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14
Sep
2009
The Second American Revolution: How a March on 9/12 Restored My Hope
I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
Thomas Paine - 1776
Over the course of the past few months, I’ve had my fair share of hopeless moments, when I thought my voice was too small, and my cause unpopular. A few days ago I discovered that I was far from alone, that my grievances with all levels of government were not only justified, but shared with a great many fellow Americans. Our President may have built a political campaign on hope, but I’ve drawn my hope from something more powerful than lawn signs and bumper stickers - from the faces of countless fellow patriots, from small acts of kindness, from the very presence of Americans at what will be known as an event that sparked a revolution, and from a glimpse of an America lost in the history books. I’d like you to read some of my thoughts on this past weekend, as I attempt to describe the profound beginning to America’s second revolution, fought not with force, but with protest, and hopefully, votes.
On April 15th, I went to my first protest in City Hall Park, NYC. I didn’t know what to expect, for my entire life I have felt as though my political views were among a very small minority. Between school, TV, movies, the majority of news outlets, and the discussions I’ve had with most of my friends, I had been given the impression that the vast majority of America was for a bigger government, more social services, higher taxes, and more spending. That the poor have no choice but to be poor due to a life where society has systematically denied them the ability to improve their own life. That the rich are in the exact opposite situation: their lives have been incredibly easy, and society has systematically hoisted them on its collective shoulders, giving them wealth in exchange for little effort, wealth which they did not deserve, and therefore should be shared with others - others who haven’t been given the same opportunities. I’ve grown up in a generation where my friends believe they deserve a job, they deserve a college education, they deserve a car, they deserve a place to live and food to eat, and they deserve everything else that they are given, simply because they can’t imagine a way of attaining these things by any method other than being given them. None of this has ever felt right to me.
On April 15th, I discovered that 10,000 other New Yorkers felt the exact same way, hundreds of thousands across the nation, and I was inspired.
Unfortunately, I have an education deeply rooted in math, logic, and statistics - and the left side of my brain refused to let me become too excited: hundreds of thousands of people is still a very tiny minority when compared to the population of this country. However, I refused to believe that we were the minority. I know enough about American history to know that Americans could never want to live in a country so badly derailed from its original purpose. That if any small part of the American dream still existed somewhere within us, that we mustn’t accept these progressive concepts plaguing our society and infecting our government as the future, but as mistakes.
I remained active. Had our forefathers given up on this country in the face of insurmountable odds, the greatest nation ever to grace God’s Earth would have never existed, the world would never have known that people should never fear their government, and humanity would have undoubtedly been worse off because of it - regardless of what the opposition might say. But they didn’t give up. They battled an empire to secure their freedom, because they were Americans. And so are we.
On September 11th, I began my drive down to Washington D.C. with my parents, two previously politically inactive Americans who have recently been awakened by the rapid changes occurring in both government, and our society. We traveled to our nation’s capital, not because we were told to do so, not because we particularly wanted to take a three day vacation in the midst of an economic recession, but because we had to. There was never a question of how many people would be there, or if we should even attend this march. We instinctively attended because it was our patriotic duty.
That evening, we went to Bullfeathers for happy hour followed by a reception sponsored by a group from Kentucky in our hotel, and met with many other concerned Americans. Americans from all over the country. Some of them organize local “tea party” protests, or were otherwise politically active, some were plain ol’ Americans: small business owners, retirees, and everything in between. Their stories were unique, but their concerns the same. Each was extremely educated on both national and local politics. Remarkably, each and every person I spoke to shared my same concerns. They felt the same inexplicable uneasiness towards our popular social concepts. They shared the same interpretation of our forefathers’ intents when they wrote our founding documents. They had the same work ethic, the same views on national security, and foreign policy. Without ever being told these things, without being taught to think in this particular way, they all arrived at the same logical conclusions regarding the role of government, the role of the United States in world affairs, and the role of Americans.
The following day, we took our protest signs, and headed to Freedom Plaza. We were met with what I can only describe as the most peaceful gathering of concerned, desperate, and varied Americans that I have ever seen. These were not Republicans, Democrats, or anything in between. I did not speak to or see a single person who claimed any particular party affiliation. This was a gathering of citizens who recognize that the issues this country faces transcend party politics, that all parties are responsible, and that our government has been traveling down this path for far too long for it to be redeemed by any one party or politician. This was not an anti-Obama rally, it was not a pro-Republican rally, or an anti-healthcare rally. It had no single purpose, no single leader, and no single voice. It was a collection of Americans from every single state in our great union who gathered to send many messages to our elected officials. These messages could best be summed up with the following: You have gone too far.
Average Americans, from all walks of life, from every nationality, every economic class, and every political party, took planes, buses, cars, and trains to deliver their message to our government. The event was suggested and popularized by Glenn Beck through his 9/12 Project and it appeared to be funded by FreedomWorks. The opposition will attempt to use these facts, which I make no attempt to hide, to devalue this rally, to claim that we were organized for political reasons. That this is a GOP movement. I can tell you firsthand that this was not the case. Every single Republican politician should fear their job security just as much as every single Democratic politician, because it took both parties to get our country to where it is today. And every single person at that rally knew this truth.
Before marching, I knew that we had a large turnout, but it wasn’t until we marched to the Capitol, and the crowd grew larger and denser that I realized the magnitude of this movement. We filled the national mall. We packed from the Capitol lawn almost to the Washington Monument, expanding out from the mall and into the streets. The lawn had room to walk, because police were controlling the amount of people who entered, however outside of the Capitol lawn, we were packed to the point where it was difficult to move through the crowd. We filled the streets and we closed the highways.
We were 1 to 2 million strong.
The D.C. police do not give crowd estimates, but other estimates range from 1 to 2 million, some exceed 2 million. The opposition are claiming around 60,000 or simply “tens of thousands”. That is simply incorrect. You could easily count that many people in just the pictures I took during the rally.
In an event so large, full of people who I had never met, it was amazing how friendly everyone was. There were no enemies. There were no political debates over petty issues. There was an unspoken bond between each and every person, a shared sense of helplessness turned hopefulness. As we walked through the crowds trying to find a place to rest and listen to the speakers, we’d inevitably bump in to people. Not once did someone yell or become annoyed. In fact, people smiled, posed for quick pictures I was taking along the way, and offered little sentiments about one of our signs. While marching to the Capitol, two women, overhearing me talking to my mother about Ayn Rand, struck up a conversation with me about Atlas Shrugged. They told me I had to read The 5000 Year Leap. After a brief conversation with them about the book, I told them I would definitely buy a copy once I got home. One of the women reached in to her bag and pulled out a copy, her personal copy. She told me it was written in and slightly used, but that I could have it. I can’t describe to you how much that meant to me. For a person to so willingly offer a complete stranger such a gift takes a level of kindness that I have only seen once before in my lifetime: on September 12th, 2001.
I then realized that the purpose of this project had been fulfilled. We truly can unite on our founding father’s core principles and values, set aside our differences, and combine our voices as not Republicans, Democrats, or Independents, but as Americans. My hope was restored.
Every single protest sign that I read, and every single person that I spoke with, echoed my same political views. My same concerns. My same uneasiness. And my same desperation. These were not lifelong protesters. I would venture a guess that this was the first protest for many, or that this series of “tea party” protests was their first time protesting - as it was mine. These were Americans from all walks of life, old, young, and everything in between. Families with children. Disabled individuals, some in wheelchairs. They waved countless American flags, and “Don’t Tread on Me” flags. They took their hats off, put their hands over their hearts, and sang along with the national anthem. They sang patriotic songs as they marched. They smiled and chatted with fellow Americans, because they knew that they were finally doing something. Talking to anyone long enough, you quickly realized that behind everyone’s smile was the same despair. The same fear. The same feeling of helplessness. No one was told to attend this march. Everyone just knew they had to. It was as if everyone had awakened from their day-to-day lives, and decided that they needed to fulfill their patriotic duty. They had to take a stand. They had to make their voice heard. They dropped everything to find their way to Washington. I can’t count the amount of Americans I came across who had attended the rally alone, from all over the country. While these patriots may have traveled alone, they certainly weren’t alone once they arrived in D.C. Our differences didn’t matter. There were no strangers. We were all driven by the same unnamed duty to uphold the values and principles that our forefathers set forth. They would be proud.
I’ll end this with something that a fellow patriot said to me at the reception on September 11th: It feels a lot like 1773, doesn’t it?
It certainly does.
If you’d like to see pictures I took at this event, go here: http://picasaweb.google.com/Jimbro727/912March#
Videos to follow.
6
Aug
2009
Big Brother wants you to do the watching for him
I read a ton of news, but this is easily the scariest I’ve read to date. What’s so disturbing about this particular story is the manner in which this WhiteHouse blog post so nonchalantly lies to Americans, and then asks you to spy on your fellow Americans for them. There’s nothing to read in to here - it’s in black and white:
On Tuesday, the White House posted a blog that asked supporters to report “fishy” information they come across about the health insurance debate. The appeal was made at the end of the blog, which showed a video that countered a set of online clips that made it look like Obama wanted to eliminate private coverage.
And if you don’t trust fox, here it is straight from the WhiteHouse blog:
There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Facts-Are-Stubborn-Things/
Facts are stubborn things. It’s a fact that H.R. 3200 will banish private health insurance as we know it today. It’s a fact that the White House consistently lies to you about this fact - they even do it in that blog post. How ironic.
Now, I beg of you - my listeners, my readers, and anyone who has stumbled across this site: If you feel that anything said on this show, or posted on this website, could be considered “disinformation” or “fishy”, I urge you to e-mail the address mentioned in that blog post. Tell them about this show. Tell them about what we’ve said. And I promise, I’ll document everything they do in response - and expose this lying, disgusting excuse for an administration for what it is. If you’d like, you may have them e-mail me personally, at jim@sheepdogradio.com
Assuming this post doesn’t get me thrown in some federal prison, I’ll be posting more about this scary trend. Yeah, it’s that serious.
Oh, and here’s one more stubborn little fact:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It’s from our Bill of Rights. Obama and his corrupt administration should read it some time.
UPDATE 1:
I was so disgusted after writing this post, that I decided to send the whitehouse an e-mail, at the address mentioned in their blog. I wanted to tell them about the widespread disinformation on their own website, here’s what I wrote:
Subject: Fishy information regarding health care reform on popular blog
I read the WhiteHouse.gov blog post entitled “Facts are Stubborn Things” and am fulfilling your request to notify you about fishy disinformation on the Internet.
I’ve read several posts on a popular blog - the WhiteHouse.gov blog - including the very post containing this e-mail address, and have watched several videos on the same website, that claim that health insurance reform will not eliminate private coverage. This is an outright lie, and seems quite fishy. The following is Sec.102(a)(1)(A) of the health reform bill (H.R.3200):
“(A) IN GENERAL- Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1.”
There are other sections of this bill that further restrict private insurers. From that one excerpt alone, however, it is clear that any claim that this bill does not eliminate private coverage is a complete fabrication. I feel it is my patriotic duty to notify you of this behavior, in hopes that you can correct it. This should be quite easy, since the primary source of these lies are your own office.
Regards,
Jim Ryan
Sheepdog Radio
UPDATE 2:
For comparison, here’s the video from the WhiteHouse blog:
And here’s the video she is referring to:
While this video does contain clips from several different videos, it is impossible to take these sentences out of context. It is clear that our President, as well as other key players in health reform, want to eliminate private health insurance in favor of a single government plan. It’s what they’ve all said and it’s what’s in the actual bill. It’s all here in this post. You decide who’s lying.
10
Jul
2009
Francisco’s Money Speech
We discussed this on our 7/09/09 show, and promised we’d post it. Below is “Francisco’s Money Speech”, the speech given by Francisco d’Anconia in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. For me, it sums up everything I have felt about my own work ethic, about the meaning of money and its place in society, and about a particular type of mentality/work ethic that seems to be lingering in our society - but is somewhat difficult to pinpoint and describe in a general fashion. It essentially puts in to words what I, and I have a feeling many others, have been feeling. That’s something that Ayn Rand accomplishes in every page of Atlas Shrugged, so I highly recommend that you read the novel, but this is a particularly important passage.
“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco d’Anconia. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
“When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor–your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?
“Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions–and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
“But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made–before it can be looted or mooched–made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.’
“To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss–the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery–that you must offer them values, not wounds–that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade–with reason, not force, as their final arbiter–it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability–and the degree of a man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?
“But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality–the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
“Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he’s evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he’s evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
“Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth–the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
“Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment’s or a penny’s worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you’ll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?
“Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?
“Or did you say it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It’s the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money–and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.
“Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another–their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
“But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich–will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt–and of his life, as he deserves.
“Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard–the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money–the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law–men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims–then money becomes its creators’ avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
“Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion–when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing–when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors–when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
“Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, ‘Account overdrawn.’
“When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, ‘Who is destroying the world? You are.
“You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it’s crumbling around you, while you’re damning its life-blood–money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men’s history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves–slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody’s mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers–as industrialists.
“To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money–and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being–the self-made man–the American industrialist.
“If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose–because it contains all the others–the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money.’ No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity–to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality.
“Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters’ continents. Now the looters’ credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide– as, I think, he will.
“Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns–or dollars. Take your choice–there is no other–and your time is running out.”
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