.  That kind of power is expensive, and without constant additional resources cannot be sustained. Ask the Romans.

Tim Pawlenty represents the shadow of Lincoln that remains in this party which says, “might makes right.” And as far as Mr. Pawlenty is concerned, the U.S. will always be on the right side as long as it has the most bombs.

A picture taken after the president read this blog.

As if it is not enough that Dixie’s values are despised and continually under attack by the mainstream 21st Century American culture? We think the least modern Americans can do is tolerate the monuments to that great civilization that yielded to them George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Robert E. Lee.  Some young people will one day (if not already) like to understand how the United States of America went wrong and why. And there is no question that the defeat of the Confederacy will be pivotal in that explanation.

If suggestions that monuments to Martin Luther King Jr. or Abraham Lincoln should not be replaced were being circulated, civil rights leaders would interpret the decision as a likely insult to those figures and the ideals they possessed. They would be right. Southerners that still value the contribution their fathers made to challenging federal tyranny and attempting to beat back the destructive effects the French enlightenment had on social views should rightfully feel the same slight.

The DOJ will likely claim that Sheriff Johnson and his deputies are arresting far too many Hispanics in proportion to Alamance County’s population. Never mind the fact that Hispanics commit a disproportionate amount of crime (especially in traffic violations) in comparison to their actual population percentage. Like most infected with the liberal ideology, the investigators at the DOJ will likely be incapable to accept that crime does not occur in neat patterns that correspond to the ethnic make-up of a society. But their intellectual rigidity is a cost that will be borne most likely by Johnson and the people of Alamance County.

The sheriff has broken no law. He has been assailed by those that not only have refused to enforce the laws for which they themselves are responsible, but who even make it their mission to ensure that the state of Arizona, Sheriff Johnson, and anyone that contends for law and order in the South are prevented from doing so. The social experimentation must continue, and anyone that takes up the cause of the Southern people will find themselves the target of the federal government.

Witness then the miserable manner in which the “Wikileaks” affair is transpiring. Apparently the federal government believes that it is owed the homage of every man, woman, and child on the planet (yes, children, as now the further discovery of the internal workings of “Wikileaks” is revealing) as it seems to be posturing itself to “go after” Julian Assange and his associates. Our press is almost entirely willing to act as an accomplice with Washington in asserting its right to jail, prosecute, defund, and otherwise destroy any such obstacle on earth that contrives a way to complicate its designs.

That is not to say that Mr. Assange and the “Wikileaks” collaborators are heroes. Indeed they have confederated themselves with at least one, if not an entire cadre of criminals within the United States government that is disseminating privileged information. But Mr. Assange himself is not an American citizen and neither are many of those into whose hands this sensitive information is unfortunately falling. Washington cannot possibly expect the loyalties of every non-citizen on the globe to be inclined towards keeping such information a secret when it has so obviously been unable to induce its own agents in the internal workings of the government from doing so.

Or can it? Those of us on the Right have known for some time that this modern world of ours is polluted with many – American or otherwise – who harbor one-world government ambitions in their hearts. But first, a word about citizenship.

If one is a citizen of a country, say the United States, then that one is endowed with all of the legal rights his society confers. In America, this involves protections from the federal government provided by the Constitution as well as additional protections that his particular state might afford. However with those rights, a certain fidelity to one’s country and one’s own people is imperative. Under this imperative, patriotism finds the soil in which it can grow and flourish. We are here not speaking of a notion of social compact. Rather a Christian man “renders honor to whom honor is due,” subjecting himself to the solemn New Testament directive to “submit to the powers that be.”    

Under these conventional understandings of citizenship, the case against Mr. Assange becomes difficult indeed. A spy employs deceit casting himself as something he is not in order to obtain sensitive information. But Mr. Assange has operated in the open, beguiling no one by assuming a false identity. A terrorist employs violence and threats of violence against law-abiding citizens for the purpose of attaining specific political goals. Yet Mr. Assange has merely made information available that any and all might use, terrorists or otherwise. The same accusation might be leveled at a newspaper. Furthermore, Mr. Assange is not violating the New Testament to submit himself to the authority Providence has placed over him.

Or so we maintain. This brings us back to those that lust for “global governance.” Many speak about Mr. Assange’s “right to free speech,” as though the Founders thought of such foreigners when they crafted the Bill of Rights. They speak of him as a “traitor.” They speak of prosecuting him for espionage though again we have already proved that he has hardly assumed the cloak of deceit that is requisite for the spy. To be sure, the real criminals who are releasing information to “Wikileaks” are being sought and will no doubt fall under the power of the law sooner or later. Yet we fear that in the meantime the attention being given to Mr. Assange and “Wikileaks” is an attempt by powerful elites to make the case and shape the framework for a global enforcement entity. They are presenting the public with a host of unwarranted presuppositions that have no validity unless they be grounded in the assumption that a one-world government already is or should come into being to meet such a crisis. Make no mistake: that is what is at stake.