Defunding The America-Hating Left: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.  It’s recently dawned on me that the America-hating left’s “defund the police” movement is half-right.  What they’ve gotten wrong is the movement’s target.

Contrary to this mindless mantra, what needs defunding is NOT law enforcement.  Rather, what MUST be defunded are the left’s legions of subversive co-conspirators in our grotesquely-overpriced, propaganda-spewing universities; our failed, union-dominated K-12 government schools; and our arrogant, corrupt media.  Also in need of defunding are the anti-democratic elements of our lawless federal government, specifically the unaccountable, social-engineering bureaucrats infesting its unconstitutional, “fourth branch” of administrative agencies and the lifetime-tenured, hyper-politicized lawyers posing as impartial judges in its judicial branch.  More even than our gutless, self-serving politicians, these outlaws have forced a godless, globalist cultural agenda upon our nation which God-fearing, liberty-loving citizens have repeatedly rejected at the ballot box during the past half-century.

To defund these rogue “public servants” is to deprive their enormous, liberty-shredding machine in Washington, D.C. of the lubricant needed for its grinding gears.  In disrupting this mechanism, we the people of the United States will enhance our prospects for taking back control of our homes, churches, schools, private businesses and other personal sanctuaries historically deemed off-limits to the federal government.  From these newly-liberated strongholds, we will be in a tactically advantageous position to force our wannabe political masters back within their original, strict constitutional constraints.

As I see it, what’s needed is not a Jeffersonian revolution to overthrow an illegitimate tyrant as in 1776.  At least not yet.  What’s needed, instead, is a peaceful restoration of the founding principle of limited, consensual government to our once and future democratic republic.  The electoral process is still necessary, although it’s no longer sufficient to achieve this end.  Non-violent civil disobedience will also be required if America is to survive for future generations as–in the words of Ronald Reagan–“a nation that has a government, not the other way around.”

If the leftist worshippers at the altar of omnipotent, coercive government are correct that the time has arrived for a defunding movement, it’s potential energy to effect political, cultural and spiritual change is truly enormous.  Its magnitude is hinted at in Victor Hugo’s observation that “all the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”  In this regard, I believe the time is NOW for courageous, law-abiding citizens to defund the globalists in our midst and thereby restore “government of the people, by the people, for the people” to our beloved nation.  Let’s roll! (ref. http://www.newguardsforliberty.com)

 

An American Odyssey: From Republic To Tyranny (And Back Again?)

Once upon a time in America, our two-party political system provided citizens with an imperfect, yet effective, mechanism for preserving our democratic republic as–in the words of Ronald Reagan–“a nation that has a government, not the other way around.”  This is no longer the case.  The mechanism is broken.

The system’s break-down can be traced to the Democratic Party’s capture by true believers in the totalitarian doctrine of omnipotent, coercive government during the late 1960s and 1970s.  Over the ensuing decades, its increasingly anti-democratic leaders have totally ignored or tragically forgotten the implications of the hundred million deaths directly attributable to the 20th Century’s experiments with communism, socialism, fascism and other totalitarian strains.

By way of contrast, the Republican Party has never ceased paying lip service to individual liberty, the rule of law and limited, consensual government.  On occasion, its leaders are still heard preaching the material, moral and spiritual superiority of these principles over unconstrained government power.  Time and time again, however, they have exhibited a cowardly unwillingness to “walk the talk” of freedom.

For all intents and purposes, the Republican Party has become an enabler of the Democratic Party’s protracted crusade against “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”  Both parties have been co-opted by a morbidly-obese federal government which has lawlessly exercised vast powers nowhere granted it in the Constitution.  Their members comprise a wannabe, bi-partisan ruling class in Washington, D.C.  Under no circumstances can they be trusted as reliable allies of freedom.

The combination of craven, Republican capitulation and duplicitous, Democratic subversion has culminated in the fundamental transformation of the U.S. Constitution.  What originated as a security pact among the sovereign states and their citizens has become an instrument of surrender to an unconstrained federal government.  Having invalidated the SOLE source of the federal government’s just powers, this transformation has also abrogated its legitimate authority over law-abiding citizens of the United States.

As a consequence, contemporary America very nearly meets the classic definition of tyranny:  Power without authority.  Under comparable circumstances nearly two-and-a-half centuries ago, Samuel Adams condemned those who would cravenly submit to the tyranny of King George III:  “If ye love wealth better than freedom, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace . . . May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”  In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson similarly proposed that his liberty-loving countrymen “throw off such Government, and . . . provide new Guards for their future security.”

All of which raises the question:  What, if anything, is to be done about this perilous predicament?  Should we submit to the de facto tyranny of Uncle Sam?  Or alternatively, should we emulate our nation’s Founding Fathers in rebelling against their illegitimate sovereign?

What I would propose is not a Jeffersonian revolution to overthrow our lawless federal government, but a non-violent restoration of the founding principle of limited, consensual government in our beloved nation.  As I see it, this goal can best be achieved by a grassroots movement of citizen CEOs (Constitution Enforcement Officers) with the courage to force the government back within its original, strict constitutional constraints.

The good news is the fate of America is still firmly in our own hands.  The bad news is time is VERY short.  And the clock is ticking.  If we do nothing, we will soon learn the painful truth that “freedom requires courage, but cowardice guarantees servitude.”  If we have the fortitude and the will to act, however, we will earn the eternal gratitude of future generations for preserving for them the blessings of liberty which we ourselves inherited from our worthy ancestors.

The America-Hating Left’s Unholy Crusade Against Objective Reality

Selective censorship is the weapon of choice used by Big Tech’s social media gatekeepers to silence those who favor the honest pursuit of knowledge over the regurgitated orthodoxies of America-hating leftists.  Whether the subject is COVID-19, man-made global warming, or–the left’s all-time favorite fantasy–the alleged superiority of omnipotent, coercive government over individual liberty, the gatekeepers are unwavering in their commitment to spreading the plague of globalism throughout our post-rational, dumbed-down, increasingly-delusional world.

Empirical evidence and actual, objective facts are of no interest to the gatekeepers in advancing their diabolical mission.  Towards this end, they have stocked their anti-democratic arsenal with hyper-politicized, ideologically-tainted “scientific” studies.

After decades of craven denial, an ever-growing segment of the general populace has finally awakened to their ongoing, unholy crusade against objective reality.  At long last, truth’s defenders have begun fighting back.  These warriors have developed a simple, effective strategy to defend themselves from bombardment by the enemy’s ideological ordnance.  It consists of the deployment of their common sense and critical thinking skills to distinguish REAL science produced by principled, non-ideological experts from JUNK science cooked up by government-funded, bought-and-paid-for frauds and promulgated by their corrupt co-conspirators in media.

Truth’s defenders know that defeat is not an option in this existential conflict.  The wisest fully realize that its stakes are nothing less than the preservation of America’s founding principle of limited, consensual government.   They understand that victory, alone, will ensure the survival of our democratic republic as–in the words of Ronald Reagan–“a nation that has a government, not the other way around.”

Rescuing America By Defunding The Federal Wolf

During the past half-century, the U.S. Supreme Court has substituted social engineering for principled, juridical reasoning in its most momentous rulings.  Fidelity to the Constitution–as written and ratified, not as converted by charlatans into a mythical “living” document–was of little to no interest to the Court in its decisions affirming the constitutionality of abortion, reverse racial discrimination and government-controlled healthcare, or in denying the constitutionality of prayer in public schools.  Its latest such decision, which denied the constitutionality of ancient, biologically-based sexual distinctions, is entirely consistent with this dishonest and unethical practice.

What these rulings demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt is that America no longer has what John Adams characterized as “a government of laws, not of men.”  What we now have is a de facto politburo comprised of lifetime-tenured lawyers controlling our lives through hyper-politicized decrees issued from their Olympian heights.  They have been aided in spreading their anti-democratic, collectivist agenda by legions of unaccountable bureaucrats exercising legislative, executive and judicial powers in direct contravention of the Constitution’s separation of powers provisions.

These co-conspirators’ subversive attacks on the Constitution have fundamentally transformed our nation’s founding document from a security pact among the sovereign states intended to protect each and every citizen’s God-given rights into an instrument of surrender to an omnipotent, coercive federal government.  Having thus rendered null and void that government’s SOLE source of its just powers, they have entirely forfeited their own legitimate authority.

As things now stand, our sabotaged democratic republic cannot long endure as–in the words of Ronald Reagan–“a nation that has a government, not the other way around.”  To ensure its survival, I hereby propose that my fellow Americans act to defund what has become an outlaw federal government.

By way of full disclosure, I myself took this action when I wrote then-Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew on April 15, 2015 informing him of my intention to bypass his department and the IRS.  I explained to Mr. Lew that, henceforth, I would be paying my taxes directly to the Defense Department, the Veterans Administration, and various private charities, social service organizations, and local law enforcement agencies.  I have continued to exercise my own personal “power of the purse” during each of the past five years.

Unlike Thomas Paine, I am no revolutionary.  I do not seek to overthrow our federal    government.  My sole purpose is to inspire a non-violent, grassroots movement of law-abiding citizens to restore the government’s legitimacy by forcing our wannabe political masters back within their original, strict constitutional constraints.

It is my firm belief that only a critical mass of citizen CEOs (Constitution Enforcement Officer) can rescue America’s founding principle of limited, consensual government.  The risks are great, of course, primarily because the federal wolf–like every natural-born predator–becomes particularly vicious when its chosen meal refuses to be eaten.

Of one thing we can be certain.  Those who resist the federal wolf will no more receive justice from its weaponized administrative or law courts than Thomas Jefferson would have received it from a British tribunal on July 5, 1776.  What we will receive in abundance, however, is the gratitude of future generations for seeking to preserve for them the blessings of liberty which we ourselves inherited from our ancestors (ref. http://www.newguardsforliberty.com).

 

My Personal, Political Awakening

The precise circumstances of my personal, political awakening are indelibly imprinted upon my mind.  It took place in front of my television set between 4 and 5 p.m. (CST) on Sunday, January 20, 1980.  At the time I was 30 years old and married with a four-month-old son.  Somewhat incongruously, I was employed in the insurance industry, although I had earned a master’s degree in English literature four years earlier and hoped for a career in academia.

My parents had both come from rather large, working class families consisting almost entirely of New Deal Democrats.  Predictably, in my first two national elections, I voted for the Democrat Party’s nominees, George McGovern and Jimmy Carter, over Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush.  To complete the stereotype, I even read the New York Review of Books.  In every way, I walked, talked and quacked like a liberal duck.

In the course of a single hour, my self perception as a political liberal dissolved like a light mist on a sunny, summer morning.  Metaphorically speaking, I saw the light while watching William F. Buckley Jr. interview Ronald Reagan, who was then a candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.  Buckley premised the interview on the hypothetical that the date was one year later, January 20, 1981, and his guest had just been inaugurated as President Ronald Wilson Reagan.

During that interview, it gradually dawned on me that what I thought I knew about America in general and Ronald Reagan in particular was in actuality a grotesque caricature.  I came to realize my beliefs were based upon lies and distortions injected into my indolent brain by leftist intellectuals, hyper-partisan media, and other America-hating globalists.

To provide context to my awakening, at the time of the Buckley-Reagan interview, our nation was mired in a swamp of self-doubt and deepening despair.  Among its causes were the physical and psychological wounds suffered during our failed, bloody war in Vietnam; the economic devastation arising from sky-high unemployment, inflation and interest rates; our ambivalence about opposing the aggressive expansion of communism in Central America, South America and Africa; and pangs of guilt associated with our nation’s allegedly-undeserved wealth and power.

Like so many of my contemporaries, I mindlessly accepted President Jimmy Carter’s diagnosis of our worsening condition as “malaise” and his prognosis that it was an incurable, metaphysical disorder.  America’s best days, we were told, were deservedly behind us.  We would have to accept that our fate was to become just another second-rate, cradle-to-grave welfare state.  We were reassured that this was no disgrace.  Quite the contrary, because we would henceforth be ruled by high-minded, social-engineering bureaucrats aided by lifetime-tenured lawyers posing as impartial judges.

While watching the interview, to my absolute astonishment, I learned that the real, flesh-and-blood Ronald Reagan was intelligent, articulate, humbly self-effacing, and filled with faith-based optimism.  His infectious good cheer inspired in me a confidence that  America was not in terminal decline.  He made a compelling case for national healing through the cooperative, common sense efforts of the American people freed from the coercive constraints of government.

By the interview’s conclusion, I was acutely aware that an enormous hoax had been perpetrated upon me by a pack of natural-born liars whom I had foolishly trusted to provide me with “the truth.”  Henceforth, I vowed to myself, I would always use my critical thinking skills to distinguish between objective fact and fiction.  In urging others to follow this practice over the ensuing years, I have often quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson that thinking is the hardest thing in the world to do, which is why so few people do it.

My actively-engaged brain soon discovered an intricate web of lies and deception at the heart of what was then called liberalism, but now bears the label of progressivism, collectivism or socialism.   The closer I examined this web, the clearer it became that its purpose was to ensnare true believers in America’s foundational principle of “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Clearly evident in the web’s ubiquitous strands was a pattern of hatred for the U.S. Constitution’s protections of individual liberty and its strict limitations on the federal government.  Their purpose was to free the government of those limitations while simultaneously shackling its citizens, thereby reversing their respective roles as servant and master.

Now, four decades later, our Constitution is no longer recognizable as a security pact among the sovereign states and their citizens.  No longer does it serve its original purpose of preserving the blessings of liberty by securing our unalienable, God-given rights.  This is because the Constitution has been fraudulently transformed into an instrument of surrender to an unconstrained, coercive federal government.

Despite this tragic development, I find myself increasingly optimistic about America’s future.  I am encouraged that the same personal awakening which I experienced 40-plus years ago is now being repeated in mass movements such as #walkaway and Blexit.  Their supporters are daily clearing “woke” cobwebs from the corners of their minds.  For the first time, they clearly see that removing our government-imposed shackles will require forcing our political masters back within their original constitutional constraints.

Only through courageous acts of non-violent resistance by law-abiding, liberty-loving citizens will limited, consensual government be restored to America.  Failure is not an option.  Success alone will guarantee its survival for future generations as–in the words of Ronald Reagan–“a nation that has a government, not the other way around” (ref. http://www.newguardsforliberty.com).

Good Will, Bad Faith And Racial Harmony

A precondition for solving any social problem is that the participants in the discussion are people of basic decency and good will.  A second precondition is that these people must be guided by reason and compassion in roughly equal measures.

Reason is needed because of the tragic and timeless truth that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, particularly the good intentions of naive, idealistic dreamers; compassion is needed to produce the empathy required to put ourselves into the other person’s shoes and see the world from their perspective.  Without the proper balance of each, the prospects for arriving at a mutually acceptable resolution of any dispute are substantially diminished.

Unfortunately, when it comes to race relations, these days far too many participants are guided less by reason and compassion than by selfish, hyper-political agendas.  These motives are incompatible with the spirit of compromise required whenever competing interests search for common ground and shared interests.

In my experience, such ideologues are often characterized by a bad faith desire to keep old wounds from healing.  All too often, their words and actions precipitate angry demands for unattainable, coercive solutions at the expense of attainable ones based upon voluntary cooperation.  In this context the perfect becomes the enemy of the good.  For this reason, identifying and excluding these malefactors from the national discussion is essential if we are to achieve lasting racial harmony.

The Lesson Of COVID-19: Life Ain’t For Wimps

Life ain’t for wimps.  Thus did my congenitally-stoic, depression-era born mother counsel her eight kids.  Over the ensuing decades, I came to recognize the profound wisdom of this simple, timeless truth.  Experience taught me that every life is replete with hazards, some of them benign, obvious and easily avoidable, others deadly, terrifying and unseen.  Risk and chance, I came to realize, are inherent in our every breath and every step.  No amount of self-delusion would alter the inescapable fact that, in due course, death comes to us all.  This is reality.  This is The Human Condition.

The Coronavirus-related fear and hysteria permeating society are a byproduct of a nonsensical notion that has insinuated itself into America’s touchy-feely, post-rational culture during the past half-century.   At the heart of this notion is the mindless delusion that “you can have it all”–a perfect life with a perfect soulmate, a perfect job, and perfect health–at the low, low cost of surrendering our essential freedoms to an omnipotent, coercive government.  Far too many of us–particularly those with the most formal education but least common sense–have foolishly fallen for this illusory promise of government-provided, cradle-to-grave protection.

By way of comparison, once upon a time in America, virtually every sentient man, woman and child above the age of reason understood that no one gets it all.  Not in this life, anyway.  We knew that trade-offs were the rule, not the exception.  Above all, we knew that no life is without pain and sorrow, just as no life is without joy and peace.  In that earlier age, only a fool believed otherwise.

In the here and now, however, our collective gullibility has emboldened a cabal of self-serving politicians, social-engineering bureaucrats, and lifetime-tenured lawyers posing as impartial judges to implement utopian schemes to create heaven on earth through unprecedented regulation of our businesses, churches, schools and other private sanctuaries historically deemed off-limits to government.  The jury is still out on the relative benefits versus the as-yet-unknown costs of these policies.  What has already become crystal clear is that they have dangerously swollen the power of our national and state governments while simultaneously atrophying the rare and precious, God-given rights of 330 million citizens to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Mistakes have been made in our nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  This is understandable.  It is even pardonable.  What would be unpardonable, however, is our failure to learn a vital lesson which our wiser ancestors applied throughout their own lives and took pains to pass along to every succeeding generation.  That lesson?  Quite simply:  Freedom requires courage, but cowardice guarantees servitude.

Of one thing we can be certain.  Without a critical mass of courageous, liberty-loving citizens willing to withhold our consent from our lawless political masters in Washington, D.C., “government of the people, by the people, for the people” will very soon perish from the earth.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, what’s needed to prevent this tragic outcome is not a revolution to overthrow the federal government.  What’s needed is a non-violent restoration of the nation’s founding principle of limited consensual government.  Only in taking on this herculean task can we the people ensure America’s survival for future generations as–in the words of Ronald Reagan–“a nation that has a government, not the other way around” (ref. http://www.newguardsforliberty.com).

Ballot Harvesting, Voting By Mail And Other Sinister Socialist Schemes

Progressives and socialists have very nearly succeeded in their decades-long strategy of engineering the decline and fall of our democratic republic.  Aided by well-intentioned but naively-utopian social justice warriors since the 1960s, these leftists have utilized lifetime-tenured, hyper-politicized lawyers posing as impartial judges to impose their collectivist agenda upon our beloved nation.  In addition, they have used unconstitutional administrative agencies infested with swarms of unaccountable bureaucrats to lawlessly seize control of our homes, churches, schools, private businesses and other personal sanctuaries historically deemed off-limits to the federal government.

Ballot harvesting and voting by mail are just two more fraudulent tactics employed to advance their agenda by destroying the integrity of the electoral process.  Without honest elections, they are well aware, America’s founding principle of limited, consensual government cannot exist.  By these additional means, they hope to complete their scheme to fundamentally transform the U.S. Constitution from a security pact among the sovereign states and their citizens into an instrument of surrender to an unconstrained, coercive federal government.

Preventing this abomination will require the rise of a grassroots movement of non-violent, non-partisan, liberty-loving citizen CEOs (Constitution Enforcement Officers) dedicated to disempowering our lawless, wannabe ruling class in Washington, D.C.  Those of us who oppose these outlaws must base our actions upon the principle that, by rendering null and void the SOLE source of their just powers (i.e. the Constitution of the United States of America), they have forfeited their legitimate authority over us.

Of one thing we can be certain.  Government of the people, by the people, for the people will surely perish from the earth if we do not force them back within their original, strict constitutional constraints.  Only if we succeed in doing so will America survive for future generations as–in the words of Ronald Reagan–“a nation that has a government, not the other way around” (ref. http://www.newguardsforliberty.com).

A Very Poor Foundation For Liberty

Self-deception is a very poor foundation for liberty.  Beginning this very day, we the people of the United States must open our eyes to the plain truth that our democratic republic lies in ruin.  We must admit to ourselves that its essential structural supports, the rule of law and the founding principle of limited government, no longer exist.

In hindsight, we should have been tipped off that saboteurs were chipping away at these supports when, a decade ago, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded “are you kidding?” when asked where Congress derived its authority to control the life and death healthcare decisions of 320 million Americans.  We should have realized they had completed their mission when, on June 28, 2012, a gang of five, hyper-politicized lawyers–posing as impartial justices–proclaimed that the Affordable Care Act passed constitutional muster by virtue of the federal government’s taxing power.

Henceforth, I was convinced, June 28, 2012 would go down in infamy as “the day the rule of law died” in America.  Regrettably, my assumption has yet to be validated, despite the fact that the deceased’s corpse has been desecrated time and time again, most recently by the weaponization of federal law enforcement, intelligence and tax-collecting agencies for use against law-abiding citizens.

Let there be no mistake.  The saboteurs have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.  They have accomplished the impossible by fundamentally transforming our Constitution from a security pact among the sovereign states and their citizens into an instrument of surrender to an unconstrained, coercive federal government.

With each passing day, ever more Americans are awaking to the realization that ours is no longer “a government of laws, not of men.”  The fearsome phrase “under penalty of federal law,” we are coming to realize, is rendered effective only because it implicitly contains every tyrant’s three favorite words:  “I say so!”

The situation is dire, yes.  But the news is not all bad.  The saboteurs have unknowingly inflicted a mortal wound upon themselves.  They have done so by rendering null and void the SOLE source of their just powers, the U.S. Constitution.  In doing so, they have forfeited their legitimate authority over we the people of the United States of America.

Only one question remains:  What are we prepared to do about it?  Time will tell if a sufficient number of non-violent, liberty-loving citizens have the courage to force our wannabe political masters in Washington, D.C. back within their original, strict constitutional constraints.

Only in doing so can we restore the rule of law and the founding principle of limited, consensual government.  Only in doing so can we assure America’s survival for future generations as–in the words of Ronald Reagan–“a nation that has a government, not the other way around” (ref. http://www.newguardsforliberty.com).

 

 

The Fallacy Of Government-Funded Computer Models And “Scientific” Studies

With each passing day, more and more people are catching on to a familiar pattern with government-funded computer models and “scientific” studies.  Typically introduced with great solemnity and media fanfare–as if they were inscribed on stone tablets by God Almighty–they always seem to use fake data to create worst case scenarios allegedly reflecting likely, future realities.  Hysteria, not rational thought, are their stock-in-trade.  Their ultimate goal is the creation of an omnipotent, coercive government in Washington, D.C.

Examples abound of this phenomenon.  Think of the hyper-politicized studies produced by bought-and-paid-for “experts” which foretold the near extinction of all humanity from HIV/AIDS during the 1980s and ’90s (no joke–look it up).  Think of the computer programs which continually predict the end of the world as we know it from anthropomorphic global warming.  Think of the climatological software which regularly posit the potential of every weak tropical depression to become a catastrophically-destructive Category 5 hurricane.

It is no coincidence that these deceptions are treated as irrefutable evidence of the desperate need for empowering government to control our lives, homes, churches, schools and private businesses  Only the federal government, we are warned, can save us from the apocalypse du jour.

All too often, we have foolishly fallen for these hoaxes.  We have remained passive while relinquishing ever more control over our lives to an arrogant, clueless political class which couldn’t run the proverbial lemonade stand or prepare a box lunch if their lives depended upon it.

Of one thing we can be certain.  The cures proposed by self-serving politicians and unaccountable, social-engineering bureaucrats will always be worse than any real or imagined disease.

My fervent prayer is that those well-meaning but gullible citizens who reflexively put their trust in this wannabe elite will ignore their fear-mongering media allies, take a deep breath, and ask themselves why “we’re from the government and we’re here to help” are perennially recognized as the scariest nine words in any language.  I further pray they will ask themselves why, despite failure after failure, disaster after disaster, government programs are never proclaimed to be the mistakes that they so obviously are.  Lastly, I pray they will acquire the wisdom and courage to demand of our government the humility needed to fundamentally transform its approach to problem solving from “if it ain’t broke, fix it till it is” to “first do no harm.”

In time such simple acts of independent thought will, I am confident, catalyze an irresistible movement to restore the rule of law and limited, consensual government to our beloved nation.  Only a clear-thinking, liberty-loving citizenry can ensure that “government of the people, by the people, for the people” never perishes from the earth (ref. http://www.newguardsforliberty.com).