Two Republics

America does not have a right to exist. America is simply a collection of ideals bound together by the belief that men have inalienable rights that can neither be taken nor given. However, the thing about inalienable rights is that one must buy into this belief that they can neither be taken nor given. When this belief set is no longer held, man will allow themselves to be bound to those that they are willing to allow to enslave them. Inalienable rights are a foundation. And on that foundation are built further principles into the system of governance defined by our founding fathers. A system of self-governance rather than tyrannical rule is the next precept that follows in American’s philosophy of inalienable rights. The methodology of self-governance builds upon the ideology of inalienable rights by way of allowing citizenry to vote or select representation that maintains that the passage of laws governing the tribes of the land will not inflict harm on what are believed to be ideals that man cannot give or take away. But when these rights are no longer found at the core of the citizenries ideology, or the model of self-governance turns toward tyranny and forces rule upon its citizens without choice, the Republic is not failing it has already fallen.

In what is now considered the latter days of the Roman Republic, the citizens of Italy and the government were in a state of turmoil. The growth of the Republic brought with it great wealth and acquisitions, but it brought a tremendous divide and began creating factions in the political system. The largest of the dividing factions consisted of “old money” families with great fortunes as well as various classes and land owners whose main desire was for the continuation of the Roman State known as the Optimates. The other largest faction consisted of families with political power that began to amass the poor or “the mob” as support. This second faction used social issues to manipulate the lower classes for their bidding. This group, known at the Populares had only political ambition at their disposal, and used the needs and desires of the common man to gain a foothold and political capital.

At the center of the Populares movement were two brothers, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, often referred to as The Gracchi. The Gracchi began social programs and influenced the passage of social regulation that slowly began eating out the heart of the Republic and created a snow ball effect of consequences to the economic and social system. The growth of the Republic required new recruits. But social policy said that the Legion could not take recruits that were landless. And land owners were not entering the military because the economic system was forcing small farms into failure. Rich land owners would then buy up these farms and continue to prosper. While those that did not own land were not allowed to be recruited by the Legion to have a chance to turn their life around and make something out of themselves. Furthermore, these landless individuals were no longer hired by landowners because the landowners could import slaves at a cheaper rate. The result was Romans across the middle and lower classes out of work. Because of the lack of small farms food supplies began to run short. The solution to these problems became more government involvement, more social programs, and attempts at greater government power.

The Gracchi are credited with the foundations of socialism and populism. Their time is considered the period of the fall of the Roman Republic and the institution of the Caesars and the Roman Empire. The only reason that history exists is that one learns from it. The situation in the Roman Republic is as different as it is similar to the Republic of the United States of America. But the time line is intriguing. America has not always been at the forefront as a world leader. In fact for the majority of her lineage she has been relatively shut off from most world events, or arguably at least events outside of her hemisphere. It was really not until we as a people came out of World War II victorious, our country unscathed and our factories and people ready to work and help rebuild Europe that we emerged as a first world power. And in the last 60 years we have slowly forgotten the lessons of history. We have built up our social programs, we have awarded the lazy, we have punished diligence and hard work, we punish prosperity, and we even punish our citizens for dying. We redistribute because life is not fair. We create programs to create work to provide citizens benefits and when those programs do not create jobs we simply enforce benefits through taxation without choice.

When the people allow their government to forget the social contract between them, the system is broken. When the citizens speak out against their government and the government ignores the will of the people and responds in tyranny that, “We’re going through the gate, if the gate is closed, we’ll go over it, if it’s too high, we’ll pole vault over it, and if it’s even higher, we’ll parachute in,” the system is not broken, the Republic has fallen. The next six months are potentially some of the most important in our nation’s history. It is time we learn from past, retake our country, and rebuild the Republic.

-nick

Originally published at The Daily Caller.

Legitimizing the U.N. & Iran…Again

I was in the gym this evening, watching a bit of news about the Iranian president’s speech earlier today, and what should come up on the station I was watching? That America has admitted to the size of its nuclear stockpile.

I was rather torn with my initial reaction- the national security hawk in me was upset at this potentially (though not likely) harmful release of information. However, the libertarian side of my brain was glad that the American people would have just that much more knowledge about what the government has for weaponry.

Unfortunately, I then got a shock: apparently, it was done to pressure Iran regarding its own nuclear ambitions. According to the Associated Press:

The United States has 5,113 nuclear warheads in its stockpile and “several thousand” more retired warheads awaiting the junkpile, the Pentagon said Monday in an unprecedented accounting of a secretive arsenal born in the Cold War and now shrinking rapidly.

The Obama administration disclosed the size of its atomic stockpile going back to 1962 as part of a campaign to get other nuclear nations to be more forthcoming, and to improve its bargaining position against the prospect of a nuclear Iran.

I understand the basic idea- show a willingness to be reasonable, and perhaps other countries will back us. However, given that the United Nations just gave Iran a position on its Commission on the Status of Women, I would say this shows the very severe lack of seriousness on the part of the U.N. leadership regarding the rights of women; holding Iran accountable for anything; and for the future prospects of stopping Iran’s nuclear program. It appears the Obama administration doesn’t understand this, and thus how useless its own gestures of outreach are.

Get Rid of Napolitano

As is well-known by now, last week there was a suicide bomber attack on a plane from Amsterdam to Detroit. The attack, fortunately, failed, as the explosive device failed to go off. The alleged terrorist is suspected to be connected to at least one terrorist organization. He claimed, initially at least, to be connected to Al Qaeda.

This, obviously, is both good news and bad. First, it’s good in that nobody died, a terrorist was captured and now we know where to concentrate more efforts on the international scale. The bad news is that some people are just plain stupid, including Think Progress’ Matthew Yglesias, who wrote the other day that, “Ultimately, it does no favors to anyone to blow this sort of thing out of proportion. The United States could not, of course, be ?devastated? by anything resembling this scheme. We ought to be clear on that fact. We want to send the message around the world that this sort of vile attempt to slaughter innocent people is not, at the end of the day, anything resembling a serious challenge to American power. It?s attempted murder, it?s wrong, we should try to stop it, but it?s really not much more than that.”

Even worse, however, is the reaction from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. “The system worked,” according to Napolitano. Given that it took a failed attempt plus civilian passengers to subdue the attempted terrorist, I’d say the system failed. Plus, the guy was on a watch list, which is particularly poignant given his father reported him as a potential threat two years ago. (See the video of Napolitano’s inane comments here.)

To quote Jonah Goldberg from The Corner yesterday, “If the White House wants to assure people that it takes the war on terror seriously (a term Robert Gibbs used this morning by the way), they could start by firing this patenly unqualified hack.” Personally, I think “man-caused disasters” are a worse threat than conservatives, Secretary Napolitano. You had better figure that out soon, or your job will be gone. Unfortunately, this will probably not happen until after Americans have died as a result of your incompetence. Yes, as they said on the Real Clear Politics blog, it’s your job to reassure the American public as part of an overall security standpoint. However- and I’ll finish with a quote from the RCP blog- “…she should be smart enough to find a way of doing that without treating the American people like a bunch of morons and dupes.”

This was originally posted at THE LOBBYIST.

Update: According to The Washington Monthly blog, President Obama has been paying close attention to the Al Qaeda threat from Yemen. Kudos to President Obama for doing so.

Update II: The Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell points out the continued failure by the Obama administration to take the proper steps to protect this country from terrorists, and offers three steps going forward.

Update III: A friend pointed out on Facebook that I misspelled Secretary Napolitano’s name- it is corrected.

Update IIII (last one, I hope): Two links from where I posted this at Race42012 showing Secretary Napolitano backtracking on her statements about the system working well. Too little, too late, I think.

TODAY Video: Napolitano: Prevention system ?failed miserably?
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/34608370#34608370

Security System Failed, Napolitano Acknowledges
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/us/29terror.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

Too Little, Too Late

Nothing like admitting potential atrocities a decade after the fact.

Apparently Israel spent about a dozen years harvesting organs without familial permission. The information was released after a controversy last summer related to accusations in a Swedish newspaper that Israel was “abducting Palestinians in order to steal their organs.”

Clearly, an investigation of Israeli medical and military practices is warranted. Given the United States’ support of Israel for the last 60 years, we should be the first to demand an investigation, both to hold our allies as accountable as we should and would our enemies and to determine whether our alliance with Israel should continue in the same way it has for so long.

Can I Have Paul Krugman’s Nobel Prize?

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman was on George Stephanopoulos’ show this past week doing a round table.? He made a lot of points about how politicos are blowing the deficit out of proportion.? And made the comment that other countries and the U.S. had come out of situations like this in the past.

For instance:

Now, the market has been wrong. But, then if you do the arithmetic, these numbers look huge. The American economy is huge. The debt burden, even after five years, is going to be well below as a share of GDP well below levels that lots of industrial countries have reached in the past, including ourselves after World War II, when we were able to handle that just fine.

The problem with this comparison is that after World War II the United States was one of the last industrialized, first-world nations that had not had its infrastructure bombed to hell.? We were one of the only major manufacturing countries left standing on the face of the planet.? Exports were massive, and our economy boomed.? That won’t happen this go around in a global economy all fighting for a piece of the pie after the world wide recession.

So I feel like it is only appropriate that Krugman share his Nobel Prize with me since he had not recognized this point.

I would like to thank the committee…

-nick