America is awaking and so is Tulsa Today.  We’ve been around for 13 years, launching five redesigns and several technical advancements, but the failure of American journalism in 2008 must be reversed and we are perfectly prepared to help.

Tulsa Today has provided online local independent news since 1996.  We have well over 100,000 unique visitors each month and those numbers are growing.  We have always been “creative conservatives” in a community dominated by a Liberal daily newspaper repeatedly proven incoherent.  (See Great Plains Airlines and decades of praise for convicted criminal and former State Senator Gene Stipe for more detail.)

As an organization, Tulsa Today is not aligned with any political party.  In the State of Oklahoma, where it is virtually impossible to have a third party on the ballot, such choices are limited to Democrats that have controlled all government here for the last 100 years and, in the last few years, a growing body of active Republicans, occasionally disgraced by some that are truly insane.  Oklahoma knows the results of one party government, which has squandered massive oil and natural resources and left us a damn poor state. 

As you can tell, I am a publisher of strong opinion.  I have won two national awards as a First Amendment Advocate since the mid 80s and, as happened yesterday, I can walk in a public meeting and point out the players with history and purpose.  Unfortunately, that limits my ability to write as a disinterested journalist, therefore I am hiring them.

In the next few weeks, Tulsa Today will be introducing a new Executive Editor.  Younger, aggressive, and experienced from Atlanta to Alaska with print, online and social media, this man has been nominated for three Pulitzers and won countless other awards. His job is to tell the truth without fear in compelling ways that draws increasing number of readers to Tulsa Today and to hire and manage others for the same purpose.

As publisher, it is my responsibility to ensure that “truth telling” is accurate in every detail and to make clear to the entire staff why we publish and what we are here to accomplish.  Tulsa Today stands for God, Country and Community.  We believe the Constitution of the United States of America has provided the frame work from which individuals in freedom have built the most generous, gracious, environmentally conscious and human rights supportive nation history has ever seen.  We stand on the side of the individual and demand that the rights of each be protected from mobs that may be swayed by momentary emotion.  Our right to freedom is provided by God and must not be allowed to be taken under any pretense by government at any level.

Personally, I am no longer non-partisan, but rather anti-partisan.  I believe the preponderance of facts prove America has elected the first Anti-American Administration in history.  Yes, let me say that again slowly so the White House Enemy List folks can understand it.   I, Publisher David Arnett, believe President Barack Hussien Obama is anti-American.  Properly elected or not, the enemy of all America holds dear is now our Commander in Chief.

By the way, is there an “Enemy List Czar” (Wikipedia: Originally derived from the title Czar or Caesar who claims the same rank as emperor, with the approval of a supreme ecclesiastical official – in this case Barack Hussien Obama.)  Just curious, because I really don’t care after noting so many “Presidential Advisors” are followers of Marx and Lenin.

Obviously, reporters need to be less opinionated.  Journalists need to talk to all sides from all perspectives to find the truth.  I will pay them to find and write the truth – regardless.

Tulsa Today is supported by businesses through advertising.  Increasing numbers of businesses are awakening to the fact that this administration will destroy not only small business (the core of the economy) but all business and free-market capitalism if given the chance.  The Obama Administration believes, as Obama said, in the communist concept of “redistributing wealth” by force and they will tax everyone in everything for any or no productive purpose in the process. 

We support business.  We support individual freedom and a free market economy.

Unfortunately, those currently in power believe that individual liberty and all profit are the exclusive purview of government.  They believe that a just society may only be built from the top down and the public should suckle like little piglets upon the many tits of government nectar even while empirical evidence throughout history proves them wrong. They see themselves as the power elite ruling class.  They are committed to the idolatry of Barack Hussien Obama.

By the way, did I mention I was opinionated?  I will be writing editorial and analysis as I have always done, but I am delighted not to have to pretend to listen politely to people who disagree with proven science, economics and history.  I’m going to leave that up to the staff and – while not announced publicly yet – Tulsa Today is truly blessed with stunning talent.

Excellent evidence of that is available for your review with this site redesign.  Our prolific programmers, inspired graphic gurus, and insightful editors have accomplished a Herculean task in an incredibly short time, but there is more to do.  Other similar challenging tasks wait.  The first decade or so was just warming up.

 

Four decades of involvement in education — as a volunteer, writer, and sometime teacher — have blessed me with riches that cannot be measured in normal ways.

I have read stories to children at east Oklahoma City schools, then walked to lunch with a dozen giggling children clinging to hands, fingers, and suspenders. I taught elementary, middle, and secondary students at an alternative school for troubled and "at-risk" youth. I substituted at public, charter, and private schools, meeting dreams and despair, trial and triumph.

I’ve lectured to sometimes idealistic and hopeful, sometimes skeptical and bored, college students about history or drama, about writing or romance, or about a call of the heart found in that tender tug from the squeeze of a child’s hand to "read just one more."

Frustrated with bureaucratic lethargy and angry with those who have surrendered to the despair of inner-city poverty and family collapse, I’ve found and then reported, sometimes in the most unexpected circumstances, examples of heroic service to children who lack stable living environments.

In the Deborah Brown Community School in Tulsa and at public and private schools in Oklahoma City, I have witnessed the miracle of learning in defiance of life’s greatest obstacles. I have seen the future, or part of it, at St. John Christian Heritage Academy, then dreamed of justice for hopeful and productive people.

But for all our problems, nothing I have encountered in American ghetto schools or in the lives of our nation’s urban poor can compare with the squalor found in descriptions given by James Tooley in his new book “The Beautiful Tree,” excerpted in the August issue of Perspective, published by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (ocpathink.org).

Tooley describes a remarkable odyssey uncovering productive but unregistered private schools all over the world, places where the children of desperately poor parents make lives better through mathematics and composition, English and French, science and hope, while preparing for success in work and life.

Tooley crossed stinking ditches, passed open sewers, encountered reeking slaughterhouses, and circled putrid fish boats all over the world, only to find enclaves of excellence guided by great minds the equal of Marva Collins of Chicago and Tracy McDaniel of Oklahoma City. The schools Tooley visited were islands of calm in the midst of turmoil, "areas that lacked decent sanitation and clean water supply, adequate roads, electricity."

Some he met were Muslim, some secular, some Christian or Christian-influenced, some libertarians longing for freedom from government dictates and irrational cultural norms.

All seemed to share the perspective of one headmaster, a man named Wajid at "Peace High School" in India, who told Tooley he became a private school educator because, well, "Sometimes, government is the obstacle to the people." Tooley took the name for his book from a figure of speech Mahatma Gandhi used in 1931 to describe ancient Indian traditions of learning and erudition.

This year, members of the British Conservative Party, transformed in their worldview by Tooley’s book and related studies, wrote with wonder in a recent manifesto: "In the poor urban and semi-urban areas of Lagos State, Nigeria, 75 percent of school children attend budget private schools. In the slums of Hyderabad, India, 65 percent of schoolchildren are in private unaided schools. These schools charge very low fees, affordable to parents on low wages. … These schools are run for poor people, by poor people."

And what are the results coming from these schools serving the poorest of the poor?

Analysis of testing of 24,000 children in five countries found that even after adjusting for background, "results achieved in private schools were significantly higher, in every country studied and on every measure used, than in public schools." Problems in their peer public schools were low motivation, lack of accountability, and high rates of teacher absenteeism. Competition among the "budget private schools" provided "an incentive to keep standards high, in order to retain their pupils."

It should surprise no one that, as Tooley’s book jacket reports: "Both the entrepreneurial spirit and the love of parents for their children can be found in every corner of the globe."

Tooley found that spirit and love in Hyderabad, in Lagos, in Ghana, and in China. I found that spirit and love in north Tulsa and in east Oklahoma City.

Let’s unleash that spirit and that love. Now. It’s a small world, after all.

Patrick B. McGuigan is the author of two books and the editor of seven. A state-certified teacher, for two years he taught middle-school and high-school students at a public charter alternative

How can we fix only the “flat tire” on the healthcare “vehicle” and NOT call the whole thing a “clunker”, sending it to the government-run junkyard to be destroyed?

Calling cars “clunkers” and sending functioning ones to a junkyard is one thing. Calling our medical system a “clunker” and destroying the private system because a few parts need fixing is quite another.

Destroying the most innovative and responsive healthcare system on the planet with government mandates, control and expansion of federally-run services in the name of “reform” is diabolical.  People’s lives are at stake.

Americans have the best medical services in the world.  No one is denied medical care for lack of medical insurance. Since 1986, Federal law has prohibited hospitals from turning away people without insurance.  Taxpayers foot the bill to pay for those without insurance. It is dishonest to keep implying that lack of insurance means lack of care.

There is no logical reason we cannot fix the payment and insurance issues and do it relatively quickly.  We don’t need to wait until 2013 when the “healthcare reform” bills are scheduled to take effect.  Why not now?

The big Grocers –Safeway and Whole Foods – have done it already. The CEO’s of both companies have creatively used common sense solutions to “fix” what is broken in medical insurance issues.

Whole Foods and Safeway executives have succeeded in their reforms in spite of the government’s interference that prevent these companies from doing more to improve their employees’ medical benefits.  Government regulations prevent them from giving additional financial discounts to people for healthy behavior.   That makes no sense.

While politicians are talking and obfuscating, Whole Foods and Safeway CEOs have been doing. They have already achieved the goals everyone else wants:

–  Affordable coverage for their employees

–  Lower costs or keeping costs flat when others (Medicare included) have costs rising 15-40% a year

–  Patient control and choices about how money is spent

–  Employees satisfied with their medical insurance

–  Employees actively engaging in healthy behavior

–  Employees rewarded financially for achieving health goals.

To fix what is “broken” we do not need the federal government to take over and destroy medical privacy, create new bureaucracies, increase costs, impose new mandates, reduce current rapid access to diagnostic services, or decimate medical innovations for treatment.  All of these inevitably occur under government run healthcare everywhere in the world.

The name you use doesn’t matter: “single-payer” or “public option” or “co-op” or “nationalized” or “socialized” – they are all the same: government controlled.

When the government gets in the middle, it always costs more.  Think hugely inflated prices for toilets when the Pentagon pays. Think high priced hams bought with “Stimulus” money.  The government is buying? Triple or quadruple the price!

Healthcare examples abound. Government-run Medicare has a 40-year track record of costing about 34% more than privately purchased medical services. Government regulations in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts make individual medical insurance premiums the most expensive in the entire country.  The Wall Street Journal reported New Jersey’s 2007 average premium for singles was $5,326 compared to the national average of $2,613.  New York families in 2007 had average premiums of $12,254 versus the national average of $5,799.

Nine states have higher insurance premiums because of the same government rules and regulations that are now being proposed for all 50 states in the Democratic versions of healthcare “reform.”  Republicans’ lower cost alternatives are not allowed to see the light of day.

Government regulations cost people more money, time and time again. Grocers get it.  Why can’t the government bureaucrats “get it?”

Insurance horror stories we keep hearing from the Democratic leadership are due to problems in the individual private insurance market, primarily caused by government interference.  These horror stories do not affect the nine out of ten Americans with medical insurance provided by their employers.  Employer-based group plans don’t get arbitrarily cancelled because one person at the company has a serious illness.

It is the individual medical insurance market that needs to be fixed first.  We can rapidly make individual medical policies tax-deductible and competitive across state lines. That can be done now.  To help more people afford coverage, we do not need to over-regulate or dismantle the entire health delivery system, or add more government intrusion just to fix the “broken.”

We need to get government, private insurance companies, and lawyers out of the middle between patients and their health professionals.

Let the free markets work.  Let people decide how they will spend their money.  We always search for better value when it’s our own money.  Put consumers back in charge of spending their own health care dollars.  They will make wiser decisions than bureaucrats will.

These are the approaches that have been proven to lower costs, increase competition, improve your control over your healthcare choices, encourage healthier behavior, and drive treatment innovation:

–  Reduce federal regulations that artificially increase prices.

–  Give people tax credits for their private individual insurance, similar to tax credits for employer-based medical insurance policies

–  Increase the caps on medical savings accounts so that people have more tax-free money that they own and control how they spend it.

–  Reduce premiums for people who lose weight, stop smoking, exercise regularly, use alcohol in moderation, and don’t use street drugs.

–  Get the 50 different sets of state government regulations out of the way.  Eliminate state mandates that increase premiums, as seen with New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts now.

–  Allow people to purchase private insurance across state lines, and own the policy, similar to car and homeowners policies.

–  Get all third party interference (government and private insurers) out of the physician-patient relationship –

–  Remove government restrictions that prevent physicians from offering sliding scale fees for patients

–  Implement tort reform. Tort reform has resulted in lower malpractice premiums for physicians and reduction in costs of “defensive medicine” in every state it has been passed.   Doctors can pass on savings to patients.

All of these strategies have worked in the past. They are working now in private businesses that implement them.  They will work going forward, IF we get government out of our way.

People pay attention when they have skin in the game.  When it’s your money at stake, you are more careful how you spend it.  Put the American people back in the driver’s seat.  As patients and savvy consumers, let them shop in a competitive national healthcare marketplace, as they do on the Internet today with everything else.

The Constitution does not give the federal government the authority to run healthcare. Capitalism and free markets lower costs, increase competition, create wealth, and grow the economy.  It is the American Way and always has been.  It works.

We need Common Sense.  Healthcare can be “fixed” with American ingenuity, initiative, and free enterprise.  Big Government will kill it.

That would be the purple-shirted members of the SEIU–the Service Employees International Union—who (literally) swung into action outside a town hall meeting in Missouri and became infamous on YouTube and national media.

“Town Hall Protestor Roughed Up by SEIU Members” read one headline. The legal system will sort out what happened to David Gladney, the victim of the attack.

But public opinion will sort out whether SEIU is sending thugs to town halls.

The union “Purps” also turned out in force at President Obama’s town hall in New Hampshire. SEIU brought its people in by chartered buses after getting special tickets from the White House.

And why shouldn’t the president give ‘em freebie tickets? He owes them! After all, the SEIU spent $61-million to help elect him.

The union also set aside $10-million to push Obama’s agenda in its post-election “Change That Works” campaign, and pledged more, including 30% of the union’s resources and hiring over 1,000 workers in 35 states.

Oddly, that level of orchestration goes unremarked by mainstream media, while conservative organizing gets critical coverage.

But liberal members of congress are well aware of the SEIU’s resources and commitment.

Rep. Tim Bishop (D-NY) loudly refused to hold town halls, but instead scheduled a rally at an SEIU union hall. Many, like Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fl), have asked SEIU to be a “sponsor” of their town halls. “Enforcers” might be a better word.

One news account of a Castor’s town hall reported, “Tractor sized bouncers (union thugs) manhandled the overflow crowd, injuring several. . . . Eyewitnesses report SEIU/ACORN members roughing up seniors, pushing little old ladies against a wall and literally tearing a man’s shirt.”

But now the SEIU’s website newly proclaims, “Stop the Violence at Health Care Town Halls.” It features an edited version of the Missouri video to create an impression that SEIU people are victims rather than perpetrators.

Still, union members are now asked to take an online pledge not to be “disruptive or disrespectful” at town halls, and “to allow the opinions of fellow attendees to be heard even if I disagree.”

Other unions have been household words for years; SEIU is quickly becoming one. SEIU led a breakaway from the AFL-CIO in 2005, bringing others like the Teamsters into its rival Change to Win Federation. Who are the people of the SEIU, who call themselves the “Purple Ocean?”

This spring the Associated Press dubbed SEIU the nation’s fastest-growing labor union as it passed the 2.2-million member mark.

The growth has come largely through mergers as SEIU swallowed up other groups. About half its members are in health care—hospital and nursing home workers especially.

Estimates say 17% of American health care workers are now in SEIU. It would like to sign up the other 83%.

SEIU is also building a dominance among public service employees—clerical and janitorial workers in schools, bus drivers, child care providers—and among those who provide services to commercial property—security personnel and janitors in particular.

Its website declares, “56 percent of SEIU members are women, and some 40 percent people of color. SEIU represents more immigrant workers than any other union in the United States.”

Strong-arm tactics are SEIU’s strong suit, even outside town halls. In her book, Culture of Corruption, Michelle Malkin writes, “The SEIU seeks membership growth through aggressive ‘corporate campaigns’ that have a blun t message to employers, “Let us unionize your workforce or we will destroy your reputation.”

Its president, Andy Stern, sums up his leadership philosophy thusly, “We prefer to use the power of persuasion, but if that doesn’t work we use the persuasion of power.”

Stern told the Las Vegas Sun, “We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama–$60.7 million to be exact—and we’re proud of it.”

SEIU aggressively recruits workers away from other unions and has been accused of coveting the financial assets of the unions it acquires. SEIU needs the money because its National Industry Pension Fund is in big trouble.

In April, it announced that the fund lacks the money to pay promised benefits and is in “critical status.”

Its big-spending ways nevertheless have bought SEIU a seat at the table, especially as a major player in President Obama’s push for a health care makeover.

They have a lead role within the HCAN (“Health Care for American Now”) coalition, alongside ACORN, the Center for American Progress, MoveOn.org, Children’s Defense Fund, La Raza, plus several other unions.

They’re going for broke with SEIU’s “Change That Works” campaign. According to its January announcement:

“SEIU members have committed to more than 1,000 members and staff working full-time in the field and dedicated 30% of the union’s resources to the campaign.

Already approximately $10 million has been set aside to build and mobilize public support in key states."

“SEIU has hired or assigned full-time state campaign directors . . . in 35 states."

“SEIU has created a "war-room" at its headquarters in Washington, DC to facilitate the Change That Works program."

“In coalition with other organizations, SEIU will participate in multi-million dollar paid advertising campaigns this month and throughout 2009.” SEIU’s overt orchestration should be remembered when people like Sen. Harry Reid (D, NV), complain about the huge crowds of private citizens at town hall meetings.

“This is not grass roots,” Reid claimed as he held up Astroturf and pronounced the crowds “about as phony as this grass.”

So how phony is it when SEIU has hired over 1,000 people? At least grassroots and Astroturf are both green. We need a new term for the SEIU mob. Perhaps “Riders of the Purple Rage?”

Ernest Istook calls himself a "recovering Congressman" from Oklahoma. He is now a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation and chairs the National Advisory Board for Save Our Secret Ballot, www.SOSballot.org www.SOSballot.org.

Keynote speech at the Ohio Rally for State Sovereignty, August 2009

Let me set down a couple of fervent beliefs that animate everything I do and everything I say.

I believe that God created heaven and earth and every single individual on the planet.  I believe that the God who gave us life gave us liberty and that freedom is our birthright.

I believe that the States created the federal government and not the other way around. And that the power that the States gave to the Federal Government – they can take back.

When we were colonists, and the King and the Parliament needed money from us, and they always seemed to need money, they devised ingenious ways to tax us. One of them was called the Stamp Act.
The Parliament decreed that every piece of paper that the Colonists had in their homes; every book, every document, every deed, every lease, every pamphlet, every poster to be nailed to a tree had to have the King’s stamp on it. You think going to a Post Office is bad?

You had to go to a British Government office and buy a stamp with the King’s picture.

Question. How did the King know that his picture was on every piece of paper in your house?

The Parliament enacted a hateful piece of legislation called the Writs of Assistance Act which let the king’s soldiers write their own search warrants, and bang down any door they chose to look for the stamps or anything else that they were looking for.

It was the last straw.

We fought a revolution. We won the revolution. We wrote the Constitution.

The constitution doesn’t grant power, it keeps the government off our backs.

When they were debating the Constitution in the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, there were two great arguments – one by the Jefferson and Madison crowd and one by the Adams and Hamilton crowd.

Jefferson argued, though he wasn’t physically there in Philly, as he did in the Declaration of Independence that our rights are ours by virtue of our humanity.

That as God is perfectly free, and we are created in his image and likeness, we too are perfectly free. The big government crowd – yes they had them even in those days – argued that you can’t have freedom without government, and that government gives us our rights, and therefore, that government can take them away.

This is not an academic argument. Jefferson and the natural law argument prevailed because the Constitution was written to keep the government from interfering with our natural rights.

And so, your right to think as you wish, to say what you think, to publish what you say, to travel where you want, to worship as you see fit, to keep and bear arms to defend yourself against a tyranny.

And, after the right to life, the greatest and most uniquely American of rights – and I say this in front of the seat of the government – is the right to be left alone.

We wrote a Constitution to ensure that the government would never interfere with these rights.

Think about it – if rights come from the government, then the government, by ordinary legislation, or presidential decree can take them away. But if the rights come from our humanity, then unless we violate someone else’s natural rights, the government cannot take our rights away.

This is not just a democrat, upper case D, or a republican, upper case R, problem. It’s a problem with government today. There’s a republican version of big government just as assaultive to our liberties as the democrat version of big government.

We fought a revolution because British soldiers could knock on our doors and demand that we house them, and demand that we turn over property to them because they could write their own search warrants.

In the Patriot Act, the most hateful piece of legislation since the Alien and Sedition Acts, a republican congress and a republican president authorized federal agents to do the unthinkable – to write their own search warrants.

And the republican administration didn’t even let members of the House of Representatives read the Patriot Act before they voted on it.

Why should the government be able to spy on us? We should be able to spy on them!

When some judge is rationalizing away our liberty, or some congressman is plotting to take away your freedom or your tax dollars, we should know what they do every minute that they do it.

I was speaking to a group of congressman from a neighboring state – I won’t tell you which state it was, but they don’t play football there – and they came up to me and said “this is the first time we have heard that the Patriot Act allows federal agents to write their own search warrants.”

Remember, in the Constitution, we put in the 4th Amendment, the right to be left alone, to make sure that if the government had a target, no matter how guilty the target, no matter how widespread is the belief in the guilt of the target, no matter how dangerous is the target, the government has to go through a neutral judge with a search warrant before it can get to that target.

These members of Congress said, “we didn’t know that the Patriot Act allowed the government to bypass the courts and write any search warrant they wanted.”

Then I asked them a question I knew the answer to already – did you read the Patriot Act before you voted on it? The answer – no. What were you voting on? A summary we received. Let me guess who wrote the summary – some lawyers in the justice department, right? Of course.

Would you hire anybody to run your business that committed you to a violation of the very reason you’re in business if they didn’t even read the document by which they were making that commitment? Of course not.

The camera is the new gun.

There’s nothing that government dislikes more than the light of day, and cameras recording what the government is doing, whether it’s on a street corner, or in there, or in Washington D.C., we have the right to know everything that they do and why they do it, and when they do it, and how they are taking our freedoms.

I have another one of my basic core beliefs. The individual has an immortal soul. Every individual is greater than any government.

Your government is based on fear and force.

You don’t have to take my word on it. The 2nd president on the United States, John Adams, said “Of course the government is based on fear.” And the first president, George Washington, said “Government is not reason, it is force.” I think they knew what they were talking about.

Now fast-forward to modern times. Whenever the government wants something, it scares us. During the civil war, Lincoln tried civilians in this state where no battles occurred, by military tribunal.

After he died the Supreme Court invalidated everything the military tribunals did. During the first world war, the Wilson administration locked up 2000 people called anarchists – same thing as enemy combatants. No trial, no charge, just jail for the duration of the war.

In World War II, FDR locked up 150,000 Japanese Americans, people born in the United States, who got no trial and had no charges, and when the war was over were given $25 and told to go home.

Today we have federal agents. You know I get in arguments with my friends at Fox News, and one of them, I don’t have to tell you who it is, but is truly the most irascible person there.

And he said to me, you know you have a problem with Guantanamo Bay, and you have a problem with the Patriot Act, what will you do if I get sent to Guantanamo Bay, will you visit me? And I say, Bill – no, because they’ll probably keep me there as well.

Government likes to say that it’s taking an oath to uphold the Constitution. In the years that I was on the bench, it seemed that every time government lawyers were in my courtroom, if the government was prosecuting someone who was legitimately guilty or whether it was a mistake, or whether somebody was suing the government because government contractors or government doctors, or government workers made a mistake – the government doesn’t come in to the courtroom to enforce the constitution, it comes into the courtroom to evade and avoid it. That, ladies and gentlemen, must be stopped.

This is a great moment in our history. A crowd of this magnitude on a beautiful day, in the boiling sun, in the most middle-American of great middle-American states…comes together not because the president is a democrat, not because his predecessor was a republican, not because a war is just or unjust, not because the Fed is stealing or printing – you’re here because you believe in human freedom.

It is the essence of our existence that we should be free. But remember this: the government hates freedom. It is an obstacle to every one of their designs.

Whenever they write laws, whenever they take your tax dollars, whenever they regulate your private behavior, whenever they tell you how to spend your money, whenever they tell you what medicines to take, whenever they tell you what food to eat, whenever they tell you with whom you may or must associate, they are taking away your freedom and they love to get away with it.

And they cannot get away with it any longer.

In the long history of the world, very few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its maximum hour of danger. This is that moment and you are that generation! Now is the time to defend our freedoms.

Jefferson was no saint but he was the greatest of our American presidents. He believed that the individual was greater than the state.

He believed that the states were greater than the federal government. And when he wrote that our rights come from our creator, and that our rights are inalienable, he forever wed the notion of natural rights to the American experience and the American experiment. We must be vigilant about every right that the government wants to take away from us.

You’ve heard the president say, present president and his predecessor, “my first job is to keep you safe.” He’s wrong! His first job is to keep us free. It is his only job to keep us free.

Shortly before he died, Jefferson lamented, that in his view of the world it was the natural order of things for government to grow and freedom to be diminished; how ardently he wish that that wouldn’t happen.

And in order to prevent it from happening he had a very simple remedy, “When the people fear the government, that is tyranny. When the government fears the people, that is liberty!”

Andrew P. Napolitano, who was on the bench of the Superior Court of New Jersey between 1987 and 1995, is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel.

His newest book, coming in April, is Dred Scott’s Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America, (Nelson, 2009).

His previous books are A Nation of Sheep, The Constitution in Exile and Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws.
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 12 August 2009 )