Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Intolerable Acts

INTOLERABLE ACTS

"Friends! Brethren! Countrymen!--That worst of plagues, the detested tea, shipped for this port by the East India Company, is now arrived in the harbor." -Boston, November 29, 1773

Intolerable Acts. The very sound of such words reeks of a tyrannical villainy that exceeds the "run of the mill" oppression normally associated with a bloated, out of control government. However, it also reeks of something else: A people who believe they deserve better and are unwilling to tolerate the tyranny, regardless of the ramifications of resistance. Despite the insistence from our president otherwise, we descend from a good, decent and independent people. However, our government, unable and unwilling to acknowledge this fact, is re-instituting a policy of Intolerable Acts, and we need only consult our wise ancestors in order to discern the remedy.

In colonial times, an arrogant English monarchy, its' treasury having been depleted by the French and Indian War, decided it could recoup its' losses by levying a series of new taxes on their American colonies. The Stamp Act of 1765, the Townsend Act of 1767 along with the infamous Boston Massacre agitated the colonists, but when the Crown decided to tax tea, the colonists revolted. They refused to pay the taxes required by the Townsend Acts claiming they had no obligation to pay taxes imposed by a Parliament in which they had no representation. Parliament then retracted the taxes with the exception of the tax on tea, this remained as a demonstration of Parliament's right and willingness to tax the colonies.

In concocting a scheme not unlike the political shenanigans of modern times, they gave the East India Company a monopoly on the importation of tea to America. Parliament then reduced the tax the colonies would have to pay for the imported tea. The scheme would actually allow Americans to get their tea at a cheaper price than before. However, if the colonies paid the tax on the imported tea, they would be acknowledging the English Parliament's right to tax them. It was assumed that the colonists would rather pay the tax than deprive themselves of their tea. It was a big mis-calculation. Our ancestors were not so easily deceived by Parliamentary trickery.

In Boston, the arrival of three ships loaded with tea ignited a furious reaction. On December 16, 1773 as many as 7,000 agitated locals gathered about the wharf where the ships were docked. The colonists demanded the ships leave...without paying the tea taxes. The Collector of Customs refused to allow the ships to leave without paying the tea taxes. A stalemate? No, our ancestors had a surprise for the English Crown. 200 men, many disguised as Indians, marched two-by-two to the wharf, descended upon the three ships and dumped their offending cargos of tea into the harbor waters. This was the first, and most famous tea party...but by no means, the last.

In early 2009, within the first month of the presidency of Barack Obama, his administration sought, and acquired, the single biggest booty in the history of theft, when the newly elected Democratic majority pilfered the United States Treasury for 787 billion dollars under the guise of an economic stimulus. The fact that the United States did not have 787 Billion dollars was not an impediment, they simply borrowed and printed the money. The public, having just voted out a republican president and majorities in congress for, among other things, excessive spending, reacted with hostility to this intolerable action. Suddenly, taxpayer tea-parties started popping up all across the country. The movement led to a massive display of over a million people at a demonstration in Washington DC on September 12, 2009. Millions more were participating in similar events nationwide. This government was put on notice that it has our attention, and it has earned our contempt.

However, the Obama administration, like King George's before him, does not handle criticism well. If you will recall your history, the English Crown responded to the Boston Tea Party by imposing a series of laws sponsored by British Prime Minister Lord North in 1774. These laws, known as the "Intolerable Acts," were the harshest laws ever imposed by Parliament against the colonies. They included:

1. QUARTERING ACT: Allowed British troops to stay in houses or empty buildings if barracks were not available.

2. QUEBEC ACT: Granted civil government and religious freedom to Catholics living in Quebec. This was a direct insult to Americans in the colonies, who had been denied the same sorts of rights that the Quebec residents were being granted.

3. MASSACHUSETTS BAY REGULATING ACT: Made all law officers subject to appointment by the royal governor and banned all town meetings that didn't have approval of the royal governor.

4. BOSTON PORT ACT: Closed the port of Boston until the price of the destroyed tea was recovered, moved the capital of Massachusetts to Salem, and made Marblehead the official port of entry for the Massachusetts colony.

5. IMPARTIAL ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE ACT: This allowed the royal governor of a colony to move trials to other colonies or even to England if he feared that juries in those colonies wouldn't judge a case fairly.

Whether it be through arrogance or ignorance our current president has revived the spirit of the "Intolerable Acts." In fact, when comparing the policies and initiatives of the Obama administration and his congressional democrat catspaws, to that of the British Crown's colonial impositions, there is an eerie similarity. It would appear, however, that the modern version is exponentially more...intolerable! Let's have a look at them.

1. HEALTH CARE REFORM ACT: For some reason I see this as having considerable similarity to the 1774 Quartering Act in that it has the potential to be the most intrusive trespass of government into our lives. Almost every aspect of your life can be controlled through government administered and regulated Health Care. Everything from what you eat to where you live can be evaluated to determine your health risk. By rendering the health care system a slave of government regulation, it will come to pass that government bureaucrats will have a say in EVERY aspect of your behavior. Behavior viewed as risky, such as eating at fast food restaurants, consuming soft drinks or even sexual behavior, will be vulnerable to regulation with just this act alone. Privacy and freedom be damned! They might as well be living with you in your house, just as the British soldiers who were being quartered in our ancestors homes, against their wishes.

If you think I'm exaggerating, consider this example: The United States Department of Health and Human Services has already conducted a study to determine the health risks of firearms. Once the Health Care Reform Act becomes law, the U.S. Constitution will not be able to stop government bureaucrats from issuing a finding of "endangerment" and then, by fiat, they will restrict or deny you the right to possess or own firearms in the name of reducing health care costs. Why do you think progressives are salivating at the prospects of passing this damnable law? In one stroke, they can assume dictatorial control over EVERYONE'S life.

The Health Care Reform Act is not the product of a limited constitutional government, but instead is an attempt at limiting freedom. The president claims passage of this would be an historic achievement on behalf of the American people. This colossal invasion of a centralized "command and control" apparatus into the health care system will unleash a tyranny that will ultimately destroy the doctor-patient relationship, ration health care and stifle medical innovation. Do you believe this is being done for YOUR benefit?

TOLERANCE ACT: As with the Quebec Act of 1774, this intolerable act involves recognizing "rights" or status for certain groups at the expense of others. This is best displayed with the recent signing into law of Hate Crimes legislation that, among other things, allows for homosexual victims of crimes to be classified as a protected class of citizen and therefore crimes against them are subject to greater punishment than crimes against others not listed as a protected class. This atrocity is an offense to the idea of equal justice under the law. Worse, is the fact that someone who criticizes the homosexual lifestyle on religious grounds can find themselves charged with a Hate Crime should any harm come to a homosexual, in spite of the fact that the religious speaker wasn't involved in the crime. This effectively invalidates free speech protections. It appears that some people are now more equal than others to the point that they are legally beyond criticism.

But it doesn't stop there. Equality engineering is also at the heart of the homosexual marriage agenda that is poisoning our political discourse. Homosexuals insist they are being discriminated against because their "relationships" are not recognized as a marriage. They see only their individual rights where marriage is supposed to be defined as a union. When two homosexuals combine 1+1 ALWAYS equals 2. Yet when a man and a woman combine in a relationship 1+1 equals a lot more. Not just in the children created, but in the mutual sacrifice of the couple in raising new citizens. Every successful society throughout history has recognized this marriage based family model as the centerpiece of its civilization. How can homosexuals claim their relationships are equal to that? Their demand to reduce marriage into nothing more than two individuals' self-interests is not only selfish, but evil and intolerable.

But the Tolerance Act just keeps on giving. This myth of equality is the centerpiece of the Obama administration's war on American exceptionalism. Obama, always trying to level the playing field, would deny the United States its' role as sole superpower to instead have us be just one nation among the cooperative of world nations. Obama is also trying to destroy the relationship between excellence and reward in our own country. Achievement is, in his sight, a sign of inequality and unfairness that requires correction. Community organizing and pandering to parasites super-cedes constitutional protections for individual rights and freedom. As the schoolchildren sing: all are equal in HIS sight. Therefore, he justifies granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, tolerance of Islamo-fascism, and racial preferences for jobs and college admissions as a form of reparations for America's alleged past transgressions. Intolerable.

THE CZAR ACT: Like the Massachusetts Bay Regulating Act before it, The Czar Act unlawfully concentrates federal power in the executive branch of government. Unelected Czars appointed by presidents without congressional approval has been a growing problem in recent administrations. However the Obama administration has more Czars than congressionally approved cabinet members...39!! With thirteen more projected for future appointment! This is a massive delegation of authority to unelected bureaucrats. Their rules have the power of law...made by regulators, adjudicated by regulators and enforced by the executive branch. It is essentially a shadow government that answers only to the president. Take a look at his appointments, a more wretched hive of left wing villainy could not easily be found...

1. Herb Allison (TARP Czar)
2. Alan Bersin (Border Czar)
3. Dennis Blair (Intelligence Czar)
4. Ron Bloom (Car Czar)
5. John Brennan (Terrorism Czar)
6. Carol Browner (Energy and Environment Czar)
7. Adolfo Carrion Jr. (Urban Affairs Czar)
8. Ashton Carter (Weapons Czar)
9. Aneesh Chopra (Technology Czar)
10. Jeffery Crowley (AIDS Czar)
11. Cameron Davis (Great Lakes Czar)
12. Nancy-Ann DeParle (Health Czar)
13. Earl Devaney (Stimulus Accountability Czar)
14. Linda Douglass (Dis-Information Czar)
15. Joshua DuBois (Faith Based Czar)
16. Arne Duncan (Education Czar)
17. Kenneth Feinberg (Pay Czar)
18. Daniel Fried (Guantanamo Closure Czar)
19. J. Scott Gration (Sudan Czar)
20. David Hayes (California Water Czar)
21. Richard Holbrooke (Afghanistan Czar)
22. John Holdren (Science Czar)
23. Kevin Jennings (Safe Schools Czar)
24. Gil Kerlikowske (Drug Czar)
25. Ron Kirk (Trade Czar)
26. Vivek Kundra (Information Czar)
27. Mark Lloyd (Media Diversity Czar)
28. Douglas Lute (War Czar)
29. George Mitchell (Mideast Peace Czar)
30. Ed Montgomery (Auto Recovery Czar)
31. Lynn Rosenthal (Domestic Violence Czar)
32. Dennis Ross, (Central Region Czar)
33. Gary Samore (WMD Policy Czar)
34. Todd Stern (Climate Czar)
35. Larry Summers (Economic Czar)
36. Cass Sunstein (Regulatory Czar)
37. Michael Taylor (Food Czar)
38. Paul Volcker (Economic Czar)
39. Jeffery Zients (Government Performance Czar)
40. Van Jones (Green Jobs Czar) Oops, this self described COMMUNIST resigned after it was revealed he was a 9/11 truther. Apparently, however, being a convicted felon and a communist was just fine with this administration.

Worse, even than the proliferation of these unelected overlords, is who they are. These Czars are among the most radical, totalitarian leftists this country's godless institutions of higher education have ever produced:

John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar, is a eugenicist that has laid out plans in his book, Ecoscience, for forced sterilizations and forced abortions as a means of population control. He stated that population control laws could be constitutional, under the right perception. Holdren also proposed such atrocities as forced adoptions for babies born out of wed-lock and claims that forced sterilization of women would be easier to enforce than men. What a guy, huh? He might appear reasonable, if only by comparison, to the half-wit Cass Sunstein who is Obama's regulatory Czar. He has publicly stated a desire to impose regulatory agendas such as outlawing sport hunting, giving animals the legal right to file lawsuits and using government regulations to phase out meat consumption. That's right, he wants your cat to have the legal right to file a lawsuit against you. Of course your cat will be represented by an ACLU attorney who is a quackaloon liberal that talks to cats and knows what they want. I have a cat and if they have their way, she won't just think she's in charge..she will be!

Harold Koh, Obama’s pick as Legal Adviser to the State Department, is a self-described trans-nationalist who has openly stated that judges should interpret the Constitution according to other nations' legal “norms.” So much for national sovereignty! Applying Sharia law in US courts is more than acceptable to this man, and, in his child-like world, the United States constitutes an “axis of disobedience” along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq. Moral reletivism at its finest.

"In questions of power, let us hear no more of trust in men, but rather bind them down from mischief with the chains of the Constitution." -Thomas Jefferson

Now you know what he means by "mischief." Unfortunately, our constitution is bound in chains by these unconfirmed, unelected and unconstitutional parasites that are sucking our freedom away right in front of us. Are we really powerless to stop this or, worse, are we just indifferent?

CAP AND TRADE ACT: Not unlike the Boston Port Act of 1774, the Cap and Trade legislation pending in the Senate would punitively restructure our economy based on the false premises of man-made global warming and the alleged climate debt that Western industrialized nations "owe" the world for emitting C02 into the atmosphere. The progressives, who bear a hatred for our petroleum based energy economy, have clicked their heels and repeated three times "there's no energy like wind and solar, there's no energy like wind and solar, there's no energy like wind and solar." All we are waiting for now is the wizard to make it all work.

The Senate, however, is balking at passing this economy killing legislation so the American Politburo, masquerading as the Obama administration, has circumvented the law. This of course is what all progressives do even as they expect you to follow the laws THEY create. The Environmental Protection Agency has issued a finding of "endangerment" for carbon dioxide. That's right, a naturally occurring ingredient in the breath we exhale is now labeled as dangerous. By issuing this finding the EPA, under the authority of the Clean Air Act of 1990, can therefore regulate all carbon emissions nationwide.

"If you don't pass this legislation, then ... the EPA is going to have to regulate in this area. And it is not going to be able to regulate on a market-based way, so it's going to have to regulate in a command-and-control way, which will probably generate even more uncertainty." -White House Official under condition of anonymity

Command and Control is the dream of all liberals. They know what's best for us and are righteously indignant at having to constantly explain their "good" intentions and get the consent of the governed. So they threaten EPA regulation in an attempt to not only blackmail the Senate into passing disastrous Cap and Trade legislation, but also to express their willingness to act dictatorially if they wish. This, in spite of the fact that the Clean Air Act of 1990 is congressional legislation that congress can amend or rescind if they wish...and they better do it fast. This administration is fast rendering congress irrelevant. A dictatorship, always the result of liberalism, is on our horizon.

IMPARTIAL ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE ACT: This is EXACTLY like the 1774 Intolerable Act that bears the same name. This allowed the royal governors to move trials in the interest of "fairness" as defined by the government. Does this sound familiar? The announcement by Attorney General Eric Holder that he is going to give 911 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and his co-conspirators civil trials in New York City has re-opened this intolerable wound. Once again we have the spectre of progressive moral relativism being imposed on the citizens of the United States. An enemy combatant, that does not even acknowledge the rules of the Geneva Convention, is going to be tried as an ordinary criminal, with the full accompaniment of rights and protections of an American citizen. History is indeed repeating itself.

This administration came in hell-bent on prosecuting the military and intelligence apparatus that so successfully kept a repeat of the 9/11 attacks from occurring for seven years. Apparently this Attorney general, with the approval of his boss, believes the terrorists had reasonable grievances against the United States and now he has given them a worldwide platform from which to advance their cause. In the process, the progressives will get to put the United States on trial, particularly the Bush administration and the CIA, and portray the United States as a villain deserving the "social justice" that the terrorists administered.

Do not think these trials will serve any other purpose. Other countries don't give enemy combatants the right to a civil trial. This passes for original thinking in this administration. Terrorists should be tried in military tribunals, as had already been agreed upon and which then senator Barack Obama supported. However this administration cannot even bring themselves to call them terrorists! They are consumed with the politics of American guilt...and it is intolerable!

In a culture that celebrates victims and their victimization, we must now accept that we too have become victims. Victims of a progressive attempt to fundamentally transform America either through our acquiescence to these intolerable actions, or through a deliberate attempt to over burden our government and economy with more debt and expectations than it can possibly handle. The collapse of our economy excites progressives as it will create an opportunity to rebuild a new America in their own image. An image of command and control, where those who know better do our thinking for us. Our portion is obedience.

This strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis, has a name and is well documented, and revered, among the elitist, progressive American left. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse. I urge you to discover it for yourself. Read it, learn it and fight it.

Progressives, socialists and liberals of all stripes talk a good game, but they are not the type to sacrifice anything for their beliefs. They speak often of the poor and weak in our society but you will never see a liberal take a vow of poverty and dedicate himself to helping them. They simply exploit their misery to further their quest for control. Remember this the next time a liberal invokes Jesus or tries otherwise to conceal himself in religious foliage in an attempt to guilt his victims into accepting social policies that encourage parasitism.

Destroying the United States is their objective and "by any means necessary" is their moral code. They want the rest of us to accept poverty in the name of "equality" and "social justice" while they appoint themselves as bearers of the burden of managing our lives for us. This is the ultimate Intolerable Act.

Friends! Brethren! Countrymen! That worst of plagues, progressivism, has now infested our government rendering it intolerable. We must exterminate this government...by any means necessary! -Sidney Allen Johnson


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