The hypersensitivity of what is perceived as terroristic behavior is now regularly highlighted by incidents such as the teenage girl who was detained by TSA for having a gun design on her purse or the FBI targeting those purchasing preparedness supplies as suspicious.
The latest incident to be blown out of proportion (literally) comes to us from San Jose, California, where police mounted a full scale response when alert citizens at the local post office reported that a man in unusual gear was fidgeting with a package.
In defense of those who see something and say something, in this particular instance, the man later identified as Cal State student Long Hoang, was sporting a cardio mask, oxygen tank and vest which could easily have been mistaken for a gas mask and body armor, and the package he was messing with could have been a chemical or biological weapon:
Sometimes, we don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but admittedly, this one had us chuckling.
Word to the wise: Maybe it’s not the smartest thing to jog in what looks like a gas mask and body armor, and then jam a package in a post office box.
It could touch off what happened Tuesday at the busy San Jose post office on Lundy Avenue: a full-scale police response, complete with the bomb squad and a robot.
But San Jose police said the suspicious-looking jogger seen fidgeting with a package at a drop-off box was only working out in hard-core, albeit odd-looking, exercise gear.
“The guy said he was wearing a cardio mask,” said Sgt. Jason Dwyer. “It was his cardio day, and he was trying to lose weight.”
That’s not what a post office customer thought when the man in the weird mask and vest was stuffing a package in a blue mail box about 12:30 p.m. The customer called police, and in a flash, the post office was on lockdown until 4:30 p.m., with 150 employees and customers tucked away in the back. The San Jose police bomb squad, the Fire Department’s hazardous materials unit and the postal inspector descended on a normally quiet strip of North San Jose. A robot detonated the package, which turned out, police said, to be a bunch of calendars.
Source: Mercury News
Hat tip Silver Bean
Goes to show that TPTB have the sheeple scared and that’s what’s scary……….
Good ol’ fashioned case of engineered panic for the masses. Scare them into voting away their freedoms and then swoop in for the final kill dressed in red white and blue. Wish they’d go ahead and replace the U.S. Flag’s stars with little stars of david and let the world know that I$rael owns the United States.
Yeah Akvalmet, just blame this idiocy on Israel. Keep doing that while the liberals here whittle our rights away.
@ssgt.ross this is @msgt.ninaorket , stfu and do your homework troop… before you make an even bigger ass of yourself and the branch of service your serve.
zionist jews of israel and aipac of amerika , an da’ splc control and own the u.s. senate, the u.s. congress and the presidency of the united facist prison states of amerika!
educate yourself troop or we here at the shtfplan clubhouse will!
Also goes to show the consequences of adjusting your “package”.
It was another fruit cake!!!!!!!!!!!! that is why thy pounced!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well Mac, I’m gonna call you out on this one. You Know full well that this picture does not describe or illustrate how this went down. Yes, I’m calling “BULLSHIT” here. And if you got a set of stones you’ll step up and I’ll be glad to hear it!
Sorry Mac, I realize what this is now through the fog. I fell into some good moonshine that I was mixing with Oceanspray grape/cranberry and it was going down smoove. My apologies.
BTW I like to kick this young man in the ass just for figgiting, that shit could get you shot. Plus I don’t don’t need these warning signs on if your post is to long, or do you wet your bed sheets, or do they lock you up in the hallway closet and beat you with a rubber hose and such shit as that. Really pulllleeeeze. Just because ninokinkoberet and a few other ass wipes can’t post something pertinent to the subject shouldn’t put a crimp to those who do. If this crap continues I’ll go elsewhere….. no biggy, Mac!
I just watched the Republican Presidential Forum. There was mostly the same hypocritical remarks they always make. Bachmann wants to deport all illegals, Perry talks a big game about the Tenth Amendment but lets TSA rule over Texas, Romney complains that Obama never called him about nationalized healthcare. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Bunch of crap.
The things that ring in my ears is what Paul enunciated. I was completely objective, and I have to hand it to him – he knows how to accentuate the important points. He stated the three most important roles of the federal government were (1) protection of borders, (2) protection of a sound currency, and (3) protection of the Bill of Rights.
In conclusion, Paul talked about NULLIFICATION at the level of the state legislatures of anything the people deemed as unconstitutional. Pure Genius. Nobody else had the intellectual foresight or intestinal fortitude to say THAT!
That made me applaud, and that’s why I believe he deserves the presidency.
He also recommended reading The Law by Bastiat, which I already have done, and it outlines the supremacy of the individual over any agency of government.
Good night and good luck.
Let the PTB fear the MOB! They lost their fear of a just and powerful God long ago!
Am I first?
almost Giurza…..
Thanx 😀 for good laugh 😀
Stupid is as stupid does…
I ride a motorcycle in cold snowy weather as we have today. Will wear a full face ski mask on occasion. There is no way when I get off the bike that I leave the mask on – going into where ever.
Never thought walking around in my ski mask an okay thing to do when leaving a note in the door of an apartment building for a friend that plans have changed.
No stories about white powder in envelopes going through the mail real or a joke??? People up to no good cover their faces – then add look alike body armor? I read the article this morning and thought what a moron –
For those that think it is over reaction – tell that to the late night single mom cashiering at the 7- 11 to keep food on the table, or even the day clerk when the store is slow, that they are over reacting when this inconsiderate a-wipe jogs into the store in that get up for an energy drink. SHEEEH!!!
LadyHawk,
You ride? Do you ride your own or with hubby?
I can tell you this when I get on my Harley in winter I look like a bank robber, so much leather. Add the leather face mask and neck warmer and man do i get the looks. May favorite thing to do has to be to walk into the pak a sak with my face mask on and ask ( Got Milk)
its classic to make them laugh.
DPS
DPS
Single lady here, riding a Honda Shadow, waiting for the Durango Kidd to wisk me off to his lair, once he stops sparking with Ms Daisy. 😀
I can see where one would think that is clever and cute, and I too laughed – and would if I was the clerk behind the counter and a group of you pulled in, backed your bikes and do all the stuff ones does at a stop and you walk in the store. In fact, I’d feel down right safe as I know what cream puffs you all are.
On the other hand, someone with no vehicle, alone, jogs into the store with face mask, body armor and gloves (as in picture)- my radar would be at full alert and if they started walking around the store with same get up (possible casing to see if witnesses) I’d be at the 911 button.
It may be a female thing – can’t believe the heebee jeebies when you are alone and going to your vehicle parked at the far end and a guy comes up behind you going in the same direction. When they peel off in a different direction – I laugh too – from relief.
LadyHawk ~
Teehee to the sparkin’. 😀
Maybe you should go sweep DK off HIS feet – why wait around? The world might end in 2012~~~
Ladies, ladies, Please!!!! I’m easy but I am not cheap!!! 🙂
I was thinking about getting a surplus gas mask to wear this winter while riding my Ural – hope if I do I don’t cause this kind of chaos.
Someone might see sumpin’ and say sumpin’.
bad idea… rubber draws cold like hell…
in summer on the other hand – nice Mad Max attire, so thumbs up for it 😉
As a side note to how stupid things are getting today, an elementary student was suspended from his school today because a substitute teacher overheard him saying, that a particular female teacher was cute.
http://www.wsoctv.com/news/29910470/detail.html
@hsl considering how many students have been molested by teachers and coaches, and how many teachers have had consensual sexual relationships for long periods over the last few years with students nationwide… this is probly a good thing for the 9 year old boy and fellow students to experience… it’s just a warning too all involved “school” is for learning, not playin’ “patty cakes” with the teacher! a line needs to be drawn somewhere!
good for the schools no b.s. policy, it’ll keep everyone safe! i personally applaud it!
i hate you nina.
hi sexy @skslover… ;0) blush blush… where have you been these last few days @skshomoerotic… i’ve so missssed your looooong biiiiig guuun… ohhh is that for me… you shouldn’t have you sexy boy!
ta ta for now lover @skslover , be seeing you ((+)) reeaaal soon lover boy! kisssssesss! ;0P pssszzt
Really???
I think that is a bit much, personally. Is there really anything wrong with finding someone appealing? We are going to create a bunch of politically correct robots that don’t know how to communicate with one another.
This is political correctness gone awry.
And, a 7 year old is being accused of sexual harassment
for kicking a bully in the huevos for nearly choking him to death.
Regarding the student that was suspended for appreciating a beauty and the subsequent comments about molestation.. all I can say is that I would’ve been more than happy to have been “molested” by some hot female teacher when I was in high school.. I wonder just which of us would’ve been charge with molestation.. SHEESH.. normal guys like girls. Normal young guys dream of being “manhandled” by a hot 25 something female..
Daisy,
I hear that just because somebody finds another cute or hot should not be a crime. Our system is a goner.
SnS
Totally agree, I’m just thankful that my english teacher in HS didn’t get caught. But hey then again I sure wish she could have taught me to spell better.
DPS
PS I got a A in english that year..Read between the lines.
DPS… LMAO.. I always got an “A” in english in HS too.. I hope we didn’t have the same teacher.. 😉 That would be sort of creepy..
SnS
Please tell me her nake wasn’t Sharon? Cause that would be wild and creepy..LMAO. But if it was she sure was a full blown hottie..
DPS
DPS – it wasn’t…. I don’t think..
I figure it isn’t really harassment until someone gets slapped on the butt.
Who has kidnapped NinaO and what have you done with the body?!
I have NO TOLERANCE for ZERO TOLERANCE !!!!!! 🙁 This gives the school systems to much authority to decide if a student is guilty over trivial things. What is this really teaching the students? OMG!!!
Paranoia run amok!!
I will never forget Daisy’s story about her daughter and her camp tool in the school… I was rofloling but feeling terrible shivers down my spine when thought about it more seriously…
Giurza – I was reminded of just that incident when I read about this episode. We have simply gone TOO FAR!!!
Your story is not even remotely relevant to this. At all.
It may not be all that relevent, but it does show stupidity. Fox news picked up the story by the way along with the mention of the 7 year old sexual harrasment story sam not sam reported. SHTFPlan may be a fan of this site.
Correction.
Fox news may be a fan of SHTFPlan.
I can almost excuse this, I’ve never seen a “cardio mask” and I’ve seen some fairly hardcore joggers – along with serious bicycle racing teams – in my general area.
While it is pretty funny, it is pretty sad. I agree with you alc, I know some pretty hardcore types when it comes to fitness, and I have yet to see any of them wearing a mask like that! I too can almost excuse this.
Ya, this would leave me scratching my head if I was walking by a person with a cardio mask.
The “cardio mask” aside, wearing that thing to the post office and shoving a package in the blue box….
the words moronic fool are inadequate!!!
Thank you alc, I’m in the same boat, dude looked like he was ready to start WWIII in that pic.
someone didn’t get enough attention from mummy and daddy as a child… and needs a lil’ more attention now. common sense says : wearing a get up like that is gonna scare the doo doo outta everyone! i’m surprised they didn’t taze him just for being one chromosone above a chimp!
Really, what do you expect when you do dumb things like that? I’m really into fitness and I have NEVER seen someone wear something like that.
Maybe he was hoping to get roughed up so he could sue the cops
@Ninaorket, I have to agree with ya’ on this one. Pretty stupid move on this guys part. I definitely would have raised an eyebrow. Just going for a run…ok, you look a little strange. Dropping a package in a mailbox dressed like that…intentional move for attention or really dumb.
this is a personal message from me “tekroanin” to my isp and the fed agency who has been actively attacking me with dns attacks for the last week and then some for my posting here… ;0P pssszzt ya can’t stop the truth fed boys and gurls! notice how i’m still posting… ya bunch of maroons! there’s more than one way to circumvent a fed zionist piggies firewall block! blow me… ;0P
Ah, there he is!
Oh no! Please tell me those insightful posts you’ve thrown in there to confuse us aren’t actually from a hacker! Say it isn’t so, NinaO!!!
More and more people are falling pray to the “I am a stupid ass” bug!
I think its the fact that the stupid ones are not allowed to kill themselves off. Modern PC crap and not being allowed to play, fight with each other, 57 point restraining harnesses for seatbelts, medicines that save “some who just are too stupid to be alive” without it.
I have an idea, let’s close the emergency rooms, emt, fire departments, welfare offices, all govt support and any police activity to anyone who is too stupid to be alive without assistance.
The idiots will kill themselves off in a few weeks, congress in about 5 min.
Going camping in the mountains of southwestern Mexico tonight.. you guys and gals try to hold the country together at least until Monday ?
I’ll do my part here in the upper midwest. Given the storm that is slowly moving in there will be some Darwin Awards to hand out to folks by Monday for their inability to drive carefully or stay home! Have a great trip.
“A Republic, if You Can Keep It” | Print |
Written by John F. McManus
Monday, 06 November 2000 11:31
The deliberations of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were held in strict secrecy. Consequently, anxious citizens gathered outside Independence Hall when the proceedings ended in order to learn what had been produced behind closed doors. The answer was provided immediately. A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
This exchange was recorded by Constitution signer James McHenry in a diary entry that was later reproduced in the 1906 American Historical Review. Yet in more recent years, Franklin has occassionally been misquoted as having said, “A democracy, if you can keep it.” The NRA’s Charleton Heston quoted Franklin this way, for example, in a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace that was aired on December 20, 1998.
This misquote is a serious one, since the difference between a democracy and a republic is not merely a question of semantics but is fundamental. The word “republic” comes from the Latin res publica — which means simply “the public thing(s),” or more simply “the law(s).” “Democracy,” on the other hand, is derived from the Greek words demos and kratein, which translates to “the people to rule.” Democracy, therefore, has always been synonymous with majority rule.
The Founding Fathers supported the view that (in the words of the Declaration of Independence) “Men … are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” They recognized that such rights should not be violated by an unrestrained majority any more than they should be violated by an unrestrained king or monarch. In fact, they recognized that majority rule would quickly degenerate into mobocracy and then into tyranny. They had studied the history of both the Greek democracies and the Roman republic. They had a clear understanding of the relative freedom and stability that had characterized the latter, and of the strife and turmoil — quickly followed by despotism — that had characterized the former. In drafting the Constitution, they created a government of law and not of men, a republic and not a democracy.
But don’t take our word for it! Consider the words of the Founding Fathers themselves, who — one after another — condemned democracy.
• Virginia’s Edmund Randolph participated in the 1787 convention. Demonstrating a clear grasp of democracy’s inherent dangers, he reminded his colleagues during the early weeks of the Constitutional Convention that the purpose for which they had gathered was “to provide a cure for the evils under which the United States labored; that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and trials of democracy….”
• John Adams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, championed the new Constitution in his state precisely because it would not create a democracy. “Democracy never lasts long,” he noted. “It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself.” He insisted, “There was never a democracy that ‘did not commit suicide.'”
• New York’s Alexander Hamilton, in a June 21, 1788 speech urging ratification of the Constitution in his state, thundered: “It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.” Earlier, at the Constitutional Convention, Hamilton stated: “We are a Republican Government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of Democracy.”
• James Madison, who is rightly known as the “Father of the Constitution,” wrote in The Federalist, No. 10: “… democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they are violent in their deaths.” The Federalist Papers, recall, were written during the time of the ratification debate to encourage the citizens of New York to support the new Constitution.
• George Washington, who had presided over the Constitutional Convention and later accepted the honor of being chosen as the first President of the United States under its new Constitution, indicated during his inaugural address on April 30, 1789, that he would dedicate himself to “the preservation … of the republican model of government.”
• Fisher Ames served in the U.S. Congress during the eight years of George Washington’s presidency. A prominent member of the Massachusetts convention that ratified the Constitution for that state, he termed democracy “a government by the passions of the multitude, or, no less correctly, according to the vices and ambitions of their leaders.” On another occasion, he labeled democracy’s majority rule one of “the intermediate stages towards … tyranny.” He later opined: “Democracy, in its best state, is but the politics of Bedlam; while kept chained, its thoughts are frantic, but when it breaks loose, it kills the keeper, fires the building, and perishes.” And in an essay entitled The Mire of Democracy, he wrote that the framers of the Constitution “intended our government should be a republic, which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism.”
In light of the Founders’ view on the subject of republics and democracies, it is not surprising that the Constitution does not contain the word “democracy,” but does mandate: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government.”
20th Century Changes
These principles were once widely understood. In the 19th century, many of the great leaders, both in America and abroad, stood in agreement with the Founding Fathers. John Marshall, chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835 echoed the sentiments of Fisher Ames. “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos,” he wrote. American poet James Russell Lowell warned that “democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.” Lowell was joined in his disdain for democracy by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who remarked that “democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.” Across the Atlantic, British statesman Thomas Babington Macauly agreed with the Americans. “I have long been convinced,” he said, “that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.” Britons Benjamin Disraeli and Herbert Spencer would certainly agree with their countryman, Lord Acton, who wrote: “The one prevailing evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.”
By the 20th century, however, the falsehoods that democracy was the epitome of good government and that the Founding Fathers had established just such a government for the United States became increasingly widespread. This misinformation was fueled by President Woodrow Wilson’s famous 1916 appeal that our nation enter World War I “to make the world safe for democracy” — and by President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1940 exhortation that America “must be the great arsenal of democracy” by rushing to England’s aid during WWII.
One indicator of the radical transformation that took place is the contrast between the War Department’s 1928 “Training Manual No. 2000-25,” which was intended for use in citizenship training, and what followed. The 1928 U.S. government document correctly defined democracy as:
A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of “direct expression.” Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic — negating property rights. Attitude of the law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.
This manual also accurately stated that the framers of the Constitution “made a very marked distinction between a republic and a democracy … and said repeatedly and emphatically that they had formed a republic.”
But by 1932, pressure against its use caused it to be withdrawn. In 1936, Senator Homer Truett Bone (D-WA) took to the floor of the Senate to call for the document’s complete repudiation. By then, even finding a copy of the manual had become almost impossible. Decades later, in an article appearing in the October 1973 issue of Military Review, Lieutenant Colonel Paul B. Parham explained that the Army ceased using the manual because of letters of protest “from private citizens.” Interestingly, Parham also noted that the word democracy “appears on one hand to be of key importance to, and holds some peculiar significance for, the Communists.”
By 1952 the U.S. Army was singing the praises of democracy, instead of warning against it, in Field Manual 21-13, entitled The Soldier’s Guide. This new manual incorrectly stated: “Because the United States is a democracy, the majority of the people decide how our Government will be organized and run….” (Emphasis in original.)
Yet important voices continued to warn against the siren song for democracy. In 1931, England’s Duke of Northumberland issued a booklet entitled The History of World Revolution in which he stated: “The adoption of Democracy as a form of Government by all European nations is fatal to good Government, to liberty, to law and order, to respect for authority, and to religion, and must eventually produce a state of chaos from which a new world tyranny will arise.”
In 1939, historians Charles and Mary Beard added their strong voices in favor of historical accuracy in their America in Midpassage: “At no time, at no place, in solemn convention assembled, through no chosen agents, had the American people officially proclaimed the United States to be a democracy. The Constitution did not contain the word or any word lending countenance to it, except possibly the mention of ‘We, the People,’ in the preamble…. When the Constitution was framed no respectable person called himself or herself a democrat.”
During the 1950s, Clarence Manion, the dean of Notre Dame Law School, echoed and amplified what the Beards had so correctly stated. He summarized: “The honest and serious student of American history will recall that our Founding Fathers managed to write both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution without using the term ‘democracy’ even once. No part of any of the existing state Constitutions contains any reference to the word. [The men] who were most influential in the institution and formulation of our government refer to ‘democracy’ only to distinguish it sharply from the republican form of our American Constitutional system.”
On September 17 (Constitution Day), 1961, John Birch Society founder Robert Welch delivered an important speech, entitled “Republics and Democracies,” in which he proclaimed: “This is a Republic, not a Democracy. Let’s keep it that way!” The speech, which was later published and widely distributed in pamphlet form, amounted to a jolting wake-up call for many Americans. In his remarks, Welch not only presented the evidence to show that the Founding Fathers had established a republic and had condemned democracy, but he warned that the definitions had been distorted, and that powerful forces were at work to convert the American republic into a democracy, in order to bring about dictatorship.
Means to an End
Welch understood that democracy is not an end in itself but a means to an end. Eighteenth century historian Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, it is thought, argued that, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.” And as British writer G.K. Chesterton put it in the 20th century: “You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.”
Communist revolutionary Karl Marx understood this principle all too well. Which is why, in The Communist Manifesto, this enemy of freedom stated that “the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.” For what purpose? To “abolish private property”; to “wrest, by degrees, capital from the bourgeoisie”; to “centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State”; etc.
Another champion of democracy was Communist Mao Tse-tung, who proclaimed in 1939 (a decade before consolidating control on the Chinese mainland): “Taken as a whole, the Chinese revolutionary movement led by the Communist Party embraces the two stages, i.e., the democratic and the socialist revolutions, which are essentially different revolutionary processes, and the second process can be carried through only after the first has been completed. The democratic revolution is the necessary preparation for the socialist revolution, and the socialist revolution is the inevitable sequel to the democratic revolution. The ultimate aim for which all communists strive is to bring about a socialist and communist society.”
Still another champion of democracy is Mikhail Gorbachev, who stated in his 1987 book Perestroika that, “according to Lenin, socialism and democracy are indivisible…. The essence of perestroika lies in the fact that it unites socialism with democracy [emphasis in the original] and revives the Leninist concept…. We want more socialism and, therefore, more democracy.”
This socialist revolution has been underway in America for generations. In January 1964, President Lyndon Johnson boasted in a White House address: “We are going to try to take all of the money that we think is unnecessarily being spent and take it from the ‘haves’ and give it to the ‘have nots’ that need it so much.” What he advocated, of course, was a Marxist, not an American, precept. (The way Marx put it was: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”) But other presidents before and after have advanced the same goal. Of course, most who support this goal do not comprehend the totalitarian consequences of constantly transferring more power to Washington. But this lack of understanding is what makes revolution by the ballot box possible.
The push for democracy has only been possible because the Constitution is being ignored, violated, and circumvented. The Constitution defines and limits the powers of the federal government. Those powers, all of which are enumerated, do not include agricultural subsidy programs, housing programs, education assistance programs, food stamps, etc. Under the Constitution, Congress is not authorized to pass any law it chooses; it is only authorized to pass laws that are constitutional. Anybody who doubts the intent of the Founders to restrict federal powers, and thereby protect the rights of the individual, should review the language in the Bill of Rights, including the opening phrase of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law…”).
As Welch explained in his 1961 speech:
… man has certain unalienable rights which do not derive from government at all…. And those … rights cannot be abrogated by the vote of a majority any more than they can by the decree of a conqueror. The idea that the vote of a people, no matter how nearly unanimous, makes or creates or determines what is right or just becomes as absurd and unacceptable as the idea that right and justice are simply whatever a king says they are. Just as the early Greeks learned to try to have their rulers and themselves abide by the laws they had themselves established, so man has now been painfully learning that there are more permanent and lasting laws which cannot be changed by either sovereign kings or sovereign people, but which must be observed by both. And that government is merely a convenience, superimposed on Divine Commandments and on the natural laws that flow only from the Creator of man and man’s universe.
Such is the noble purpose of the constitutional republic we inherited from our Founding Fathers.
This article, slightly revised, originally appeared in the November 6, 2000 issue of The New American.
Photo: AP Images
Jealous!!! I love Mexico!
“You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the Eternal God, will rout you out.”
-Andrew Jackson
“The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness…This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.”
-Plato
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
–C.S. Lewis
“The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.”
“The bold effort the present central bank had made to control the government are but premonitions of the fate that await the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it.”
-Andrew Jackson
“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
-Plato
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity? ―Psalm 94:16
A great revolution in just one single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a society and, further, will enable a change in the destiny of humankind.
“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality never helps victims, only the oppressor. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
-Elie Wiesel
“Whenever you decide that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
-Mark Twain
“Apathy is the glove in which evil slips it’s hand.”
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
“All that is required for evil to flourish in the world is for good men to do nothing.”
“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”
-Patrick Henry
“Forewarned is forearmed.”
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
-Aristotle
“The Bible is the rock on which this Republic rests.”
-Andrew Jackson
“Government “help” to business is just as disastrous as government persecution… the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.”
-Ayn Rand
“If there is no absolute by which to judge society then society becomes absolute”
-Dr. Francis Schaeffer
“The hottest place in hell is reserved for those who never spoke up in times of moral injustice.”
“It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“Liberty vs. tyranny, not left vs. right.”
“Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.”
“Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expedience asks the question is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.”
“How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.”
-Adolf Hitler
Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth, with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country by your own institutions.
~ Thomas Babington Macaulay, Letter to Henry Stephens Randall [October 9, 1858]
My… someone has diarrea of the keyboard.. makes my fingers hurt just reading it..
But good points..
Doing anything out of the ordinary while wearing what appears to be a gas mask is plain stupid. I think it’s a reasonable response to seeing that. The man is an idiot for assuming nobody would think it’s extremely strange for (from 99% of the population’s perspective) a man wearing a gas mask while trying to force a package into a drop box.
Not even remotely close to an overreaction by the SJPD. What kind of MORON wears a GAS MASK to DROP OFF A PACKAGE?
I could’ve told this guy he was asking for trouble. Never wear strange looking gear or clothing in the wrong place. I learned a hard lesson about that after our last “Knights of the Middle Ages” reenactment. Never knew people in a 7-11 store could get so upset over a guy in chain mail and a 5 foot sword clanking against his armour. And don’t even ask about the attempt to renew my car tags while on the way to the Star Wars Chewbacca convention, the memories are just too painful…
*mental image*
😆
That was for Smokin Okie in his Knight costume, btw.
I want to see a pic of him in the Chewbacca!
“Laugh it up, fuzzball!”
😉
Yeah, we need a way to post “illustrations”!
Only one photo of the chewbacca costume exists. I had to buy it from the national enquirer for $50,000 and it will NEVER be seen by the public! (I was having a real ‘bad hair day’ that time)
What we see here is a world where people know little and do little. The know so little about things such as security and explosives or terrorist behaviour that they percieve that “different” behaviour is threatening. Since they are stupid and unthinking, they also can’t comprehend the notion that the cops really don’t care. The only thing they care about is making money and from guys like this, they will. He’ll be fined.
I live in a world full of morons. Were it not for my peeps on SHTFPlan.com, alt-market.com and SHTFM.com I would truly go crazy.
I live in England but i understand the frustration you Americans feel about trying to wake up the mass of the people to what is coming down the line,They just dont see it coming ,sadly its the same in England.
I think it’s that way the world over, Apache kid!! They’ve been sheeple so long, they know nothing else!
oh I gotta share this with you guys and gals!!! I just got myself and my missus a DP5V… what is it you ask? well, that is a mouth watering stuff – an old soviet geiger counter. at super bargain price too! 160 LTL (counts in his head) aah… 62$
they are tough, robust and heavy duty. unkillable almost. works like charm, has internal beta radiation source so you can check workability even now. produced (my model) back in 1979. missing some extra parts, but main unit is working… finally I can breath more easily. there was nothing more terrifying for me than the thought of not knowing when it would be safe to leave.
You may be interested to sign up for “DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report” on GovDelivery to know more what is happening around.
Always ??????????????????????????????????? Government!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-0jkFGLH7E&feature=related
@ Giurza : Where did you find it ? I have a couple of the old US DOD yellow jobs…..but I really don’t have a good sourse to try to calebrate them. Your unit sounds like it could be the solution….
Montgomery County Texas
Happy to be of some use.
here’s the deal, I got mine from a local guy who just happened to have no use for it. but I first stumbled upon this review on US page, and it provided with a link to e-sales page where you could get those old soviet thingies. according to the review the site was reliable. when review was done, DP5 cost was around 75 bucks, but last time I checked it was up in 100 zone. It is up to you whether to buy one, but from what I got in that review, the kits sold by the site where in pristine condition, the whole kit included, so it is much better than the deal I got. Mine is missing the container box, rod, earphones (I still have old soviet telephone earphones, so I will improvise with those, but the originals are much much better – they are specifically designed to be used under helmet) and some other small thingies. Here’s the link:
http://www.sovietarmystuff.com/Product_380_DP-5_Soviet_Russian_Army_DOSIMETER_GEIGER_COUNTER_NEW!.html
Thanks Giurza !!! I will check out your link. Really appreciate the help.
Montgomery County Texas
Guaranteed to make your day!!! Your week!!! Don’t mess with Guns of America—I’m moving to N.M.
Armed and Ready: New Mexico Residents Defy Government
Just omit the 3 spaces after //
http:// http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/guns/armed-and-ready-new-mexico-residents-defy-government
Hmmm….thinking New Mexico might be a good move in the future!!! These people rock!!
Outstanding! I didn’t think such a place still existed here in the U.S. It gives me hope. Thanks posting that awesome link JJ. Bravo!
Whoa! Serious freedom and liberty awareness alert in New Mexico!
Now, there are some people out there that make me proud to inhabit the same continent with!
Its not all bad, people! There are idiots and there are morons. There are also the New Mexicans. …and there will be more like them as awareness travels. I think we are seeing the start. Unblinking staredowns of the over-active, tyrannical bastard-thieves makes me want to do the happy dance.
…and run a few more rounds through my AK.
Disregard the directions to omit any spaces..geeze!!
Sorry guys/gals,
This guy is an idiot. Funny, but an idiot. Just think back to the Tokyo subway nerve gas attacks. When I was at work, we had a Pakistani middle school student threatened to gas the school if the pledge of allegiance was recited one more day. When the staff figured out who the kid was he was expelled from the district. We went through the kid’s wall locker and found the pre-stages of serin nerve gas being made in his locker. Now this kid was at a magnet school and his IQ was off the charts, so I don’t think the average middle schooler could do this, but wow!
Also, as an NBC (Nuclear Biological Chemical) warfare scout for my regiment in the Cav may make me a little more sensitive to this type of article, but doing something like this is just stupid. How many people who got gassed in Tokyo wish that someone would have been alert enough to spot the danger signs (although the delivery system there was concealed in packages so this scenario wont count)?
JJsan
Same applies if you are wearing a turbin of some sort and have a beard: don’t fidget with your mail.
He is Vietnamese (doesn’t matter where he was born) and was just practicing what will happen when San Jose turns another Saigon, a la ’75.