RT @LibertyLockPod: Conservatives are gonna advocate for red flag laws on Trans people
The state will then use those laws to only go after… Da Time: 17 hours ago
@FilmLadd Given that both people and algorithms written before Musk took over are still present I don't find that weird at all Da Time: 17 hours ago
As I was scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed I came across the following fragment of a quote from Thomas Jefferson, “An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.” It appeared to me that Jefferson accurately predicted a couple hundred years into the future because his quote almost perfectly sunned up conditions existing here in the United States now. The only discrepancy in the quote is the fact that the Biden regime is unelected, thanks to the theft of the 2016 presidential election from Trump.
Despotism is one of those words I’ve encountered over and over again and was 99 percent sure I knew what it meant. I looked it up to be sure. Here is a definition of despotism from Google. It corresponds with my understanding of the term.
A country or political system where the ruler holds absolute power. The exercise of absolute power, especially in a cruel an oppressive way.
An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.
The Constitution properly distributed government power between three federal branches, with proper checks and balances. Also government power was distributed between the states and the federal government.
Progressives began transforming the United States from a constitutional republic into a full-fledged despotism over a hundred years ago by concentrating the majority of all government power into an enormously overblown executive branch of the federal government. The United States is now completely a despotism.
In his farewell address George Washington also warned that the concentration of power would lead to despotism.
The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.
Every time I post quotes by Thomas Jefferson on social media, something I do quite often because he has always been the founding father I most closely identify with, my Progressive friends trot out their customary talking points with maximum smugness. I’m absolutely sure you know which ones I’m talking about. The ones condemning Thomas Jefferson for owning slaves, which he inherited and tried desperately to free but could not because of Virginia law. and being a white supremacist. Jefferson very hard to free all slaves on several occasions but failed. He was no white supremacist either. Neither charges are valid and are discussed in these two books: Jefferson Lies and The Real Thomas Jefferson. Both are extremely well documented and chock full of quotes.
As Independence Day rolls around every year liberal news agencies bash Thomas Jefferson for hypocrisy because they claim he only included white people when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, that he did not touch on slavery at all. They are dead wrong on this. The original and complete text of Declaration of Independence, as originally written by Thomas Jefferson, is proof of hollowness if these charges.
The truth of the matter is that the original complete text of the Declaration of Independence is proof that Thomas Jefferson was actually a failed abolitionist. When he wrote the Declaration of Independence he included a clause condemning the King of England for England’s role in slavery. That criticism of slavery in our most seminal document would have ended slavery in the this newborn nation. The clause was eliminated by the members of the Continental Congress who were from colonies that supported slavery. Here is the deleted clause.
He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
Joe Biden’s first two weeks in office have so far proved to be as bad as I feared. He has issued a staggering number of executive orders, all of them a smorgasbord of far left edicts from on high, all of which destroy liberty, the economy, and jobs. So far the Democrats-Socialists who control congress have not passed a single bit of legislation but when they finally do, everything they pass will be as odious as all of Biden’s executive orders.
Because both Houses of Congress and the presidency are all occupied by the most radical leftists imaginable all appears to be very bleak for every single person living the United States. Thankfully a remedy exists under our Constitution whereby the individual states can put a halt to all unconstitutional acts by the federal government, whether they be laws passed by congress, executive orders, or Supreme Court decisions. This remedy is called Nullification and it is discussed in great detail in the Draft of Kentucky Resolutions by Thomas Jefferson. The Kentucky Resolutions were written by Jefferson in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were signed into law by John Adams. The final version passed by Kentucky were very much watered by the Kentucky legislature, therefore I believe do not truly represent the views of Jefferson.
In this quote we see Thomas Jefferson’s justification for nullification:
1. _Resolved_, That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.
In this next quote Thomas Jefferson discusses one of the most important constitutional principles, one that was so important it was enshrined in the Tenth Amendment. Every single one of Joe Biden’s executive orders and every single law that the Democrat controlled Congress will pass violate the United States Constitution.
3. _Resolved_, That it is true as a general principle, and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the Constitution, that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people;” and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, and were reserved to the States or the people
Thomas Jefferson lays out his doctrine of Nullification in this next quote. As you can see the states can nullify federal actions on their own without waiting for the Supreme Court.
8. …that in cases of an abuse of the delegated powers, the members of the General Government, being chosen by the people, a change by the people would be the constitutional remedy; but, where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy: that every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact, (casus non foederis,) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits: that without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them:
RESOLVED, That the General Assembly of Virginia, doth unequivocably express a firm resolution to maintain and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of this State, against every aggression either foreign or domestic, and that they will support the government of the United States in all measures warranted by the former.
That this assembly most solemnly declares a warm attachment to the Union of the States, to maintain which it pledges all its powers; and that for this end, it is their duty to watch over and oppose every infraction of those principles which constitute the only basis of that Union, because a faithful observance of them, can alone secure it’s existence and the public happiness.
That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.
Nullification is not discussed in the Constitution but it does not have to be for states to have that power. If you don not agree check out the Tenth Amendment. It is not specifically denied to the Sates therefore the states have that power.
George Washington statue in Chicago’s Washington Park
By John Ruberry
Early Friday morning before sunrise Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s sneaky order to remove Chicago’s two Christopher Columbus statues, one just south of downtown at Grant Park and the other in Arrigo Park in the Little Italy neighborhood, was carried out.
A week earlier a riot, where 49 police officers were injured with 18 of them being hospitalized, broke out at the Grant Park Columbus statue, fireworks and frozen bottles of water were thrown at the cops by the rioters. Amazingly, the media, as far as I can tell, didn’t call this melee a “mostly peaceful protest.” So there is a bit of good news in this story.
Although removal of the statues was called “temporary” by Lightfoot mark my words: If these bronze monuments ever escape from the Raiders of the Lost Ark-type warehouse where they are hidden, they’ll end up indoors in a museum behind bullet-proof glass and proximity alarms.
At my own blog, Marathon Pundit, I called it a victory of the rioters’ veto. The anarchists won–law, order, and tradition were defeated.
Even before the riots and the overreaching COVID-19 lockdown, Chicago and Illinois were losing population. The trickle will become a flood.
Mayor Lightweight believes she has satiated the leftist beast–her base is the far-left by the way. But the regular protests outside her home by that base of hers should serve as a warning. Now that the Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and other leftists have learned that riots bring results, they’ll push for more. Power gained, or I should stay seized, is not casually abandoned by usurpers.
City parks may be next.
This is not just a Chicago story. I’m only singling out America’s third-largest city because of my familiarity with it. They same battles will be coming to your woke city and town too.
There are over 600 parks within the Chicago Park District. One of them is named for Columbus. I’d be surprised if a year from now the great explorer’s name will be on it. There’s a Jackson Park on the South Side, where the Obama Presidential Library will be built. That park is named for Andrew Jackson, a slaveholder who forced Native Americans out of the southeast on the Trail of Tears. Chicago doesn’t have an Obama Park. It’s pretty easy to predict what Jackson Park’s new name will be.
About a mile away from Jackson Park is Washington Park, of course our first president. Up until a few months ago I would have told you that changing the name of this park was an absurd notion. In this era of wokeness, it’s not. On the edge of the park is a statue of General Washington on horseback, which was recently vandalized. Washington Park offers the leftists a two-for-one bargain. A park to be renamed and a statue to topple.
Last week Douglas Park, named for Abraham Lincoln’s Democratic rival Stephen A. Douglas, was renamed Douglass Park, in honor of civil rights pioneer Frederick Douglass. The legacy of “the Little Giant” is complicated, through his wife he was a slaveowner and his Kansas-Nebraska Act initiated the carnage of Bleeding Kansas, but as a US Senator he laid the foundation that transformed his adopted hometown of Chicago into the major city it is now. Douglas was a fervent supporter of the Union and Lincoln after the Civil War broke out, which is forgotten because he died in the summer of 1861. Last month I wrote that the Lincoln and Douglas statues on the sites of their famous 1858 debates could be endangered. So far they are safe. But Michael Madigan, the longtime state House speaker and state Democratic chairman, though a statement (Boss Madigan rarely communicates directly with the media), has called for the removal of the Douglas statue on the state capitol grounds.
Douglas is buried in a tomb on the grounds of his former Chicago estate on the South Side. No one, so far, is calling for him to be exhumed but three state legislators want to take down the statue of him, which rests on a 30-foot high obelisk.
Today, I join with my colleagues @RepTarver & @LamontJRobinson to implore @GovPritzker to remove the Stephen Douglas statue from the Neighborhood that I live in & rep. Douglas looked down on black people during his life. We shouldn’t allow it in his death. pic.twitter.com/qDu7n1b5le
Back to the parks. Chicago has two parks honoring Thomas Jefferson, and a Battle of Fort Dearborn Park. That last one refers to what was called the Fort Dearborn Massacre when I was a kid. The battle was between soldiers and Chicago settlers with the Potawatomi.
Will those park names vanish?
When the leftists win the park wars they’ll move on to street names. A tougher fight, yes, as businesses and even run-of-the-mill residents balk at such name changes. But those conflicts are coming to Chicago and many other cities and towns.
Unless ordinary folks stand up, that is. A few have already did so in Chicago Saturday’s Back the Blue march.
That’s a start.
John Ruberry regularly blogs just north of Chicago at Marathon Pundit.
Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog 