Posted by Bill Hennessy on July 29, 2007 under Latest | 
For years, now, al Qaeda and Taliban criminals have used the Western mountains of Pakistan as their home base. Emboldened by Pakistani President Musharraf’s reluctance to deal with radical Islam head-on, the Taliban have recently begun a campaign to turn Pakistan into what Afghanistan was before 9/11.
Ed Morrissey had been keeping up with these events, and this story today on Captain’s Quarters may signal the end to Musharraf’s patience with the radicals.
Let’s hope so.
On the other hand, we know that leaders–even our own–tend to get weak-kneed when push comes to bullets. Remember that it was Musharraf who wanted the US Army to let local tribesman capture Bin Laden in 2002–tribesmen who let the murderer escape. During the siege of the Red Mosque last month, Musharraf allowed numerous deadlines to pass.
All of these actions embolden the enemy.
If Musharraf is serious about crippling Islamofascism in Pakistan, he must prosecute the war ruthlessly. Not an easy thing, since Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be calling for him to stop the bloodshed.
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Posted by Bill Hennessy on July 28, 2007 under Latest |
Imagine you live on a busy street, and you have small children. You want to get a stop sign put up on one of the cross streets near your house to slow people down. You just need to know whom to talk to.
In a country like the United States where federalism has been replaced by Big Government, you probably need to get hold of your U. S. Congressman. If he’s so inclined, he’ll attach an amendment that authorizes the placement of the stop sign to some bill. Several years later, if the bill makes it through Congress and the amendment isn’t stricken by procedure before the final vote, the bill passes and the president signs it. Chances are, you’ll get your sign two years later. Your little kids, 4 and 6 at the time you started the effort, are closing in on high school–or they’ve been hit by a car.
Under federalism, the most important decisions to a family like yours are made by your family or by your local, municipal government. In a federalist system, you’d need to contact your city council member. If your neighbors don’t object, you can get your stop sign in a month or two, while your kids are still young enough and alive enough to benefit from it.
Here’s the difference: in modern America, your opinion is in competition with 300 million other Americans. In federalism, your idea competes with the people who live in your town or state. If you can’t handle your town’s politics, move to the next town; if you can’t live with your country’s politics, move the next country?
I prefer federalism. Don’t you?
Why a piece on Federalism? It’s all over the blogs:
Kicking Over My Traces
Keith D. Milby
Politics Lobby 4
Bill Hennessy 1 and Bill Hennessy 2
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Posted by Bill Hennessy on under Latest |
**Note: Please read the entire store by clicking on the title or the Continue Reading link below. **
Those of us whose conservative conversions occured in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I think, are particularly fascinated by the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. We also mourn over its senseless destruction by Congress, courts, and citizens.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people.
How simple. How refreshing. How freedom-loving. For those whose civics classes centered around Native-American rights and women’s sufferage lectures, the straightforward concept of this amendment may be too simple to grasp. Try this:
The Constitution speaking to the new members of the 110th Congress, introducing herself:
“I am the Constitution of the United States of America. I was born September 17, 1787 and baptized by the several states in 1789. My husbands have all died, leaving me to fend for myself. I see you have their portraits and statues adourning your walls and this great city. Thank you. I miss them, too.
“I’d like you to meet my 10th son, born in a litter of 10, in 1791. Being the runt of the litter, he is, of course, my favorite. (Please don’t tell the others, though; I love them, too. Even the 14th, who is so shamefully misunderstood by everyone.)”
“The Tenth, as we call him, speaks directly to you and to that court a few blocks from here. But do they listen? Do you hear what he tells you?
“When I see the way you ignore him, I think of Scrooge with the Ghost of Christmas Future. Remember the little boy and little girl huddled under the robe of the grim reaper? Remember what Scrooge’s guide told him about them?
‘This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.’
“My Tenth, poor little fellow, warns you the same. You ignore the boy at your own peril. You ignore the writing on his brow–a concept so simple, so easy for you to disregard in your sophistication and achievement and fame. But listen, please, while you still can.
“My Tenth is telling you what his Fathers believed, what you claim in you campaign speeches to believe. He’s talking about me, his mother. He’s telling you, ‘Listen to my mother!’
“He speaks so softly that you’ll need to turn off your iPods and stop the side conversations to hear him. But what he says is, perhaps, more profound than anything ever written. He says, ‘If my mother, the Constitution, doesn’t tell you, Congress, to do something, it’s the same as her telling that you must not do it. Unlike God, Mother doesn’t have time to list the things you’re not permitted to do–and there are so many. After all, you aren’t a creature of God, but of Man. Man is free to do all but a short list of things, but you are permitted to do only that stated in the Constitution, and no more. You are constrained–the people are merely guided.’”
The Congress sat in nervous silence. A few throats cleared. Some people, mostly on the left side of the aisle, looked down at the blue carpet and seemed restless, even angry. They seemed wishing to be adjourned. Others, mostly on the right, seemed to want to hear more, as if they recognized a favorite lullaby their mothers used to sing them. A tiny group, too small to count, really, all on the Right, wept quietly. They loved the Tenth and saw its mother’s pain and wondered what its Fathers would say about this and previous Congresses. They knew the Fathers’ thoughts would not be kind.
Ed Morrissey’s piece on Captain’s Quarters inpsired this story. I hope, like Ed, that our candidates understand the simple little sentence at the end of the Bill of Rights. I wonder, sometimes, weather anyone does. Mark Trapscott’s piece on the 10th Amendment through Fred Thompson’s eyes seems to have inspired Ed. Please read them all. More from Instapundit.
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Posted by Bill Hennessy on July 27, 2007 under Latest |
Five kids is a lot these days.
“You have five kids? Oh, my God!” people say, their eyes bugged out, mouths wide open.
Even when the oldest were babies, developmental psychologists were advising parent not to tell children “no.” Their theory was that “no” would teach a child limitation and destroy his curiosity. Instead, offer an alternative. Well, that doesn’t work.
But the funny thing is, it’s the no “no” advice is totally out of synch with society.
My dad came home from two wars: World War II and Korea. I try, these humid summer nights when the whole house is asleep, to think to of the prohibitions Jack Hennessy faced in 1953. He change the oil in his car, smoke in the grocery store and Sears, drive a car without a seatbelt, build a house to own liking, spank his kids, let his 16-year-old kids swim without a lifeguard, ride a bike without a helmet, tear down his house and build a new one, fly the American flag, and wash his car in the driveway.
These are just a few of the things his grandchildren can’t do. And the list of “NO”s getst longer every day, doesn’t it. For instance, his son, according McCain-Feingold, cannot blog 60 days before an election. Petty little pleasures, aren’t they? that society denies us. And it denies us more every, every day.
It saddens me when I read young people’s blogs that seem to encourage the government to deny more freedoms. They seem willing, even eager, to trade their little bit of freedom for some guarantee of health, wealth, and happiness. How said and naive. Of course, their little pieces of freedom are so puny by 1953 standards, it’s no wonder they’re willing to cast them aside. Sam Adams and George Washington knew some serious freedom; they were eager to die to preserve it for their kids.
And absolute prohibitions are only the start of our denied freedom. You can’t do a lot of things without money, so another way society limits our freedom–places more “NO”s on us–is taxation. When Dad came home from Korea, combined taxes were 25 percent of GNP. Today, the percentage of the economy that goes to taxes is almost 40 percent. That’s a lot of freedom transplanted from the people to the politicians.
There are dangers in driving without a seat belt, shooting off fireworks, and swimming in a river. There is life in these things, too. There is excitement and rush and flush and pleasure. There is childhood and feeling grown up. There is joy and memory and anticipation and running through the woods at night laughing with your friends. There is freedom. And maybe real freedoms would make the escapism of recreational-cum-addictive drugs and careless sex less attractive. Maybe young people today would act more like kids in the 50s if they were allowed to act like kids in the 50s.
Freedom.
I’ll never a have fortune to pass to my children. And unlike every generation that came before mine, it looks like I won’t leave them a free country, either. Makes me wonder if my eleven years in the Navy were anything more than a crappy paycheck.
If you must vote on a single issue next year, freedom is the noblest single issue man can live or die for, especially when he has five hungry memories to feed.
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