A Holiday of Mockery

Is today Independence Day or simply the Fourth of July to you? Is it a day to celebrate liberty or just a day of grilling and fireworks? Are the Americans of 1776 more independent than those in 2008? Which government is more oppressive, Britain of 1776 or America of 2008? Are there any heroes of 2008 that posterity shall remember as harbingers of freedom? Today, a simple history lesson. What could possibly justify a people to commit treason and wage war against their former country? What constitutes an absolute tyranny that must be overthrown? What moves an untrained and ill-prepared army to fight the greatest empire on the face of the globe? Fortunately for us, 232 years ago these reasons were declared by the Continental Congress. I will list their greivances against the king, and I encourage you to consider the state of our own federal government in 2008. 1. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. 2. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. 3. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. 4. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. 5. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. 6. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. 7. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. 8. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers. 9. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. 10. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. 11. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. 12. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power. 13. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: 14. For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: 15. For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: 16. For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: 17. For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: 18. For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury: 19. For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: 20. For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies 21. For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: 22. For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. 23. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. 24. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. 25. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. 26. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. 27. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. Many of the first 22 greivances sound pretty much the same as our current government. Congress refuses to assent to the will of the people regarding immigration reform, drilling for oil, and many other issues. Our charters and most valuable laws have been taken away by activist judges. The federal government and courts have prevented local and state governments from passing laws of immediate and pressing importance. I especially like the tenth greivance about a bloated, harassing bureaucracy swarming around the country. What can we do to battle the tyranny of our own government? Fortunately, we do have an example to follow. First, we must constatnly petition the government for redress of these greivances and entreat our fellow citizens to take up our plight along with us. If our repeated petitions are answered by repeated injuries, then the time for revolution and disobedience is at hand.

I Don't Want to Be Right About This

In my very humble opinion, two of the major problems with the American economy are high gasoline prices and the loss of manufacturing jobs. As I reflected upon the state of our economy, I came to a conclusion which I do not want to believe. If my conclusion is correct, it would mean not only accepting higher gas prices, it would require me to embrace them. And I do not stand for that. Follow my logic and please find the flaw in my thinking. The products we buy are mostly manufactured overseas from raw materials produced in a third country. It is less expensive for a company to have materials shipped to another country for manufacture and then shipped to sell in the United States than to produce the materials and manufacture them in our own country. As shipping costs increase, the cost of manufacturing overseas increases, making the overpaid American worker more competitive with the overseas worker. Therefore, expensive fuel is good for American manufacturing. Therefore, shouldn't I support higher fuel prices to benefit American industries and production of raw materials closer to home? Since liberals favor higher gas prices, I searched amongst liberal blogs and websites for a theory similar to mine. Before an emergency run to the bathroom to cleanse my bowels of liberal diarrhea, I found only the alleged health and environmental benefits of decreased fuel consumption. The only mention of the high prices are as a means to decrease consumption. As I sat on the toilet, I realized something sinister was brewing in the smoke-filled rooms of liberal strategists. As we all know, liberals have been been trying to shut down the oil industry for over forty years. Liberal politics is based upon wealth envy. When the liberals see the wealth of the oil industry, a deep lust swells within them. We were supposed to have sucked the entire planet dry of all possible oil resources decades ago. Since that has never happened, liberals cut off our domestic oil production and refining capacity, hoping to someday make oil so expensive that it would be priced out of the energy market. With liberal control over all branches of our federal government coming this fall (regardless of election outcomes, let's have no illusions here), the price of oil will continue to rise as drilling and refining capacity stay just as they have been. As prices continue to rise and inflation runs out of control, the vast liberal conspiracy will finally come to its conclusion. With my bathroom proceedings completed, I realized the end goal of a liberal conspiracy that began long before I was born. We've heard about obscene windfall profits in the oil industry. Obviously, the oil industry has no right to make a profit, so the government must tax those profits. You would think that billions of dollars of profit stealing would be enough to placate the liberal greed. But why not just eliminate the middle man? Just ask Maxine Waters or Maurice Hinchey. They've started testing the waters, and they've found them disturbingly warm. Hinchey recommends that the refining of fuels be directly controlled by the federal government. Waters actually used the term "socialize" when discussing her plan for the future of the entire oil industry. I would like to say that there was a national outcry against this lunacy, but reaction has been pretty mild. After a few years of consistent price increases, the reaction will almost certainly be overwhelmingly positive. Especially with the crap our indoctrination system is feeding our kids and the open-minded. I sincerely hope I am wrong about all of this. I hope that my economic theory is grossly misguided and my suspicions toward the liberal takeover of the oil industry is paranoia. If you can do anything to prove me wrong, please let me know. I won't be able to sleep at night knowing I might be right.