FRANK SALVATO: REAPING THE REWARDS OF A “PROGRESSIVE” AMERICA
http://newmediajournal.us/indx.php/item/5070
As the nation directs its attention to the events taking place at the United States Supreme Court, specifically, the oral arguments surrounding the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, now may be a good time to evaluate some of the “progress” we have made, both as a country and as a culture, where the Progressive Movement’s efforts are concerned.
I say that now may be a good time for this evaluation because as the Justices of the Supreme Court debate the merits of the case before them, we stand on the precipice of the largest expansion in government authority since the institution of the income tax. And while both Republicans and Democrats; Conservatives and Liberals, have had a hand in the total of government expansion, no other group has celebrated that expansion over our liberties, over our freedoms, more than Progressives.
Now, I am not an overly religious man. As regular readers understand, my Mother would be very happy if I attended church more often. But even I can see that at the hand of the Progressive Movement the idea of secularism has become totalitarian. In a nation built, in part, as a sanctuary for the religious (this is the onus behind the First Amendment’s right to “Freedom of Religion”), people of the cloth are being placed under arrest for preaching on public grounds.
In Hemet, California, the Rev. Mark Mackey, a preacher with the Calvary Chapel, was arrested for “preaching to a captive audience” as he read passages from the bible outside a still closed Department of Motor Vehicles building. The arresting California Highway Patrol Officer said to Mackey, as he was leading him away in handcuffs, “You’re not allowed to preach here because this is a captive audience…You can preach on your own property.” One so-called constitutional attorney said Mackey was “creating an intimidating situation.”
In Florida, as the details of a highly publicized crime are still coming into focus, a volunteer neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman, is in hiding because the New Black Panther Party has put a $10,000 bounty on his head, along with a “dead or alive” precursor, for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin (and we all thought vigilantism was a thing of the past). And as race-baiting activists – the likes of self-anointed Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, both whom have become quite wealthy in their pursuits of keeping the nation divided along racial lines, and elected officials call for – and incredibly so – the arrest of a man before an investigation into the event is even concluded, racist organization La Raza (“The Race” in Spanish) has issued a statement questioning his ethnicity. “His background is not clear…Is he Latino? Is he white? Is he both? Who knows?,” La Raza spokeswoman Lisa Navarrete said in an interview with The Daily Caller. Zimmerman’s Mother is Hispanic.
Speaking of the New Black Panthers, as the men and women of our military fight and die to liberate whole national populations from the tyranny of Islamofascist oppression, our own Justice Department, led by Eric Holder – who is turning out to be not only a racist but a racial activist by proof of both his actions and inactions, refuses to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law, paramilitary-clad, night-stick wielding New Black Panther racists who stood outside a Philadelphia polling place during the 2008 General Election intimidating every Caucasian voter who tried to enter. J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department Voting Rights Section attorney, who served in the Holder regime, has testified that orders were given not to prosecute any Black defendants…period.
Take a walk on any college campus and the cultural decay envelops you at almost every step. As Progressives blanket every square inch of every campus in an effort to register as many college students to vote as they can, militantly Progressive professors, protected with tenure status, spew hatred of the Founders and Framers while juxtaposing the “benefits” of Socialism and Socialist Democracy against the “evils of Capitalism” to terminally half-hungover students in Ché Guevara t-shirts. I say terminally half hungover because in an age when an alarming number of college graduates need to be completely re-trained for the workplace – and in an age when those entering college need remedial classes just to feign that they graduated with any subject knowledge at all from high school – late-night orgasmic debauchery is the social norm.
Don’t get me wrong, I was no angel in college, in fact, the calls about my charge card use each month that came from my Father saw most of my dorm floor evacuating for the tapestry of weaved anguish that emitted from the telephone receiver. But I would be considered a model student by today’s standards (If you choose to click on the corresponding link in the previous paragraph, please know that it is R-Rated progressing to X-Rated in nature).
Tune the radio to any station that used to be Top 40 in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and you will be inundated with the musical offering known as rap music. Having been a musician in my young adulthood, and having played with some of the best jazz and blues players in the business, many of whom are mentioned in history books, I can always appreciate something about a musical genre. But I can’t help but notice that if you listen to a “popular” music station today for longer than 20 minutes you will eventually hear “singers,” or “artists,” pontificating about women being whores, men questing to bed as many of those “whoes” as possible, shooting cops, the celebration of the drug culture and a much undeserved self-aggrandizing of overall violence and intolerance. This “art form” is permissible but – going back to the first item – telling someone that Jesus Christ loves them is something you can get arrested for.
And then we have politics…
Throughout history, Progressives and Liberal Democrats have existed in the seat of power each and every time that the government has expanded power. Whether it was the creation of the New Deal entitlement of Social Security, the Medicare entitlement of the Great Society, or the now constitutionally challenged entitlement of mandated Health Insurance under the Obama Administration, each time Progressives have been elected to the seat of power they have connived their way to the expansion of government., doing so with little regard to the limitations placed upon them by the United States Constitution and the total of the Charters of Freedom.
In fact, two of the most revered Progressives ever to inhabit the Oval Office, Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt, literally despised the Charters.
Wilson is quoted as saying, “If you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface.” The preface – or Preamble – is the part which states that the only legitimate purpose of government, regardless of time, place or circumstance, is to secure the natural rights of the individual:
“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. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
According to Senator James Watson’s memoir, Teddy Roosevelt, in response to criticism that his Pennsylvania Plan regarding the Coal Strike of 1902 was unconstitutional, is quoted as saying, “To hell with the Constitution when the people want coal!”
President Bill Clinton is quoted as having said, in an August 12, 1993, speech:
“If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government’s ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.”
And today, we have a President in Barack Obama, who views the Constitution as flawed and through eyes tainted by the teachings of not only Socialism – via his childhood mentor Frank Marshall Davis, but the racism of Black Theology – via Trinity United Church and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Regarding the Constitution, Mr. Obama has stated,
“I think it is an imperfect document, and I think it is a document that reflects some deep flaws in American culture, the Colonial culture nascent at that time…
“African-Americans were not – first of all they weren’t African-Americans – the Africans at the time were not considered as part of the polity that was of concern to the Framers. I think…it was a ‘nagging problem’ in the same way that these days we might think of environmental issues, or some other problem where you have to balance cost-benefits, as opposed to seeing it as a moral problem involving persons of moral worth.
“And in that sense, I think we can say that the Constitution reflected an enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day, and that the Framers had that same blind spot. I don’t think the two views are contradictory, to say that it was a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now, and to say that it also reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.”
Regarding his racist tendencies, in his book, Dreams from My Father, Mr. Obama wrote,
“That’s just how white folks will do you…It wasn’t merely the cruelty involved; I was learning that black people could be mean and then some. It was a particular brand of arrogance, an obtuseness in otherwise sane people that brought forth our bitter laughter. It was as if whites didn’t know they were being cruel in the first place; or at least thought you deserving of their scorn.”
Today, as the United States Supreme Court contemplates the constitutionality of yet another Progressive expansion of governmental authority – and, yet again, another diminishing of our individual liberties – and as we can clearly see the fomentation of a potential race war in Florida at the hands of Progressive race-baiters, we have to ask ourselves some important questions: Do we really approve of the government and society that the Progressive Movement has delivered us? Is this the government we want to leave to our children; a government that tells us what we have to buy and eat, who are privileged and who are not, what we can say and where we can acknowledge our God?
The question put to all of us this coming election is not whether we are Democrat or Republican; Liberal or Conservative, it is whether we embrace liberty and freedom or cede both to further governmental encroachment upon individual sovereignty. Truth be told, our Founders and Framers started a revolution over this very question. I wonder if we will make them proud, or further disappoint them with our abdication of constitutional stewardship.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin
Optional:
Frank Salvato is the Executive Director for BasicsProject.org a non-partisan, 501(c)(3) research and education initiative focusing on Constitutional Literacy and the threats of Islamic jihadism and Progressive neo-Marxism. His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His organization, BasicsProject.org, partnered in producing the original national symposium series addressing the root causes of radical Islamist terrorism. He is a member of the International Analyst Network and has been a featured guest on al Jazeera’s Listening Post and on Russia Today. He also serves as the managing editor for The New Media Journal. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel, and was featured in the documentary, “Ezekiel and the MidEast ‘Piece’ Process: Israel’s Neighbor States.” He is the author of the series Understanding the Threat of Radical Islam, an educational pamphlet series. Mr. Salvato is a regular guest on talk radio including on The Captain’s America Radio Show, nationally syndicated by the Phoenix Broadcasting and ABC Satellite Networks, catering to the US Armed Forces around the world. and is heard weekly on The Roth Show with Dr. Laurie Roth syndicated nationally on the IRN-USA Radio Network. Mr. Salvato has been interviewed on Radio Belgrade One. His opinion-editorials have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times, Accuracy in Media, Human Events, and are syndicated nationally. He is a featured political writer for EducationNews.org, BigGovernment.com and Examiner.com and is occasionally quoted in The Federalist. Mr. Salvato is available for public speaking engagements. He can be contacted at contact@newmediajournal.us.
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