The term republic had a significant meaning for all early Americans.  The form of government secured by the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution, and the Constitution was unique, requiring strict limitation of government power.  Powers that were permitted would be precisely defined and delegated by the people, with all public officials being bound by their oath of office to uphold the Constitution. 

The Constitution made it clear that the government was not to interfere with productive nonviolent human energy.  This is the key element that has permitted America’s great achievements and made America the political and economic envy of the world.  We have truly been blessed.

Today, however, the nature of a republic and the current status of our own form of government are of little concern to most Americans.  But there is a small minority, ignored by politicians, academics, and the media, who do spend time thinking about the importance of the proper role of government.  The comparison of today’s government with the one established by our Constitution is a matter worthy of deep discussion for those who concern themselves with the future and look beyond the coming election.  Understanding the principles that were used to establish our nation is crucial to its preservation and something we cannot neglect.

In our early history it was understood that a free society embraced both personal civil liberties and economic freedom.  During the 20^th century, this unified concept of freedom was undermined.  Today we have one group talking about economic freedom, while interfering with our personal liberty, and the other group condemning economic liberty, while preaching the need to protect civil liberties.  Both groups reject liberty fifty percent of the time.  Sadly, there are very few in this country who, today understand and defend liberty in both areas.

Many Americans wonder why Congress pays little attention to the Constitution and are bewildered as to how so much inappropriate legislation gets passed.  But the Constitution is not entirely ignored.  It is used correctly at times when it’s convenient and satisfies a particular goal, but never consistently across the board on all legislation.  The Constitution is all too frequently made to say exactly what the authors of special legislation want it to say.  That’s the modern way: language can be made relative to our times.  But without a precise understanding and respect for the supreme law of the land, the Constitution no longer serves as the guide for the rule of law.  In its place come the rule of man and special interests.

That’s how we have arrived in the 21^st century without a clear understanding or belief in the cardinal principles of the Constitution—the separation of powers and the tenets of federalism.  Instead, we are rushing toward centralized control.  Executive Orders, agency regulations, federal court rulings, and un-ratified international agreements direct our government, economy, and foreign policy.

Congress has truly been reduced in status and importance over the past hundred years.  And when the people’s voices are heard, it’s done indirectly through polling, allowing our leaders to decide how far they can go without stirring up their constituents.  This is opposite to what the Constitution was supposed to do: protect the rights of the minority from the abuses of the majority.  The majority vote of the powerful and the influential was never meant to rule the people.

In a free society individuals should control their own lives, receiving the benefits and suffering the consequences of their actions.  Once the individual becomes a pawn of the state, whether a monarch or a majority that’s in charge, a free society can no longer endure.  We are dangerously close to that happening in America, even in the midst of plenty and with the appearance of contentment.  If individual freedom is carelessly snuffed out, the creative energy needed for productive pursuits will dissipate.  Government produces nothing, and in its effort to redistribute wealth, can only destroy it.

Freedom too often is rejected when there is a belief that government largesse will last forever.  This is true because it is tough to accept personal responsibility, practice the work ethic, and follow the rules of peaceful coexistence with our fellow man.  The temptation is great to accept the notion that everyone can be a beneficiary of the caring state and a winner of the lottery or a class action lawsuit.  But history has proven there is never a shortage of authoritarians—benevolent, of course—quite willing to tell others how to live for their own good.

Some of my good friends suggest that it is a waste of time and effort to try to change the direction in which we are going.  No one will listen, they argue, and the development of a strong centralized authoritarian government is too far along to reverse the trends of the last century.  Why waste time in Congress when so few people care about liberty?  The masses, they point out, are interested only in being taken care of, and the elites want to keep receiving the benefits allotted to them through special-interest legislation. 

I am not naïve enough to believe the effort to preserve liberty is a cakewalk.  But ideas, based on sound and moral principles, do have consequences.  Our Founders clearly understood this, knowing they would be successful, even against overwhelming odds.  They described this steady confidence, which they shared with each other when hopes were dim, as “divine providence.”  We face tough odds, but to avoid battle or believe there is a place to escape to someplace else in the world would concede victory to those who endorse authoritarian government.  The grand experiment in human liberty must not be abandoned.  A renewed hope and understanding of liberty are what we need today. 

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Wesley Allen Riddle is a retired military officer with degrees and honors from West Point and Oxford.  Widely published in the academic and opinion press, he serves as State Director of the Republican Freedom Coalition (RFC) and is currently running for U.S. Congress (TX-District 25) in the Republican Primary.   He is also author of two books, Horse Sense for the New Millennium (2011), and The Nexus of Faith and Freedom(2012).  Both books are available on-line at
www.WesRiddle.net and from fine bookstores everywhere. Email:  Wes@WesRiddle.com.

  In addition to the market’s “miracle” of efficiency, there is an important moral element in the functioning of the free-market economy that we sometimes overlook or undervalue.  There are none who are only masters and others who are simply servants!  In the market society we are all both servants and masters, but without either force or its threat.  In our roles as producers—be it as men who hire out our labor for wages, resource owners who rent out or sell our property for a price, or entrepreneurs who direct production for anticipated profits—we serve our fellow men in attempting to make the products and provide the services we think they may be willing and interested in buying from us.

            “Service with a smile” and “the customer is always right” are hallmarks of the seller’s deference to those to whom they offer their supplies.  What motivates such attitudes is the fact that in an open, competitive market no one can compel us to buy from a seller who offers something less attractive or more costly than what some rival of his is presenting to us for our consideration.

            And why are we interested in not offending or driving away some potential customer into the arms of our rival suppliers?  Because only by successfully making the better and less expensive product can we hope to earn the income that then enables us to re-enter the market, now in the role of consumer and demander of what our neighbors are offering to sell to us.

            As consumers, we become the “masters” who those same neighbors attempt to satisfy with newer, better, and cheaper products.  Now those whom we have served defer to us.  We “command” them, not through the use of force but through the attraction of our demand and the money we offer for the goods they bring to the market.  By how much we can “command” the service of others in the market in our role as consumer is directly related to the extent we have been successful in our service to our neighbors as reflected in the money income we have earned from satisfying their wants and desires.

            In a free society, no man is required to do work or supply any good he considers morally wrong and ethically questionable.  He may earn less from choosing to supply something that is valued less highly in the market, but he cannot be forced to produce anything that God and/or conscience dictates to be wrong.

            On the other hand, we cannot prevent others from supplying a good or service we find morally objectionable.  The ethics of liberty and the free market require that we use only morally justifiable means to stop our neighbors from demanding and supplying something that offends us.  We must use reason, persuasion, and example of a better and more right way to live.

            Unfortunately, too many of our fellow men want to preserve or extend a return to a form of a slave society—regardless of the name under which it is presented.  Too many want to dictate how others may make a living, or at what price and under what terms they may peacefully and voluntarily interact with their fellow human beings for purposes of mutual material, cultural, and spiritual betterment.

            Our task, for those of us who understand and care deeply about human liberty, is to reawaken our fellow men an awareness of the miracle and morality of the market.  The task, I know, seems daunting.  But it must have seemed that way to our American Founding Fathers when they heralded the truth of the unalienable rights of man for which they fought and then won a revolution, or when advocates of economic freedom first made the case for the free market.

            The world was transformed by these ideals of the morality of free men in free markets.  What is most important is that each of us understands as best we can the miracle and the morality of the market economy.  Too often the friends of freedom allow the advocates of various forms of government regulation, control, and redistribution to set the terms of the debate.  Freedom will not win if we do not put those proponents of political paternalism on the defensive.

            By that moral right do they claim to tell other men how to peacefully go about their private and market affairs—as long as those men do not use murder, theft, or fraud in their dealings with others?  By what ethical norms do those political paternalists declare their right to take that which others have honestly acquired through production and trade, and redistribute it without the voluntary consent of those from whom it has been taken?  By what assertion of superior wisdom and knowledge do they presume to know more than the individual minds of all the members of society about how the market should go about the business of manufacturing all the things we want, and matching the demands with the supplies?

            Defenders of individual freedom and the market economy have nothing to be ashamed or fearful of in advocating the free society.  The American system of limited government, personal liberty, and free enterprise liberated the individual creativity and energies of many millions of people.  It provided the greatest opportunity for individual betterment and the highest standard of living ever experienced in human history.  It also generated the most charitable and philanthropic society in the world.  Therefore, it should be the critics and opponents of this system of individual freedom that should have to justify their continuing calls for reducing our liberty.

            It was clear thinking and moral courage that won men liberty in the past.  Liberty can triumph again, if each of us is willing but to try.  We need to take to heart the words o the free-market Austrian economist and long-time FEE senior adviser, Ludwig von Mises:

Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others.  And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction… What is needed to stop the trend towards socialism and despotism is common sense and moral courage.

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Wesley Allen Riddle is a retired military officer with degrees and honors from West Point and Oxford.  Widely published in the academic and opinion press, he serves as State Director of the Republican Freedom Coalition (RFC) and is currently running for U.S. Congress (TX-District 25) in the Republican Primary.   He is also author of two books, Horse Sense for the New Millennium (2011), and The Nexus of Faith and Freedom(2012).  Both books are available on-line at
www.WesRiddle.net and from fine bookstores everywhere. Email:  Wes@WesRiddle.com.

"First They Came For Pat Buchanan but we did nothing..."

"MSNBC host Reverend Al Sharpton --hired by MSNBC president Phil Griffin -- caught on this video clip fromEvocateur, a documentary film of the late television host Morton Downey, Jr. Sharpton, seen here on the set of Downey's television show, is heatedly shouting to an audience member:

You ain't nothing, you a punk faggot. Now come on, do something!

That video, provided on YouTube courtesy of Tucker Carlson's The Daily Caller, is in fact an excerpt of a trailer for the film on Downey produced by Ironbound Films. The entire trailer can be found here at the Ironbound site.

The clip of the MSNBC host hired by Mr. Griffin has now surfaced along with a series of Sharpton audio tapes -- foundhere. Beginning with this reference by Sharpton to the black then-mayor of New York, David Dinkins.

David Dinkins.… You wanna be the only n….on television, the only n….in the newspaper, the only n…to talk.…Don't cover them, don't talk to them, cause you got the only n…problem. Cause you know if a black man stood up next to ya they would see you for the whore that you really are.

Other tapes are littered with derogatory references to "Greek homos," "Chinamen," "Koreans sell us watermelons," and so on.

But there's one video that has not gotten attention.

That would be this one, which features NBC News anchor Brian Williams speaking to the National Action Network Conference

That would be the National Action Network, a progressive group founded by: Al Sharpton. Whom Williams refers to in warm and familiar terms at the end of the tape as "the Reverend Al."

The controversy over the relationship between Sharpton and both MSNBC and NBC News anchor Williams has erupted in the wake of the drive by leftists -- with MSNBC and Media Mattersin the front of the pack -- to strip Rush Limbaugh of his sponsors because of the Fluke affair -- and hence push his program off the air.

As president of MSNBC, Griffin is directly responsible for Sharpton's hiring, as well as the relentless attack on Limbaugh's free speech rights. The accusation that MSNBC is terrified of free debate was an accusation made as well by the recently dismissed MSNBC commentator and longtime conservative Pat Buchanan. Buchanan discussed his firing by MSNBC with Fox's Sean Hannity hereand here...."

Jeffrey Lord at The American Spectator

St. Patrick is a real historical person, a holy man who accomplished great feats around which legends have sprung.  Patrick is also the Christian or given name to a man born Maewyn Succat in 4^th century (c. A.D. 385) Roman controlled Britain.  Probably born in Wales, possibly England or southern Scotland, he was the son of Calpurnius a Roman-British officer.  When pirates landed in south Wales they kidnapped Patrick at the age of 16 and sold him into slavery to an Irish king Niall.  Niall’s son Laoghaire would later grant Patrick unmolested access to his land to spread the Gospel, even against the advice and counsel of Druid priests.  But for now young Patrick was just a slave, and he remained in condition of servitude for six years working as a shepherd.  It was on a lonely mountainside tending sheep, that St. Patrick found religion, or one might say his religion found him—for although his parents had been Christian, Patrick did not consider himself to be a Christian before his captivity. 

In a dream one night he heard the voice of God telling him that his ship was ready, that he should walk 200 miles and there find a vessel that would convey him away.  He got up and literally walked off the mountainside to freedom.  He walked 200 miles to Wexford and found a boat there headed for Britain.  The captain at first turned him away, but as he walked St. Patrick prayed until the captain inexplicably changed his mind.  The crew called out to Patrick to come aboard, and the boat made his escape to Britain and then onto the northern coast of Gaul in France.  Patrick joined a monastery there and studied under St. Germain, the bishop of Auzerre.  In a subsequent prophetic dream, he heard “the Voice of the Irish” calling him to come back and save them.  From that day, he knew the mission God had appointed for him to accomplish: the conversion of the Irish to Christianity. 

He was not the first chosen by the Pope, however, for that mission.  Patrick was not as polished as other priests, having not received the full measure of formal education before being kidnapped.  While other priests tried with limited success therefore, Patrick devoted himself to studies at the monastery and awaited a time of God’s choosing.  In 432 Pope Celetine finally made him a bishop and sent him on the mission to Ireland.  Taking 25 followers, he embarked and spent the first winter under kindly patronage of a local landowner and early convert.  In the spring on a warm sunny day, St. Patrick approached King Laoghaire.  Patrick’s composure and confidence impressed the king but the Druids were incensed.  They tempted St. Patrick, asking whether his god would create snow.  To everyone’s astonishment it began to snow, the blankets cascading down upon everyone until St. Patrick made the sign of the cross—and immediately the snow ceased and the sun returned. 

A lot of what we know about St. Patrick comes from his Confessio, an autobiography that tells his spiritual journey; and Epistola, which denounces the British mistreatment of Irish Christians.  In Ireland he journeyed far and wide, preaching, baptizing, establishing schools and churches and monasteries with an untiring zeal.  For nearly thirty years he did this until he had literally converted the entire Emerald Isle to orthodox Catholicism, winning Hibernia/Erin/ a.k.a. Ireland for Christ.  In so doing, it is said that he drove all the snakes from Ireland into the sea.  But this story is allegorical, because the snake was a pagan symbol regarded as sacred by the Druids.  St. Patrick thus drove paganism out of Ireland and into the sea of destruction.  Part of what made him successful was his ability to win over nobility, and as he converted the princes and warrior chiefs, their tribesmen followed.  St. Patrick was just as successful, however, by relating to the common people.  When tribesmen had trouble understanding the hard concept of the Trinity and how one God could be a triune Person (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), St. Patrick plucked a shamrock from the ground and showed how the three-leaf clover had a single stem, metaphorically one God in three Persons.  They understood and believed, and the shamrock became a revered symbol of Ireland from that time.   

St. Patrick died in A.D. 461 on March 17^th and that’s why we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day on that date.  It was originally and exclusively a Catholic holy day for hundreds of years, and that’s the way it stood until it became a public holiday in Ireland in 1903.  Indeed, church calendars of the Roman Catholic Church and Church of Ireland move the date for commemorating St. Patrick’s if the date falls within Holy Week.  In 1940 for instance, St. Patrick’s Day moved to April 3^rd to avoid coinciding with Palm Sunday.  The church also generally lifts prohibitions during the fasting season of Lent to allow celebration and eating of meat.  Pubs in Ireland, however, were traditionally closed.  This changed during the 1970s, as the government wanted to encourage tourism and St. Patrick’s Day continued to morph into a general appreciation of Irish culture and all things Irish.  There is amazing irony in the fact that, if and as secular celebrations overindulge in alcohol and revelry, St. Patrick’s Day parties come to resemble the drunken festival of Bacchanalia—a pagan rite in honor of the god Bacchus once held on March 17^th before St. Patrick’s Day replaced it. 

In America the first public observance of St. Patrick’s was by Irish immigrants in Colonial Boston in 1737.  The first St. Patrick’s Day parade marched through the streets of New York City in 1762.  At the time, the parade was mostly made up of Irish soldiers serving in the English army.  George Washington facilitated observance of St. Patrick’s Day amongst Irish troops serving in the Revolutionary Army.  Irish traditionally ate cabbage and Irish bacon on that day, but in America they began substituting corned beef for bacon—a delicious and much cheaper alternative they learned about from their Jewish neighbors in the Nineteenth Century. 

Today over 100 U.S. cities have St. Patrick’s Day parades.  Some cities paint the traffic stripe of their parade routes green.  Chicago and Indianapolis dye their main river canals green.  Savannah dyes the downtown city fountains green.  If you do imbibe, chances are the beer will probably be dyed green; and green popcorn is not unheard of in movie theaters.  Of course, appropriate colors for St. Patrick’s Day are the orange and green of the Irish flag, but green is nearly obligatory these days.  Leave it to schoolchildren to turn every American Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, by that most persuasive custom of pinching anyone who doesn’t wear it.    

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Wesley Allen Riddle is a retired military officer with degrees and honors from West Point and Oxford.  Widely published in the academic and opinion press, he serves as State Director of the Republican Freedom Coalition (RFC) and is currently running for U.S. Congress (TX-District 25) in the Republican Primary.   He is also author of two books, Horse Sense for the New Millennium (2011), and The Nexus of Faith and Freedom(2012).  Both books are available on-line at
www.WesRiddle.net and from fine bookstores everywhere. Email:  Wes@WesRiddle.com.

Charles A. Coloumbe writing at TakiMag reveals a horrifying example of how Obama has positioned America against Christianity, Natural Marriage and Western Civilization. 

Is this what America's soldiers are dying to defend? It is reminiscent of the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"- it seems as if an evil, alien force is running the body called "The United States"- Read the following and see if you agree:

"All of the chatter about the euro obscures another important news item out of the mother continent: the reaction in Europe and the United States to the new Hungarian Constitution which took effect January 1. The brainchild of the ruling conservative Fidesz Party, the document replaces the 1949 communist-era one. The uproar has been tremendous.

Part of the negative reaction stems from Hungary’s neighbors and is rooted in the region’s convoluted history. The 1920 Treaty of Trianon which ended Hungary’s role in World War I reduced the prewar Kingdom of Hungary to a fragment encompassing the country’s central (and overwhelmingly Magyar) core. Large Magyar minorities became part of successor states such as Yugoslavia, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. For the Hungarians this was a mutilation of their homeland involving the separation of thousands of their compatriots from the motherland. For the former minorities it was liberation from the Magyar yoke. These opposing narratives resemble the Anglo-Irish, Serbo-Croatian, and Russo-Polish disputes. They arouse intense passions among the participants but are difficult for outsiders to comprehend.

For Hungary’s neighbors, Magyar irredentism has been a great fear since 1920, partly borne out by Hungary’s temporary expansion as a German ally in World War II. To these people, the fact that the new constitution makes all Magyars outside of Hungary eligible for citizenship and voting seems to indicate a desire to retake the lost territories. For many or most of the Hungarians themselves, the name change simply reflects a desire to reject the communist era. The constitution’s “right of return” merely emulates that granted by many other countries to descendants of their citizens abroad.

That prince of faceless bureaucrats, former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, worked himself up into a rare emotional lather over it. Hillary Clinton condemned it on behalf of you and me. As the Hunsor Observer puts it:

The gravest crime Orban’s government is accused of is cultural and religious. In the preamble to the Constitution or “Basic Law,” there is mention made of God. Still worse, it makes reference to Christianity in particular as part of Hungary’s heritage. Furthermore, the Constitution defines marriage as “the union of a man and a woman established by voluntary decision” and “protects the institution of family as the foundation of the subsistence of the nation”; even goes so far as to state that “the life of the fetus shall be protected from the moment of conception.” It is here that Hungary’s government crossed the “red line” of what may be tolerated in modern Europe.

Or in modern America. Why would the rulers of today’s world care about public Christianity, heterosexual marriage, and freedom from infanticide in one small European backwater? Because they always fear a return of the ancien régime, no matter how inconspicuous it may appear. And given the Hungarian government’s two-thirds majority, it apparently represents the views of their countrymen.

While Hungarians have a tortured historical relationship with their neighbors, they resemble them in many ways. There are many—perhaps a majority of—Slovaks, Poles, Slovenes, Croats, and others who would agree with the constitution’s social provisions. Therein lies the danger for the moral munchkins in Brussels and Washington. Eastern European national identities are supposed to be slowly eroded through EU membership. But what if Hungary succeeds in saving herself culturally and demographically and her neighbors follow her lead? What if she ceases to be a bugbear to her former subjects and becomes an inspiration?

The results could be terrible. Success of such a project could inspire similarly inclined minorities in every country of Europe. Such a Europe would annoy the current leaders in Brussels and Washington to no end.

Upsetting as all this may be to our rulership, it is by far the best possible outcome for us. If the nations of Europe do not reclaim their past and safeguard their future—which is what the Hungarian Constitution and the views of likeminded Europeans around the continent is about—then only two futures remain. Either—as Pat Buchanan and sundry others have predicted—our nations of origin will be under sharia law in a century or less, or else their desperate denizens will turn for protection to new leadership with the will to resist creeping Islamization. Such leadership will inevitably be what our pundits are pleased to call neofascists. Neither Islam nor neofascism would bode well for the USA."