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"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
The Violent Militarization Of Local Police
Law-abiding citizens are no longer safe from police. Once the motto for police officers was “To protect and serve,” but now it seems to be “To harass, assault and attack.”
Across the country, police officers are increasingly militarized and increasingly militant. They make up laws out of thin air, claiming that innocuous activities like watching or videotaping police activities — including arrests on public streets, walking in certain neighborhoods, parking on certain streets and putting trash in trash cans — are crimes.
While the vilest offenders are SWAT teams, even regular patrol officers become violent at the least provocation. Thanks to YouTube and similar content-sharing sites, more of these incidents are coming to light. However, capturing video of these incidents has put the videographer at risk from the police, who often unlawfully and forcibly take the phone or camera and erase its contents or remove its memory card. It’s not unusual for the videographer to be roughed up and/or threatened with arrest in the process. A list of recent incidences of police brutality and other police misconduct can be read at Injustice Everywhere.
Cops have come to think of themselves as gods above the law whose commands are to be obeyed immediately and without question. Any hesitation often leads to the “suspect” being left bleeding and broken or quivering from electricity introduced by a TASER. It doesn’t matter if the person was unable to understand the command because of a language barrier, or if the person was unable to comply due to disability or defect. Officers expect immediate and complete compliance with no questions asked.
They are shooting dogs for barking, Tasing (see here and here) and pepper spraying children in schools and shooting wheelchair-bound men in the streets. They apparently feel they operate above the law.
Many, if not most, patrol cars now carry dash cams. Sometimes, dash cam videos are preserved, which allows abused citizens — if they are persistent and dogged enough — to get justice and restitution occasionally. Such was the case shown here, where the officer threatened to shoot a suspect in the head for not revealing he had a concealed weapon in the car. Often, though, the dash cam video mysteriously disappears before trial.
According to a report by the CATO Institute, tens of thousands of raids are conducted by SWAT teams each year. The report claimed:
These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.
The so-called War on Drugs is undoubtedly the casus belli for the increased militarization of the police. SWAT officers are armed and armored as well as, if not better than, soldiers. Drug task forces receive Federal funding to purchase assault weapons, armor and armored vehicles to use in drug raids. They no longer serve warrants by knocking on doors or by picking up suspects on the streets. Instead, they bash down doors or use chain saws to gain entry.
SWAT teams argue their safety requires they swarm into homes. But that doesn’t negate the fact that they create an explosive situation that often leads to innocent people being harmed or killed. Sadly, they often force their way into the wrong residence.
The instance in Tucson, Ariz., in which Iraq veteran Jose Guerena was shot 60 times by SWAT officers in his home is prima facie evidence of the danger these situations create.
In the early morning hours Guerena’s wife, Vanessa, saw a man pointing a gun at her through the window. She awakened her husband, who was asleep after working the night shift. Thinking a home invasion was in progress, Guerena told his wife to get into a closet and grabbed his gun.
The SWAT team forced open the door and opened fire on Guerena, then stood by and watched him bleed for an hour before letting paramedics treat him. By then, he was dead. SWAT officers then lied about who shot first. The safety was still on Guerena’s gun, indicating he never fired. Nothing illegal was found in Guerena’s home.
It is grounded in conservative American psyche to defend oneself and one’s home. Yet responding to an unannounced and violent intrusion by police will leave you as dead as it left Guerena.
And even if you aren’t shot dead, the police have no qualms about destroying your residence. They claim it is police procedure to gas the house, tear up floor boards, kick in doors and walls, and strew contents of cabinets and furniture to the winds. Requests for compensation are ignored, even if nothing was ever found.
But it’s not just suspected drug dealers who feel the wrath of police officers. Just ask Marianne Godboldo of Detroit. Police thugs forcibly removed her daughter for the crime of Godboldo not giving her daughter a pill prescribed by a physician.
Most people dismiss claims of an increasingly violent and aggressive police force as either conspiracy theory or sour grapes by criminals. Minorities have long seen their claims of police brutality dismissed out of hand by white America. Many people naively believe that if they don’t commit a crime, they won’t have anything to worry about from police. But it’s high time that people see this for what it is and connect the dots on the news stories of today.
Congress has just authorized having as many as 30,000 unmanned drones patrolling the U.S. skies. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security are greatly expanding the definition of extremist and terrorist to include people performing normal activities or objecting to paying taxes. The USA Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act have given government carte blanche to detain Americans without charge and without trial and ship them to the Guantanamo Bay prison resort.
In a series of debates on socialism in 1914, John Basil Barnhill said, “Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.” The government fears the people and the coming conflagration it has sparked. By tightening its grasp on liberty through the militarization of the police force, the pendulum is swinging to where the people are now beginning to fear their government.
Where this will lead is anybody’s guess, but I predict it won’t be pretty.
Across the country, police officers are increasingly militarized and increasingly militant. They make up laws out of thin air, claiming that innocuous activities like watching or videotaping police activities — including arrests on public streets, walking in certain neighborhoods, parking on certain streets and putting trash in trash cans — are crimes.
While the vilest offenders are SWAT teams, even regular patrol officers become violent at the least provocation. Thanks to YouTube and similar content-sharing sites, more of these incidents are coming to light. However, capturing video of these incidents has put the videographer at risk from the police, who often unlawfully and forcibly take the phone or camera and erase its contents or remove its memory card. It’s not unusual for the videographer to be roughed up and/or threatened with arrest in the process. A list of recent incidences of police brutality and other police misconduct can be read at Injustice Everywhere.
Cops have come to think of themselves as gods above the law whose commands are to be obeyed immediately and without question. Any hesitation often leads to the “suspect” being left bleeding and broken or quivering from electricity introduced by a TASER. It doesn’t matter if the person was unable to understand the command because of a language barrier, or if the person was unable to comply due to disability or defect. Officers expect immediate and complete compliance with no questions asked.
They are shooting dogs for barking, Tasing (see here and here) and pepper spraying children in schools and shooting wheelchair-bound men in the streets. They apparently feel they operate above the law.
Many, if not most, patrol cars now carry dash cams. Sometimes, dash cam videos are preserved, which allows abused citizens — if they are persistent and dogged enough — to get justice and restitution occasionally. Such was the case shown here, where the officer threatened to shoot a suspect in the head for not revealing he had a concealed weapon in the car. Often, though, the dash cam video mysteriously disappears before trial.
According to a report by the CATO Institute, tens of thousands of raids are conducted by SWAT teams each year. The report claimed:
These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.
The so-called War on Drugs is undoubtedly the casus belli for the increased militarization of the police. SWAT officers are armed and armored as well as, if not better than, soldiers. Drug task forces receive Federal funding to purchase assault weapons, armor and armored vehicles to use in drug raids. They no longer serve warrants by knocking on doors or by picking up suspects on the streets. Instead, they bash down doors or use chain saws to gain entry.
SWAT teams argue their safety requires they swarm into homes. But that doesn’t negate the fact that they create an explosive situation that often leads to innocent people being harmed or killed. Sadly, they often force their way into the wrong residence.
The instance in Tucson, Ariz., in which Iraq veteran Jose Guerena was shot 60 times by SWAT officers in his home is prima facie evidence of the danger these situations create.
In the early morning hours Guerena’s wife, Vanessa, saw a man pointing a gun at her through the window. She awakened her husband, who was asleep after working the night shift. Thinking a home invasion was in progress, Guerena told his wife to get into a closet and grabbed his gun.
The SWAT team forced open the door and opened fire on Guerena, then stood by and watched him bleed for an hour before letting paramedics treat him. By then, he was dead. SWAT officers then lied about who shot first. The safety was still on Guerena’s gun, indicating he never fired. Nothing illegal was found in Guerena’s home.
It is grounded in conservative American psyche to defend oneself and one’s home. Yet responding to an unannounced and violent intrusion by police will leave you as dead as it left Guerena.
And even if you aren’t shot dead, the police have no qualms about destroying your residence. They claim it is police procedure to gas the house, tear up floor boards, kick in doors and walls, and strew contents of cabinets and furniture to the winds. Requests for compensation are ignored, even if nothing was ever found.
But it’s not just suspected drug dealers who feel the wrath of police officers. Just ask Marianne Godboldo of Detroit. Police thugs forcibly removed her daughter for the crime of Godboldo not giving her daughter a pill prescribed by a physician.
Most people dismiss claims of an increasingly violent and aggressive police force as either conspiracy theory or sour grapes by criminals. Minorities have long seen their claims of police brutality dismissed out of hand by white America. Many people naively believe that if they don’t commit a crime, they won’t have anything to worry about from police. But it’s high time that people see this for what it is and connect the dots on the news stories of today.
Congress has just authorized having as many as 30,000 unmanned drones patrolling the U.S. skies. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security are greatly expanding the definition of extremist and terrorist to include people performing normal activities or objecting to paying taxes. The USA Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act have given government carte blanche to detain Americans without charge and without trial and ship them to the Guantanamo Bay prison resort.
In a series of debates on socialism in 1914, John Basil Barnhill said, “Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.” The government fears the people and the coming conflagration it has sparked. By tightening its grasp on liberty through the militarization of the police force, the pendulum is swinging to where the people are now beginning to fear their government.
Where this will lead is anybody’s guess, but I predict it won’t be pretty.
Does Media Matters Coordinate Strategy With the WH
David Brock was smoking a cigarette on the roof of his Washington, D.C. office one day in the late fall of 2010 when his assistant and two bodyguards suddenly appeared and whisked him and his colleague Eric Burns down the stairs.
Brock, the head of the liberal nonprofit Media Matters for America, had told friends and co-workers that he feared he was in imminent danger from right-wing assassins and needed a security team to keep him safe.
The threat he faced while smoking on his roof? “Snipers,” a former co-worker recalled.
“He had more security than a Third World dictator,” one employee said, explaining that Brock’s bodyguards would rarely leave his side, even accompanying him to his home in an affluent Washington neighborhood each night where they “stood post” to protect him. “What movement leader has a detail?” asked someone who saw it.
Extensive interviews with a number of Brock’s current and former colleagues at Media Matters, as well as with leaders from across the spectrum of Democratic politics, reveal an organization roiled by its leader’s volatile and erratic behavior and struggles with mental illness, and an office where Brock’s executive assistant carried a handgun to public events in order to defend his boss from unseen threats.
Yet those same interviews, as well as a detailed organizational planning memo obtained by The Daily Caller, also suggest that Media Matters has to a great extent achieved its central goal of influencing the national media.
Brock, the head of the liberal nonprofit Media Matters for America, had told friends and co-workers that he feared he was in imminent danger from right-wing assassins and needed a security team to keep him safe.
The threat he faced while smoking on his roof? “Snipers,” a former co-worker recalled.
“He had more security than a Third World dictator,” one employee said, explaining that Brock’s bodyguards would rarely leave his side, even accompanying him to his home in an affluent Washington neighborhood each night where they “stood post” to protect him. “What movement leader has a detail?” asked someone who saw it.
Extensive interviews with a number of Brock’s current and former colleagues at Media Matters, as well as with leaders from across the spectrum of Democratic politics, reveal an organization roiled by its leader’s volatile and erratic behavior and struggles with mental illness, and an office where Brock’s executive assistant carried a handgun to public events in order to defend his boss from unseen threats.
Yet those same interviews, as well as a detailed organizational planning memo obtained by The Daily Caller, also suggest that Media Matters has to a great extent achieved its central goal of influencing the national media.
The Buck Never Stops With Them
From a friend in Washington:
Former OMB Director and White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew did the full tour of all five Sunday shows this morning, failing on each show to articulate how their upcoming budget would lift the crushing burden of debt and tackle our nation’s most pressing challenges. Instead, Lew confirmed reports of familiar ‘stimulus’ spending initiatives, recycled tax increases, and exploiting tired budget gimmicks.
Lew did break news in one area, however: when it comes to the fact that the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate has failed to pass a budget in over 1,000 days, the White House’s dodge has now turned to deception. The federal government continues to spend trillions of dollars, yet Senate Democrats have – for three straight years – refused to prioritize Washington’s spending and borrowing. Senate Democrats, by refusing to honestly confront the debt threat, have chosen to accelerate our most pressing fiscal and economic challenges.
When asked earlier this week about the Senate Democrats historic failure, Press Secretary Jay Carney claimed that the White House had “no opinion” on whether or not the Senate should pass a budget.
This morning, when pressed further on this question, Lew revealed a stunning deception with respect to the budget process. Lew claimed on both CNN and Meet the Press that a supermajority is needed to pass a budget resolution in the U.S. Senate, and that a ‘filibuster’ is what stands in the way of Senator Reid’s inability to pass a budget.
- Jack Lew on MTP: “Well, one of the things about the United States Senate that I don’t think the American people realize is that it takes 60 not 50 votes to pass something.”
- Jack Lew on CNN: “We also need to be honest. You can’t pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes and you can’t get 60 votes without bipartisan support.”
That is simply false: “The budget resolution…requires only a majority vote to pass, and its consideration is one of the few actions that cannot be filibustered in the Senate.”
Confusion when it comes to the budget law is nothing new for this Administration. The President’s budget request tomorrow is already past the deadline set by the 1974 Congressional Budget Act, the latest in a lengthy string of violations of their legal obligations.
Has the White House bothered to ask their party’s leaders in the U.S. Senate the real reason they refuse to prioritize the American people’s tax dollars? Is it that they can’t admit to how much more they want to take from hardworking American families in order to fuel their spending appetite?
Tomorrow’s belated budget request from the President will likely provide some guidance to these questions. With respect to why Democrat leaders fear detailing their real priorities, Chairman Paul Ryan noted the following this past week:
While President Obama shirks his responsibility to advance solutions to our fiscal challenges, he can no longer hide from the merciless math of the balance sheet.
We have pressured the President to put forward a number of deficit-reduction proposals – and while none has offered a credible solution to our fiscal crisis, each one has revealed a little bit more about what the President would do if he were forced to end the deficits. It wouldn’t be pretty. His proposals have three things in common: they load massive tax increases on small businesses and hardworking families, they require bureaucratic rationing in government health care programs, and they hollow out our national security.
Every time we force the President and his party’s leaders to get specific on how they would solve our fiscal challenges, they show us an agenda that does great harm to our economic security, our health security, and our national security.
Obama’s White House is more of the same. Really dumb ideas to solve very deep and complex problems. It’s not a White House that has thought of ways to get us out of the mess-but it’s simply used the White House to redirect our path and speed it down the drain to European style socialism.
Former OMB Director and White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew did the full tour of all five Sunday shows this morning, failing on each show to articulate how their upcoming budget would lift the crushing burden of debt and tackle our nation’s most pressing challenges. Instead, Lew confirmed reports of familiar ‘stimulus’ spending initiatives, recycled tax increases, and exploiting tired budget gimmicks.
Lew did break news in one area, however: when it comes to the fact that the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate has failed to pass a budget in over 1,000 days, the White House’s dodge has now turned to deception. The federal government continues to spend trillions of dollars, yet Senate Democrats have – for three straight years – refused to prioritize Washington’s spending and borrowing. Senate Democrats, by refusing to honestly confront the debt threat, have chosen to accelerate our most pressing fiscal and economic challenges.
When asked earlier this week about the Senate Democrats historic failure, Press Secretary Jay Carney claimed that the White House had “no opinion” on whether or not the Senate should pass a budget.
This morning, when pressed further on this question, Lew revealed a stunning deception with respect to the budget process. Lew claimed on both CNN and Meet the Press that a supermajority is needed to pass a budget resolution in the U.S. Senate, and that a ‘filibuster’ is what stands in the way of Senator Reid’s inability to pass a budget.
- Jack Lew on MTP: “Well, one of the things about the United States Senate that I don’t think the American people realize is that it takes 60 not 50 votes to pass something.”
- Jack Lew on CNN: “We also need to be honest. You can’t pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes and you can’t get 60 votes without bipartisan support.”
That is simply false: “The budget resolution…requires only a majority vote to pass, and its consideration is one of the few actions that cannot be filibustered in the Senate.”
Confusion when it comes to the budget law is nothing new for this Administration. The President’s budget request tomorrow is already past the deadline set by the 1974 Congressional Budget Act, the latest in a lengthy string of violations of their legal obligations.
Has the White House bothered to ask their party’s leaders in the U.S. Senate the real reason they refuse to prioritize the American people’s tax dollars? Is it that they can’t admit to how much more they want to take from hardworking American families in order to fuel their spending appetite?
Tomorrow’s belated budget request from the President will likely provide some guidance to these questions. With respect to why Democrat leaders fear detailing their real priorities, Chairman Paul Ryan noted the following this past week:
While President Obama shirks his responsibility to advance solutions to our fiscal challenges, he can no longer hide from the merciless math of the balance sheet.
We have pressured the President to put forward a number of deficit-reduction proposals – and while none has offered a credible solution to our fiscal crisis, each one has revealed a little bit more about what the President would do if he were forced to end the deficits. It wouldn’t be pretty. His proposals have three things in common: they load massive tax increases on small businesses and hardworking families, they require bureaucratic rationing in government health care programs, and they hollow out our national security.
Every time we force the President and his party’s leaders to get specific on how they would solve our fiscal challenges, they show us an agenda that does great harm to our economic security, our health security, and our national security.
Obama’s White House is more of the same. Really dumb ideas to solve very deep and complex problems. It’s not a White House that has thought of ways to get us out of the mess-but it’s simply used the White House to redirect our path and speed it down the drain to European style socialism.
Romney wins at CPAC??
So what's up with that?? I keep getting this feeling that "we the people" are being led down a path for our candidate. Every time a real conservative comes to the front he is beat back by something or someone. Could it be that a person CAN buy the spot if they have enough money?? or am I just being paranoid?
America the Impotent?
Michael Youssef
No column that I have written for MichaelYoussef.com has brought more tears of grief than this one.
As an immigrant to this great country, I have respected, revered, and loved America. As a young boy growing up in the horrors of a socialist dictatorship, America represented the ideal of freedom and peace through strength for this earthly life.
As an adult who has been privileged to circle the globe more than 42 times on behalf of the good news of the Gospel of Jesus the Christ, I have met many fellow lovers of America...though they have not had the privilege of living here.
Everywhere I have travelled, I have found myself deeply aware of some who resented America and others who feared her...but all have respected this great nation. I remember particularly in the 80s after President Reagan restored America’s tarnished national image from the Carter years. From Asia to South America people were glad for America’s renewed stature.
Sadly, today it is déjà-vu all over again.
When a banana republic like Egypt, who receives more than $1.5 billion a year in aid from the United States, can thumb its nose at the United States and put the son of America’s Secretary of Transportation on trial for promoting democracy, one wonders if anyone can truly restore America’s former “peace through strength” image to the world.
Remember, it was the Obama administration that supported the so-called “democracy” movement. It was the Obama administration that acquiesced to the collapse of the former regime, Mubarak—America’s ally. It was the Obama administration that hailed the military takeover. It was the Obama administration that held secret talks with the then-outlawed, now in charge, Muslim Brotherhood. The list continues on.
Now, the Obama administration is so impotent that it cannot demand the release of true American democracy advocates, including the son of one of its own. What a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions!
Americans of all political stripes need to grieve over America’s impotent image around the world.
In grieving over the condition of the greatest country on Earth, believers need to pray that God will somehow supernaturally intervene, not because we deserve His supernatural intervention, but because of the role that America has played and can continue to play in bringing the only message of peace through Christ to a desperate and dying world.
No column that I have written for MichaelYoussef.com has brought more tears of grief than this one.
As an immigrant to this great country, I have respected, revered, and loved America. As a young boy growing up in the horrors of a socialist dictatorship, America represented the ideal of freedom and peace through strength for this earthly life.
As an adult who has been privileged to circle the globe more than 42 times on behalf of the good news of the Gospel of Jesus the Christ, I have met many fellow lovers of America...though they have not had the privilege of living here.
Everywhere I have travelled, I have found myself deeply aware of some who resented America and others who feared her...but all have respected this great nation. I remember particularly in the 80s after President Reagan restored America’s tarnished national image from the Carter years. From Asia to South America people were glad for America’s renewed stature.
Sadly, today it is déjà-vu all over again.
When a banana republic like Egypt, who receives more than $1.5 billion a year in aid from the United States, can thumb its nose at the United States and put the son of America’s Secretary of Transportation on trial for promoting democracy, one wonders if anyone can truly restore America’s former “peace through strength” image to the world.
Remember, it was the Obama administration that supported the so-called “democracy” movement. It was the Obama administration that acquiesced to the collapse of the former regime, Mubarak—America’s ally. It was the Obama administration that hailed the military takeover. It was the Obama administration that held secret talks with the then-outlawed, now in charge, Muslim Brotherhood. The list continues on.
Now, the Obama administration is so impotent that it cannot demand the release of true American democracy advocates, including the son of one of its own. What a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions!
Americans of all political stripes need to grieve over America’s impotent image around the world.
In grieving over the condition of the greatest country on Earth, believers need to pray that God will somehow supernaturally intervene, not because we deserve His supernatural intervention, but because of the role that America has played and can continue to play in bringing the only message of peace through Christ to a desperate and dying world.
Justice Ginsburg Reminds Us What is at Stake
This November’s election isn’t about the direction of our country over the next four years – it’s about the very survival of our Constitution, our values, and our freedoms as we know them. If freedom-loving Americans needed any more evidence for this, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently provided it.
In a visit to Cairo, Egypt, Justice Ginsburg told Al Hayat television, “I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.”
Instead, she urged Egyptians to look elsewhere to more modern constitutions in South Africa, Canada, and even the European Convention on Human Rights.
Of course, not one of these governing documents comes close to adequately guaranteeing the fundamental human rights and liberties enshrined in our U.S. Constitution. It’s also worth pointing out that Ginsburg’s eagerness to diminish the sanctity of America’s supreme law is hardly shocking, as this isn’t the first time she’s gone out of her way to disparage the document she swore an oath to uphold.
But her comments should serve as a chilling reminder of everything that is at stake in this year’s presidential election.
If President Barack Obama wins reelection, he could have the opportunity to fill up to three vacancies on the Supreme Court. And as we’ve seen in his first term, Obama is not interested in appointing sound, originalist nominees to the high court.
Rather, the President is committed to stacking the court with anti-Second Amendment, anti-freedom justices who are motivated to make rulings that dismantle the fundamental freedoms guaranteed in our Bill of Rights. In essence, Obama wants judges in the Ruth Bader Ginsburg mold, who are brazen enough to undermine the very laws and individual human rights they swear to defend.
For example, in the Supreme Court’s landmark Heller decision that narrowly struck down Washington, D.C.’s unconstitutional gun ban by a 5-4 vote, Ginsburg and three of her colleagues concluded that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual right to own a firearm, nor does it protect our right to defend ourselves, our property, or our loved ones.
Ginsburg may have lost that round, but assuredly, she knows how close the anti- freedom wing of the court is to erasing our Second Amendment freedom out of existence. As Ginsburg told a Harvard Club audience in 2009, she looks forward to the day when a “future, wiser court” overturns 5-4 decisions like Heller.
NRA members, gun owners and all liberty-minded Americans need to recognize that our future is now. This year’s election is a choice between the America our Founding Fathers established, and a radically different America that Barack Obama and Ruth Bader Ginsburg envision.
In a visit to Cairo, Egypt, Justice Ginsburg told Al Hayat television, “I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.”
Instead, she urged Egyptians to look elsewhere to more modern constitutions in South Africa, Canada, and even the European Convention on Human Rights.
Of course, not one of these governing documents comes close to adequately guaranteeing the fundamental human rights and liberties enshrined in our U.S. Constitution. It’s also worth pointing out that Ginsburg’s eagerness to diminish the sanctity of America’s supreme law is hardly shocking, as this isn’t the first time she’s gone out of her way to disparage the document she swore an oath to uphold.
But her comments should serve as a chilling reminder of everything that is at stake in this year’s presidential election.
If President Barack Obama wins reelection, he could have the opportunity to fill up to three vacancies on the Supreme Court. And as we’ve seen in his first term, Obama is not interested in appointing sound, originalist nominees to the high court.
Rather, the President is committed to stacking the court with anti-Second Amendment, anti-freedom justices who are motivated to make rulings that dismantle the fundamental freedoms guaranteed in our Bill of Rights. In essence, Obama wants judges in the Ruth Bader Ginsburg mold, who are brazen enough to undermine the very laws and individual human rights they swear to defend.
For example, in the Supreme Court’s landmark Heller decision that narrowly struck down Washington, D.C.’s unconstitutional gun ban by a 5-4 vote, Ginsburg and three of her colleagues concluded that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual right to own a firearm, nor does it protect our right to defend ourselves, our property, or our loved ones.
Ginsburg may have lost that round, but assuredly, she knows how close the anti- freedom wing of the court is to erasing our Second Amendment freedom out of existence. As Ginsburg told a Harvard Club audience in 2009, she looks forward to the day when a “future, wiser court” overturns 5-4 decisions like Heller.
NRA members, gun owners and all liberty-minded Americans need to recognize that our future is now. This year’s election is a choice between the America our Founding Fathers established, and a radically different America that Barack Obama and Ruth Bader Ginsburg envision.
