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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

8/19/2008

Reagan Would Be Ashamed

Reagan Crying.jpg

I was just beginning to reconcile myself to the fact that I must vote for John McCain on November 4th – despite his numerous political negatives, the most egregious of which is his authorship of the McCain-Feingold bill, the most blatant attack on the right of free speech in the history of our republic.

I was just about willing to overlook his weaknesses, and his recent compromises of principle. And then I witnessed the senator’s newest national ad, in which the most prominent sentence reads, Only McCain has taken on big tobacco, drug companies, fought corruption in both parties. He'll reform Wall Street, battle Big Oil, make America prosper again.

No worse than McCain-Feingold, for sure, but somehow, for me, it represents the camel's-back-breaking straw. Maybe I was looking for a final insult. This commercial provided it.

All I know is that Reagan would be ashamed.

I have been a republican (in name) since long before I was of voting age. I campaigned vigorously for Barry Goldwater in 1964, years before I was legally allowed to enter a voting booth. I sat enrapt before the radio in October of that year, listening to Ronald Reagan deliver his Rendezvous With Destiny speech, convinced that the Reagan vision of the republican party accurately represented the party that our Founders would have endorsed. Their vision had found a home there.

What a difference forty-four years can make.

The republican party bears about as much resemblance to the magnificent liberty/sovereignty vision of our Founders as rap music bears a resemblance to the magnificent creations of Beethoven and Mozart.

The GOP (not so 'G' anymore) has become a party that shares more with the democrats than it does with those courageous anti-slavery activists who painstakingly laid the party’s sublime foundation in an act of defiance against a tyrannical federal government more than a century and a half ago.

The party has been hijacked by a ‘leadership’ that prefers compromise over principle, and, as a result, the erosion of the tenets upon which the party was founded has now rendered its foundations unrecognizable.

I despise Barack Obama and his cotillion of Marxist/black separatist, anti-American mentors and advisors. In addition to the fact that he embraces terrifying ideological beliefs, he possesses no credentials that qualify him to serve as President of the United States and leader of the free world (see previous essays here on the subject):

Will the Real Barack Obama Please Stand Up?

Saint Barack and the Missus

Questions for Obama

On Rainbows and Puppy Dogs

Is This America’s Future?

Who is Barack Obama? – The Question the Mainstream Media Won’t Answer

A Small-Town Pennsylvanian’s View of Arrogance

The Truth About Black Liberation Theology

Believe Him At Your Risk

Barack Obama Embarrassed by Billionaire Link to Home Deal

The Cat’s Out

But I also despise a ‘republican’ leadership that has bowed to the pressures of politically-correct special interest groups, and, in so doing, betrays those it purports to represent.

I believe that the eight most insidious threats to the sovereignty of our nation and the liberty of her people are:

    (1) the spread of Islamic fascism
    (2) the invasion of illegal immigrants that threatens to destroy the very fabric of our society
    (3) the incremental, open-ended theft of our liberties and prosperity by the hoax known as ‘global warming/environmentalism'
    (4) the economic and political power of trial lawyers over virtually every aspect of our lives
    (5) the anti-capitalist crusade that permeates much of American politics/academia/media
    (6) the purposeful dismantling of the finest healthcare system in the history of mankind, via the incremental imposition of socialist/universal health programs, the over-regulation of the insurance industry, the demonizing of drug companies, and the allowing, even encouraging, of frivolous lawsuits
    (7) the protection under law of the murder of more than a million unborn children every year
    (8) the incremental loss of religious freedom, and the gradual removal of God from the national conscience
If Ronald Reagan were running for president today, I can guarantee you that his political advertisements would include his plans to confront all eight of the above. Do any of you remember the Bear in the Woods presidential ad of 1984? It was not pleasant, but there were no punches pulled, and politically correct advisors were not consulted in its production.

Yet what issues do John McCain’s advertisements claim he will confront? All of the self-created ‘enemies’ that exist on the ‘enemies list’ of the politically correct: big tobacco, drug companies, big oil, and the like ... all of the ‘crises’ that leftists have manufactured -- global warming, corporate ‘excess profits’, corporate ‘evil’ in general (with oil, tobacco and drug companies highest on the list of capitalist 'villains'), human (even criminal/terrorist) ‘rights’, and the like -- in order to divert our attention from the crises that genuinely threaten to bring America to her knees.

No one has the right to call himself a republican who willingly joins the leftist, pseudo-environmentalist, anti-capitalist parade by promising to solve manufactured, or magnified-out-of-all-proportion ‘problems’ that merely serve as a smoke-screen designed to hide the genuine threats to our liberty and sovereignty.

John McCain is aiding and abetting the enemy within our borders – that growing majority in the political/academic/media arena whose over-riding purpose is to divert our attention from the enemy at the gate so as to focus our attention on mirage enemies, the destruction of which will require us to relinquish incrementally more of our liberties, and allow the ruling elite incrementally more power over our lives. And that is the over-riding focus of the left, and of those who are willing to compromise with the left: the creating of phony ‘enemies’, whose defeat requires the relinquishing of liberties, and the amassing of power by the ruling elite.

I have witnessed no more accurate definition of treason in my lifetime.

Whether Obama or McCain occupies the White House for the next four years, America is in for a rude awakening. I would prefer that a liberal democrat/avowed Marxist be blamed for the geopolitical/economic earthquakes that are looming over the horizon. At least that way we will have the whisper of a hope that a genuine conservative may be able to eventually take the reins and pick up the pieces.

I could not, in good conscience, cast a vote for a Marxist. But neither will I continue to vote for those who are willing to consistently compromise with the evil ideology of the left. Such imposters have succeeded in re-defining my party, handcuffing their genuine republican counterparts, and corrupting my government beyond recognition. And if an avowed anti-American Marxist must damage our beloved republic for four years in order for the republican party to recognize that it had better return to its roots, then that may well be the terrible price we must pay in order to embark on that long-overdue journey.

I will no longer play an active role in the hijacking of the republican party ... or the suicide of our beloved republic. I'll leave the heartbreak of writing her epitaph to others.

~ joanie

35 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is an excellent column as always Joanie, but I can't agree with not voting for McCain. I will have to hold my nose and do so, only because 2 Supreme Court appointments hang in the balance. We cannot let Obama shift the court even further to the left.

Anonymous said...

"....that is the over-riding focus of the left, and of those who are willing to compromise with the left: the creating of phony ‘enemies’, whose defeat requires the relinquishing of liberties, and the amassing of power by the ruling elite."

Our demise in a nutshell.

Anonymous said...

I'm afraid I have to vote for McCain Joanie, but I can't disagree with a word you wrote. It's just the lesser of two evils thing all over again. An Obama presidency has to be avoided at all costs, even if it means voting for a RINO.

Anonymous said...

Joanie, you're a treasure!

joanie said...

Stonemason:

I understand your Supreme Court argument, but I can't share your view.

If McCain is elected, there are three aspects of that argument that make it so weak as to be even less effective than other reasons to vote for this latest 'lesser of two evils':

(1) There is no guarantee that McCain will appoint a strict constructionist. McCain himself has consistently proven to be a middle-of-the-roader.

(2) Even if he were to appoint someone believed to be a strict constructionist, we have seen quite a few such justices veer sharply left once they were seated.

(3) We are almost assured that the new House and Senate will be democrat controlled, and any genuine strict constructionist faces a snowball's chance in hell of confirmation. Robert Bork can provide an accurate prediction of the fate of such a nominee.

Thanks for your insightful response, even though I don't share it.

~ joanie

Anonymous said...

I remember Reagan's speech in 64 too. It was one of the most powerful speeches I've ever heard.

I'm still undecided about what to do in November. Like you, I'm tired of voting for the lesser of two evils, but the thought of an Obama presidency might just scare me into doing that again.

Thanks for this great piece.

Anonymous said...

Maybe, just maybe, the drug companies have done more to improve the quality of life than John McCain has ever done. Also, what has John McCain ever done to improve this economy? Our country would not exist in its present form without the life-blood of oil pumping through its veins.

Anonymous said...

You'll appreciate this:

John McCain: Liberal in Disguise

Anonymous said...

I just received a mailing from the McCain campaign. It contains the following description of what will happen if the Dems win the White House and Congress:

"They will pull our troops out of Iraq before we secure the victory and establish the stibility that the surge has put us in position to achieve. They will raise taxes dramatically to pay for $500 billion in new big government programs at a time when businesses and families are facing soaring fuel and food prices. They will institute Jimmy Carter-style energy policies that will further increase energy prices for consumers. And they will remake our health care system in the image of the government run socialized health care systems of Europe."

He talks differnetly when he's talking to his "base" than he does in his television ads.

All of what he says is true, but that doesn't erase what you wrote in this column.

In the envelope they provided for contributions I'm sending them a copy of your column.

Anonymous said...

You do nice work.

Anonymous said...

David Freddoso, author of The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate, says Barack Obama has worked hard to portray himself as reformer when he is, in fact, anything but.

I agree with your essay Joanie, but Obama frightens me more than any candidate I've ever come across.

Anonymous said...

I'm not being flip when I say that I agree with you: Reagan, dead, would be a better President than either of the candidates alive and kicking.

Anonymous said...

Joanie, Rick Santorum is on the same page:

“It’s amazing to hear what John McCain is trying to convince the voters he is all about. The bottom line is, I served 12 years with him, six years in the Senate as one of the leaders of the Senate, trying to put together the conservative agenda, and almost at every turn, on domestic policy, John McCain was not only against us, but leading the charge on the other side.”

Santorum: McCain Presidency Very Dangerous

Anonymous said...

To reprise Sir Edward Grey, the lamps are going out all over the world, and an awful lot of the map will look an awful lot darker by the time many Americans realize the scale of this struggle-- Mark Steyn

Anonymous said...

I don't agree with your write in vote Joanie, but every word you say is true. God bless.

Anonymous said...

Joanie, I thought you might be interested in this Obama-like quote I heard on Glenn Beck yesterday. It goes along with your theory that they make big oil (energy) one of their villians:

CHARLES BARRON, NEW YORK CITY COUNCILMAN: Well, you know, it`s not to really help business or hurt business. I just don`t think that the arm of the legislative branch should reach that far to shut the doors on those who are trying to air condition their businesses.

And secondly, I think Con Edison is the problem with energy in New York City. And if we don`t want to do oversight on Con Edison, I don`t think the grids are going to be damaged by the air conditioning. This is a scapegoat approach not to do the real right thing. And that is oversight over Con Edison, that`s incompetent, and maximizes profits, raises our bills up.

And I`m not against a more socialistic practice in government to go ahead and take over Con Edison and utilities should be run by the government and be provided free for the people, not profit by Con Edison. So I voted against it, not because it`s going to hurt business, because I don`t think it`s going to hurt business one way or the other. Nor is it going to be a tremendous conservation of energy. It`s just a scapegoat measure to not deal with the real problem in New York City in energy and electricity, and that is the incompetence of Con Edison.

Anonymous said...

Does this sound familiar? The greatest most powerful county in the world has its troubles because...

1. Decline in moral values and political civility at home
2. Fiscal irresponsibility by the central government
3. The inability to control their borders
4. An over confident and over-extended military around the world

If you think this is the U.S.? Maybe so. But the above were the main reasons the 1000 year rein of the Roman Empire ended. Looks like we're on the right track to repeat history. Only this time it will happen after 200+ years.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this.

Anonymous said...

I'll be voting for Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party candidate, in November, but I respect your choice of Reagan as a protest.

Anonymous said...

no_way_a_liberal said...

Maybe, just maybe, the drug companies have done more to improve the quality of life than John McCain has ever done.

***********************************

That's a winner.

Straight from the pr room of Eli Lilly?

Anonymous said...

Read Ludwig's response and ask whether such an anti-capitalist belongs here.

Only an anti-capitalist focuses on the negatives where American drug companies are concerned (and there are admittedly many), and refuses to recognize the fact that they have been the major force in eradicating disease and creating longer and healthier lives for the entire world for decades.

Anonymous said...

I don't take an aspirin unless I have to, and there have certainly been many examples of drug companies being unscrupulous, but dantheman is right. Hundreds of millions of people around the world are living longer, healthier lives because of decades of successful R&D by American drug companies. I have many relative in my own family who would have been dead if they had lived a few generations ago, and it is modern drugs that have kept them alive and well.

Liberals, and misdirected conservatives, aren't willing to see the forest for the trees.

And you're right Joanie. Drug companies are demonized every bit as much as big oil. With the drug companies it's part of the program to bring everything health related under a government umbrella, and God help us then!

Anonymous said...

Dan the Man and Lou Barakos--

Spot on comments about the drug industry and its enemies on the left.

joanie said...

Dave Burkett:

Thanks for the excellent Steyn quote. He is a national treasure. Read his chilling piece in this month's Imprimis, Lights Out on Liberty.

joanie said...

Brad Zimmerman:

Charles Barron is apparently a nitwit, but a frighteningly dangerous one. Yet I give him creit. He has the courage(?) to voice his socialist agenda rather than cloaking it in phony 'patriot humanitarianism'.

joanie said...

I appreciate your comment about Baldwin more than you know. I have been thinking about voting for him as well. The Constitution Party is headquartered here in Lancaster County, and any contact I have had with them over the years has been extraordinarily positive. Their agenda has always meshed well with the Founders' vision. I'll be doing a little more research into their ticket. Thanks for the nudge.

Anonymous said...

(6) the purposeful dismantling of the finest healthcare system in the history of mankind, via the incremental imposition of socialist/universal health programs, the over-regulation of the insurance industry, the demonizing of drug companies, and the allowing, even encouraging, of frivolous lawsuits.

Excerpts from Healers Under Seiger: The War Against the Pharmaceutical Industry, by Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute:

America's drugmakers are under attack. Congressmen are pushing to cut prices and trim patent rights. Passage of a Medicare pharmaceutical will encourage Uncle Sam to regulate drug access and prices directly.

State legislators are debating their own draconian price control schemes. The media, such as the PBS show Frontline, has targeted the drugmakers. Trial attorneys, left-wing activists, and state attorneys general are filing lawsuits charging pharmaceutical firms with everything from racketeering to fraud.

This assault is not new. Drug companies have been under pressure for a decade. When the Clinton administration attempted to nationalize American health care, it sought to demonize the drugmakers as well as most doctors and hospitals.

Unfortunately, years of demagoguery advanced for political profit are having an impact. Public opinions of the industry have been falling sharply.

While Americans have yet to agree with Al Gore's grotesque comparison of the drugmakers to the tobacco companies and "big polluters" — there is little that he would not say to win a vote — they are increasingly turning on an industry that has done so much to improve their lives.

HarrisInteractive reports that those who believe the drugmakers are doing a good job of serving consumers fell from 79 percent to 57 percent from just 1997 to 2001.

Yet new pharmaceuticals are responsible for almost half of the reduced mortality among different diseases between 1970 and 1991.

Columbia University's Frank Lichtenberg figures that every new drug approved during that time saves over 11,000 life-years annually. And the benefits continue. He estimates that fully 40 percent of the increase in average lifespan between 1986 and 2000 is due to new drugs.

"Three decades ago medical technology was rather primitive by today's standards," says Dr. E. M. Kolassa of the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy. "Today, physicians have at their disposal medications and technologies that provide for the immediate diagnosis and treatment of most of the disorders that affect modern man."

Hundreds of new drugs are in development for cancer, heart disease, strokes, Azheimer's, infectious diseases, and AIDS. Consider the latter: Two decades ago there was no treatment for AIDS. By 1987 there was one drug, AZT. Now there are 74 anti-AIDS drugs available and another 100 in development....

Daring innovation is most likely to come in a competitive, profit-driven market. After all, today's medicines exist only because there is a bevy of sophisticated pharmaceutical companies devoted to finding drugs to heal the sick.
Isn't this serving consumers well?

Ah, but prices are high. Too high, in the view of myopic, vote-seeking politicians. "There's no question that prescription drugs cost too much in this nation," claims Sen. Jim Jeffords (I., Vt.).

Why, yes. They only save lives. Extend our life spans. Moderate our pain. Control our nausea. Eliminate our need for surgery. Treat our allergies.

Why should we have to pay for such products? The outrage. The horror. Drugs should be free. Or at least a lot cheaper.

It would be nice if they were, of course, but people who believe prices can be lowered legislatively are living in the world as it ought to be. Everyone ought to be rich and beautiful. Everyone out to be paid a million dollars a year for working ten hours a week.

Everyone ought to have a Mercedes at a Yugo price. Everyone ought to have a mansion for the price of a shack. And everyone ought to have all of the pharmaceuticals now available, but for less money.
Life as it ought to be.

Unfortunately, pharmaceuticals do not appear outside company doors every morning like manna from heaven appeared in the Promised Land for the ancient Israelites.

Instead, firms review numerous plausible substances: of every 5,000 to 10,000 checked, 250 make it to animal testing. About five reach human trials. Only one gets past the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) onto the market. That one has to pay for the research costs of the other 5,000 to 10,000. It ain't easy.

Thus, the real cost of pharmaceuticals is not making the pill that patients swallow. It's the research that went into developing the pill — as well as the other 9,999 substances that never made it to the market. The pill's price also has to cover the cost of running the company and complying with burdensome FDA requirements.

The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development estimates that companies spend nearly $900 million over a ten- or fifteen-year period to develop each drug. America's major research firms alone spent $32 billion on R&D last year.

Nevertheless, some politicians would control prices directly. For instance, legislators in Maine want to impose rates that they think are fair and are threatening retaliation if any company tries to pull out of the market in response. Washington already demands super-discounts for some of its programs.

But government can only confiscate the drugmakers' existing inventory. It can't force them to keep making drugs to be confiscated in the future.

Adopting Canadian- or European-style controls will result in a Canadian- or European-style drug industry and patient access. These countries do their best to free ride off of America, but their pharmaceutical industries are weak and getting weaker.

Moreover, their ill citizens have far less access to important medications. The group Europe Economics warns that patients often wait years for life-saving products.

Still, America's political air is filled with other alleged panaceas. Reimportation from Canada is pushed even by some conservatives. Yet prices are lower there because the government imposes price controls and litigation costs are less — the country is not full of profit-minded tort attorneys. Charging Canadian (or Mexican, or Afghan) prices in the U.S. means the drugs would not be developed in the first place.

Increased use of generics is another idea. Generics are an important component of the existing market, accounting for almost half of all prescriptions written. But generics companies provide very little independent R&D to develop new products, the lifeblood of medical progress.

Politicians also are pushing a range of utilization restrictions — formularies, reference pricing, and more. Yet every attempt to stop people from using new medicines endangers their health and threatens to increase health costs elsewhere. For instance, Frank Lichtenberg estimates that replacing 1000 older prescriptions with newer drugs raises pharmaceutical costs by 18,000 but cuts hospital costs by $44,000.

Everyone in America has a stake in lowering health-care costs. But they also have a stake in maintaining quality health care.

If the pharmaceutical industry succumbs to the demagogic campaign against it, we will all suffer the painful consequences.

Anonymous said...

"And if an avowed anti-American Marxist must damage our beloved republic for four years in order for the republican party to recognize that it had better return to its roots, then that may well be the terrible price we must pay in order to embark on that long-overdue journey."

Motion seconded.

Anonymous said...

---No one has the right to call himself a republican who willingly joins the leftist, pseudo-environmentalist, anti-capitalist parade by promising to solve manufactured, or magnified-out-of-all-proportion ‘problems’ that merely serve as a smoke-screen designed to hide the genuine threats to our liberty and sovereignty.---

A couple months back I remember hearing that McCain was meeting with global warming "experts" for a few days to try to come up with a plan to reduce our carbon footprint.

Either he's bought into the fraud or he's patronizing the liars.

He doesn't have 1% of Reagan's backbone.

If Reagan were President, we wouldn't have the illegal alien problem, the Muslims wouldn't be rattling their sabers, Russia, Iran and N. Korea wouldn't be doing what they're doing, and we wouldn't be trying to come up with global warming solutions.

joanie said...

Brent Rosen:

Thanks for the excerpt from the excellent article. I have a great deal of respect for the Cato Institute. A friend of our daughter is their eminent domain expert, and I know the quality he brings to the organization. Doug Bandow appears to be cut from the same cloth.

joanie said...

Carl V:

Well said. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

Struggling to find some flaw in your writing, all I can say is, that I would refer to Obama's self-impressed society of comrade-neo-terrorists, as more a cotillion, than a coterie; because they represent literally billions of dollars of high society that historically, and still, makes such deals putting social revolutionaries into office, on the theory that such a move will:

a) protect these high sources of money
from the gov't excesses imposed
by the thugs-now-in-charge; and

b) make high socielites (male, female
and all the others) look good as
in "I am with you, the people! Si!"
as portrayed in the media who have
little practical education (such
as being unable to figure out what
is a Navy destroyer v. aircraft
carrier, and so-wanting, they
salve *their* egos by operating
two camps - one to photograph all
of 'the entertainment world' to
death, and two, by thus defining
their own talking head to *NOT*
be that kind of media, they presume
to lay upon the public, a meaty
fist in the nightly news, that
you would not possibly understand
the gravity of the events of high
states-person-ship, because you
are first, not said talking head,
and second, in 'fly-over country'
where the same liberal media try
hard to KEEP YOU UN-INFORMED by
such info-tainment, referring to
the first example of the trade).

-

These left-wing media moguls and high society moguls, who will speculate with money that is not theirs, to the point of risking everybody else's well-being by putting into power, people of tyrrany, are thought-less-ly-corrupt in an axis of like-mind-less-ness dead set on having power and control over every person they "view" as beneath all the people of the cotillion.

-

First_Salute

Anonymous said...

Joanie,

Yet, "coterie" applies well, because the Obama self-admiration society of like-mind-less-ed "fellow" traveling terrorists, has only one "dream":

Their sovereignty over how
all rules are made

... is what they envision.

-

First_Salute

Anonymous said...

Michelle OBAMA:

'I have said and will continue to say that I am absolutely proud of my country and in no other place in this country could my story be possible. I mean, that’s, you know, I am here because of the opportunities that my father had, that my mother had, um, you know, we are who Americans were supposed to be.'

joanie said...

F_S,

Love the use of 'cotillion' rather than 'coterie', and I've changed it accordingly. :)

~ joanie