Well, not exactly. As Harry Nilsson wrote in The Point!, “A point in every direction is the same as no point at all.” We must remain focused because the left is using the arguments and issues I discussed as distractions.

“Focus, Daniel-san,” said Mr. Miyagi.

Indeed we must. The Tea Party movement is focused with laser-like intensity on fiscal responsibility with the related ideas of limited, constitutional government and free markets. Not the laser-like focus that Obama had on jobs just long enough to appoint big labor leader Andy Stern to lead a government study panel. Whatever became of that effort, anyway? But I digress. We’re so easily led astray….

We must keep our focus on the massive out-of-control spending that is rapidly pushing our economy past the point of no return and the huge government that is being built to run it. That means our focus is on only two things:

• Throw out the bums who vote for this stuff, regardless of party
• Replace them with people of integrity who will return us to our Constitutional roots

The left would like to focus on social issues. The Tea Party movement and resurgent conservatives have a variety of opinions on social issues such as abortion and what to do about healthcare and immigration. We don’t agree on everything: we are conservatives after all! Unlike the left, we don’t march in lockstep or goose-step. Those debates are well worth having–later. Now we must maintain focus.

It’s pretty simple. Common sense. You don’t need a Harvard degree to understand it; in fact, I think a Harvard degree inhibits understanding. The left knows this. The left knows that they cannot win on the issues because the majority of Americans don’t agree with them on the issues. They believe in the collective; we believe in the individual. They believe in remaking humans into their ideal of socialist man; we believe in striving to match God’s ideal.

The left is moving to dig up dirt on conservative candidates; we know that human beings are not perfect. Certainly we want the best to represent us. We know that no matter how bad they try to make conservative candidates look, they will be far, far better than anything the left can muster.

If we stay focused we will win. We will win because we value eternal truths while they embrace only the momentary advantage. The leftist Democrat I debated Saturday made fun of Glenn Beck tearing up while talking about these truths. They make fun because they don’t understand, because there is nothing they believe in.

We believe. We will win.

“We celebrate the principles that are timeless, tenets first declared by men of property and wealth but which gave rise to what Lincoln called a new birth of freedom in America — civil rights and voting rights, workers’ rights and women’s rights, and the rights of every American,…”

You have to be quick as he sneaks it right past you, just as that clown in Monument tried to do. Their theory is that the Constitution is somehow invalid because black men and women didn’t participate. Did they participate anywhere in 1787? Sam Adams didn’t have a suit to wear to the Continental Congress–his neighbors took up a collection to buy him one, a far cry from the president whose 2009 tax return shows $5.5 million in income. Men of wealth? I think not, but they were willing to risk all they had for the principles they believed in.

Notice also the insertion of workers’ rights. What is that all about? Perhaps he got confused between the Declaration of Independence and the Communist Manifesto.

They tell you that the Constitution was written for a world that no longer exists. What they mean here is that America in the 18th century was agrarian, a pre-industrial society. This is significant for Marxists who believe that agrarian society is a stage in the evolution of history followed by the industrial age. Marxism belongs to the industrial age and the struggle between capitalists and workers which will eventually be won by the Marxists. Um, hasn’t happened so far and we’re in a post-industrial economy by now. So how exactly is Marxism better?

The indictment also glosses over the fact that slavery was a big issue in the colonies and in the Constitutional convention itself. They charge that the Founders counted slaves as only 3/5 of a person, when in fact the Three-Fifths Compromise reduced the representation of the slave-holding states who wanted their non-voting slaves to count fully one-for-one for representation in the House. Come to think of it, that’s a little like today where the Democrats want non-citizens counted in the census, which is used for representation in the House.

They only get away with such distortions of fact if we don’t know our history. Glenn Beck is doing a great job on his Founders’ Friday shows and others, such as Wall Builders, do as well. Listen, read and educate yourself and those you know. We have a lot of work to repair the damage of at least twenty years.

Our institutions of government are not designed to rule over us and make life care-free; our government is designed simply to free us from the mundane tasks of self-government while we pursue life, liberty and happiness. To win this struggle we have to start by remembering that.

Fellow activist Linda Hoover recently wrote of our task:

I don’t see where we have the same abilities to push back that they have to push us around.  I think a big piece we have to face is that we are out-financed (they have George Soros, all of our tax dollars, you name it), out-muscled, out-infrastructured, out-prepared and otherwise largely sitting ducks for this takeover.

The politicians are all sworn to uphold a corrupt system that is being manipulated with both skill and speed.

As I see it the goal is clear: the river of government has overflowed its banks and flooded the country. It is our job now to control the flooding and put government back within its banks. Maybe the protective levees of the Constitution were not strong enough; maybe they were in disrepair.  Mitigating the damage before all is swept away has to be the first task. 2010 is damage control.

Here’s what the liberty movement is doing, with great success:

• Articulating broad goals and objectives
• Supporting and electing candidates who believe in these goals
• Learning or re-learning the principles of our citizen-led republic
• Teaching, communicating and organizing

From out of  nowhere in February 2009, today polls show as much as 36% of the population self-describe as tea partiers. We have had tremendous success: That’s a higher percentage than either political party–yet the movement is not and has never claimed to be a political party.

We are not sitting ducks. We were sitting idly by, but not now. They only have power because we gave it to them, temporarily. Either they surrender it peacefully when we ask for it back in November, or they will try to seize it illegally. If they do that, they will cause a civil war which they will surely lose. Either way, we win.

Don’t waste your time and energy hating Barack Obama or trying to figure out where he was born: he is nothing. I have more respect for a dung beetle, which at least performs a useful function. He is neither Messiah nor demi-god; he is merely the end-product of a process of historical development whose end was predicted centuries ago. He and his kind can never succeed because they can never create, they can only destroy.

Likewise, it doesn’t matter very much if they are socialists, Marxists, statists, thugs, or a combination of all of the above. Either way, they’ve got to go.

So stay the course. Continue to organize, to educate, to recruit, to vote. And to pray. As Linda concluded:

Me, I’m going to church this morning, and going to keep asking for a miracle — not from the couch mind you.

In looking back at the Revolution, the Founders believed it was nothing less than Divine Providence that allowed them to prevail against the greatest power of the day. God will again provide a miracle.

We are that miracle.

The core problem is that our government has become a government of the elites and for the elites with enough bones thrown around to make a majority of the population either subservient or dependent on government handouts. This Aristotle called Oligarchy, an unjust form of government. The corresponding just form is Aristocracy, in which the elites rule not on their own behalf but on the behalf of all. Many on the left who call themselves Progressives believe that’s exactly what they are doing. They think they are smarter than the rest of us and can rule on our behalf better than we can rule ourselves. They tell us they are bringing us justice.

They are wrong, of course. Our country was founded on the principle that the people, through democratically elected representatives, can and ought to rule themselves. James Surowiecki, in The Wisdom of Crowds, convincingly makes the case that crowds are always more right than the most expert of experts. Trust the people, with some safeguards against mob rule, and you have the principle behind the Constitution.

Long before Surowiecki wrote his book Plato, in The Republic, sets up a form of government in which the wisest rule by common consent; in The Statesman he admits  that this is just an illusion and ultimately relies on a Nocturnal Council to rule in secret. Does that remind you of the midnight votes in the Senate? Plato, history shows, was wrong; Aristotle was right. The Founders studied Plato and Aristotle and others in a depth unknown today. In the 1940s, Friedrick von Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom, in which he convincingly proves yet again that rule by experts doesn’t work. His book was extremely popular in the early 1950s, even being reprinted by Readers’ Digest. When Glenn Beck mentioned it earlier this month, it shot to #1 on Amazon’s best seller list. Today it is still #7.

In short, neither form of rule by the few works as well as a true republic in which the interests of all are balanced. Hayek shows that even Aristotle’s just form of government by the few is fated to become unjust.

The fight, then, is about who is going to rule this country: the people or the political class? Will this country remain, as Lincoln said, a government of the people, by the people and for the people? Or will it be the rule over the people by the self-appointed elites? Talk about “the failed policies of the last eight years”! They are pushing the failed policies of recorded history.

This fight is all about the re-founding of America on its original principles. We may not look like the America of 1787, but the principles are the same.

We all know that the 2010 election is important; I’ve been saying that it is as pivotal as the election of 1860. Suthers remarks seem to agree: he said the 2010 election is about federalism, about federal control and power over the individual lives of citizens. The healthcare bill–don’t ever mistake it for mere reform–is the most sweeping power grab in our history and an affront to the very concept of federalism.

The left has long ago jettisoned a belief in the concept of federalism yet only certain powers are granted to the federal government in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution. Those powers not explicitly granted to the federal government are reserved to the states or the people.

He noted that healthcare is not an enumerated power in the Constitution. So how does the left believe they can do this? The more cynical among us–me included–say that they do it simply because they want to and they have the votes. Suthers said that they relied on the Commerce clause. Funny thing about that, though: when CNS News asked key Democrat figures at the time, they couldn’t come up with an answer. Nancy Pelosi just sputtered, “Is that a serious question?” The Commerce clause is merely a fig leaf.

Suthers explained that the commerce clause was meant to regulate commerce between the individual states because at the time there were tariffs between them. It was meant to regulate interstate commerce. Over time it has been stretched to mean any economic activity across state lines. Although he didn’t mention it, the case which grossly expanded the commerce clause was Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942) in which Filburn, a farmer raising wheat on his own property to feed his chickens, was ruled by the Supreme Court to have engaged in interstate commerce.  There are attempts today to overturn that ruling, but that’s another story. Ever since 1942, the Congress has relied on the commerce clause to justify a whole host of things.

But that, Suthers pointed out, was economic activity. The federal government influences our economic activity by incentives, such as tax credits for solar panels, or by offering either individuals of states federal dollars in exchange for playing by their rules. Drive 55 or don’t get federal highway money. We should never forget, however, that it is reality not “federal” money but rather our tax dollars. They’re bribing us with our own money!

Healthcare is different. This is the first time in our history that the government is saying to individuals, “Buy healthcare or be fined and punished up to 2% of your income by the IRS.” The Congressional Budget Office, he said, has been warning Congress since 1998 that federal power has never been used to punish citizens for not buying something; in essence, for a lack of economic activity.

If this law is allowed to stand, there is no limit on what the government can do. If this stands, the federal government can not only give you a tax break for buying that solar panel but also fine you for not buying one.

Recognizing, perhaps, the weakness of the commerce argument, Holder’s Department of Justice is basing its defense on the taxing power of the federal government. This, too, fails, said Suthers, because under Article I Section 9 of the Constitution federal taxes would have to be apportioned to the states based on population; this is individual. This, he said, amounts to a “capitation” tax, or a head tax, which the federal government is not allowed to levy.

Let me note here that it was a hearth tax that helped precipitate the French Revolution and a tea tax that helped precipitate our first Revolution. And yet this illegal health tax is not enough for the left: they are planning “cap and tax” right now.

One final note. For his courageous stand for our constitutional liberties, John Suthers has a big liberal target on his back. He is our only Republican elected official at the state level right now. The attorney general’s office is not usually a high-profile race but in 2010 it is a key to our liberty. The 9-12 groups in Colorado collected over 10,000 signatures in support of his efforts. But that is not enough: Please support him financially as well. What do you think will happen to the lawsuit if he is defeated?

What are the Tea Parties really all about? They are about restoring constitutional government in America. Do you believe in the Constitution? Robert Rowland of the Elbert Tea Party does:

Not only do I believe, I also believe that many in America despair and search for a way to save our nation from the path it is on, that the only way back is through the U.S. Constitution. As we focus on individual issues, spending, immigration, environment, free trade, foreign policy, all of which are worthwhile for grassroots patriots, we need to see the bigger picture and demand, fight and use our forces to restore original and uncompromising compliance with the Constitution. The solutions to what is taking us down this path of destruction all lay within the wisdom, direction and words laid down by our fore fathers. I also believe that they were spot on when they declared they had been led to these words and this wisdom by the hand of providence, by God. Our fore fathers and our God still believe in us, and now we need to turn back to this document as was intended by all of them, it is our calling, we must not fail.

Amen, brother! Words perhaps too simple and uncomplicated for a professor of philosophy to understand.

When is the party going to get a clue?

Maybe the defeat of Senator Bob Bennett by grass-roots conservative Mike Lee in Utah will give pause. Or Gov. Crist’s withdrawal from the Florida GOP primary under pressure from Marco Rubio. Both men, by the way, are supported by Senator Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund, which I’ve highlighted before.

In Colorado, the party’s State Assembly is this week and I’m a delegate. RSCC pick Jane Norton has decided to petition on to the primary ballot just in case.  Her campaign under Josh Penry has gone negative and just today I got an email from a prominent supporter of hers attacking Ken Buck’s character and distorting his record.

Last week I got an email from the Scott McInnis campaign making a fine distinction between McInnis, who held a “consistent” stand on immigration versus Maes, whose stand “evolved”…to end up in the same place. Who cares? Only a lawyer trying to win a debate.

This is politics as usual. These negative personal attacks are what the American people are sick of. This year the fight in the Republican party is about principle: does the party stand on the conservative principles it says it does? More importantly, do it’s candidates? Arguments like “I have more experience in politics” and “I know the players, I can get things done” don’t hold nearly as much weight as they may have in the past. In fact, they are liabilities.

Here’s the clue: if you want to win in the primary AND go on to attract independents and even non-Marxist Democrats, then you had better show that you are a person of principle and that those principles prominently include limited constitutional government, fiscal responsibility and the free market.

This year’s election is not about your political career; this is a battle for life and liberty. If you’re not in this for God and the Constitution, get out now.

It is worth reading because it summarizes the massive mismanagement of the government by these spendthrift socialists. One has to wonder how even they think this spending spree will end–especially given not only the magnitude of the deficits but also the transfer of the productive private sector of the economy to the non-productive government sector.

What really caught my eye was his paragraph on progressivism. You see, he and I both grew up in Wisconsin which taught the virtues of one of the biggest progressives, Robert “Fighting Bob” LaFollette–a Republican.  Let me quote a paragraph:

Early Progressives wanted to empower and engage the people. They fought for populist reforms like initiative and referendum, recalls, judicial elections, the breakup of monopoly corporations, and the elimination of vote buying and urban patronage. But Progressivism turned away from popular control toward central government planning. It lost most Americans and consumed itself in paternalism, arrogance, and snobbish condescension. “Fighting Bob” LaFollette, Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson would have scorned the self-proclaimed “Progressives” of our day for handing out bailout checks to giant corporations, corrupting the Congress to purchase votes for government controlled health care, and funneling billions in Jobs Stimulus money to local politicians to pay for make-work patronage. That’s not “Progressivism,” that’s what real Progressives fought against!

You see, these so-called progressives aren’t.  In Colorado, the Democrat-controlled legislature are trying to make it harder for citizens to petition: the petition (referendum) was a key piece of the progressive agenda. They are trying to restructure the state constitution, repeal rules against gerrymandering, and remove controls on voting procedure that would allow for massive fraud.

They’re not progressives at all: they are radical Marxists trying hard to find any label for themselves other than that.

You may have sen this photo before. It is just wrong on so many levels.

Free health care – why? It is not free for citizens, nor should it be.

Jobs with no taxes – I’d like that, too, but since we passed the 16th Amendment, taxes just keep getting higher and higher.

You owe us America! I wonder if that is a case of bad grammar: does he mean simply “You owe us, America!” as in America, you owe us these things we are demanding or is the meaning clear: we want the country known as America and you owe it to us.

Finally the violent threat. The threat of violence that is absent from the Tea Party movement. How can any civilized country stand for such a threat against the rule of law? What does it say about America in 2010 that this protester–this illegal alien who shouldn’t be here in the first place–feels he can say that and get away with it? Could he say that in Mexico? In Cuba? In Venezuela?

And free from what? Nobody forced you to cross the border and nobody is forcing you to stay. This is not some East German protesting at the Berlin Wall. What do you think would have happened to such a person?

Finally, lest you think that Arizona is picking on the poor illegal immigrant who is, after all, just looking for a better life while letting businesses who hire them off the hook, consider this: two years ago Arizona passed a law requiring businesses to certify that their employees were legal as a condition of getting or maintaining their business license.  I know, I was there with the IT people implementing it.

No country can long survive where the rule of law is ignored.

First, some sobering thoughts from State Senator Sylvia Allen:

The people who live within 60 to 80 miles of the Arizona/Mexico Border have for years been terrorized and have pleaded for help to stop the daily invasion of humans who cross their property . One Rancher testified that 300 to 1200 people a DAY come across his ranch vandalizing his property, stealing his vehicles and property, cutting down his fences, and leaving trash. In the last two years he has found 17 dead bodies and two Koran bibles. Another rancher testified that daily drugs are brought across his ranch in a military operation. A point man with a machine gun goes in front, 1/2 mile behind are the guards fully armed, 1/2 mile behind them are the drugs, behind the drugs 1/2 mile are more guards. These people are violent and they will kill anyone who gets in the way. This was not the only rancher we heard that day that talked about the drug trains. One man told of two illegal’s who came upon his property one shot in the back and the other in the arm by the drug runners who had forced them to carry the drugs and then shot them. Daily they listen to gun fire during the night it is not safe to leave his family alone on the ranch and they can’t leave the ranch for fear of nothing being left when they come back.

The border patrol is not on the border. They have set up 60 miles away with check points that do nothing to stop the invasion. They are not allowed to use force in stopping anyone who is entering. They run around chasing them, if they get their hands on them then they can take them back across the border. Federal prisons have over 35% illegal’s and 20% of Arizona prisons are filled with illegal’s. In the last few years 80% of our law enforcement that have been killed or wounded have been by an illegal. The majority of people coming now are people we need to be worried about. The ranchers told us that they have seen a change in the people coming they are not just those who are looking for work and a better life.

The Federal Government has refused for years to do anything to help the border states . We have been over run and once they are here we have the burden of funding state services that they use. Education costs have been over a billion dollars. The healthcare cost billions of dollars. Our State is broke, $3.5 billion deficit and we have many serious decisions to make. One is that we do not have the money to care for any who are not here legally. It has to stop.

There is more at the Tucson Citizen.