Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas by Thomas Jefferson

"But the greatest of all reformers… was JESUS OF NAZARETH. …his LUSTRE … and DIAMOND … have the outlines of a system of the MOST SUBLIME MORALITY which has ever fallen from the lips of man. The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this BENEVOLENT MORALITY, and rescuing it from the imputation of imposture… is a most desirable object."

On December 25, 1776, George Washington and other Continental Army heroes crossed the icy Delaware River, defeated enemy troops, and turned the tide of war. These noble souls enabled posterity to enjoy a Merry Christmas every year.

Six days before the Crossing, on December 19, Thomas Paine's The American Crisis was published. On December 23, General Washington had it read to his troops, who suffered great privations including blankets. Thomas Paine's words fueled uncommon souls:

“These are the times that try men's souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

Eternal reverence, my Heroes! Honored and adored!
The Voices, The Minds, and The Swords.

TERRY LAKIN – In the Company of Heroes

This article by Jerry McConnell of Canada Free Press says:

“One day after being sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, on Jan. 21, 2009, Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13489… The actual wording of Obama’s first Executive Order merely rescinded an earlier executive order issued by President Bush severely limiting public access to presidential records after they left office.

By doing this he was gaining points by making a Bush’s EO public and not kept secret while at the same time protecting his own personal records and keeping his critical personal information uber top secret and not subject to later disclosure by a succeeding presidential EO.”

On March 30, 2010, Lieutenant Colonel Terrence Lakin wrote to President Obama:

“For more than seventeen years, I have had the privilege of serving my country as a member of the U.S. Armed Forces, including overseas assignments in imminent danger/combat areas in Bosnia and Afghanistan….

Since the fall of 2008, I have been troubled by reports that your original birth certificate remains concealed from public view along with many other records which, if released, would quickly end questions surrounding your place of birth and "natural born" status. Many people mistake the online Certification of Live Birth for an original birth certificate. Until the summer of 2009, the Hawaiian Department of Homelands would not accept this Certification of Live Birth to determine native Hawaiian identity--the Department insisted upon also reviewing an original birth certificate. Many do not understand that the online document was from 2007, generated by computer, laser-printed, and merely a certification that there is an original birth certificate on file which may or may not be sufficiently probative. An original birth certificate is the underlying document that presumably includes a hospital and attending physician's or midwife's name that should lay to rest the "natural born" dispute….

Unless it is established (by this sufficient proof that should be easily within your power to provide) that you are constitutionally eligible to serve as President and my Commander-in-Chief, I, and all other military officers may be following illegal orders. Therefore, sir, until an original birth certificate is brought forward that validates your eligibility and puts to rest the other reasonable questions surrounding your unproven eligibility; I cannot in good conscience obey ANY military orders.”

Lieutenant Colonel Terrence Lakin is a military doctor, the NOBLEST of professions combined. He declares, "The Constitution matters, so does the truth. Americans deserve answers, not a continuing coverup."

LTC Lakin has been sentenced to six months in jail. He is jail-bound because the coercive-power monopolist, supposed to secure individual rights, has turned oppressor.

LTC Lakin is in the company of heroes. Thomas Paine salutes him:

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death."

Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams embrace LTC Lakin:

"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.... Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, may your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were ever our countrymen. Forbid it, Almighty God! But as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

LTC Lakin does great honor to Continental Army Officers Thomas Clark and Aaron Clark, and to their father, Abraham Clark:

Dragooned to renounce his signature on the Declaration of Independence for the release of his two sons, captured and tortured by the British, Abraham Clark refused, honoring his country and solemn pledge: “We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

LTC Lakin has earned the love of the Glorious 56:

Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward Jr. and Arthur Middleton
Lost their vast landholdings and estates while in prison.
As Signers of the Declaration of Independence
They were singled out for indignities and brutal treatment.

Richard Stockton was brutally beaten upon capture.
He was starved and subjected to freezing cold weather.
After nearly six weeks of brutal treatment,
He was released, his health ruined.
His belongings, crops, and livestock taken or destroyed,
His library, one of the finest in the colonies, was burned.

LTC Lakin is a Declaration of Independence man. Having FREEDOM and self-respect as top values, he does the right thing no matter the cost. No matter how difficult, he cannot do otherwise - he cannot sacrifice his sacred honor.

LTC Lakin embodies Jeffersonian principles:

"I prefer dangerous liberty to peaceful servitude.... Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.... The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.... When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality.”

“Honor, justice, and humanity,
Forbid us to tamely surrender that freedom
Which we received from our gallant ancestors,
And which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us.
We cannot endure the infamy and guilt
Of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness
Which inevitably awaits them
If we basely entail hereditary bondage on them.”

LTC Lakin fights with and for George Washington and his army. LTC Lakin goes through utter hell so that their uncommon heroism shall not be in vain.

George Washington’s uncommon ragtag army
Against an empire, unbeatably mighty
Great privations stretching to years
Sacrifice-free! Proud and fierce!

Angels do walk on Earth, but it takes the noblest of virtues to recognize them. Thank you, military doctor Terry Lakin. God bless, uncommon angel.


*****

Lieutenant Colonel Terry Lakin discusses the denial of access to key witnesses.

THE ONLY VIDEO COVERAGE FROM THE TRIAL: LTC Lakin Found Guilty of Obeying his Constitutional Oath

Lieutenant Colonel Terry Lakin Court-Martial Trial Update

Tyrant-Wannabe Charles Krauthammer

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the WikiLeaks exposés are embarrassing and awkward but would not significantly complicate US foreign policy. Yet, tyrant-wannabes, like Charles Krauthammer, lust to gestapo Julian Assange.

Governments hold a MONOPOLY on coercive power. The ONLY nonviolent checks against this power are the freedoms of speech and the press.

"No government ought to be without censors & where the press is free, no one ever will…. Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."

"If virtuous, [the government] need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting the truth, either in religion, law, or politics."

"I am... against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents. …error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."

"A right of free correspondence between citizen and citizen on their joint interests, whether public or private and under whatsoever laws these interests arise, is a natural right… it is... one of the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established."

"[Let us] go on in doing with [the] pen what in other times was done with the sword, [and] show that reformation is more practicable by operating on the mind than on the body of man."

-- Thomas Jefferson

Tyrant-wannabe Krauthammer salivates at the unarmed and defenseless going through CREATIVE mental torture devised by the coercive-power monopolist.

When the police and armed forces become protectors of Goliaths bashing unarmed citizens, the latter will have no choice but to put into effect the purpose of the 2nd Amendment.

“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”

“A people unwilling to use extreme violent force to preserve or obtain their liberty, deserves the tyrants that rule them.”

-- Thomas Jefferson

Candle in the Whirlwind

“It’s not criminals who provoke great hatred, it’s honest men.” The words of a polymath and polyglot executed by tyrants at age 35: Dr. Jose Rizal.

Honesty is fidelity to the truth. The truth is what conforms to reality. Integrity is fidelity to logic. It is the refusal to hold contradictions; it is the consistent cohesion of words and deeds; it is honoring one’s mental creations by giving them physical existence.

When millions are redefining religious freedom to mean faith in bed with force,

When atheism warriors are perverting Objectivism, shunning deists fighting for freedom yet supporting popular theocracy and anarchism warriors,

When many are avoiding Thomas Jefferson’s tempestuous sea of liberty,

When freedom fighters fail to grasp a concrete defiance against tyranny,

When loved ones and friends are distant or silent,

     The lonely Jeffersonian must face a Rizalist fate almost alone.

The Fed’s Circumvention of the First Amendment

“The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.” –- Thomas Jefferson

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” -- First Amendment

Congress may not abridge freedoms, but may the board members of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York? They can. They are circumventing the First Amendment.

Would NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC report on abuses of COERCIVE POWER or conflicts of interest at The Fed though their boss, Jeffrey R. Immelt, is a board member?

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, another current board member, issued an outside-work policy in its 2010 Code of Conduct Training prohibiting JPMC employees from posting a statement such as this on the internet: “I think the financial services industry is over-regulated and should be governed by market forces only.”

Would NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC assign reporters to find out which other Fed board members who head private corporations have issued the same directive? Have the Fed board members dragooned other CEOs into issuing this directive?

Jamie Dimon’s DECREE impacts the freedoms of speech and of the press, and of the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. If an action of one who wields COERCIVE POWER infringes these freedoms, it is a First Amendment violation. 

A moral man does not rule, nor can he be ruled by men.

JP Morgan Chase Circumvents the First Amendment

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase (JPMC), a current board member of a GOVERNMENT BANK, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issued an outside-work policy in its 2010 Code of Conduct Training prohibiting JPMC employees from posting a statement such as this on the internet: “I think the financial services industry is over-regulated and should be governed by market forces only.”

I refused to affirm this infringement of outside-work speech and press. Consequently, my employment with JPMC was terminated on August 7, 2010.

*
Other news items and information:

G.E. and JPMorgan Got Lots of Fed Help in ’08

The Wall Street Pentagon Papers: Biggest Scam In World History Exposed - Are The Federal Reserve’s Crimes Too Big To Comprehend?

JP Morgan Silver Manipulation Explained

GOVERNMENT-GOLIATH Gestapoes Job Creators

“There exists a right independent of force; that a right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings; that NO ONE HAS A RIGHT TO OBSTRUCT ANOTHER exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature.” -- Thomas Jefferson

  

Antitrust, Insider Trading, and other regulations have rendered businessmen rightless and have kept them under a silent, growing reign of terror. Terrorists and fish get better treatment.

Insider Trading laws allow intervention BY FORCE into the very process of gaining and using knowledge. They are undefined, flexible, and unpredictable monstrosities. Regulators can deem any businessman a criminal anytime.

The advocacy or sanction of coercion is THE MARK OF EVIL.

"I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others." -- Thomas Jefferson

  

The government established in the Insider Trading laws: UNEARNED PROFITS BY FORCE. Profiting from years of study and establishing goodwill with others is earned profit, but punishable with fines and imprisonment. Intellectual egalitarianism, the belief that the minds and the knowledge of all men must be equalized, is the root premise of full disclosure and insider trading laws.

Insider Trading and Antitrust laws have turned Wall Street into a SLAVE PEN.

• Big New York Insider Trading Probe - 2009 & 2010
• Insider Trading Persecutions under Ronald Reagan (Find CHAPTER 3)
• The Injustice of Insider-Trading Rules

The American Revolutionaries fought a king and his mighty empire that ALL individuals be free from coercion by other men and by the government. When asked to do good by force – to be king of the USA – George Washington responded: “Abhorrent!” He upheld individual rights. He rejected power. Power-lust is for little men.

If the White House, US Congress, and Securities & Exchange Commission GOLIATHS were not coward power-lusters, they would shed their GOONS, compete with honor in a coercion-free market, and wipe out all no good businesses and businessmen. Instead, these rampaging GOLIATHS, on coercive-power steroid, puff up, “FREE competition must be ENFORCED! FREE men must be SHACKLED! FREE men are RIGHTLESS! You can have your job creators and pitchfork them, too!”

The successful and the affluent have rights equal to the inherent inalienable rights of every man.

  

When rights-protectors turned GOLIATHS bash unarmed citizens: Thomas Jeffersons, George Washingtons, Patrick Henrys, Samuel Adamses, and George Pattons must rise up to defend Liberty.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty. When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality.

The time is at hand which must determine whether American businessmen are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their properties are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. Their cruel and unrelenting oppressors leave them only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. They must resolve to conquer or die.

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, may your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were ever our countrymen. As for me, give me liberty or I will fight unto death!

Americans love freedom. American businessmen must fight GOLIATHS for three reasons. First, they must defend their loved ones and their properties. Second, they fight for their own self respect. Third, they fight because they are free men!

  

Job Creators:

     Assert Freedom! Fight the knaves!
          Else, be crowned cowards, willing slaves.

First POTUS to Propose Income & Inheritance Taxes, & Socialized Medicine

Republican and Progressive THEODORE ROOSEVELT, John McCain’s hero, admired by Hillary Clinton and Bill O'Reilly -

1) Theodore Roosevelt was a dedicated enforcer of Antitrust (FREE competition must be ENFORCED!)

2) “In 1908 Theodore Roosevelt endorsed both an income tax and an inheritance tax, becoming the first President of the United States to openly propose that the political power of government be used to redistribute wealth.” -- Origin of the Income Tax -- http://mises.org/daily/1597

3) “Socialized medicine was first proposed by Republican Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, when he ran for a third term as president on the Progressive Party platform.” -- http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5697

Independent Equals Must Choose: Self-reliance or Dependence

Independent equals must choose: self-reliance or dependence. Self-reliance requires selfishness. Dependence breeds moochers, looters, and rulers.

Men who glorify servility need serfs to provide their sustenance. They are not satisfied with benevolence; they demand sacrifice – the renunciation or destruction of the precious. They damn selfishness as evil, and preach masochism and sadism in the name of service and sacrifice.

Selfless means no self: no self-esteem, no self-respect, no self-love. One who is not self-reliant, a moocher or a looter, is selfless. He does not use his own mind. Having no self-respect, he needs others – for approval, guidance, and/or sustenance. One who babysits adults dishonors independence, and derives self-esteem from others. A rights-infringer is selfless - he recklessly risks his life and freedom for his need of victims. A power-luster tramples on individual liberty and derives satisfaction from enslaving others – he is not an individualist; he is not selfish.

Those who fear self-reliance, i.e. selfishness, demonize individualism - they advocate service and sacrifice. Since President Abraham Lincoln and his heroes had eradicated serfdom, citizens are conned into thinking that voluntary self-immolation is noble. Men conned into regarding selfishness as evil evade that it is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. They unwittingly facilitate power-lusters who recognize that man’s love of self must be destroyed so rulers could thrive.

To value is a function of the self – it is selfish to care for loved ones; their well-being or happiness is not divorced from the valuer’s. That good people live and prosper is in one’s own self-interest. One benefits from the advantages of social existence: exchange of knowledge, trade, division of labor, and defense from force. One wants to live in freedom and in peace – therefore, to cherish a society that respects individual rights is selfish.

The virtue involved in caring for loved ones and doing the right thing is integrity: you love, so you care; you think it is right, so you do it.

Individualists do not need sacrificial lambs. Men with self-esteem, i.e. selfish men, take pride in independence. One cannot achieve happiness without self-esteem. Without self-respect, life is not worth living. This explains why men of integrity do the right thing no matter the cost. No matter how difficult, they cannot do otherwise - they cannot sacrifice their sacred honor. Doing the right thing is not sacrifice – it is upholding the precious, not renouncing nor destroying it.

The people of the Enlightenment bequeathed virtue and glory to posterity. I call on individuals who value freedom to remember the founding of the nation conceived in Reason and Liberty. The legacy of the glorious thinkers and men of action has been trampled upon without compunction for decades. Just as they were faced with a mighty empire then, we are now faced with powerful kings.

Sons and daughters of Liberty: rise and mutually pledge to each other your lives, your fortunes, and your sacred honor that the nation conceived in Reason and Liberty shall not perish from the Earth.

-- Cut and pasted from my second novel, Royal Serf. The first half is posted here. 

Tea Partiers

The American Revolutionaries, the original Tea Partiers, fought a mighty empire. Now, we are faced with powerful dictators. Sons and daughters of Liberty must think and act that the nation conceived in Reason and Liberty shall not perish from the Earth.

The current Tea Partiers are composed of Independents, Objectivists, Libertarians, Republicans, Conservatives, and Jeffersonians. Their professed fundamental principle is freedom, but they differ in essential concretes. They differ because some hold contradictions to the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence: Individualism, the principle of Individual Rights, and that the sole proper function of government is to secure these rights, i.e. police force, courts of justice, and the military.

Its author, Thomas Jefferson, held: "I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion without imputing to them criminality."

Jefferson stated the difference between Individualists and well-meaning socialists: "We both consider the people as our children, and love them with parental affection. But you love them as infants whom you are afraid to trust without nurses; and I as adults whom I freely leave to self-government." Socialism is babysitting adults by force.

Jefferson abolished ALL excise taxes including the whiskey tax in the first year of his first presidency. In 1913, the Republicans helped institute taxation-slavery. The Americans of 1913 consented to becoming slaves, spurning George Washington’s words: “The Parliament of Great Britain hath no more right to put their hands into my pocket, without my consent, than I have to put my hands into yours for money.”

The Republicans of 1913 helped legalized extortion and trampled on the first principle of association: "To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association -- the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." – Thomas Jefferson

Earlier, in 1890, the Republicans instituted dictatorship, passing the Sherman Act, the antitrust law. The Republicans defied definitions and logic, dictating that FREE competition must be ENFORCED.

Forgotten are these Jefferson words: "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."

Citizens who embrace individual liberty formed the Libertarian Party, but its founding principle is anarchism. Its members spurn these words of the author of the Declaration: "[The] voluntary support of laws, formed by persons of their own choice, distinguishes peculiarly the minds capable of self-government. The contrary spirit is anarchy, which of necessity produces despotism."

Ayn Rand created Objectivism whose ultimate goal is capitalism. She revered the Founders. She was an atheist but said, “THERE ARE RATIONAL RELIGIOUS PEOPLE. If you want to be a full Objectivist, you cannot reconcile that with religion; BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN RELIGIOUS PEOPLE CANNOT BE INDIVIDUALISTS AND FIGHT FOR FREEDOM. THEY CAN, AND THIS COUNTRY IS THE BEST PROOF OF IT....” But, there are self-described Objectivists on Facebook who are fighting, not for capitalism, but for atheism.

Ayn Rand said, "We should keep religion out of politics for the same reasons the Founding Fathers gave. Religion is a private matter... With the American separation of church and state, all religions could live together peacefully, because each man is free to hold his own beliefs but cannot force them on others.

Persuasion, reason, argument are not the province of religion. Religion rests on faith - on an acceptance of certain beliefs apart from reason. THIS IS WHY IT MUST BE PRIVATE. WHEN IT'S A PRIVATE MATTER, IT'S FINE - IT CAN EVEN BE A KIND OF INSPIRATION TO PEOPLE. Faith is what each man may choose for himself, if he wishes. I don't."

The Conservative Party spurns Ayn Rand and Thomas Jefferson, especially these words: "...Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State..."

Ayn Rand described the Conservative Party as “not an American political party, but a religious party – A PHENOMENON FORBIDDEN BY THE CONSTITUTION.” She further said: “the Conservative Party… subordinates reason to faith, and substitutes theocracy for capitalism…”

The Conservative Party is backed by Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth - 2009) and Pope Paul’s Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples - 1967). These encyclicals blame the PROFIT motive for all the world’s problems, and call for a worldwide REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH by a world government as the solution.

Ayn Rand further said: Pope Paul’s Populorum Progressio declares that capitalism is worse than Marxism and that the only morality is altruism (self-sacrifice). She explained: “Sacrifice” does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious. “Sacrifice” does not mean the rejection of the evil for the sake of the good, but of the good for the sake of the evil. “Sacrifice” is the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don’t.

Tea Partiers must resolve good-versus-evil differences. We can do so by using reason and science.

“Shake off all the fears and servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." – Thomas Jefferson

‎‎'Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose... not to propagate it by coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do.... our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.....' –  Thomas Jefferson

We have spent the prime of our lives in procuring (young men) the precious blessing of liberty. Let them spend theirs in shewing that it is the great parent of science and of virtue; and that a nation will be great in both, always in proportion as it is free." – Thomas Jefferson

"We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart. In this enlightened age and in this land of equal liberty, it is our boast that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest offices that are known in the United States." -- George Washington

There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness. -- George Washington

The opponents of abortion hold it is EVIL while I think their arguments are not science-based, thus reek of the Dark Ages persuasion. This is an EVIL-versus-DARK-AGES difference that must be resolved by science. Heed Thomas Jefferson: "It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason." (related article)

Tea Partiers: let us be guided by the Declaration of Independence.

Ayn Rand worshipped: "If it is ever proper for men to kneel, we should kneel when we read the Declaration of Independence… probably the greatest document in human history, both philosophically and literarily."

Abe Lincoln extolled: "THE PRINCIPLES OF JEFFERSON ARE THE DEFINITIONS AND AXIOMS OF FREE SOCIETY… ALL HONOR TO JEFFERSON - to the man, who in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and sagacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so embalm it there that to-day and in all coming days it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.”

Let us ponder the founding principles, sharpen our minds, and search our souls. Let us Pay the Freedom-Debt Forward.

When the Unborn Human Being Acquires Rights

One's personal stand on abortion or on anything is no one's business. But when one proposes to impose on others, one's arguments must be based solely on reason and reality.

There are no rights other than Individual Rights. The power of any government, state or federal, comes from the people, which cannot delegate a right they do not possess. In freedom, the only right delegated is the right to self defense (except in case of an emergency), so that citizens deal with each other only by reason and persuasion, never by force. Abortion is a matter of rights, not subject to resolution by each state.

Arguments against abortion that are not based on science, i.e. reality, are theocratic and/or tyrannical. Only an actual living rational being has rights. One cannot reason with animals, so they do not have rights though they have life and brains. By nature, man is fallible, so a woman may get pregnant though she and her partner might not yet be ready to be parents. The question that must be resolved based on science is when the unborn human being acquires rights, and thus becomes equal to the mother when it comes to rights.

I use the criterion for the cessation of human life, brain activity, as the criterion for the onset of becoming an actual living rational being. Only a being with a rational tool can be considered human, thus the zygote or embryo, though has the potential to become human, is not yet an actual human.

A fetus has a central nervous system and brain activity. Thus, it is an actual living rational being. Hence, it has rights.

“The people are responsible for the character of their Congress.” - James Garfield

Vote out ANTI-FOUNDERS! Be clear to the US-hating socialist-in-chief and his minions that you reject their agenda by voting out power-lusters.

“Now, more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature…. If the next centennial does not find us a great nation… it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.” -- President James Garfield

Mark Twain on Congress:

"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session."

“There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress.”

“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

Agenda of Government-Goliath:

C - coerce
O - obstruct job creators
N - negate rights
G - greed for COERCIVE POWER
R - redistribute wealth
E - extort; enslave LIFESAVERS
S - spend extorted money
S - spend money borrowed from communists

Related post - Goliaths: Afraid to Compete in the Reason-and-Persuasion-Only Zone

The Pursuit of Happiness Album

I dream that music would be put to exalted words by or about beau ideals to regenerate interest in their principles. I conceptualized The Pursuit of Happiness Album:

1.   The Voice, The Mind, and The Sword
2.   The Shot Heard ‘Round the World
3.   Declaration Signer and Sons
4.   The Glorious 56
5.   When I Fight for Liberty
6.   George Washington Found it Abhorrent to be King
7.   All Honor to Thomas Jefferson
8.   The Gettysburg Address
9.   O Captain! My Captain!
10. Thinking
11. Perfect Freedom
12. 99 Percent
13. Pay the Freedom-Debt Forward
14. The Pursuit of Happiness

Extra songs:

15. Born Free
16. God Bless the USA
17. Philadelphia Freedom

The Voice, The Mind, and The Sword

I dream that music would be put to exalted words by or about beau ideals to regenerate interest in their principles. I conceptualized The Pursuit of Happiness Album. This is the 1st song:

The Voice, The Mind, and The Sword

"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!"

"We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable;
That all men are created equal & independent,
That from that equal creation
They derive rights inherent & inalienable,
Among which are the preservation of
Life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness;
That to secure these ends,
Governments are instituted among men,
Deriving their just powers
From the consent of the governed..."

"The time is now near at hand
Which must probably determine
Whether Americans
Are to be freemen or slaves;

Whether they are to have any property they can call their own;
Whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed,
And themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness
From which no human efforts will deliver them.

The fate of unborn millions will now depend,
Under God, on the courage and conduct of this army.

Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us
Only the choice of brave resistance,
Or the most abject submission.

We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die."

Eternal reverence, my Heroes! Honored and adored!
The Voice, The Mind, and The Sword.

‎The Shot Heard ‘Round the World

I dream that music would be put to exalted words by or about beau ideals to regenerate interest in their principles. I conceptualized The Pursuit of Happiness Album. This is the 2nd song:

‎The Shot Heard ‘Round the World

“Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year….

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!

For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.”

On April 19, 1775
“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard ‘round the world.”

The American Revolution began,
The fight for the right to bear arms.

Listen to the wisdom of George Washington:
“The very atmosphere of firearms
Anywhere and everywhere
Restrains evil interference –
They deserve a place of honor
With all that's good.”

“A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined,
But they should have sufficient arms and ammunition
To maintain a status of independence from any
Who might attempt to abuse them
Which would include their own government."

Hear wise Benjamin Franklin:
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb
Voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed lamb
Contesting the vote!"

Do you remember these words?

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...
Disarm only those who are neither inclined
Nor determined to commit crimes...
Such laws make things worse for the assaulted
And better for the assailants;
They serve rather to encourage
Than to prevent homicides,
For an unarmed man may be attacked
With greater confidence than an armed man."

“A strong body makes the mind strong.
As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun.
While this gives moderate exercise to the body,
It gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind.

Games played with the ball and others of that nature,
Are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind.
Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks.”

These gems are from Thomas Jefferson.

On April 19, 1775
“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard ‘round the world.”


*
References:

Paul Revere’s Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Concord Hymn by Ralph Waldo Emerson

‎Declaration Signer and Sons

I dream that music would be put to exalted words by or about beau ideals to regenerate interest in their principles. I conceptualized The Pursuit of Happiness Album. This is the 3rd song:

‎Declaration Signer and Sons

The Declaration Signer from New Jersey
Two sons in the Continental Army
Thomas and Aaron had to endure
Capture and torture, oh hellish torture!

Renounce your signature, or else, Signer
Precious sons remain in painful danger
Retract your pledge, secure sons’ return
Else: Aaron and Thomas would burn.

Do you remember the Glorious 56?
What the New Jersey father did?
He said, “No.” Courageously, he refused!
Uncommon valor, sacred honor, mighty good.

Do you know these heroes’ names?
Father and Sons in great pain
D’you remember what they fought for?
Perfect Freedom! Oh Liberty above all!

The glorious family from New Jersey
D’you honor their love of Liberty?
Continental Army Officers Thomas and Aaron!
Signer Abraham Clark owns this song.

In the early hours of July 4, 1776,
Abraham Clark wrote, "Our Congress Resolved
To Declare the United Colonies Free and Independent States....
It is gone so far that we must now be
A Free Independent State, or a Conquered Country...."

Ten days later Mr. Clark wrote,
"Our Declaration of Independence I dare say you have seen....
A few weeks will probably determine our fate -
Perfect Freedom or Absolute Slavery.
To some of us freedom or a halter.
Our fates are in the hands of an Almighty God,
To whom I can, with pleasure, confide my own…”

Signer Abraham Clark’s epitaph reads:
“He loved his Country and adhered to her cause
In the darkest hours of her struggles against oppression."
Indeed! At all cost, Abraham Clark and Sons honored the Declaration!

The glorious family from New Jersey
D’you honor their love of Liberty?
Continental Army Officers Thomas and Aaron!
Signer Abraham Clark owns this song.

The Glorious 56

I dream that music would be put to exalted words by or about beau ideals to regenerate interest in their principles. I conceptualized The Pursuit of Happiness Album. This is the 4th song:

The Glorious 56

Do you remember the Glorious 56?
Do you honor what they did?
D’you care to sing and ponder?
The Declaration of Independence, every Signer?

From Delaware: Caesar Rodney, Thomas McKean, and George Read.
From Pennsylvania: George Clymer, Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, John Morton,
James Smith, George Taylor, George Ross, Benjamin Franklin, and James Wilson.

From Massachusetts: Elbridge Gerry, Robert Treat Paine, Samuel Adams, John Adams,
And the President of the Second Continental Congress –
He attended Harvard College for a business education
And graduated at age 17: Mr. John Hancock.

From New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, and Matthew Thornton.

From Rhode Island: William Ellery attended Harvard College and graduated at age 15.
During the war, he saw his property and home looted and burned to the ground.
Stephen Hopkins, self-educated, age around 69, and with cerebral palsy,
Signed the Declaration of Independence with a shaking pen
But declared: ‘My hand trembles, but my heart does not.’

From New York: The homes, estates, and fortunes of Francis Lewis,
William Floyd, and Lewis Morris were plundered.
Philips Livingston’s great holdings were confiscated.

From Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, and George Walton.

From Virginia: George Wythe, Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton,
Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Jefferson…
Richard Henry Lee remarked on July 4, 1776:
“Let this most happy day give birth to the American Republic.
Let her arise not to devastate and conquer
But to re-establish the reign of peace and the laws….
The names of the American legislators will be placed, by posterity,
At the side of … all those whose memory has been
And will be forever dear to virtuous men and good citizens.”
Do you remember the other Virginian?
Who ordered his own home destroyed by cannon fire?
Do you know the reason for the uncommon order?
General Cornwallis had his headquarters
At the home of Thomas Nelson Jr.
At the battle of Yorktown,
He ordered his own home destroyed by cannon fire.

From North Carolina: Joseph Hewes, John Penn, and William Hooper.

From South Carolina: Thomas Lynch Jr.,
1st South Carolina Regiment Company Commander,
Fell ill shortly after becoming a Declaration Signer.
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward Jr. and Arthur Middleton
Lost their vast landholdings and estates while in prison.
As Signers of the Declaration of Independence
They were singled out for indignities and brutal treatment.

From New Jersey: Francis Hopkinson.
John Hart’s farm was raided by British and Hessian troops.
Hunted down, the elderly Mr. Hart hid in the Sourland Mountains.
Richard Stockton was brutally beaten upon capture.
He was starved and subjected to freezing cold weather.
After nearly six weeks of brutal treatment,
He was released, his health ruined.
His belongings, crops, and livestock taken or destroyed,
His library, one of the finest in the colonies, was burned.
The British nearly destroyed the College of New Jersey, later called Princeton,
Rebuilt at great personal and financial difficulty by Dr. John Witherspoon.
To an objection that the country was not yet ready for independence,
Dr. Witherspoon replied that it “was not only ripe for the measure,
But in danger of rotting for the want of it.”
Dragooned to renounce his signature on the Declaration of Independence
For the release of his two sons, officers in the Continental Army,
Captured and tortured by the British:
Abraham Clark refused, honoring his country and solemn pledge:
“We mutually pledge to each other
Our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

From Connecticut: Oliver Wolcott, Roger Sherman,
William Williams, and Samuel Huntington.
From Maryland: Charles Carroll, Samuel Chase,
William Paca, and Thomas Stone.

Uncommon thinkers and sons of Liberty
They risked life, fortune, and family.
Do you honor what they did?
Do you remember the Glorious 56?

George Washington Found it Abhorrent to be King

I dream that music would be put to exalted words by or about beau ideals to regenerate interest in their principles. I conceptualized The Pursuit of Happiness Album. This is the 6th song:

George Washington Found it Abhorrent to be King

George Washington led the brave Continental Army
Through eight years of war, privations aplenty.
He inspired a ragtag army, a fragile nation
Amid the threats of failure and disintegration.

At the war's end in 1783, he took affront
When asked to be king, to wear a crown.
George Washington replied, “Abhorrent!” Power-lust is for little fiends.
A moral man does not rule, nor can he be ruled by men.

Rejecting power, George Washington resigned his commission.
On Mount Vernon, the General retired to his plantation.
An incredulous King George III remarked, greatly awed,
“If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

The Electoral College elected General George Washington
Unanimously in 1789, and again in the 1792 election.
The only president to get 100% of electoral votes, he refused a third term
"First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."

Thomas Jefferson honored George Washington:
“The moderation and virtue of a single character
Probably prevented this Revolution from being closed,
As most others have been, by a subversion
Of that liberty it was intended to establish.”

"His mind was great and powerful...
His integrity was most pure,
His justice the most inflexible I have ever known…
He was, indeed, in every sense of the words,
A wise, a good, and a great man....

The best horseman of his age,
And the most graceful figure
That could be seen on horseback....

On the whole, his character was, in its mass, perfect…
Never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great,
And to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies
Have merited from man an everlasting remembrance...."

“I served with General Washington
In the legislature of Virginia, before the revolution,
And, during it, with Dr. Franklin in Congress.
I never heard either of them speak ten minutes at a time,
Nor to any but the main point, which was to decide the question.
They laid their shoulders to the great points,
Knowing that the little ones would follow of themselves.”

On the one hundred and tenth anniversary
Of the birthday of George Washington,
The man who found it abhorrent to be king,
Was reverently exalted by Abraham Lincoln.

“Washington is the mightiest name on Earth —
Long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty;
Still mightiest in moral reformation.
On that name a eulogy is expected.
It cannot be.

To add brightness to the sun
Or glory to the name of Washington
Is alike impossible. Let none attempt it.
In solemn awe pronounce the name
And in its naked, deathless splendor
Leave it shining on."

‎All Honor to Thomas Jefferson

I dream that music would be put to exalted words by or about beau ideals to regenerate interest in their principles. I conceptualized The Pursuit of Happiness Album. This is the 7th song:

‎All Honor to Thomas Jefferson

Abraham Lincoln extolled:
"The principles of Jefferson
Are the definitions and axioms of free society…
All honor to Jefferson - to the man,
Who in the concrete pressure of a struggle
For national independence by a single people,
Had the coolness, forecast, and sagacity
To introduce into a merely revolutionary document
An abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times,
And so embalm it there that to-day and in all coming days
It shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block
To the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.”

"I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring
From the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence."

Ayn Rand said, “Definitions are the guardians of rationality,
The first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration…”
Axioms are perceptual self-evidencies.
They are the starting points of cognition, on which all proofs depend.
Axiomatic concepts are the foundation of objectivity.

Ayn Rand’s most admired Founder is Thomas Jefferson.
She worshipped, "If it is ever proper for men to kneel,
We should kneel when we read the Declaration of Independence…
Probably the greatest document in human history,
Both philosophically and literarily."

The author of the Declaration of Independence,
The Father of religious freedom,
The advocate of the Bill of Rights,
The President who abolished the slave trade –

Slavery was obtruded on the Colonies by King George III.
Jefferson inherited slaves - it was against the law to free them.
When it was permitted for the self-supporting,
Freed slaves must leave the State within a year.

In 1769: Chosen for the first time to be a member of a legislature,
Thomas Jefferson made one effort in the House of Burgesses
For the permission of the emancipation of slaves,
But was rejected.

In 1770: As a lawyer, Thomas Jefferson defended a slave,
Saying: under the law of nature, “we are all born free.”
In 1776: He strongly condemned slavery
In his draft of the Declaration of Independence.

In 1778: The legislature passed a bill he proposed
To ban further importation of slaves into Virginia.
In 1784: His draft of what became the Northwest Ordinance
Stipulated that "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude"
In any of the new states admitted to the Union from the Northwest Territory.

In 1806: President Jefferson requested Congress
To ban all slave importation to the US.
In 1807: President Jefferson signed a bill
Abolishing the slave trade –
On March 3, 1807, as President of the USA,
Thomas Jefferson signed a bill
Making slave importation
Illegal in the United States.

Jefferson successfully abolished primogeniture in Virginia,
The rule by which the first born son inherited all the land.
His December 20, 1787 letter to James Madison
Contains objections to key parts of the new Federal Constitution.
Primarily, Jefferson noted the absence of a bill of rights…

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will
Within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.
I do not add 'within the limits of the law'
Because law is often but the tyrant's will,
And always so when it violates the rights of the individual."

"A wise and frugal Government,
Which shall restrain men from injuring one another,
Shall leave them otherwise free to regulate
Their own pursuits of industry and improvement,
And shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
This is the sum of good government."

"The first principle of association –
The guarantee to every one
Of a free exercise of his industry
And the fruits acquired by it."

While abolishing ALL excise taxes
Including the whiskey tax
In the first year of his first presidency,
While engaging in the Barbary War
Within two months of his first presidency,
And then spending $15 million
In the Louisiana Purchase
To double the then size of the USA,
Jefferson reduced the national debt
From $83 million to $57 million.

Thomas Jefferson said every word in the Constitution
Is subsidiary only to the execution
Of the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence:
First: Equal Inherent Inalienable Rights,
Second: The only proper function of law and of government
Is "to secure these rights."

Abraham Lincoln extolled:
"The principles of Jefferson
Are the definitions and axioms of free society…
All honor to Jefferson…”

‎The Gettysburg Address

I dream that music would be put to exalted words by or about beau ideals to regenerate interest in their principles. I conceptualized The Pursuit of Happiness Album. This is the 8th song:

‎The Gettysburg Address

“Four score and seven years ago
Our fathers brought forth on this continent,
A new nation, conceived in Liberty,
And dedicated to the proposition
That all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war,
Testing whether that nation, or any nation
So conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
We are met on a great battle-field of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field,
As a final resting place for those who here gave their lives
That that nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate –
We can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground.
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here,
Have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here,
But it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here
To the unfinished work which they who fought here
Have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated
To the great task remaining before us –
That from these honored dead we take increased devotion
To that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion –

That we here highly resolve
That these dead shall not have died in vain –
That this nation, under God,
Shall have a new birth of freedom –

And that government
Of the people, By the people,
For the people,
Shall not perish from the Earth.”