Happy Independence Day

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:


For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. - The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

Happy Birthday America!!

conservative domestic policy

As promised, today starts what I hope to grow into a Wednesday feature here at the Crank Files... a symposium of sorts between self-identified American conservatives to talk about conservative beliefs and how they inform our opinions in the American political context.

Today's topic: Domestic policies.

Now, that's a huge category - Constitutional rights, laws and law enforcement, taxation, social and education programs, welfare and retirement programs, commerce and corporate "bailouts," infrastructure and ecology, transportation, as well as new proposals like socialized medical care and the creation of a national security paramilitary force - in short, everything the federal government is in charge of currently and the current Obama administration is pushing to become in charge of.

Take a bite or the whole pie. What do you as a conservative want domestic policy to be? What specific programs would you enhance or abolish? Any new domestic policies you would propose? What is the expected result from the changes you would make?

Warmup Match

On Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 we will begin a series of debates between American right-wingers / conservatives and those that call themselves such.

This is to vent some heat from various exchanges going on around my peephole view of the blogosphere, and hopefully produce light. As conservatives within the American framework, what do we believe? What should we fight?

Participation in these events is restricted to those that consider themselves politically conservative in the context of politics in the United States of America. Foreign trespassers and known leftist trolls will be deleted. As host of the debate, I'll be moderating and slinging questions as agent provocateur.

Keep it on topic. Keep it non-personal. Keep it real. We want to know conservatism in the contemporary American context and where and how it should shape domestic and foreign policy.

Qualifying round: What is a conservative and why do you believe yourself to be one?

walk out

I'll be back....

...someday.

Velcome to Amerika

On June 24, 2009, Der Fuhrer Obama will seize control of the ABC television network to showcase medical cost-cutting measures as a part of his national socialist health care "reform." This state seizure of a broadcast network follows a socialist trend of seizing the means of production that has already seen the federal government come to control nearly a quarter of America's GDP via its semi-nationalization of the banking industry and takeover of several large sections of the automobile manufacturing industry. Obama's plan to take over the health care industry will take another 15% of America's GDP out of the private sector. Coupled with the 35% of America's GDP controlled by government already at the local, state, and federal levels, Obama's proposed increase in direct control of America's economic means by the government will exceed 75% of GDP. The American private sector economy will, for lack of a better term, die.

Democrats have never demonstrated the ability to run even a city efficiently. It was a mistake to give them control of the entire nation.

Can we get the ball back?

Shocking to the reliably stupid American left is North Korea's threats of nuclear war if the United Nations enforces a blockade on the export of North Korean missile technology to Iran and Syria, the export of which violates Nobel Prize-winning agreements with freelance diplomat Jimmy Carter not to do so in exchange for $4 Billion from the Clinton administration to build the nuclear reactors that armed North Korea with nuclear weapons in the first place.

As early as 1998, four years after the agreement with North Korea, the Senate Foreign Relations committee considered cutting off the $4 Billion nuclear reactor deal with North Korea because of blatant violations of the Agreed Nuclear Framework. Over Republican objections, Democrats in support of President Clinton pushed through a bill to continue funding North Korea's nuclear program despite the violations of that agreement. Moron watchers may recall our Vice-President Joe Biden in 2002, when he was still a Senator and senior member of the Foreign Relations committee, fiercely criticizing President Bush's inclusion of North Korea in his "Axis of Evil" speech, stating an unfamiliarity with any violations by North Korea.

As frightening as it is to contemplate that the Democratic Party's "foreign policy expert" Joe Biden can't recall important foreign policy discussions that transpired under his Commitee's guidance a mere four years before lipping off in defense of North Korea's Stalinist regime in 2002, it's more frightening that Biden is now a institutional voice that guides the development of foreign policy within the Obama administration.

In October 2000, Secretary of State Madeline Albright went to North Korea to ask them pretty please to stop exporting missile technologies to state sponsors of terrorism, and personally presented Dear Leader Kim Jong-il with a hand-autographed Michael Jordan NBA basketball to show that the United States wanted to be taken seriously.

It's too late to stop North Korea from acquiring President Clinton's $4 Billion nuclear weapons business starter kit with Joe Biden's help. But before North Korean nuclear weapons begin killing people, can we get that basketball back?

Democrats continue Nazi traditions

The old Nazi pseudoscience bogeyman "passivrauchen" - second hand smoking - is making a comeback as Congress lurches ever leftward to "protect" America from itself.