January 1776 Thomas Paine first declared these words as he provided inspiration for a Revolution. The Revolution.

“The time has found us.”

The words leapt off the page to me as I read Common Sense for the umpteenth time, but it seems like I had skipped past that part in previous readings. I can’t recall that phrase meaning so much to me before.

Paine was one of America’s first, and best journalists. Who out there in the media today could fill his shoes in time of great need?

Paine used this phrase in the context that there was no better time than the present to fight the Revolution. The size of the colonies, the resources of the land, the mood of the people and the feeling that a Power greater than them all was dictating their actions led Paine to conclude that this was not a battle to be left to generations yet to be born, that it was a battle to be fought in the present. So it was. An under nourished, outnumbered, ill equipped army of Colonialists took the words of Paine to heart and we can all be grateful today that they did.

Without reservation, I repeat the words of Thomas Paine today, “the time has found us.”

I would encourage you to read Common Sense and put it in the context of this day and you will find parallels a-plenty. While nobody thinks Paine saw our day (he had enough going on at the moment to occupy his time) there is almost a sense of prophecy as you read his words.

While traveling this great nation for nearly three weeks leading up to the 2010 elections I went coast-to-coast, 35 cities, to document and report from Tea Party rallies. I found an attitude and devotion towards the principles of our founding that was absolutely inspirational. Like in Paine’s day, these are Americans who want only to choose for themselves their futures, instead of having a monarchy dictate it for them. After reading Paine again, I believe he would have found this current administration, and perhaps even previous administrations, as ones that were not dissimilar to what he found in his day in Great Britain.

Today we have a government that looks towards what they say is the common good of the people, when their actions only serve a few elitists while trashing the rights of the individual. Or, put another way, the perceived good of the masses outweighs the Liberty of each of us. Of course, the monarchy and elitists always ignore the fact that the lessons of history tell us that when governments of any nation larger than what you will find in the suburbs of LA tries to control its people that way—disaster is the eventual outcome. It never turns out good. Paine understood this perfectly and his words leap off the pages at us today.

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If you sometimes wonder why Rush Limbaugh has changed his mantra from the “drive-by media” (lazy, disinterested character assassins who can’t be bothered to get blood on their hands) to the “state-controlled media” (slavish lickspittle apparatchiks bucking for career advancement), you need look no further than this news announcement, courtesy of Politico’s Ben Smith:

Another jump from the media to politics: ABC News’s deputy political director, Teddy Davis, emails that he’s leaving the network to join SEIU’s already-muscular communications and politics operation.

He’ll be Assistant Director of Communications at the giant union, he said, “working with the SEIU team on their political campaigns and policy agenda.?”

The hire is a sign that SEIU’s new leadership intends to keep its large Washington footprint.

No kidding. Davis now joins a host of other former news professionals who have thrown their lot in with the Obama Administration or its satellite operations, such as the thuggish SEIU, including Jay Carney of Time Magazine, who’s now Joe Biden’s press secretary. (more…)

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
– Alexis de Tocqueville

In part one we discussed how there are only two forms of government. In part two we discussed the history of those two forms. Now we’re going to discuss how the BG (Big Government, aka statist) types have infected our political system.

We’ve all heard the sordid history of Communism and hard socialist countries, which are all totalitarian dictatorships. Nations like North Korea and Zimbabwe are economic basket cases which have famines and moribund economies; police states in which human rights are non-existent. Cuba keeps its citizens prisoner and rations food. These are just a few examples of what happens when BG systems are taken to their extremes.

Human beings operate mostly out of self interest. BG systems allow an elite class to have complete control over every aspect of the public’s lives. Those who love power love to abuse it. (more…)

As we celebrate Presidents Day today, we may observe that there have been no shortage of people attempting to link themselves to the legacy of the greatest President of these United States. This includes the current President of the United States, who commented on Honest Abe’s example in a February 12, 2009 AP story:

Lincoln “could have sought revenge,” Obama said, but he insisted that no Confederate troops be punished.

“All Lincoln wanted was for Confederate troops to go back home and return to work on their farms and in their shops,” Obama said. “That was the only way, Lincoln knew, to repair the rifts that had torn this country apart. It was the only way to begin the healing that our nation so desperately needed.”

That’s great and it obviously speaks to the “let’s forget about ideologies and principles and just all get along” message that is a central theme of the Obama administration. Nothing would please the President more than for us crabby conservatives to shut up and go back, both figuratively and literally, to our farms and shops. (more…)