Thomas Sowell: Dismantling America

[FrankRep]

http://www.thenewamerican.com/images/stories/columnists/sowell.001.jpg



Those seeking to rule increasingly by fiat find the Constitution an impediment to their plans, which explains why they work so hard to circumvent it. By Thomas Sowell


Part I.

Dismantling America (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/opinion/thomas-sowell/4327-dismantling-america-)


Thomas Sowell
17 August 2010


"We the people" are the familiar opening words of the Constitution of the United States — the framework for a self-governing people, free from the arbitrary edicts of rulers. It was the blueprint for America, and the success of America made that blueprint something that other nations sought to follow.

At the time when it was written, however, the Constitution was a radical departure from the autocratic governments of the 18th century. Since it was something so new and different, the reasons for the Constitution's provisions were spelled out in "The Federalist," a book written by three of the writers of the Constitution, as a sort of instruction guide to a new product.

The Constitution was not only a challenge to the despotic governments of its time, it has been a continuing challenge — to this day — to all those who think that ordinary people should be ruled by their betters, whether an elite of blood, or of books or of whatever else gives people a puffed-up sense of importance.

While the kings of old have faded into the mists of history, the principle of the divine rights of kings to impose whatever they wish on the masses lives on today in the rampaging presumptions of those who consider themselves anointed to impose their notions on others.

The Constitution of the United States is the biggest single obstacle to the carrying out of such rampaging presumptions, so it is not surprising that those with such presumptions have led the way in denigrating, undermining and evading the Constitution.

While various political leaders have, over the centuries, done things that violated either the spirit or the letter of the Constitution, few dared to openly say that the Constitution was wrong and that what they wanted was right.

It was the Progressives of a hundred years ago who began saying that the Constitution needed to be subordinated to whatever they chose to call "the needs of the times." Nor were they content to say that the Constitution needed more Amendments, for that would have meant that the much disdained masses would have something to say about whether, or what kind, of Amendments were needed.

The agenda then, as now, has been for our betters to decide among themselves which Constitutional safeguards against arbitrary government power should be disregarded, in the name of meeting "the needs of the times" — as they choose to define those needs.

The first open attack on the Constitution by a President of the United States was made by our only president with a Ph.D., Woodrow Wilson. Virtually all the arguments as to why judges should not take the Constitution as meaning what its words plainly say, but "interpret" it to mean whatever it ought to mean, in order to meet "the needs of the times," were made by Woodrow Wilson.

It is no coincidence that those who imagine themselves so much wiser and nobler than the rest of us should be in the forefront of those who seek to erode Constitutional restrictions on the arbitrary powers of government. How can our betters impose their superior wisdom and virtue on us, when the Constitution gets in the way at every turn, with all its provisions to safeguard a system based on a self-governing people?

To get their way, the elites must erode or dismantle the Constitution, bit by bit, in one way or another. What that means is that they must dismantle America. This has been going on piecemeal over the years but now we have an administration in Washington that circumvents the Constitution wholesale, with its laws passed so fast that the public cannot know what is in them, its appointment of "czars" wielding greater power than Cabinet members, without having to be exposed to pubic scrutiny by going through the confirmation process prescribed by the Constitution for Cabinet members.

Now there is leaked news of plans to change the immigration laws by administrative fiat, rather than Congressional legislation, presumably because Congress might be unduly influenced by those pesky voters — with their Constitutional rights — who have shown clearly that they do not want amnesty and open borders, despite however much our betters do. If the Obama administration gets away with this, and can add a few million illegals to the voting rolls in time for the 2012 elections, that can mean reelection, and with it a continuing and accelerating dismantling of America.


SOURCE:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/opinion/thomas-sowell/4327-dismantling-america-

[FrankRep]

One of the chief means radical politicians use to undermine the republic is to bury controversial bits of legislation within larger bills, then rush them through to passage, thereby eliminating the possibility of debate. This has especially been a favored tactic of the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats. By Thomas Sowell


Part II.


Dismantling America, Part 2 (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/opinion/thomas-sowell/4340-dismantling-america-part-2)


Thomas Sowell | The New American (http://www.thenewamerican.com/)
Wednesday, 18 August 2010


"We the people" are the central concern of the Constitution, as well as its opening words, since it is a Constitution for a self-governing nation. But "we the people" are treated as an obstacle to circumvent by the current administration in Washington.

One way of circumventing the people is to rush legislation through Congress so fast that no one knows what is buried in it. Did you know that the so-called health care reform bill contained a provision creating a tax on people who buy and sell gold coins?

You might debate whether that tax is a good or a bad idea. But the whole point of burying it in legislation about medical insurance is to make sure "we the people" don't even know about it, much less have a chance to debate it, before it becomes law.

Did you know that the huge financial reform bill that has been similarly rushed through Congress, too fast for anyone to read it, has a provision about "inclusion" of women and minorities? Pretty words like "inclusion" mean ugly realities like quotas. But that too is not something that "we the people" are to be allowed to debate, because it too was sneaked through.

Not since the Norman conquerors of England published their laws in French, for an English-speaking nation, centuries ago, has there been such contempt for the people's right to know what laws were being imposed on them.

Yet another ploy is to pass laws worded in vague generalities, leaving it up to the federal bureaucracies to issue specific regulations based on those laws. "We the people" can't vote on bureaucrats. And, since it takes time for all the bureaucratic rules to be formulated and then put into practice, we won't know what either the rules or their effects are prior to this fall's elections when we vote for (or against) those who passed these clever laws.

The biggest circumvention of "we the people" was of course the so-called "health care reform" bill. This bill was passed with the proviso that it would not really take effect until after the 2012 presidential elections. Between now and then, the Obama administration can tell us in glowing words how wonderful this bill is, what good things it will do for us, and how it has rescued us from the evil insurance companies, among its many other glories.

But we won't really know what the actual effects of this bill are until after the next presidential elections — which is to say, after it is too late. Quite simply, we are being played for fools.

Much has been made of the fact that families making less than $250,000 a year will not see their taxes raised. Of course they won't see it, because what they see could affect how they vote.

But when huge tax increases are put on electric utility companies, the public will see their electricity bills go up. When huge taxes are put on other businesses as well, they will see the prices of the things those businesses sell go up.

If you are not in that "rich" category, you will not see your own taxes go up. But you will be paying someone else's higher taxes, unless of course you can do without electricity and other products of heavily taxed businesses. If you don't see this, so much the better for the Obama administration politically.

This country has been changed in a more profound way by corrupting its fundamental values. The Obama administration has begun bribing people with the promise of getting their medical care and other benefits paid for by other people, so long as those other people can be called "the rich." Incidentally, most of those who are called "the rich" are nowhere close to being rich.

A couple making $125,000 a year each are not rich, even though together they reach that magic $250,000 income level. In most cases, they haven't been making $125,000 a year all their working lives. Far more often, they have reached this level after decades of working their way up from lower incomes-- and now the government steps in to grab the reward they have earned over the years.

There was a time when most Americans would have resented the suggestion that they wanted someone else to pay their bills. But now, envy and resentment have been cultivated to the point where even people who contribute nothing to society feel that they have a right to a "fair share" of what others have produced.

The most dangerous corruption is a corruption of a nation's soul. That is what this administration is doing.


SOURCE:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/opinion/thomas-sowell/4340-dismantling-america-part-2


====


Dismantling America, Part 3 (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/opinion/thomas-sowell/4352-dismantling-america-part-3)


One of the few campaign promises that Barack Obama has kept was this: "We are going to change the United States of America!" As in many other cases, those who were thrilled by the thought of "change" seldom seemed to consider whether it would be a change for the better or for the worse. True believers in the Obama cult assumed that it had to be a change for the better.

Now it is slowly dawning on more people that it is a change for the worse — runaway government spending, under the banners of "stimulus" and "jobs" is not stimulating anything except political pay-offs to special interests. As for jobs, the percentage of the population with jobs keeping on declining, even as the administration points to all the jobs it is creating.

It is of course not pointing to all the other jobs that it is destroying, whether by taking money out of the private sector or by loading so many mandates on employers that labor is made artificially too expensive for many employers to do much hiring.

But the most dangerous and most lasting damage that this administration has done to this nation has been in the international jungle, where it is alienating our long-time allies, dismantling our credibility by reneging on our commitments to putting up a missile shield in Eastern Europe and — above all — doing nothing meaningful to stop the leading terror-sponsoring nation in the world, Iran, from getting nuclear weapons.

We could deter the Soviet Union with our own nuclear weapons, but no one can deter suicidal fanatics, whether they are international terrorists of the sort that caused 9/11 or suicidal fanatics in charge of the government of Iran, who have long been supplying international networks of suicidal fanatics.

Threatening to launch nuclear retaliation against the people of Iran will not deter them. They have already shown how little they care about the people of Iran and how much they care about their fanatical beliefs and hate-filled agendas.

How much does our own administration in Washington care about the American people and their national security? This is not a question you would usually have to ask about any administration of either party. But this is not like any other administration, and Barack Obama is unlike any other President of the United States in having come from a background of decades of associations and alliances with people who resent this country and its people.

Against that background, the Obama administration's undermining of our long-standing international alliances with Britain and Israel, among others, while seeking to reach accommodations with nations hostile to this country, raises painful questions and even more painful possibilities for the future.

Gratuitous affronts to both Britain and Israel began early in the Obama administration, including a clear downgrading of state visits from their national leaders. These affronts were pitched at a level unlikely to be noticed by the general public but unmistakable to anyone familiar with international relations, including both our allies and our enemies. But most of the pro-Obama media said little to alert the public.

It is not only in our foreign relations that the administration's commitment to the national security of the United States is open to serious question. Domestically, as well, the same serious and painful questions arise.

After spending hundreds of billions of dollars on political pork barrel projects from coast to coast — some frivolous beyond belief — its only major cut in federal spending has been its move to cut $100 billion from the Defense Department's budget.

If there was ever a time when we needed a larger standing army, as distinguished from relying on National Guard troops, taken suddenly from civilian life and sent on multiple tours of combat duty, this is that time. We need a bigger and constantly modernizing military, not a bargain basement military, trimmed down to leave more money for pork barrel spending.

Sometimes small things can give you a better clue than large things. A recent editorial in Investor's Business Daily pointed out that hundreds of captured illegal aliens from terrorist-sponsoring nations were released on their own recognizance within the United States. Are these the actions of an administration that is serious about the national security of the American people?


SOURCE:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/opinion/thomas-sowell/4352-dismantling-america-part-3

[RedStripe]

"We the people" are the familiar opening words of the Constitution of the United States — the framework for a self-governing people, free from the arbitrary edicts of rulers.

This is a blatant distortion of history - the regurgitation of romanticized American mythology. The Constitution did not establish "self-government" for "the people." On the contrary, it established a clever system of government by the elite, wealthy, white, males of the colonies over the rest of society. It was specifically intended to create a stronger central government which would promote the commercial, banking, and large-scale agricultural interests which were represented by those who drafted it.

These colonial elites spent much of the revolutionary period encouraging the lower classes to throw off the shackles of British tyranny, but carefully contained the revolution so that it would not also disrupt the established power hierarchy of the colonies themselves - the local tyranny.

They, the colonial elites, met in secret - a colonial bilderburg of sorts - to devise a system that would be amiable to their class interests. Like the modern bilderburgers, many were certainly forward-thinking and enlightened in their time, and had no overtly malevolent intentions, but were clearly and unavoidably biased by their privileged position in society as well as the antiquated notions of superiority and elitism they held.



It was the blueprint for America, and the success of America made that blueprint something that other nations sought to follow.

Like the mystified Hegelian dialectic, the author stands causation on it's head. The Constitution was not the blueprint for America, but rather a reflection of then-existing American society. It is simply the product of a particular time and place in history, created by forces which continued to shape the development of the nation just as they had shaped the formation of the Constitutional system.



At the time when it was written, however, the Constitution was a radical departure from the autocratic governments of the 18th century. Since it was something so new and different, the reasons for the Constitution's provisions were spelled out in "The Federalist," a book written by three of the writers of the Constitution, as a sort of instruction guide to a new product.

I don't dispute that the Constitution represented a departure from European Monarchy as a form of government, but the "radical" nature of the departure has been overemphasized by those who chronically overlook the way in which the Constitutional system of the United States was an evolution of European Monarchism. The enlightenment and the rise of mercantilism made absolute monarchy and feudalism an increasingly unstable and unfavorable, especially to the class of men who created the Constitution (who belonged to competing factions of centralized economic power - the rich southern planters, the New England merchants, etc). They liked a Constitutional system because it improved upon the way in which the elites of a society could rule the rest - it was more efficient and more humane than an aristocracy which rules the peasants through a king.



The Constitution was not only a challenge to the despotic governments of its time, it has been a continuing challenge — to this day — to all those who think that ordinary people should be ruled by their betters, whether an elite of blood, or of books or of whatever else gives people a puffed-up sense of importance.

First of all, notice how the author only cites two (relatively minor) sources of elite power: family relations and intelligence/education. In truth, the elite class has always been defined by one thing - economic dominance - which is actually the genesis of the power of families (always wealthy) and power of the intellectuals (either independently wealthy or dependent upon their rich patrons).

To the power of the wealthy over society, the Constitution has not provided a significant challenge - in fact, it is the means by which the wealthy have maintained effective control of the masses because it has provided a pre-text of democracy and liberal ideals while essentially carrying over the fundamental class system of feudalism and monarchy.

For all his talk of "ordinary people" the author clearly doesn't think it significant that "ordinary people" such as blacks, Indians, women, Hispanics, Jews, or poor whites, (in other words, the vast majority of the population and virtually all of the "ordinary people" throughout American history) have almost universally been excluded from the American power structure. It's not a coincidence.



While the kings of old have faded into the mists of history, the principle of the divine rights of kings to impose whatever they wish on the masses lives on today in the rampaging presumptions of those who consider themselves anointed to impose their notions on others.

Of course it lives on - there was never a disruption of the principle. Read some American history: the elites did what they wanted to, period, and the Supreme Court obliged.



The Constitution of the United States is the biggest single obstacle to the carrying out of such rampaging presumptions, so it is not surprising that those with such presumptions have led the way in denigrating, undermining and evading the Constitution.

Again, the author is inventing his own role for the Constitution. He claims it is an obstacle to the use of power - but clearly it is not! First of all, the very people who drafted the document (and their class throughout American history) have never been afraid of using power to serve their interests, all within a political-legal superstructure established by the Constitution and the adoption of English common law.



While various political leaders have, over the centuries, done things that violated either the spirit or the letter of the Constitution, few dared to openly say that the Constitution was wrong and that what they wanted was right.

Right, because the Constitution is an essential legitimizing document that (as is obvious from the attitudes of people such as the author himself) has become almost sacred, untouchable, and divinely inspired. The continued, unquestioning, faith in the "genius" of the Constitution is an essential element of modern tyranny. By refusing to critically examine the Constitution alongside its historical, economic and class context (and to continue to perpetuate the mythological view espoused previously by the author) one works against liberty and truth.

Stop getting caught up in legal arguments over the definitions of words, and start recognizing the actual purpose of the cage that is being erected around you, and its historical context. Understand the interests at play, and understand how they developed the very system within which they now operate.



It was the Progressives of a hundred years ago who began saying that the Constitution needed to be subordinated to whatever they chose to call "the needs of the times." Nor were they content to say that the Constitution needed more Amendments, for that would have meant that the much disdained masses would have something to say about whether, or what kind, of Amendments were needed.

To the extend that intellectual leaders of diverse "progressive" movement emerged, they represented massive social unrest and demands by the "much disdained masses" for fundamental change (the kind of change feared by the drafters of the Constitution; that is, a demand by the masses that the elite minority be stripped of their privileged position of control over the lives of the majority).

Of course, many of the elites at the time (the smart, forward-looking, and "humane" ones) realized that it would be in the best interests of the wealthy and powerful elite to support modest reforms which, at best actually strengthened their position, and which, at worst, merely protected the privileged elite from the rising tide of popular anger. The same thing is occurring today, if you care to look for it.



The agenda then, as now, has been for our betters to decide among themselves which Constitutional safeguards against arbitrary government power should be disregarded, in the name of meeting "the needs of the times" — as they choose to define those needs.

Elites don't just spring forth from the void - these are the same elites that had always run the country and who had always disregarded so-called Constitutional "safeguards" against "arbitrary government power" (it would be nice for the author to actually list some of those). There was no fundamental change! Again, just as with the adoption of the Constitution, there was merely an evolution of the system, engineered by the elites, in response to important changes (rise of the labor movement, women's rights movement, socialism, etc). These movements had to be crushed, co-opted, or appeased in a way which would not fundamentally undermine the hierarchy of economic, social, and political power in the United States. And they did all three of those things successfully.



The first open attack on the Constitution by a President of the United States was made by our only president with a Ph.D., Woodrow Wilson. Virtually all the arguments as to why judges should not take the Constitution as meaning what its words plainly say, but "interpret" it to mean whatever it ought to mean, in order to meet "the needs of the times," were made by Woodrow Wilson.

An entire book could be written about the various ways in which Presidents prior to Wilson had openly attacked the Constitution. Andrew Jackson openly defied the Supreme Court and thus Article III. John Adams openly violated the first amendment. The first national bank was instituted by the very men who wrote the constitution.

But of course, Wilson saw, as did many other elites looking to preserve the status quo in a time of unrest, a need for increased centralization at a national level - the need for more a more powerful government in order to consolidate the hierarchy of power. To suggest that the power of a government controlled by a small group of privileged men was expanded for the benefit of the "ordinary person" is ridiculous. As a way of appeasing the masses? As a way of creating a larger middle class to provide a "buffer" from the laboring poor? Sure - so long as the ultimate aim of preserving class privilege was achieved.



It is no coincidence that those who imagine themselves so much wiser and nobler than the rest of us should be in the forefront of those who seek to erode Constitutional restrictions on the arbitrary powers of government.

It is also no coincidence that the same sort of men wrote the Constitution in the first place.



How can our betters impose their superior wisdom and virtue on us, when the Constitution gets in the way at every turn, with all its provisions to safeguard a system based on a self-governing people?

How? The Constitution never got in the way! The Constitution was designed by the elite, for the elite. It's structure ensured that the government would be flexible enough to do whatever was necessary to serve the elites - that's why there's a Supreme Court (which represents the same wealthy elite interests) to "interpret" the Constitution (a phenomenon that was, in no way a new function as of the early 1900s).



To get their way, the elites must erode or dismantle the Constitution, bit by bit, in one way or another. What that means is that they must dismantle America. This has been going on piecemeal over the years but now we have an administration in Washington that circumvents the Constitution wholesale, with its laws passed so fast that the public cannot know what is in them, its appointment of "czars" wielding greater power than Cabinet members, without having to be exposed to pubic scrutiny by going through the confirmation process prescribed by the Constitution for Cabinet members.

This reads like the diatribe of a typical tea party idiot who thinks all of these are all new and startling developments, whereas they have been going on for decades, and merely represent an evolutionary process guided by the power-relationships present within a society (which, every since the founding, have consisted of a tiny few ruling the rest of us). Nothing new there, buddy.



Now there is leaked news of plans to change the immigration laws by administrative fiat, rather than Congressional legislation, presumably because Congress might be unduly influenced by those pesky voters — with their Constitutional rights — who have shown clearly that they do not want amnesty and open borders, despite however much our betters do. If the Obama administration gets away with this, and can add a few million illegals to the voting rolls in time for the 2012 elections, that can mean reelection, and with it a continuing and accelerating dismantling of America.

Typical of right-wing propaganda, the false-history and mythology is invented and presented as the ideological premises of some banal and contradictory policy statement about whatever issue of the day riles up their fickle readership. Now, all of a sudden, the "people's will" is so important but not (and never) with respect to such questions as "does the government have the responsibility for caring for the needy?" or "should the rich pay a higher percentage of their income as taxes than the poor?"

The great irony of this "article" is that it, on the one hand, demonizes the idea of a society controlled by the few, yet, on the other hand, romanticizes that very political system.

[FrankRep]

"We the people" are the familiar opening words of the Constitution of the United States — the framework for a self-governing people, free from the arbitrary edicts of rulers.


This is a blatant distortion of history - the regurgitation of romanticized American mythology. The Constitution did not establish "self-government" for "the people." On the contrary, it established a clever system of government by the elite, wealthy, white, males of the colonies over the rest of society.


Says the Socialist.



Don't want to derail, but basically I'm for socialist ends (pro: economic egalitarianism, worker's rights, wide distribution of capital, labor class-consciousness, sustainability and anti: bigotry, racism, homophobia etc) through libertarian (anti-state) means.

Many old school socialists were anarchists/libertarians who understood that the state, along with capitalism, must be defeated in order to have a truly just society.

[Stary Hickory]

Good call Frank

[RedStripe]

Says the Socialist.

Haha, oh FrankRep! What am I going to do with you?

I'll say it again right now: I'm for socialist ends through libertarian means.

Try to feign a modicum of intellectual honestly and either make an argument or don't post at all. I do you the favor of actually dismantling these articles rather than just laughing them off as the latest round of propaganda to come out of "The New American".

I don't dislike you FrankRep, I just think you're very misguided when it comes to certain issues. I'm sure we agree on a lot of things, after all, I'm Ron Paul supporter. I realize you've got it so ingrained in your head that "socialism = evil" that you probably don't even read what I post, but if nothing else, doing so will make you better able to defend your beliefs and make your more confident in them. Believe it or not, I've got a good idea of where you are coming from. I've got several friends in the JBS (one of whom I actually agree with on a lot of core issues, but then again he is very populist) and I've probably read a lot of the same literature as you.

I'm not afraid of being wrong. That's why I like to engage people on this forum.

[RedStripe]

I mean, if a group of the wealthiest, most influential and powerful people in our society were to have a secret meeting to come up with a new system of government for the United States, just imagine what you'd think. LOL can you imagine what the JBS would say about that? But if it happens a couple of centuries ago it's just fine and it was written for the "common person's freedom." (even when the history of the country actually shows the uninterrupted oppression of the masses by the elite, up to and including today)

We've all been taught in school that the constitution was written for the benefit of a free people! I mean really? You're going to criticize public education as propaganda except for the "founding" myth of our nation? That's called ideological blinders, good sirs.

[RedStripe]

Not gonna defend your article FrankRep?

[RedStripe]

Wow, does no one on here have the balls to defend the traditional view of the drafting of the Constitution and its purpose?

[FrankRep]

Part III.

Dismantling America, Part 3 (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/opinion/thomas-sowell/4352-dismantling-america-part-3)


One of the few campaign promises that Barack Obama has kept was this: "We are going to change the United States of America!" As in many other cases, those who were thrilled by the thought of "change" seldom seemed to consider whether it would be a change for the better or for the worse. True believers in the Obama cult assumed that it had to be a change for the better.

Now it is slowly dawning on more people that it is a change for the worse — runaway government spending, under the banners of "stimulus" and "jobs" is not stimulating anything except political pay-offs to special interests. As for jobs, the percentage of the population with jobs keeping on declining, even as the administration points to all the jobs it is creating.

It is of course not pointing to all the other jobs that it is destroying, whether by taking money out of the private sector or by loading so many mandates on employers that labor is made artificially too expensive for many employers to do much hiring.

But the most dangerous and most lasting damage that this administration has done to this nation has been in the international jungle, where it is alienating our long-time allies, dismantling our credibility by reneging on our commitments to putting up a missile shield in Eastern Europe and — above all — doing nothing meaningful to stop the leading terror-sponsoring nation in the world, Iran, from getting nuclear weapons.

We could deter the Soviet Union with our own nuclear weapons, but no one can deter suicidal fanatics, whether they are international terrorists of the sort that caused 9/11 or suicidal fanatics in charge of the government of Iran, who have long been supplying international networks of suicidal fanatics.

Threatening to launch nuclear retaliation against the people of Iran will not deter them. They have already shown how little they care about the people of Iran and how much they care about their fanatical beliefs and hate-filled agendas.

How much does our own administration in Washington care about the American people and their national security? This is not a question you would usually have to ask about any administration of either party. But this is not like any other administration, and Barack Obama is unlike any other President of the United States in having come from a background of decades of associations and alliances with people who resent this country and its people.

Against that background, the Obama administration's undermining of our long-standing international alliances with Britain and Israel, among others, while seeking to reach accommodations with nations hostile to this country, raises painful questions and even more painful possibilities for the future.

Gratuitous affronts to both Britain and Israel began early in the Obama administration, including a clear downgrading of state visits from their national leaders. These affronts were pitched at a level unlikely to be noticed by the general public but unmistakable to anyone familiar with international relations, including both our allies and our enemies. But most of the pro-Obama media said little to alert the public.

It is not only in our foreign relations that the administration's commitment to the national security of the United States is open to serious question. Domestically, as well, the same serious and painful questions arise.

After spending hundreds of billions of dollars on political pork barrel projects from coast to coast — some frivolous beyond belief — its only major cut in federal spending has been its move to cut $100 billion from the Defense Department's budget.

If there was ever a time when we needed a larger standing army, as distinguished from relying on National Guard troops, taken suddenly from civilian life and sent on multiple tours of combat duty, this is that time. We need a bigger and constantly modernizing military, not a bargain basement military, trimmed down to leave more money for pork barrel spending.

Sometimes small things can give you a better clue than large things. A recent editorial in Investor's Business Daily pointed out that hundreds of captured illegal aliens from terrorist-sponsoring nations were released on their own recognizance within the United States. Are these the actions of an administration that is serious about the national security of the American people?


SOURCE:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/opinion/thomas-sowell/4352-dismantling-america-part-3