Progressivism - all doubt removed

My drive to work takes me about 25 minutes.  Since I generally arrive at work between 7:00 and 7:15, I'm usually on the road around 6:45.  Fortunately for me, the only radio show on that is worth listening to (with the occasional exception of Pete Boyles on 630 KHOW) is the Bill Press Show [1] [2].  Bill Press is a seasoned Progressive talk radio host, who, at least lately, has been perhaps best known for comparing the Glenn Beck 8/28 event at the Lincoln Memorial to "granting Al Qaeda permission to hold a rally on September 11th at Ground Zero."  The full quote follows:

In a slap at both President Lincoln and Dr. King, not to mention the American people, the National Park Service has given Glenn Beck permission to hold a Tea Party rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28 – 47 years to the day after Martin Luther King gave his magnificent ‘I Have A Dream’ speech…If you ask me, that’s like granting al Qaeda permission to hold a rally on September 11 – at Ground Zero. What the hell were those bureaucrats at the Park Service thinking? [3]

Nevermind that "those bureaucrats" are explicitly prohibited from stopping Beck's rally, so long as it is peaceful (it was), as a result of the First Amendment, which guarantees not only Beck's freedom of speech, but also the right of the People to "peaceably assemble."  Even further, the First Amendment protects these freedoms explicitly when they are presented as a petition to the government for a "redress of grievances" [4].  Essentially, Bill Press has suggested that the federal government violate three freedoms explicitly guaranteed to Beck by the First Amendment.

You should also probably disregard the fact that Glenn Beck's audience has not murdered 3,000 people and that none of them had anything to do with Lincoln's assassination in 1865.  Sure, you may have heard Glenn Beck blamed many times (mostly in the run-up to 8/28, coincidentally) for supposedly encouraging or otherwise prompting his audience to violence (despite Beck's consistent record of explicitly promoting nonviolence over the years).  One of the best, and more recent blames was leveled at Beck and his audience on December 14th of last year (2010) by Progressive talk host Mike Malloy:

Another Glenn Beck killer on the loose today, this time in Panama City.  How does it feel, Glenn, to know that your rat bastards are out there doing exactly what you're telling them to do, huh?  Those dirty school board members, right?!  With their Atheistic science, and, uh, history, and all this other stuff that Beck and these vermin don't like. [5]

A quick Google search did not yield any results linking to any apology issued by Mike Malloy after his poorly constructed and researched smear.  As it turns out, the Florida school board shooter was, if anything, a Progressive - his short Facebook manifesto railed against the "rich" and linked to several well known Progressive websites, such as a 9/11 Truther website and mediamatters.org [6], an organization dedicated solely to the destruction of Fox News, as you will quickly learn from a brief visit to their website.

Malloy has apparently not learned from his previous errors (and calling these "errors" is sort of like calling intentionally burning someone's house down a "mistake"), as he has not only previously embarassed himself by an apparent lack of thinking, but has nearly single-handedly destroyed the honor of his family for generations to come with derogatory verbal nonsense such as this:

I really think this son of a bitch Beck is a threat to, to, to, well, to America, number one. He’s not a, he’s not a clown any more. This guy is really nuts, and he should be taken off the air and put some place very quiet and given the drugs that’s necessary to keep him sedated. When you are really pathological, pathologically nuts like Beck is, you don’t do it for the money, you don’t do it for the fame, you do it because you’re crazy. He pretty much is a dry-drunk, a dry-drug user. But he’s crazy. And it’s very easy in these days in this country to find equally crazy people just waiting for Jim Jones [a suicidal/murdering maniac [7]] – oh, I’m sorry – Glenn Beck to lead them into hell. And Beck is more than willing to do it. He wants to see murder and mayhem.

Now, frankly, Glenn Beck is a co-conspirator in this case in California. He should be jailed also and charged with co-conspiring with the poor dumb bastard Byron Williams who thought he was hearing the voice of God in an effort to commit murder at the Tides Foundation and against state troopers. Glenn Beck is a co-conspirator in this case. He should be in jail. He really should.

From today, Richard Scott McCloud (sp), of (?), Michigan, was arrested today on weapons charges, and is under suspicion of potential threats against President Barack Obama. So this Glenn Beck fan had a gun, a bullet-proof vest, a picture of Obama. He didn’t know what Obama looks like? This is how dumb these bastards really are. That’s a mind-set of a Fox boob would be assassin.

Glenn Beck is trying to get people to assassinate the President of the United States and his family. Beck is trying to have this occur. And he’s getting close to it. [Emphasis mine] [7a]

In his defense, Beck has long maintained that his family prays nightly for the safety of the President.  I do as well - God forbid anything happens to the President, regardless of who it may be.

Now, back to the original story:  Bill Press, who holds a similar seemingly unfounded disdain for Glenn Beck and anyone who dares listen to his radio show, was recently a contributor to a discussion on the Joy Behar Show (I didn't know she had her own show either), wherein Joy opened a particularly intelligent discussion by asking Press, "Do you think this Constitution-loving is getting out of hand? [8]"

Press responded with equal finesse:

There could be some benefit here, because I think most Republicans haven't read the Constitution, to be honest. I hope they listen carefully. There's some good stuff in there about the right of privacy they probably never heard before.  There's something in there that says, 'only Congress can declare war,' not a President of the United States.  I bet they've never heard of that before... [9]

This is absolutely mind boggling.  Most Republicans haven't read the Consitution, but Constitutional-scholar Bill Press is certain that there is "good stuff in there about the right of privacy" that the Republicans "haven't heard before"?

Well this is news to me!  The "right of privacy" is not found in the Constitution [10].  In fact, the word "privacy" is not found in the Constitution.  If anything, the protection of personal privacy is conveyed by the Fourth Amendment, which limits unlawful search and seizure, which I have discussed previously .  The courts didn't even discover this supposed right of privacy until 1928 - 141 years after the Constitution was written.  A much stronger argument can be made that personal privacy is protected by the 9th Amendment, which protects any rights of the People which are not explicitly mentioned within the Constitution from federal government intrusion [11].  This argument actually makes sense - but it runs contrary to everything else Bill Press believes about government, so that couldn't possibly be the source of the "right of privacy" he was implying.

Bill Press has opened his mouth and succeeded in removing all doubt [12].  It is abundently clear that Press is completely lacking in not only a basic understanding of what is contained in the Constitution (which is a relatively short document at a mere 4,440 words), but also in an understanding of the Constitution's intended purpose, which was to limit the powers of government to those which are "few and defined [13]," as contained within its pages.

I do not make a habit of name calling and personal chastising here, as I believe it is largely a waste of time and detracts from the seriousness of the topics otherwise discussed.  The definition of the word "fool" is "a person who lacks judgement or sense [14]."  Based on your analysis of the "right of privacy" and the Constitution, Mr. Press, you sir, are a fool.

This is not an uncommon problem, however, in the world of Progressivism.  Attacks on conservatives and libertarians (although usually leveled against the "Tea Baggers" or "Republicans") by Progressives claiming that the recent resurgence of interest in Constitutionally-limited governance is nonsense, are routine - listen to any Progressive talk radio program if you don't believe me.  Just don't expect to hear what Progressives "know" about the Constitution in these rants - it is usually entirely absent, which explains Bill Press's scholarly evaluation of the "right of privacy."

In a similar bout of nationally-aired mental diarrhea, the reading of the Constitution in the House of Representatives at the opening of the 112th Congress has been called a gimmick, because "[The Constitution] has no power to do anything," and "the text is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago," according to Ezra Klein, an MSNBC contributor and staffer for the Washington Post.

His full statement reads as follows:

Yes, it’s a gimmick. [laughs] You could say two things about it. One is that it has no binding power on anything, and then two, the issue of the Constitution is not that people don’t read the text and think they’re following, the issue with the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago and what people believe it says differs from person to person and differs depending on what they want to get done, so I wouldn’t expect too much coming out of this. [15]

It isn't surprising that an MSNBC contributor (or Washington Post staffer for that matter) doesn't have any respect for the limits the Constitution places upon the authority of the federal government. There are plenty of other boneheads (read: Progressives) at MSNBC who have proven this over the years. It is funny though, since Progressives have determined that regular Fox News viewers are the "most misinformed" of any cable news viewers [16], because they, among other things, don't know that the Stimulus bill created three million jobs or that the health care bill is going to reduce the deficit. Never mind that a blogger at The Blaze has already destroyed this supposed study [17]. Or that national polls have routinely found Fox News to be the most trusted source of cable news [18]. Or that MSNBC was relied upon the least for election news in 2010, with only 12% of respondents identifying with the network (Fox News, on the other hand, had 42%) [19]. Or that Fox News took the title of "most watched cable news channel" for the ninth year running, beating out CNN, MSNBC, and Headline News combined [20]. Or that all of this was accomplished in the face of entire "media" organizations dedicated solely to reporting on Faux News's supposed improprieties [21]. Apparently Progressives' important, watchful, and caring reporting on the shameful Fox News is falling on deaf ears.

The Washington Post performance is almost as impressive as MSNBC's, declining in circulation in 2010 by nearly 6.5% [22]. Strangely, the newspaper constantly chided by Progressives as being too right-leaning, the Wall Street Journal, posted a gain in circulation of nearly 2%. I guess the People are just hungry for more Progressivism. Perhaps the best solution is to simply nationalize MSNBC into the new PBS. After all, who could possibly be trusted to faithfully report the news more than the federal government?
That said, I'd like to only very briefly address Mr. Klein's statement, as I have already been writing for two hours and frankly the brainlessness of Mr. Klein in this instance is alarming.  For Mr. Klein's benefit I will try to limit my vocabulary to only the 500 most used words in the English language [23], as I don't want this to become too "confusing" for Mr. Klein and the like to comprehend. Oops - I mean *read*.

This statement by Mr. Klein, perhaps more so than any other, shines a light on exactly what Progressives believe about the Constitution - it is worthless and has no binding power on anything. It can be safely ignored.  After all, who could possibly understand the language of the Constitution?  It's over 100 years old!
 
One final note:  The Republicans who are reading the Constitution at the opening of the 112th Congress may well be doing this as a gimmick.  However, they do so at their own peril.  The same people who voted them in will just as easily vote them out.  The time for partisan gimmicks is over.  Someone had better start telling the unvarnished, unappealing truth to the American People, no matter if that truth makes their party look bad.  The era of Republicans vs. Democrats has ended.  It is high time for the People to embrace Constitutionalism - then all of these battles over social issues, welfare, health care, etc. can be duly fought out where they belong - in your state legislature!

-----

UPDATE - Ezra Klein has issued a clarification of his original statement [24]:

Yes, the Constitution is binding. No, it’s not clear which interpretation of the Constitution the Supreme Court will declare binding at any given moment. And no, reading the document on the floor of the House will not make the country more like you want it to be, unless your problem with the country is that you thought the Constitution should be read aloud on the floor of the House more frequently. In which case, well, you're in luck!

... huh?

In love of liberty,
The Bulletproof Patriot

Postnote (10:21pm):  This article is 2,321 words in length, or 53% of the length of the Constitution.  It took me two hours to compose, so I assume that Ezra Klein will be duly confused by paragraph two.  Nobody could possibly understand anything more than 100 words in length.  (...huh?)

Postnote (6-Jan-2011):  With regard to the argument that the "right of privacy is read into the substantive due process clause of the 14th Amendment" and not by extension of the 4th or 9th Amendments, I have to wonder - does anyone else find it concerning that rights can be "read into" the Constitution?  The 9th and 10th (as well as the preamble to the Bill of Rights) clearly reserve ANY rights not specifically mentioned to belong to the People - the "reading in" of rights which already belong to the People by way of the 14th Amendment's Due Process clause suggests that the People don't have completely ownership of these rights.  This is a fantastic example of just how far Progressivism has extended into the Federalist framework.  My original response follows:

[The case for the 14th Amendment] could also be made, as could many provisions in the Bill of Rights other than the 4th and 9th Amendments – in fact, you are making essentially the same argument I am with regard to the 9th, except that the 9th is more clear because it specifically addresses unenumerated rights retained by the People. The 14th Amendment’s due process clause and it’s “substantive” implication has been used to “discover” specific rights which are generally regarded as being common liberties enjoyed by the public. In this sense, it supports a sort of common law, which under a (functioning) Federalist framework of enumerated powers is nonsense.

This only becomes an issue when the Constitution is assumed to convey to the federal government a general power to legislate, which Madison very clearly rejected, rather than a government which had only the powers to act in the areas specifically enumerated in Article 1, Section 8. The “right of privacy” is completely unnecessary, as the federal government does not have the power to intrude on the privacy of the People to begin with. This is the argument that was made against the Bill of Rights – it was unnecessary, because the Congress could not wade into areas not specifically mentioned in Article 1 anyway. The inclusion of a Bill of Rights, as the argument went, would only serve to create the false impression that it was important to protect specific rights of the People, because the Congress would assume a general power to legislate. As such, the 9th and 10th Amendments were added to placate the states with this concern and to further establish that any rights not mentioned within the body of the Constitution were retained explicitly by the People (in the case of the 9th), and by either the People or the states (in the case of the 10th).

The larger point remains – there is no “right of privacy” expressed in the Constitution. This is precisely because that right was already assumed to belong to the People.

That said, I appreciate the honest questioning and comments - if anything, maybe we can learn something from each other.  A functioning Republic requires it.

- TBP

Murdered: A plea for decency and responsibility

In the third incident involving one of my wife's co-workers within the past 2 months (the incidents are otherwise unrelated), I have just found out that one of her closest co-worker's brother-in-law was shot to death last night while attempting to break up a fight in the restaurant in which he was employed [9 news story here].  This follows another shooting death in an incident involving the son of yet another co-worker, who was murdered before Christmas when his apartment was broken into in Denver.  I cannot properly express my condolences to these families who have lost members recently in senseless acts of violence.  The disregard for Human life seems to be growing by the day.

I express my deepest and most profound sorrow to the families affected.

Beginning today, those of us capable must take on a personal responsibility for providing for not only our own safety, but the safety of others against this kind of violence.  The Police force is obviously not enough.  In an effort to lead the charge, I implore whomever reads this to look into your state's concealed carry laws.  In Colorado, CCW permits are shall-issue (after passing a background check and submitting fingerprints to your local Sheriff's department).  In Colorado, you are also permitted by law to use deadly force against anyone who unlawfully enters your home, so long as you believe that there is an immediate threat to your person or your property.  You are also authorized to use deadly force in defense of another person if that person is in imminent danger of death or "great bodily injury".  These are covered in the Colorado Revised Statutes (CRS) 18-1-704 [1].

Learn the law, learn to handle a weapon safely, and begin exercising your right to your own defense.  Unfortunately, we have reached the point where when seconds count, the Police are only minutes away.  We must take care of our own safety and the safety of those around us.  There is simply no other option.

In love of liberty,
The Bulletproof Patriot

A promise to future children

I have been persuaded to publish the letter below.  It is intended as a letter to future generations.  Perhaps others will find some inspiration to write their own in kind.

To my future children:

The opening salvo in the war against the few remaining shreds of man’s freedom in the United States has commenced.  This shot across the bow has scattered the millions once galvanized against the tyrannical destruction of what was once called the American Dream – not the right to own a home, earn a living, or be made equal with your neighbors by way of social justice, but the chance to fully develop yourself into the person you choose to become, whoever that might be.  You were made with your own individual abilities, unique from everyone else.  You were made to succeed in your own way.  You were made from God’s stock.

Sadly, the American Dream, as it once existed, is dead.  It has been replaced with government dependence in the form of handouts to the undeserving, a restructuring of the family to value “all” families, whether assembled as God intended or not, and a lust for power by a self-established elite class under the guise of maintaining the social welfare.  Liberties have been sacrificed to the god of government all too willingly, and the People have accepted the pittance doled out to them that is just sizable enough to keep them quiet.  The liberties so many had hoped you would enjoy are fading.

In order to guarantee the freedoms of your future, I promise to lead the charge against this.

I promise that you will never be alone in this life.  I love you, your mother loves you, and your Father in Heaven loves you the most.

I promise that I will look to our family and to God for guidance on the important things in life, and not to government.

In the same regard, I promise to teach you to be independent and responsible for yourself.  You will never be dependent on a political party, group of friends, or anyone else to do your thinking for you.

I promise to always be in honorable pursuit of God’s will, wherever that may lead.

I promise to lead this family through all things, good and bad, with the close counsel and guidance of your mother.

I promise to love your mother as best as I am able and to set the best example I can for you of the way that Christ loves his Church.

I promise to take responsibility for the consequences of our own decisions.  If a correction of course is required, a correction will be made, no matter how difficult.

I promise to never give up, no matter how daunting the battle may be.

I promise to provide for you as long as I am able.  I promise that by the time I am unable, you will be prepared to provide for yourself.

I promise that you will be made ready to tackle the storms of this life.  Help others through their storms.  Use these victories to build up treasures in Heaven.

I promise that you can always rely on me.  When you have exceeded the limits of my ability, I promise that you can rely on God.

Build up your Heavenly defenses now.  Darker days are certain to come.

I promise to let you fail.  I promise also to be there when you have picked yourself up, dusted yourself off, and learned from your mistakes.  I promise you will be better for it.

I promise to punish you when necessary.  I promise it will be out of love.

I promise that the two most powerful words in any language are I AM.  Use them.  I AM _____.  Fill the blank in yourself.  If you don’t, someone else will.

Always stand where the Lord tells you to stand, especially when it makes you uncomfortable.  Be sure to keep your eyes open for miracles – they happen, you just have to pay attention.

Everything you need to be happy in life is contained within the walls of your home.  It eats with you, talks with you, and loves you.  God and family are the only things of any lasting value.

I promise that America is very much God’s country, too.  Keep her on the right track.  This will not be an easy task, but I promise it will be one worth pursuing.

I promise that the shining city on the hill still exists, although today it is covered by layers of grime and filth, perpetuated by our own negligence.  It is high time that we take to the streets with our families, friends, and neighbors, and scrub and polish until the American Dream once again shines as a beacon of hope to the world, visible from even the darkest shores.  America is at her best when she leads faithfully and compassionately.  She is at her best when she shines.

To this end, I resolve myself to keep up the fight.  This day, I too, with a firm reliance on divine Providence, pledge my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor, so that you also will have the opportunity to live in freedom.

With love,

M

4 January 2011