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REQUIEM

Below are the two final essays to be posted on Allegiance and Duty Betrayed. The first one is written by a friend -- screen name 'Euro-American Scum' -- who, over the past four years, has been the most faithful essayist here. He has written about everything from his pilgrimage to Normandy in 2004 to take part in the 60th–year commemoration of the invasion, to his memories of his tour in Vietnam. His dedication to America’s founding principles ... and those who have sacrificed to preserve them over the past 200+ years ... is unequaled. Thank you, E-A-S. It has been a privilege to include your writing here, and it is a privilege to call you my friend.

The second essay is my own farewell. And with it I thank all of the many regular visitors, and those who may have only dropped in occasionally, for coming here. I hope you learned something. I hope a seed or two was planted. But, even if not, I thank you for stopping by ... 25 March, 2010

5/26/2006

The Illegal Immigration Nightmare and the Modern American Minutemen



George Bush, from a campaign speech in Miami, August 2000:

'We are now one of the largest Spanish-speaking nations in the world. We're a major source of Latin music, journalism and culture. Just go to Miami, or San Antonio, Los Angeles, Chicago or West New York, New Jersey ... and close your eyes and listen. You could just as easily be in Santo Domingo or Santiago, or San Miguel de Allende. For years our nation has debated this change -- some have praised it and others have resented it. By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America.'


Several years ago, when we found ourselves in the throes of the obscenity known as the second term of the Clinton administration, I found myself obsessing with the atrocities being perpetrated on the sovereignty of our republic and the safety of its citizens … obsessing to the point at which my concern interfered with my own everyday responsibilities and, sometimes, with my ability to obtain a good night’s sleep.


It was then that I stepped back and took stock, realizing just how little power to institute change we individual Americans have these days, as a result of the unprecedented power of the mass media (despite the dent in their omnipotence that the internet has provided), technological progress, laws that have been passed (‘Campaign Finance Reform’ chief among them) whose major focus is to silence the voice of the individual in the political process, the incredible power of special interest groups, and the general unconstitutional over-reaching power that the state now has in all of our lives and liberties.


It was then that I also recalled, and reflected upon, the words of the serenity prayer:


God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.


Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it;


Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next.


... and then decided to attempt to re-shift my focus from frustration and anger with those in power who are virtually ‘beyond arm’s length’ from me, and, instead, speak and work, for the most part, within my own circle of family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers … and, where possible, beyond that, through the power of the written word.


As a result, I have spent the past approximately eight years sleeping better and knowing a renewed peace of mind.


Until now.


In some very disturbing ways, the state of our republic is even worse off than it was back in the late nineties. Back then, despite the overt anti-liberty, anti-sovereignty crimes and treasons committed or condoned by so many in power in Washington, there was always a major group of republican/independent leaders and lawmakers who were decrying the duplicity and decay. They were voicing outrage and concern, and seeking the eventual power to administer an antidote to negate the toxic effects of the Clinton administration’s crimes. Whether consciously or not, we conservatives clung to the hope that they would someday … and sooner rather than later … be successful.


In 2000 the clouds appeared to disperse, and the sun shone on our republic once again.


Fast forward six years and we conservatives are once again outraged by the behaviors of our leadership in Washington. Yet this time (at least in name only) that leadership is our own. So to whom, now, do we turn for the hope that springs from knowing that there are large numbers of people of like mind and purpose in our national government who are just as outraged as we?


Our southern border is being left open and vulnerable; undocumented foreigners are streaming into our country as a result. And our leadership in Washington remains relatively oblivious. Rather than look the evil in the eye, they are consumed with posturing, preening, preparing for the next election, spending what they don’t have, exhorting us to dig deeper into our pockets for the ‘greater good’, and daily authoring and promoting their latest innovative blueprints for cradle-to-grave socialism.


One senate Republican aide, gutsy enough to call a spade a spade, recently observed that ‘there is a paralyzing fear of the illegal-immigrant lobby’ in Washington. It matters not that the large majority of American citizens believes that illegal immigrants should not be offered any kind of amnesty, and that an even larger majority wants to erect a security fence along our southern border. Representative government appears to have given way to rule by special interest and the amassing of political power.


Passions run high when a perception of deep betrayal, injustice, and the instinct to survive are a part of the mix. And I don’t believe any informed conservative can cite a time in his life when all three were more a part of his daily thoughts and fears than they are now.


It would appear that those who still possess sufficient insight to comprehend that we are under an unprecedented attack by an malevolent invading army, and who exhibit sufficient courage to declare that those in ‘leadership’ positions in Washington who are doing nothing about it are betraying this republic, find themselves in a shrinking and ill-treated minority that is consistently smeared, called radical, alarmist, hostile to Latinos, and a myriad of other undeserved labels.


Prudence and tolerance, at all costs, is not called for in the current political climate. Courage is.


We patriots are not calling for a revolution. We are begging our leadership to lead, so as to avoid one. Criminals are streaming across our border. Eleven million of them are living among us and four thousand more are joining them each day … arrogantly demanding (and receiving) rights without responsibilities, staking out illegitimate claims to our homeland, looking at two-plus centuries of success and prosperity, built on the blood and sweat of those who came here with a respect for our laws and a willingness to shed their blood, and work from dawn to dusk … and the invaders are scheming to steal those hard-won successes and rewards, and to bring this republic to her knees in the process.


It’s parasitic. It’s wicked. It’s unjust.


We must exort our ‘leaders’ to stop the interminable, tread-water debates about how to deal with those illegal immigrants who have broken the law and are working in the U.S., and obtaining education, health care, court costs, legal representation, etc. at no cost, while the American taxpayer must pay obscenely burdensome taxes to obtain the same for his family. That criminal behavior and resultant inequity must be identified, acknowledged and corrected. But we face a much more pressing problem that needs to be solved now. And every day that you persist in political posturing simply serves to render the problem even more deadly. We must stop the flow of illegal immigrants. We must close our southern border.


Although unfair, and continually sapping our national fiscal strength, it’s not the illegals’ effect on our economy that is killing us. Dollars and cents are never the bottom line in a free society. Liberty and sovereignty are. And both precious entities are growing ever more precarious in America 2006.


If a deadly toxin is seeping into your house, in higher concentrations each day, do you sit in your livingroom debating among family members how you should attempt to neutralize its toxicity so as to avoid eventual death for you all? And do you quibble incessantly over who should have the power to make such decisions?


Or do you first locate, and seal up, the source of the leak?


I used to believe that the fact that our leadership in Washington would turn a blind eye to such a monumental threat to our liberty and sovereignty as the malignancy known as illegal immigration was the result of either incompetence or naiveté.


What has me (and I suspect many of you, occasionally or regularly) once again losing sleep over the state of our republic is the hideous realization that incompetence and naiveté no longer provide a rational explanation for our leadership’s inaction … even enabling … of the border travesty.


It appears that the allegiance of much of American leadership at the highest levels rests in something other than the sovereignty of our republic and the safety of her people. Whether that alternative allegiance lies in a belief that the importance of illegals to the (mirage) robust American economy supersedes any threat to our sovereignty that their criminality poses …. or a belief that a world without borders is preferable to one in which each nation’s sovereignty is sacrosanct … is unclear.


But what is becoming abundantly clear is that America’s sovereignty is now under relentless attack from both within and without her borders. Thanks to politicians (both republican and democrat) without character or conscience, obsessively focused on cheap labor and more votes (read: the amassing of personal and ideological power), or openly advocating a globalist world order … and thanks, also, to media that hold in disdain the America that once was, working hand-in-hand with racist pressure groups … our republic sits on the brink of a terrible abyss from which, for the first time in our history, only the American citizen can pull her back.



God bless (and we must support) the Minutemen. These modern American patriots, and the potential influence they may have on the rest of the citizenry, embody the hope of our republic … our leadership having betrayed us by purposefully abdicating that role.


~ joanie


… don’t be surprised if, some day in the not too distant future, the Statue of Liberty’s torch is replaced with a sign reading ‘It Worked Fine at First’ … Florence King


The Choice is Ours ... and Ours Alone



In the United States of America, we have the freedom to believe as we choose regarding the sanctity of the Constitution of our republic. We can choose to believe that it is the most magnificent and timeless blueprint for governance ever devised by the mind of man. Or we can choose to believe that it is an outmoded government design, in need of constant revision, because it was written by nearsighted men who couldn’t see past the eighteenth century.

Being allowed to embrace either belief, or any other, is what individual freedom is all about. But there are a certain few among us who, by virtue of their position, ought not to have the right to all such beliefs.

There once was a time when national office holders (especially presidents, senators, congressmen, and Supreme Court justices) believed that the Constitution was the incontrovertible law of the land and that it was their honored duty to uphold it. The words 'preserve, protect and defend' had a tangible, concrete meaning. And that meaning in no way allowed the infiltration of the concepts of 'edit, assault, and declare obsolete'. As a matter of fact, it forbade them.

That someone would seek elected or appointed national office, the prime duty of which is to preserve, protect and defend a document, would consider that document malleable, and every aspect of it interpretable in countless ways, is ludicrous. Why would anyone want to take an oath to protect something whose very definition (and therefore its value) is forever changing?

There once was a time when America’s leaders were (as they should be) a cut above the rest of us. That time is long past. It has been waning for decades, but drew its last breath around 1989. Before that time, if our leaders were not Constitutional scholars per se, they at least had a working knowledge of the document they were charged to defend, and they were generally committed to seeing to it that it remained whole, and supreme.

Those once-upon-a-time strict constructionist leaders, who regarded the Constitution as a sacred trust, for the most part are now viewed as dinosaurs – and dangerous dinosaurs at that.

To which I say to the dinosaur-phobes, ‘Then go back to private life, where you may hold any Constitution-related belief that you like. Let someone else take your seat – someone who reveres the document he was elected/appointed to defend.’

When those who are entrusted with the defense of ‘sacred’ ground are allowed to defile that very ground, the ground is then neither sacred nor worth defending.

The dismantling of the Constitution amounts to the corruption of words whose sources are pure and well-conceived, in order to justify power-hungry, self-absorbed, irresponsible human behavior. And if we continue to allow government leadership to chip away at that precious, timeless document, we will find ourselves adrift in deep, dark waters, without anchor or compass. And then we had better hope (having forfeited our right to pray) for a storm-free future.


~ joanie