Friday, February 7, 2020

The price of liberty


It is said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

We'll be okay if people keep their guards up.  If not, then things will go downhill until we end up like Venezuela.

The conservative side may be too trusting.  You can be assured that the left is on guard always.  However, liberty is not their goal.  If it was their goal, there'd be no problem.  When it comes to the GOP, the media watches like a hawk, but it only goes one way.

It is a sad fact that we have to depend upon the GOP to preserve liberty.  Too many of them are too much like the Democrats.  They like their big government and ever-increasing encroachments upon the liberty of the people.

I'm not a big fan of State of the Union speeches.  I watched about half of the most recent one.   There are those who are praising it to the heavens.  I'm not so sure.   No, I'm not changing my politics.  But you need to watch out with this stuff.  The very idea of addressing Congress in person seemed monarchial according to Thomas Jefferson.  He gave his State of the Union in writing.  This was followed until Woodrow Wilson broke that tradition.  It was about that time that this country started down the statist road.

Don't put too much faith in these speeches, I say.

Ronald Reagan had a good State of the Union once.  But that speech wasn't about praising some government program or initiative.  It was about those "three little words" that the Constitution begins with, which are "We The People".  Reagan may have seemed a bit corny at times, but I think he really believed it.  I'd say way too many people these days do not seem to.

Reagan said we are a people with a government and not the other way around.   To put it another way, "we the people" own the government, but the government does not own us.  These days, it seems that we are marching steadily to the other direction that Reagan seemed to be warning us about.  The government is getting too powerful and it won't be too much longer when we might as well be slaves.  We won't be free anymore at this rate.

People need to take heed of where this government is going.  That includes those on our side.  I know Romney may want to seem like a dutiful and thoughtful conservative, but that is a ruse.  It is this dishonesty and corruption that is killing us.  If Romney was that thoughtful, he would have wanted a lot more information than it seemed that he was interested in hearing.  We need the full story, not the ones that the Democrats were telling.  There are two sides, and we got a rather one-sided process even in the Senate.  The House was a House of Horrors--a Star Chamber.  The Senate was too generous towards the House and should have been much more severe about their methods.  Romney didn't seem to find issues with the House, but 50 of his fellow Republicans did.

The impeachment was a Bill of Attainder.  Trump is treated as a guilty person without the benefit of due process.  A case should have been made to that effect.  It wasn't.  Too bad.  We may pay for that omission.  The price of liberty truly is eternal vigilance.  There may be those who are glad it is all over, but the only way to assure us of that was with a thorough process, which this was not. 

Not that I agree with the liberals.  No NEW witnesses, but there should have been an argument with the way that this process unfolded and a formal vote to condemn the way the House ran it.  We could have heard from a witness in the Senate trial, and it wouldn't have been a NEW witness.  One of the House's inquiry-witnesses had his testimony BLOCKED by Adam Schiff.  Some of what he said could have thrown a big light upon the sham that the impeachment truly was.

People may want to remember that one.  It is a big deal.


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