Consitutional Checks on Mob Rule

I was re-reading Federalist No. 10 and No. 51 the other day.

I think it was this post at Maggie's Farm that got me going, "Crawled out of a snowbank":

American exceptionalism contains the notion that government is a necessary evil, requiring containment and strict limitations by a virtuous people and a muscular Constitution to handcuff the state. The state is the enemy of individual freedom. GW: "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

RTWT at the link.

A Weaker Tea Party?

Here's the headline from yesterday's New York Times front page: "Sidestepping Fiscal Showdown, Weaker Tea Party Narrows Focus."

The main thrust of the piece is to brush off the tea party as an irrelevant "fringe" movement following Obama's reelection and internal divisions among prominent organizations. There are indeed problems, but by no means is the tea party finished as a movement. The congressional elections saw some significant tea party victories and the tea partiers will no doubt have a strong voice in 2013, as their bread-and-butter issues of limited government and fiscal restraint prove more relevant than ever.

Note too that the tea party isn't so much a protest movement any more as it is a political tendency seeking to place activists into positions of power at all levels of government. I love the protests, but that energy has been increasingly channeled into electoral activities and organization. Leslie Eastman comments on that, at Legal Insurrection, "Tea Party tidal surge, not tsunami." And a local example is conservative activist Mike Munzing, who I first met at tea party rallies in 2009. He was elected to the Aliso Viejo City Council in November. A number of other local tea partiers either ran or were elected to the Orange County GOP Central Committee in recent years. Basically, the movement helped generate a mass of activists moving into formal political organizations.

Having said all that, the latest high profile conflicts at FreedomWorks are like catnip to the liberty-haters on the left. The Other McCain has the story with lots of links, "The Bloody Mess at FreedomWorks."

Either way, it's best not fall for the Democrat Media Complex's operation demoralize narrative. Taking back the country will require lots more activists to redouble their efforts at all the forms of grassroots participation. There's going to be ups and downs. Ignore these stupid memes about a "weaker tea party."

Even Far Left New York Times Slamming Obama's Unprecedented Violations of Constitutional Law and International Human Rights

Well, this is interesting, at the Old Grey Lady, "Rules for Targeted Killing":

The White House reportedly is developing rules for when to kill terrorists around the world. The world may never see them, given the Obama administration’s inclination toward unnecessary secrecy regarding its national security policy. But the effort itself is a first step toward acknowledging that when the government kills people away from the battlefield, it must stay within formal guidelines based on the rule of law — especially when the life of an American citizen is at stake.

For eight years, the United States has conducted but never formally acknowledged a program to kill terrorists associated with Al Qaeda and the Taliban away from the battlefield in Afghanistan. Using drones, the Central Intelligence Agency has made 320 strikes in Pakistan since 2004, killing 2,560 or more people, including at least 139 civilians, according to the Long War Journal, a Web site that tracks counterterrorism operations. Another 55 strikes took place in Yemen.

Administration officials have never explained in any detail how these targets are chosen. Are they killing people only associated with groups that participated in the Sept. 11 attacks, the limitation imposed by Congress when it authorized military force in 2001? Or are they free to remove any threat to the United States they perceive? Officials insist they go after only actual belligerents covered in the 2001 legislation, but the public and the world have no way of knowing whether these decisions are made ad hoc, or how they would be interpreted by future presidents.

Before the election, when it looked as if Mitt Romney had a chance of winning the White House, administration officials began codifying these rules, according to a recent report in The Times by Scott Shane. Mr. Obama did not want to leave an “amorphous” program to his successor, one official told Mr. Shane anonymously.

That impulse was right, even if the reasoning was wrong. The rules for killing shouldn’t be amorphous simply because Mr. Romney might have taken over; they need to rigorous and formalized for Mr. Obama, too. If he sets proper boundaries, it would create a precedent that his successors would have to justify breaking....

Mr. Obama has acknowledged the need for a “legal architecture” to be put in place “to make sure that not only am I reined in but any president’s reined in.” Yet his administration has resisted legal efforts by The Times and the American Civil Liberties Union to make public its secret legal opinions on these killings. Once the rules are completed, they should be shown to a world skeptical of countries that use deadly force without explanation.

This is the most secretive presidential administration in history, and the Times would do well to push as hard against Obama as it did against President Bush. Recall that the Times was willing to sabotage the Bush administration's foreign surveillance programs, so no doubt such treasonous undermining of national security would be hard to match. I'll simply concede that the Times is on the right track in highlighting the unprecedented violations of law and international norms under this president. But to be consistent the paper should be calling for congressional action, and in the event of executive branch resistance, stonewalling, and cover-up, the initiation of impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives.

PHOTO: PressTV, "Survey reveals US covers up civilian victims of drone strikes in Pakistan."

Patriotic Thanksgiving Wreath

I came home from work on Wednesday and my wife had mounted this wreath on the front door.

Stuff like this makes up for some of that "dwindling optimism" I mentioned earlier:

Dwindling Optimism This Thanksgiving

I'll be enjoying some tasty leftovers today, grading papers and watching football. I'll also be blogging the holiday. I noted last night that I'm thankful that we have our wonderful U.S. Constitution to safeguard against tyranny, and right now boy do we need all the protection we can get. But notice how I argued that the current progressive ascendancy is "brief." Sure, we'll always have the idiot big government types who think their ideology has an answer for every public problem through more statism, but ideological trends run in cycles, and when things get bad enough there'll be a shift back to markets and federalism to invigorate our economy and polity. We may have a long way to fall before that happens, and literally millions of American lives could be harmed, if not destroyed by leftist failures, but in time the economy simply won't be able sustain all that the left imposes on it. California is America's Greece. Prop. 30 is just a breather to a fiscal reckoning that won't be long in coming. The national government's going to have its own reckoning, but alas it won't be during the second half of the Obama interregnum. We'll have to wait for a resurgence of pro-American values in our national political leadership. It will come. The hardships will be in enduring the interim.

In any case, I was inclined to riff further on this by Alan Caruba and his essay, "Memories of Thanksgiving's Past":

I have always been an optimistic person, but that optimism has been drained by four years of Obama’s regime and the prospect of four more. It is compounded by a Congress that has steadily marched toward turning America into a European socialist economy now on the brink of financial collapse and, worse, by a nation that has abandoned many of the values and shared beliefs that made it great; a beacon of freedom for those who chose to come here, a superpower following World War II, a compassionate and largely tolerant nation.

Continue reading.

I'll have more throughout the day.

Thanksgiving Dinner 2012

My wife's working Thanksgiving, in the afternoon, so we thought it'd be easier to have a full dinner tonight and then the family can have leftovers tomorrow. I tweeted out a message as well.

I am first and foremost thankful for my family. But I feel this year more thankful than ever for my --- and our nation's --- liberty. I see huge chunks of that eroding as government becomes more expansive and progressive ideology enjoys its brief ascendance. But thank goodness especially for the U.S. Constitution, for in that document is enshrined the principles of limited government and the protection of private property. If Americans preserve and protect that document, even amid dramatic social change, I'm confident that our historic emphasis on personal independence and self-sufficiency will continue to keep the greedy clutches of the Democrat Party away.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my loyal readers as well.

I'll continue plugging away. And I hope you'll join me for the ride.

Constitution Day: Long Beach City College

Here's the announcement: "Constitution Day Panel Discussion."

Constitution Day is September 17th, but the college scheduled the panel for the 20th (for scheduling convenience, one assumes). I was a reluctant participant. Also on the panel was my highly esteemed colleague, Dr. Julian Delgaudio. He's a communist. A nice fellow, actually, I just can't stand his arrogance, hypocrisy, and ideological bankruptcy. The original invitation asked presenters to prepare a two-minute introduction. That's my department chair Professor Gene Goss who introduces the panelists. Professor Delgaudio spoke first. I thought he was defending a dissertation or something. He was droning on and on about how terrible ---- terrible! ---- is the U.S. Constitution. Professor Goss had to ask him to wrap up his comments at least three times. Talk about a bloviator. I had a student who flagged me down on campus last week asking, "Who was that guy who spoke first?" And even one of the part-time faculty members had questions. He obviously left an impression, and it wasn't a great one. And frankly, Professor Delgaudio was not well versed in how the Constitution actually works. It wasn't designed to prevent wealth accumulation. Delgaudio conflates wealth with power, and thus the Constitution "failed" since enormous wealth has been concentrated at the top of the social hierarchy historically. Whatever. All the other panelists did a wonderful job. I just don't like communists, and I don't think people like this are doing LBCC students any favors.