It has been argued by many progressives that the Declaration of Independence has absolutely no legal value. That is true. All legal power and authority for the government of the United States flows from the Constitution. However, The Declaration of Independence very eloquently conveys the moral and philosophical foundation at the very core of the founding of the United States.
Thomas Jefferson did not write a truly original document when he wrote the Declaration. He chose to base that document mainly on the writings of John Locke. That was because Locke based his most influential works, Two Treatises of Government, primarily on Natural Law.
As you can see from the opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, Natural Law is the very foundation of the most famous breakup letter ever written.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands 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.
This next quote states quite clearly that Natural Rights are the very foundation of the Declaration of Independence.
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
This next quote is the most important for two reasons. First, because Jefferson states that for governments to be legitimate, they must derive their powers solely from the consent from the governed. Second, that the people have the right to tear down a government that is harmful to the natural rights of the people.
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 of 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.
This last quote warns us that we must have very valid reasons before we throw off the yoke of an oppressive government.
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.
Blogger with a Soviet-made Volga sedan in Sece, Latvia. Behind the car is a newly-built tractor barn.
By John Ruberry
Late last month I traveled to Latvia, where Mrs. Marathon Pundit was born and raised, for the first time in 25 years. I had also visited with her in 1994.
I expected a different Latvia, and indeed that was the case.
First, a little history. A series of nations ruled Latvia, the last being czarist Russia, until 1918. The Bolsheviks recognized Latvian independence in 1920.
But along with neighboring Estonia and Lithuania, while most of the world was focused on Nazi Germany’s aggression in western Europe, Latvia was forcibly annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. The Nazis attacked the USSR a year later, but the Soviets recaptured the Baltic States later in the war.
Three months before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Evil Empire recognized the independence of the Baltic States.
When Latvia regained its independence, the population as just 52 percent Latvian. Russians, many of them brought to Latvia to replace Latvians deported to Siberia in the 1940s, made up about a third of the population in the last days of the Latvian SSR. Many of them quickly left after independence, but Russians still make about one-quarter of the population of Latvia. Riga, Latvia’s capital and largest city, has a Russian population of about 35 percent. Russians are a clear majority in Daugavpils, Latvia’s second city.
The Latvia I saw in the 1990s was poor, my guess is, without the abject poverty, economically speaking it was on the level of Mexico.
But in 2004, the Baltic States joined the European Union, also that year they became members of NATO.
Since then, it’s been full steam ahead for Latvia, notwithstanding the 2008-09 recession.
What I saw in Latvia in June was a prosperous European nation. Gone are the gray–literally, they were gray–retail stores. They have been replaced by colorful and brightly lit retail outlets. Many of these stores, as well as hotels, utilize English-language names. Instruction in English began in Latvian schools after independence was achieved. All Latvians under 35 speak pretty good English.
I’m a runner, and I was one of the few when I hit the roads for a workout. Now there are many running, or if you prefer, cycling trails.
During my first visits I saw many Russian-made cars on the Latvian streets and highways. My wife and I traveled hundreds of miles during my nine days there–she will be in Latvia for another week—and I saw just two Russian-made cars, both Ladas. I’m pictured with an old Volga above. That make was discontinued in 2010. Volkswagen, Audi, and BMW are the most popular cars in Latvia.
Mrs. Marathon Pundit and I spent a lot of time in rural communities. She grew up on a collective farm in Sece, which is pretty much at the center of Latvia. They grew an assortment of crops, mostly potatoes, beets, and cucumbers, and while driving thru Latvia in the 1990s, the look of the land betrayed that odd lot cultivation. While Latvia doesn’t look like Iowa–there are few cornfields and about half of Latvia is forested–it’s becoming a nation of mega-farms. Wheat, canola, oats, are the major crops. And potato growing is hanging on.
My wife attended her high school reunion in Sece, she was one of three in attendance from her graduating class of seventeen. One our hosts was another, and the third, almost certainly the wealthiest man in Sece, has been buying, one by one, parcels of land that were part of those old collective farms that were divided up after independence, in Sece, from people to old to tend to the soil, or who have no interest to do so.
The prosperous farmer is the owner of that Volga in the photograph.
The graduating class sizes of my wife’s old school is now roughly 10 students per year. Rural Latvia, just like rural America, is shrinking.
Only rubble remains of the farmhouse where my wife grew up. Thousands of Latvians can attest to the same situation.
Scattered throughout Latvia are the ugly white-brick buildings, poorly built, that are long-abandoned. “That used to the community creamery in Sece,” Mrs. Marathon Pundit said to me. “That used to be the tractor motor pool, the tractors parked next to them haven’t moved in years.” She could have said the same to me every dozen miles or so when we drove past similar structures. Nearly every one of these collective farm buildings have been long abandoned. They are miniature Pompeiis that were never buried, sad monuments to the failure of communism, an economic and political system that never should have been implemented. Sadly, after over a century of proven failure, there are still people falling for Marxist nonsense.
In the cities and the small towns, khrushchevka apartment buildings, known in the West as “commieblock” structures, are still omnipresent. Most of them utilize those same unpleasant white bricks.
And in the cities, especially Riga, you’ll find many abandoned buildings that were Soviet-era factories.
Yes, I know, we have abandoned buildings in our American cities. But Riga has many new buildings–beautiful ones. I’m particularly fond of the National Library of Latvia.
Yes, but what about Donald Trump?
Okay, that was an abrupt transition, but most Latvians don’t like him. With the war in Ukraine showing no sign of ending, and when I was in Latvia when the apparent Wagner Group attempted coup occurred, his name, and that of Vladimir Putin, was brought up many times.
Oh, Joe Biden is viewed in Lativa as an ineffective old man.
But wait, what about Trump?
To a person, Latvians are pissed off about Trump’s compliments of Putin. For instance, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, he called Putin’s move “genius” and “savvy.” I explained that Trump is running to regain the White House, and the former president, dating back to his career as a real estate mogul, is the consummate negotiator, Trump, in my opinion, could be simply playing mind games with Putin. He used a similar strategy with Kim Jong Un. Trump’s flattery is analogous, I tried to reason, to entering a store and being complimented on the shirt I am wearing by a flirtatious saleswoman. Suddenly, my guard is dropped. True, Putin is likely made of tougher stuff than I am. I think.
Only the Latvians I spoke to weren’t buying my explanation. Don’t forget, Russia borders Latvia on the east, and Putin’s puppet state of Belarus is on Latvia’s southeast. In spite of their nation’s membership in NATO, it’s understandable that Latvians are quite nervous about Russia. Dual invasions from Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave and from Belarus into Lithuania could quickly isolate all three Baltic nations.
Latvia faces challenges, a declining population is the biggest one. While life is better now in Latvia, it’s even better in Scandinavia and Germany. European Union membership presents a dilemma for Latvia.
I occasionally scroll down on my browsers news feed. I probably shouldn’t, since almost all the news “curated” for me is sensational click-bait headlines with weak, ad-packed articles. Despite this, I mistakenly scrolled down this morning to find this headline:
For those who (somehow) don’t know, The Witcher is a series of stories by Andrzej Sapkowski written in Poland in the 1990s that was later adapted into a very successful computer game series, and after that into a moderately successful (but now quickly declining) Netflix TV series. The books started being translated into English in 2007, around the same time that a Polish video game producer, CD Projekt Red, made the first of three video games.
The video games and books were wildly popular. The main character, Geralt of Rivia, is a witcher, a human mutated by different poisons and gene-altering drugs, to become an inhumanly deadly warrior, but with no emotions and a desire to stay neutral in most conflicts. Witchers were created to fight monsters that entered the world due to an event called the Conjunction of the Spheres, which is sort of like the Multiverse. The world of the Witcher features a variety of monsters, magic and warring kingdoms, all the things you would expect in a medieval fantasy world.
The Witcher is very different from other fantasy though. As he adventures in the world, Geralt discovers that many monsters are actually sentient and simply trying to live, while humans use the fact they are a monster to place bounties on their heads in order to steal their land and possessions. In many of his quests, Geralt sides with these beings, and when humans point out that he was created to fight monsters, Geralt asks who the real monsters are. This is captured in the video games, where you get to make choices about what quests to take and how to complete them. You can side with the humans, or side with the monsters, or choose a mix, and your ultimate outcome is based on your choices. In many cases, these outcomes are radically different. There is no “right” side…you can find fault in each faction, and even Geralt’s desire to stay neutral can become a fault all on its own.
The other big difference between The Witcher and other fantasy is that it is very adult. Geralt’s mutations render him sterile, so he sleeps around a lot. He has a competing love interest with two different sorceresses (Yennefer and Triss) in the books and the game, and the video games let you sleep with a variety of female characters. The books have plenty of gory fights, and the games don’t shy away from gore or nudity.
With a big following, intriguing characters, and different fantasy world, I was super excited when Henry Cavill was announced to star in the Netflix series. Cavill actually read the books and played the games. The dude is built like The Witcher, and in the first two seasons, he perfectly captured Geralt’s character. I immediately noticed that the writing was…lackluster. We weren’t getting the “choices” themes, we had a weird back story on Yennefer that wasn’t in the books and didn’t add much to the story, and the other supporting characters were twisted a bit out of context.
Which brings me to Jaskier, which is the Polish name for the character Julian Alfred Pankratz, who goes by the stage name Dandelion. In the books he is a sharp contrast to Geralt’s dower and moody behavior, often challenging the notion that Geralt can remain neutral in the middle of the conflict between the various nations. In the video games, he’s a skilled poet, avid business man and notorious womanizer, which gets him in trouble that occasionally requires Geralt to bail him out.
No where, ever, is it implied he is gay or bisexual. You might think that because he is a poet and a snappy dresser, but the books and games don’t ever imply it.
The Netflix series used him first as the butt of a lot of jokes. While he had some good moments (the Toss a Coin to your Witcher song being the best), he is too often a dumb, scared fop of a character. Then, since he’s a poet, and apparently its OK to paint a classist brush across all artistic people, the producer decides to explore his sexuality. Never mind that they are fighting the lore while doing this, that Henry Cavill quit over disagreements about the what the writers and producers were doing to the series, and attempts to add a prequel (The Witcher: Blood Origins) failed miserably. Nope, let’s make a bisexual character, that’ll make our series more popular!!
Funny enough, the world of the Witcher actually HAS a few homosexual and otherwise LGBTQ characters in it. Cirilla, one of the main characters in the book series, at one point has a homosexual tryst with the female leader of the Rats, a group of brigands that she joins after fleeing from the school of magic. Various factions, such as the all-female dryads and some sects of elves, are heavily implied to be homosexual. Most of the more powerful sorceresses have female lovers. The Dopplers, a race of shape-shifting creatures, are portrayed as enjoying the ability to explore both their masculine and feminine sides.
There is PLENTY of existing homosexual and erotic content in the novels and video games that a producer could bring into the Netflix series, and I doubt it would cause issues. Instead, they chose to dumb down an interesting character and shoe-horn him into a bisexual role he was never meant or written for, and to the surprise of nobody, caused serious angst.
Look, if you want gay characters, go write them in your novels. Do the proper character development and make them interesting. Not surprisingly, you might find that if you follow good writing practices and make your transgender warrior an interesting character that has to overcome issues, has flaws, and follows a story arc, people might actually want to read your writing, and if you want an example, look at Japanese anime. The laziness that modern producers have in simply taking good, existing characters and placing them on the LGBTQ spectrum exhausts audiences and reveals that these producers and writers have no real talent.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.
It is safe to say that the Democrats were emboldened by the successful theft of the 2020 presidential election. They were further emboldened by the utter lack of any meaningful response from the Republican Party. That has not stopped them from coming up with more and more elaborate plans to make absolutely sure Republicans will never win another Presidential election.
The Biden Regime’s latest attempt is rather clever and elaborate. Unfortunately it would be more successful than anything Acme ever produced.
Through this executive order, the president is abusing the power of his office and using taxpayer-funded resources to transform federal government agencies into get-out-the-vote machines for the left.
Like all other attempts by the Democrats, this one is in direct of the Constitution.
When it comes to elections, the U.S. Constitution is clear: Determining their time, place, and manner falls squarely upon the shoulders of the state legislatures with limited oversight from Congress. Nowhere is the president granted the power to regulate elections.
The effects of this Executive Order will be far reaching.
The bad news is this executive order brings the threat of federal election interference to every state’s doorstep. And with the countdown to 2024 well underway, time is running out to stop Team Biden’s scheme. The good news is Congress and the states can stop the threat if they work together and work quickly.
This Executive Order will deputize every single far left community activist group, making them voter registration power houses.
In one of his first acts after taking office, Biden signed Executive Order 14019, titled “Promoting Access to Voting.” His order commanded every federal agency to use taxpayer-funded resources to engage in voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts. These are overtly partisan activities reserved for political parties, not government.
Through food stamps, public housing, Medicaid, and other welfare programs, federal agencies have the resources and ability to target millions of potential voters across every state in the country — potential voters whose information is required to enroll in these programs and who are statistically more likely to vote Democrat.
The order went even further by requiring agencies to allow third-party groups, hand-selected by the White House, to engage in voter registration activities on federal agency premises.
Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog 