Constitutionalism:

Sovereign Citizenship and  Limited Representative Government.

The American philosophy that government derives authority from citizens and is permanently limited is called Constitutionalism.

If Law is solely authored by government, then, how can government ever be limited by law? 

Vic Biorseth, Saturday, August 10, 2013
http://www.CatholicAmericanThinker.com

Constitutionalism is, in its shallowest definition, the philosophy and practice of government under the regulation of, and within the strict limitations of, a written, fixed Constitution.  Nations so governed are therefore said to be nations of laws and not merely of men.  The Constitution, as the supreme law, is above all men, including men in government.  To my knowledge, the USA is the only successful nation of laws in existence, imperfect in that aspect though she may be. 

In America, Constitutionalism proclaims, to the legislator of law (the Congress,) the enforcer of law (the Presidency,) and the adjudicator of law (the Supreme Court) that there is, always, a higher authority to be considered: the Constitution.  Men - including government officials - are not free to make law, enforce law or judge law however they see fit; everything the government does must conform to the guidelines, instructions, constraints and limitations of the Constitution.  This "Higher Authority" principle is very important, and worthy of some elaboration. 

The revolutionary authors of America's Constitution all, personally, answered to a Higher Authority, in the Person of God.  They were all raised in Christian families within Christian culture in accordance with Christian traditions, morals and life-guiding principles.  And that religious, familial and cultural education and upbringing bound them all to a common set of social norms, even in their rather broad denominational differences.  Even the Deists among them, and even the worst sinners among them, all recognized the same common standards of judging right and wrong in behavior for individuals and for societies.  This common set of Christian moral norms was how they guided their lives, as habit, as norm, without thinking about it too much in daily life. 

When these men developed the American Constitution, that Christian moral norm is what guided them.  It was natural for them to develop into civil law new rules that adhered to the revelation of God through the Christian religion.  The American Revolution was a revolution against the rule of man, not against the higher rule of God.  It was to free man - the citizen - to pursue his own salvation and his own self interest, despite what any other man might think about that effort.  It was to bring man out from under the rule of man, but still provide reasonable rules for the sake of good order and peace. 

Thus, the American Constitution was designed to produce laws that the man raised up in Christianity would find to be "natural" and perfectly conforming to how he was raised.  Thus, when naturally and instinctively adhered to, any such good Constitution produces a fixed, predictable, peaceful and orderly society. 

Fixed law produces order.  

The opposite of order is disorder, or chaos. 

No group, social order, society or culture can long endure in the absence of order and predictability of behavior.  Popular agreement with law produces peace.  Popular adherence to law produces order. Good law must make sense to most people. 

Before Constitutionalism, laws were made by rulers, plain and simple.  National law was the preserve of monarchs of nations.  Before there were nations, in feudal times, the law was the preserve of the nobleman of title, the suzerain of his domain, to whom all serfs owed their very lives, and all lesser nobles owed fielty. Serfs who lived on the property were part of the property, and were owned.  They paid "taxes" of a sort to their suzerain, in the form of rents, which were usually some fraction of the annual harvest of whatever they produced.

There were Constitutions before there was an American nation.  Britain went through quite a long history with an "evolving" Constitution, beginning with the Magna Carta, and the first recognition of "rights" held by common men.  Modern Britain has become, to me, such a hodge-podge mixture of Constitutional Commonwealth, Parliamentary Democracy and Hereditary Monarchy that is is a wonder that it works as well as it does, and that her people are as free as they are.  They still recognize nobility and rigid class separation, and they even seem to cherish it, yet they also seem to get along fine and enjoy a high degree of citizen liberty.  British government bureaucracy, or Socialist "Administration" of society, is much, much worse there than here; but we are quite rapidly catching up, under Obamunism. 

The Russian word for a government bureau or agency or ministry that makes and enforces regulations controlling the behavior of citizens is a Soviet.  Today, all of the free world, including the USA, is undergoing a Sovietization through runaway bureaucratization of governments.  We are ever increasingly being administered by appointees and employees of a new kind of dictator, who alone is operating from an elected office. 

We still call these ministers Cabinet Members, or Bureau Chiefs, or Bureaucrats, or even Czars, but in actuality they are Ministers, no different than any of those appointed by Lenin or Stalin in the old Soviet Union. At the direction of the dictator, they make regulations, with full force of law behind them, and they enforce these regulations.  They are, not so gradually, replacing representative law and representative government.  This is a direct violation of the Constitution, but no one seems to notice it. 

When man makes the law, we cease being a nation of laws, and become just another nation of men. 

We addressed these principles and rights more thoroughly in the American Foundational Principles page, and we addressed American civil rights concretized in the Constitution and Bill of Rights in the American Constitutional Principles page.  Here we will address just one principle, and one civil right: 

A penny saved is private property, the fourth of the six vitally important American principles and rights listed above and enshrined in the Declaration.  It stems from the American civil right to the Pursuit of Happiness.  The pursuit of happiness means the seeking of improving your own condition in life.  That means saving a penny, i.e., accumulating private property. 

You earned it; it is yours. 

The natural law that drives the natural system of Capitalism has been in play since the dawn of specialization, and it is this:  A man produces more of whatever he produces than he needs for survival, else he does not get paid more than he needs for survival.  Whatever he gets paid over what he needs for survival is profit = wealth = private property = a penny saved.  He may do with it whatever he wishes. 

If you work for wages, you may work overtime, or another job, or you may live at a lower level in order to save a penny, looking forward to a higher education, a nicer place to live, a nicer car, a nicer retirement, or whatever you choose in your personal pursuit of happiness.  If you own a farm or a business you may look to expand your soil or livestock or production, or expand into other areas, in search of the same thing the laborer is seeking: it's called trying to get ahead. 

If you don't want to get ahead, you don't have to. 

If you don't want to be part of a strong family, or build a strong family, or work in a family business, or accept family support, you don't have to. 

If you don't want to be part of a Church, or build up a Church, or work for a Church, or accept Church support, you don't have to. 

Just don't try to lay claim to anything that is not yours. 

That would not be American equality; it would be something alien to America.  Redistributionism is diametrically opposed to American Constitutionalism.  We have an equal right to pursue our own happiness however we see fit; we do not have any right to share in what we have not earned.  To take from someone who earned it and give to someone who did not is unequal treatment before the law and a violation of the American principle of equality before the law. 

That is what is meant by equality in America.  Some of us are going to get rich, some are going to be poor, most will fall in between.  Some will be charitable, some will be greedy.  The original intended purpose of our government is to protect our rights, including the ability to pursue our own happiness, but not to control it in any way.  The poor will always be with us.  Any government that tries to eliminate poverty will economically break itself in the attempt.  It is an impossible task for government.  High public morality can alleviate poverty to some degree, but government intervention can only exacerbate, increase and cause more poverty. 

By the time of mid 18th century, pre-revolutionary America, slavery was so entrenched in early America as to be perhaps the greatest single economic force in the whole colonial economy.  It had created an actual rich upper class, a sort of nobility or aristocracy, in the Planters, who were owners of great plantations that were worked by slaves.  No farmer or planter of any kind could bring forth produce from the land at a competitive price when the slave-driving Planters paid nothing for labor.  The price of a slave was paid back through the slave's work very early in the life of the slave, and the slave produced more slaves for his owner, for free. 

The Planters didn't even have to feed their slaves; they had learned early on that the slaves could feed themselves from a small patch of land, and take care of themselves, and the Planters allowed them - perhaps forced them would be more appropriate - to do so.  This was an unconscionable situation, and the immorality of it was plain to nearly all of the Founders and the Framers.  They themselves owned slaves, and they had to deal with 13 Colonial governments, or their representatives, some of whom were dominated by Planters. 

All of these men who condemned slavery yet owned slaves did not come by their slaves by purchase, but by inheritance, or by marriage to someone who owned slaves.  By that time, the problem of freeing all of their slaves was, for many, an economic impracticality if not impossibility.  If they only owned a few slaves, the problem was simple; they freed them.  But if they owned vast family lands or industries worked by slaves, freeing the slaves would often mean near impoverishment for not only themselves and their immediate families, but their larger extended families, and partner-families of friends.  They and many relatives and dear friends might be made destitute, over night. 

So what they sought was an agreement for a law or common agreement, in which everyone in the Colonies would free all of their slaves, all at once.  That way, everyone would be on a level economic playing field.  If the land produced less, well, the price of what it produced would go up, but no one, or very few, would be made destitute.  All would survive, and they would go back to working their own land, or paying someone to work it for them.  Of course, the richest Planters would never agree to any such thing. 

Thomas Jefferson proposed just such a freeing of all slaves in a line that was narrowly voted out of the final draft of the Declaration of Independence.  The critical point in the heated argument over sustaining slavery was that the Planters had sufficient numbers and political clout that if they walked away from the table, the whole idea of a United States of America would collapse.  That most of the Founders opposed slavery is a historical fact.  And so it was with the Framers, who struggled to write the Constitution, with Madison wielding the pen as Jefferson had done during the drafting of the Declaration. 

They fought their first battle with the Planters over the issue of slave representation in Congress.  The Planters at first insisted that slaves were not human beings, which, of course, was a logically, theologically and biologically insupportable argument.  With logic, theology and biology on their side, the abolitionists argued the Planters into a humiliating compromise on the representation of slaves in Congress.  It was hoped that if slaves had legal Congressional Representation, they could eventually be freed, by instigation of their Congressional Representatives.  Here is the third paragraph of Article 1 Section 2 of the Constitution, which resulted from this compromise:

What this said was that a slave was legally considered to be 3/5 of a human being, for purposes of his representation in Congress.  The abolitionists had forced the Planters into an embarrassing argument ending with a compromise on how much of a human being they thought that a black man might be.  Many of them never got over the humiliation; tempers were so on edge that there had been an actual possibility of representatives challenging each other to duels.  This was the compromise - and indeed, it was a compromise, from both sides - that resulted in the Constitution of United States of America, which is to say, the creation of the United States of America.  If that compromise had not been made, we might not exist, as a nation. 

The Slavers were always a minority in America, but at first, they were a very powerful minority.  They held huge economic power, and, as we said, minority though they were, they had the power to stop the creation of the nation.  As the history of the new nation progressed, they were forced into logically and morally untenable positions that could only be maintained by increasingly false and racist arguments.  What they were opposing was the equality principle, and the equality principle could only be denied to blacks if blacks were seen to be less than human.  Thus, anti-black racism; the argument that blacks were an inferior race, unworthy of legal equality. 

The Planters and the slavers solidified and organized their political power into what became the Democrat Party.  Contemporary citizens aware of the many lies sponsored by the Democrat Party today should not be surprised that the Democrat Party was actually brought into being in order to politically and legally promote the lie of racism: the racial inferiority of black human beings.  That is what the Democrat Party stood for, and why it came into being. 

The political argument was growing so heated that states began passing laws both ways - some outlawing slavery, and some fixing slavery into law.  The nation began to divide into slave states and free states.  There were multiple covert operations of abolitionists to free slaves, help slaves escape, hide slaves and transport slaves to safety.  Planters responded by hiring slave catchers and detectives to find and return slaves. 

Again, history has a familiar ring to it.  Contemporary citizens today who are outraged by the recent Supreme Court decision legitimizing the glaringly un-Constitutional Obamacare law should not be surprised looking back at the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857.  There, the Supreme Court of the USA declared that an escaped slave was not protected by the Constitution because he was not a "legal person".  He was "private property" to be returned to his owners.  This was a 7-2 decision.  A free black citizen was OK, but an escaped slave was merely property.  (And you thought we had some really evil stupid asses on the court today.) 

The infamous Dred Scott decision was the topic of the Lincoln-Doublas debate, in which Douglas, the Democrat, defended the decision, and Lincoln, the Republican, opposed it.  Douglas turned it into a "free choice" issue, in which the Democrat position was pro-choice, and the Republican position was anti-Choice.  Sound familiar?  Douglas argued that if Mr. Lincoln didn't want to own a slave, he didn't have to; that was his choice.  But Lincoln had no right to deny Douglas the right to own a slave.  Lincoln argued that no one had any right to do something that was just intrinsically wrong. 

The two positions continued to harden against each other.  As our national history progressed, it became increasingly clear that the Democrat positions on issues denied the Western notion of morality, and denied any fixed sense of right versus wrong. 

The Civil War was supposed to settle the matter.  What seems to be forgotten by many is what it was all about.  It was about Secession, yes; but Secession itself was over the issue of slavery.  It was the slave states that wanted to secede from the Union, and it was the free states that would not allow it. 

It was fought over the moral issue of unjust servitude, pure and simple. 

What other nation, in all of world history, ever fought such a horrible, destructive and costly war with itself over such a noble issue?  Brother against brother; father against son.  Hundreds of thousands dead; untold numbers of horribly wounded.  All for the freedom of black men who were not even citizens.  All for the American principle of equality. 

Don't ever stand there and tell me America is an essentially racist nation. 

No other nation, in all of history, ever would, or ever did, pay such a dear price to free slaves and end slavery. 

But, the Civil War didn't settle the issue.  Lincoln was assassinated, and was succeeded by his Vice President, Andrew Johnson, who was a Democrat; a "Southern Unionist".  Although he favored the Union, he did not favor black equality.  He fiercely opposed the 14th Amendment, and his post-war "Reconstruction" program was not what it would have been had Lincoln survived.  Under Johnson it was, indeed, quite the opposite.  It was less to re-unite the American people in peace than it was to exacerbate the situation and promote division.  He clashed with Congress, and was actually impeached, but he was acquitted in the Senate by one vote. 

Now, the 14th Amendment did more than turn the slaves into full voting citizens.  It also turned the Southern veterans into a non-voting, unrepresented lower class of citizens.  It took away any right to vote or to hold elected office, from all citizens who had "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the United States.  No Southern veteran could vote, or hold office.  The authors feared that Southerners could one day gather sufficient political power to re-amend the 14th Amendment out of existence, and maybe even re-institute slavery. 

So, try to picture the image of untold thousands of completely impoverished Southern Soldiers, some of them missing limbs, struggling to get back to their largely burned-out homes and farms any way they could, with Confederate money completely worthless, the South ravaged by the war, and no political voice at all.  The Planter class had been destroyed; even the richest of the Planters were reduced to abject poverty. 

When Progressivism was almost (but not quite) dead in the Republican Party, Wilson brought it over into the Democrat Party, and it literally took over that entire political Party.  Today the only Democrats who are not Marxist Progressives are outright Marxist Revolutionaries.  And, Marxist Progressivism has had a major resurgence in the Republican Party too.  A major feature of Progressivism is that it opposes the Constitution.  All Progressives who ever swore in an oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution swore a false oath.  American Constitutionalism and Marxism, in any form whatsoever, are mutually exclusive political philosophies.  They cannot indefinitely coexist in the same nation. 

But the people still don't know what Progressivism is. 

The Three Versions of Equality thus far:

1. Constitutional equality in legal rights, remedies, protections and requirements: equality before the law. 
   
2. Un-Constitutional racist equality for non-blacks only.
3. Un-Constitutional Marxist equality of output: equality of condition.  

The whole of the Great Depression years were spent by a Marxist-dominated government, Marxist-dominated educators and a Marxist-dominated news media demonizing, in the public eye, big business, big banking, employers in general and, at the root, Capitalism, which is to say, The Free Market.  The public was conditioned to believe that free enterprise could not be trusted, and only big government could save humanity from the exploitation of "the money lenders" and "big corporate interests." 

While all of this was going on the government, under FDR, was deepening the Great Depression.  The only thing that ended it was World War II, primarily from the influx of foreign money due to American ship building.  I do not believe that the great majority of the American people ever fully understood what had been done to them in the Great Depression. 

After the Brown v Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1957, it looked like "separate but equal" racially segregated schools would finally end, but the Democrats wouldn't have it.  Democrat Arkansas governor Orval Faubus defied the Court decision and actually ordered out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent black children from entering Central High School in Little Rock. 

Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower sent in the Screaming Eagles of the 101 Airborne Division to uphold the decision and settle the matter.  Democrat Senator Sparkman of Alabama bitterly renounced Eisenhower's action as a military "Occupation" of state land and an intrusion on state sovereignty.  Democrat Senator Russell of Georgia referred to the Screaming Eagles as "Nazi Storm Troopers." 

Once again, in the 1950s, with Democrats solidly lined up on the anti-black racist side, and Republicans defending blacks and black rights, there was the possibility of yet another civil war being fought over racial equality.  We can only thank God it didn't come to that. 

The KKK, which had died out by the end of reconstruction, had a greater-than-ever revival under Democrat Wilson, and then died out again, had another resurgence during the Eisenhower desegregation era.  Again, it bore all the signs of being an "enforcement wing" of the Democrat Party.  KKK Cross burnings, terrorism, violence and racial intimidation returned to America, for the third time. 

Democrat Governor of Alabama George Wallace took his oath of office January 14, 1963, while standing on the spot on which Jefferson Davis was sworn in as the first President of the Confederate States of America.  In his inaugural address given from that spot, he included this famous (or infamous) line:

In June of 1963 Wallace actually stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama to block entry of black students, and was removed by soldiers of the 2nd Infantry Division.  He vainly tried to block entry of black students in Huntsville and in Birmingham, but, one at a time, Alabama primary and secondary schools were also desegregated. 

Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor was a Democrat, a Ku Klux Klan member, and the Commissioner of Public Safety in Birmingham, Alabama during the hay day of the American Civil Rights Movement.  He was infamous for ordering his police to use fire-hoses and unleash attack dogs on peaceful demonstrators. 

Race is just one item; everything has been turned upside down. 

Two statements may be made regarding every charge against the Right or against Conservatives that comes out of the Leftist Democrat Party, the Leftist news media, the Leftist education establishment or the overwhelmingly Leftist entertainment industry:

1. The charge they make against the Right will be a lie. 
   
2. The Left will actually  be guilty of their own false charge. 
   

No one should be surprised that the Left lies. The Left is Marxist; therefore the Left is a bunch of MEJTML¹⁴ s. I made the link because I just got tired of typing the same old words over and over again. You show me a Marxist and I'll show you an ends-justify-the-means liar. Lying is what Marxists do. It is a definitive characteristic of Marxists. To them, advancing Marxist notions is a higher goal for the improvement of society, so, lying to advance the cause is always a secondary, if not primary, hidden purpose behind whatever they are doing or saying or writing. They think they are improving the world.

The fact of the matter is that it is the Left that is and always was racist.  They project their own racism onto the Right.  We talked about the "New RAcism" elsewhere herein, most recently in the Of Lies and Liars page.   In the New Racism, the term Reverse-Racism has been malformed to mean, simply, anti-white racism.  Which is bogus.  It implies what Leftists have come to believe, because it was born of one of their Leftist lies, and the Left has repeated that lie so many times they now actually believe it.  Here is that lie that says:

Once you believe that, then, any clearly racist act done by a black person is seen as a aberration, a freakish incident, almost a perversion of nature; hence it is called Reverse Racism. 

Of course, that is false.  Anyone can be racist, against any other race.  What a "Reverse Racist" is, in plain English, is someone who is racist against his own race, and therefore racist against himself.  Which is precisely what all the guilt-ridden white Leftists are.  They constantly struggle with the fact that they are white, and that the only racists on earth are white, and so they must constantly, continuously, assiduously and determinedly work and struggle and suffer to overcome their own innate, natural, internal racism, and suppress it.  It's a constant battle with them.  They are so super-sensitive about it that any time any black offers the slightest hint of being racially offended by them, they will break down and weep, and beg for forgiveness, and swear to never do it again, whatever it was. 

Black manipulators of whites love this.  They look for the slightest opportunity to start again with the "How dare you!" and the "I am deeply offended!" and the "I demand an immediate apology!" statements that always reduce the super-sensitive Lefties to tearful grovelling, and turning into quaking gobs of white jello.  It is always great entertainment for black racists. 

But the fact of the matter is that everyone on the Left is racist to the core.  From Obama to Oprah, from Ed Schultz to Joe Biden, from the Clintons to the Carters, and on and on, they are all racists.  They are what they accuse us of being.  White Lefties actually see (but won't say) blacks as actually inferior, incapable of improving their own condition without the hidden help of white sugar-daddy Lefties like themselves.  (It's a tough job, but someone has to do it.)  But race is only one part of the false accusations and reversal of actual guilt. 

They look at Tea Party rallies, with parents carrying babies and pushing children in strollers, picking up litter and leaving the ground cleaner than it was when they came, and then actually describe them, in the news and in commentary, as comparable to Hitler's Brown Shirt thugs.  They accuse us of wanting to destroy the government, when they themselves are Marxist, and the ultimate goal of Marxism is, always, " ... the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. ... ".  In every case, they themselves actually are what they accuse us of being. 

They charge us with indifference to the inner-city blight, the under-class, the unfortunates, and they even go so far as to make their plight somehow our fault.  The poor are poor because we are rich, or richer.  The unemployed are unemployed because we are employed.  The poorly educated are that way because we are "priviledged" with superior education.  It's just nuts. 

The disgusting liars in the news media are often worse than the Democrats.  They accuse us of demonizing Marxism when Marxism is merely a harmless alternate philosophy, then they work to destroy America by promoting anti-Constitutional Marxism.  All of them, including Cronkite, Rather, Jenkins, Sawyer, Brokaw, and on, and on, took turns telling the same flagrant lies in a Marxist propaganda campaign that lost the Vietnam War, not on the battlefield, where not one single battle was ever lost by any American unit, but on the streets of America, where new generations had been radicalized.  They, and they alone, broke a Presidency and induced Congress to cut funding of valiant troops in the field, forcing them to cut and run, and then to come home to be spat upon.  I see them all as traitors, and I see their treason as greater than that of the sneaky Moslem Jihadist wearing an American uniform and standing in the ranks. 

They charge us with class indifference, when they themselves purposely make classes and incite them against other "classes".  The Democrats, as Marxists, cannot even exist in the absence of a dumb, subservient, permanent underclass that depends entirely upon them.  Thus, they make it, they feed it, they grow it, they dumb it down, they indoctrinate and propagandize it, and they give it government benefits, at our expense.  That is their voter base.  That is the moron vote. 

At the same time the Democrats, and not a few Republicans, make themselves into what they falsely charge us with being: a super Ruling Class.  They make themselves into an elitist, aloof, upper-crust, privileged Ruling Class, in charge of the citizenry, rather than Representatives of the citizenry. 

How did this come to be?  When Comrade Obama, peace be upon him, is so glaringly obvious in his systematic dismantling and destruction of the Constitution he falsely swore to defend, and is so glaringly obvious in his destabilization of sovereign nations and incitement of Islam to holy war, with global war clearly visible on the near horizon, how is he getting away with it?  How did he get elected - twice? 

Is the moron vote now that large?  Are we, too, moronified to some degree?  Can we not see what is right in front of our noses? 

It is fairly easy to document the creation of, and the care and feeding of the American moron vote in American education.  History, particularly American history, has been "scrubbed" by Marxists, to show the Founders and the Framers in the worst possible light, to demonize religion, particularly Christian religion, to discredit the Constitution itself, to show Marxist "ideals" in a superior light, and to dumb down the citizenry.  It is begun by formal education, which today is owned and operated by anti-American Marxists.  Contemporary school textbooks are clearly and obviously loaded down with open fraud and falsehood.  Including even - perhaps especially - false, fraudulent and bogus "science". 

The process is continued via the false propaganda of the SLIMC¹ , which today is owned and operated by anti-American Marxists. News Media and Entertainment generally back-up all the falsehood that is ladled out in formative education, and only strengthened in college and university.

But, surely, it hasn't gotten all of us. 

Where is the voice of reason? 

The warnings of our Founders and the warnings of Tocqueville are coming true, right now, all around us.  We have seized and desisted from being good Christians living good Christian lives.  We have seized and desisted from being a moral people.  We no longer recognize simple right and wrong.  We do not even recognize an open, sworn mortal enemy standing right in front of us. 

Jesus said,

When He gathered with and ate with sinners, they were repentant and converted sinners.  He said to the woman caught in adultery "Go ye and sin no more."  Levi, the tax collector, repented of his past sins.  The Lord came to sinners to heal them, not to join them, and not to condone their sins or bless their sinful life styles.  When He sent out His disciples to preach and to baptize, he told them to "shake the dust" from their sandals as testimony against all who would not hear, and move on with their mission.  (Matt 10:14; Mark 6:11; Luke 9:5)

What are we doing? 

With whom do we gather? 

I look to the Church, and I find similar scandalous situations, including the existence of an infamous and powerful Lavender Mafia of gay prelates.  I see no American bishops stepping forward to excommunicate or even loudly denounce pro-abortion champions, and even non-Catholics (like the Clintons) sacrilegiously coming forward to the Roman Catholic Communion Rail.  The American bishops appear to be just as lukewarm and just as disgusting as the Republican Party. 

I look to the best source of Conservative thinking available in America today, which is to say Talk Radio, and I hear one of them say that he has gay employees and gay friends who are welcome in his home and at his table, with his children.  And that is gathering, not with Christ, but with obstinate unrepentant sinners.  And I hear another of them say, broadcasting, that he is a practicing Catholic, but he disagrees with the Church's doctrine regarding artificial contraception, which in and of itself disqualifies him as a practicing Catholic.  And I hear another say that he makes exceptions in his anti-abortion stance for cases of rape or incest; said in plain English, that means that innocent babies conceived via rape or incest deserve to be unceremoniously mudered, by being cruelly torn apart, limb from limb, while still in the womb, because someone else committed a crime. 

I look to our government and I find an anti-Christian agenda going at warp speed.  Christian references driven out of public (government) schools, and replaced with anti-Christian indoctrination.  Creation of law, through legislation, executive order and regulation, opposing prayer, symbols, references or hints of Christianity in government, in public, in the military, even in business.  Servicemen in all branches of the armed forces being forced into close company with open homosexuals.  Fierce promotion and legal advancement of the homosexual agenda, the pro-abortion agenda, special rights for sodomites, gay marriage, and on, and on, and on. 

And I find a Republican Party that is embarrassed by its own religious political base.  They want to be hip, and with it, and up to date, and they are being held back by all those Christians who will not get up with the times.  The Republicans oppose their own political base.  They will compromise with the Democrats on everything, including the promotion of homosexuality, sexual licentiousness, abortion, and even suppression of Christianity. 

Is is any wonder that I keep falling into the mortal sin of despair?  Some days, it is a real struggle to be optimistic about America's future and the future of the world.  I feel like I'm standing alone on the shore, screaming into a hurricane, and here comes the howling wind, and here comes the driven rain, and here comes the giant waves; and I am but a speck. 

We don't even recognize Islam for the threat to civilization that it is. 

We don't even recognize Marxism for the threat to civilization that it is. 

We have Congressmen, Senators, Supreme Court Justices and Presidents who have violated their own oaths of office, and no one seems to even notice. 

We have a President who violates his oath of office, and violates the Constitution itself, with nearly every single action he takes in office.  He criminally selectively enforces existing law. 

We have Republicans who are so stupid that they think they can fix our "broken" immigration law and our "broken" border security law by passing "comprehensive" immigration reform.  First of all, nothing is broken.  There is nothing wrong with our immigration law except that it is not being enforced.  (Not enforcing law is a crime; not that that makes any difference.)  There is nothing wrong with our border security law except that it is not being enforced.  (Not enforcing law is a crime; not that that makes any difference.)  If the President is not enforcing existing law, what makes them think he will enforce any new law?  What's in it for him?

We have Republicans who are so stupid that they think they can stop Obamacare, maybe, by de-funding it, while funding the rest of government, in the upcoming budget continuing resolution battle.  How would that stop him?  He's spending now, and we haven't had a budget since he took office.  He hasn't been restrained by the Constitution or by existing law or by anything at all so far; what makes them think he will stop spending just because of any action they take?  What's in it for him?  He is already spending money that doesn't even exist. 

He holds the check book.  He owns the printing press.  He is already digitizing the American dollar into worthlessness.  He is going to keep doing what he chooses to do until he is impeached and removed from office, or until he wins the ultimate prize he seeks, whichever comes first.  And so is every Congressman, Senator, Justice and Cabinet Member who also violated their oaths of office while in office. 

But, that may be the least of our worries. 

There is our national morality to consider. 

God has not moved.  Scripture has not changed. 

Homosexuality is condemned all over the Old Testament and all over the New Testament.  It is we who have moved on this issue.  Not God, and not His Scripture. 

Do you condemn active homosexuality?  That is a yes or no question. 

How are we any different than Sodom and Gomorrah? 

Do you still call yourself a Christian? 

Why? 

=====

Is there anyone out there?

If you hear me, please pray for me; I'm starting to go negative again. 

=====

Sarcastic Acronym Hover-Link Footnotes: For the convenience of those readers using devices that lack a mouse, these footnotes are provided for all webpages, in case any webpage contains any hover-links. (If you don't have a mouse, you can't "hover" it over a link without clicking just to see the simple acronym interpretation. Click any footnote link to see the acronym and a detailed explanation; "Hover" the mouse over it just to see the simple interpretation.)

SLIMC¹ Secularist Liberal Intellectual Media Complex
GESGOEAEOT² Gradually, Ever So Gradually, Over Eons And Eons Of Time
PEWAG³ Punctuated Equilibrium's Wild-Assed Guess
TTRSTF⁴ Them There Real Scientifical-Type Fellers
TTRSPTF⁵ Them There Real Smart Perfesser-Type Fellers
TTRSJTF⁶ Them There Real Smart Journalistical-Type Fellers
SNRTACBT⁷ Surely No Right Thinking Adult Could Believe Today
STNSEACPB⁸ Surely Today No Serious Educated Adult Could Possibly Believe
WDN⁹ We Don't Know
BMDFP¹⁰ Baboons, Mongrel Dogs, Filthy Pigs and ...
HBAACOTE¹¹ Human Beings Are A Cancer On The Earth
ACLU¹² Anti-Christian Litigation Union
FLORMPORIF¹³ Flagrant Liar, Or, Mindless Parrot, Or, Innocent Fool
MEJTML¹⁴ Marxist Ends-Justify-The-Means Liar
IEJTML¹⁵ Islamic Ends-Ends-Justify-The-Means Liar
MPAV¹⁶ Marxist Principles And Values
WBESSWG¹⁷ Wise, Benign, Elite, Super-Scientific World Governance
TRMITM¹⁸ The Reason Man's In This Mess
IYI¹⁹ Intellectual Yet Idiotic
TTRSCBTF²⁰ Them There Real Smart Catholic Bishop Type Fellers
IACMPVND²¹ Illegal-Alien-Criminal Marxocrat-Party-Voting Nation-Destroyers
PEJTML²² Palestinian Ends-Justify-The-Means Liar
PSYOP²³ "Psychological Operation" Mind Trick
CDC²⁴ Covid Developmentally Challenged
LGBTQ+ Every Letter Represents A Serious Psychotic sexual Identity Disorder
HEJTML²⁶ Hedonist Ends-Justify-The-Means Liar
SEJTML²⁷ Scientistic Ends-Justify-The-Means Liar

Reference Material

[All Web Pages listed in Site Map by date-of-publication;
oldest at the top, newest at the bottom of the list.]

Culture=Religion+Politics;  Who Are We?  Vic Biorseth

The Brilliantly Conceived Organization of the USA;  Vic Biorseth

Live Interviews

Return to the BLOG page

Return to the HOME PAGE

Subscribe to our Free E-Zine News Letter

---

Date:  Sat Aug 10 13:56:03 2013
From:  Stan
Email:   
Location:  
Comment: 

What side did the Catholic Church support in the American Civil War? 

---

Date:  Sat Aug 10 14:35:10 2013
From:  Vic Biorseth
Comment:  

Stan:

"The Church", as in the Pope, didn't support either side as far as I know.  The American bishops appear to have gone along with their congregations, and so they were split, geographically.  Bishops in the South tended to support the South, and bishops in the North tended to support the North.  I believe it was the same with various Protestant denominations.  Some denominations actually split into two denominations over the Civil War; notably Presbyterians and Baptists. 

Regards,

Vic

---

Date:  Sun Aug 11 11:17:57 2013
From:  Stan
Email:   
Location:  
Comment: 

Vic, you accuse a lot of people with being wrong.  I almost looks like everyone.  How can anyone know if you are right? 

---

Date:  Sun Aug 11 13:46:29 2013
From:  Vic Biorseth
Comment:  

Stan:

Don't look at what I say.  Look at what the most important documents I am relying on say.  Try this.  Clear your mind of any opinions, biases or discriminations, to be as open minded and objective as possible.  Then:

Read the Declaration of Independence as if it were written just for you. 

Read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as if it were written just for you. 

Read the Holy Bible as if it were written just for you. 

Consider the redemptive action of Jesus Christ as if it were done just for you. 

Regards,

Vic

---

Date:  Sun Aug 11 18:41:37 2013
From:  John
Email:   johncostellojr@hotmail.com
Location:  Escondido/CA/San Diego
Comment: 

Vic,

First of all I would like to thank you for creating a table of contents for your articles. I still would hope you will provide a short summary of your articles. I realize it would be a big effort to go back and do that for your previous articles. Since you are not sure where the Holy Spirit is leading you, when you finish the article, your key points will be fresh in your mind, and it would probably only take you a few minutes to create a brief summary of your article.

Your recent article, “Constitutionism” is a perfect example of why a summary would help that reader who is short on time.  The first part of the article was historical in nature and focused on the race issue and slavery. You then shifted gears to focus on the present I may have skipped reading the article because most of  the historical facts I was aware of. If I hadn’t read the entire article (it was 23 pages). I would have missed your thoughts about the present situation we are facing as a result of our Democratic administration.

I was quite surprised when you shifted to your personal thoughts about your “immortal soul is in danger”. You talked about the sin of despair. I am also a Catholic and I believe it can be a mortal sin if all the conditions for a mortal sin are present. I am sure this is covered well in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. When you are in despair, you have given up hope and in turn giving up on God. God is in control, we just think we are. We need to be obedient to His commands, and do our best and then let God do the rest.

I would like to suggest something to you that might change your outlook. If you focus on the moral decay and the America as we knew it slip away, it is difficult not to have a feeling of despair. Currently you are doing a terrific job of educating people on the problems you see in the world. Focusing on the negative can be very depressing. If you balance the negative with a positive approach to try to correct the problems, it would give you and your readers hope.

One thing you could do is start a new website that would unite  people like you, me and many of your followers who have conservative views, and encourage them to take action to correct these problems. 
Here is   partial list of conservative views:

§    Belief in God and His Commandments
§    Family Values
§    Pro-life Issues
§    Capitalism and Free Enterprise
§    Self-Reliance
§    Marriage defined to be between one man and one woman
§    The principal of subsidiarity

Depending on the problem the action might be:

§    Supporting candidate having conservative views
§    A letter writing   campaign
§    Demonstrations and Rallies
§    Civil Disobedience
§    Coordinating the actions of similar groups
§    Provide links to websites that support similar beliefs.

Thanks again for all you are doing to educate your readers.
May God bless you.

John

P.S. I believe you meant “mental” not “metal” in the following sentence:

  In fact, a new metal illness has been conjured into being for it, under the title of homophobia.

---

Date:  Mon Aug 12 06:00:11 2013
From:  Vic Biorseth
Comment: 

John:

Thank you once again for your advice, encouragement and correcting my typos.  I guess once I get rolling I tend to be wordy and just keep on going; maybe that's the real problem.  Stopping new writing long enough to follow your suggestion ain't gonna happen any time soon; there are just too many new thoughts fighting for highest rank and to get out and set down on paper.  Or new pages, or whatever.  I seem to never be able to get back to finishing the rest of The Cut The Spending Pages, which of right ought to be my primary focus until they are all done.  Almost every one of those bureaucracies are un-Constitutional, shouldn't even exist, they do precisely what the Constitution insists they should not do, which is, to regulate and direct our personal private activities, ostensibly "for our own good".  They employ thousands (collectively, millions) of union employees at taxpayer expense, to illegally direct the lives of the taxpayers. 

But new articles keep popping into my mind that always seem more important.  Right now I'm thinking about a "Prepper" article, explaining Food Insurance, which we have already experimented with, and other things people should do to survive the approaching depression, which might be accompanied by God only knows what else.  These things seem important. 

I'm mostly looking for ways to reach more people, who haven't been reached by other approaches.  Sometimes I think I'm really repeating myself, but maybe saying the same thing another way will reach someone.  This page is almost a mirror of Lies and Liars, for instance. 

There are so many people I love who just don't see it coming.  When you look back at the story of Sodom, consider the fact that there were babies and little children there.  Little ones who couldn't know any better, older children raised in iniquity, etc.  All were made disgusting in the eyes of God; all were destroyed.  The people of Sodom made themselves disgusting as a whole people. 

The source of my sense of despair is less for myself than for my nation.  And whatever happens to America has serious ramifications for the larger world. 

I just have to attack it.  When I see lies and falsehoods, I have to go after them, and try to show them in the light of truth, so someone else can see them for what they are.  It's all I can do. 

Regards,

Vic

---

Date:  Sun Aug 11 23:03:23 2013
From:  Dennis
Email:   dennis2r@msn.com
Location:  Lewiston/Idaho/USA
Comment: 

Vic,

Your question:  "Take the threat of Islam.  No one takes it seriously.  Everyone sees it as a religion of peace."  One man has taken this threat very seriously, and has done his homework, and then wrote 12 books on this subject.  The latest one, published this year, is "Not Peace but a Sword," by Robert Spencer.  His final chapter is a debate with an American "apologist" for Muslims, who thought Islam was the religion of peace.  Their conclusion?  The only good Muslim is a bad Muslim -- meaning a Muslim who does not follow the Koran.  He fears Islam, not Muslims.  It is Islam with the Koran that teaches hatred of all that is not Muslim.  That is right out of the "holy book" itself.

Vic, be encouraged!  Look at the saints who have gone before us.  Look at the imprisoned life of St. Maximilian Kolbe -- killed at Auschwitz before the end of the war.  He converted his fellow prisoners, taught them hymns, baptized them, prayed with them, and gave them the last rites as they died of starvation, at the hands of the Nazis.  He lived with Jesus daily, hourly.  And offered his arm for the final injection that was ordered, simply because he did not die in a timely manner, with his fellow prisoners.

We are not to love this life, for if we do, we are bound to lose it.  (you know the rest of that Biblical quotation....)

Best Regards, Vic.  Keep reading and keeping us encouraged.  And don't lose HOPE.

Dennis
Lewiston, Idaho

---

Date:  Mon Aug 12 06:34:46 2013
From:  Vic Biorseth
Comment:  

Dennis:

Thank you so much.  I am familiar with Robert Spencer through another of his books: Islam Unveiled, which explores Koranic sources of Islamic violence, Jihad, conquest, murder and subjugation of non-adherents, and so forth.  He, too, seems to be running against a strong tide of non-Moslem Islamic apologists, convinced that all religions are the same, and all that nonsense.

They pave the way for their own doom. 

As do all the hip, modern, up-with-the-times Americans who contracept, smoke a little dope, make exceptions for their anti-abortion stance, and still go to Church most Sundays.  After all, they properly re-cycle, and they are reducing their carbon footprint.  It's the new good citizenship, and the new "goodness". 

What agonizes me is that America is voluntarily putting herself into a new kind of Auschwitz, of her own making.  So many have just lost their way.  So many just don't see it. 

My hope for America rests in:

1. Enough Americans wake up to the threat and see the truth.
   
2. Survival until after the 2014 election.
3. Survival until after the 2016 election.

That's a tall order.  But I have to believe that we are turning around.  I have to believe that. 

Regards,

Vic

---

Date:  Sun Aug 18 20:14:23 2013
From:  Bernice
Email:   
Location:  Oakland
Comment: 

What about the mortal sin of hate, which opposes the virtue of love?  You appear to be a hateful man, particularly toward homosexuals.  Your lack of forgiveness is self-documented in your Vietnam War page.  There you say you might one day sit down and break bread with your past military enemies, but then you say "But, with a Fonda, or a Cronkite, or a Kerry - never. I couldn't even occupy the same room with any one of them."  Yet your faith calls you to forgiveness, seventy times seven times.  Even Michael the Archangel did not personally rebuke Satan, praying that the Lord would rebuke him.  Yet you pour forth all sorts of vitriol against such men as Dan Rather and Richard Dawkins and Sigmund Freud.  You preach and exemplify hatred rather than love. 

---

Date:  Mon Aug 19 06:22:52 2013
From:  Vic Biorseth
Comment:  

Bernice:

I have been over that ground multiple times with multiple confessors.  There is a major difference between my brother wronging me personally in some way, and someone purposely and deviously betraying a whole people and a whole way of life, particularly when that way of life involves serving God.  And it moves up a notch when someone actively and purposely attacks the faith and even attacks belief itself. 

Scripture nowhere avoids calling the devil the devil. 

The likes of Cronkite, Rather, Sawyer, Mudd, etc., and Fonda and Kerry, have never repented of their opposition to our Constitution and their support of our enemies against us, and their willful seduction of whole generations of American citizens into pro-Marxist anti-Americanism.  They have never sought reconciliation or forgiveness, accompanied by honest reformation of their anti-American pro-Marxist hearts.  They represent a new kind of traitor.  They do not operate as physical fifth column actually engaging in combat; they rather operate as a psychological fifth column to infect minds with untruth and undermine faith in the existing system. 

As for the likes of Dawkins, Freud, Huxley, Kinsey, etc., they represent a worse form of social parasite, psychologically attacking God Himself, and all belief, and all faith.  They even attack reality. They pretend to be scientists, and objective seekers of truth, but, in teaching falsehood as if it were scientific theory, they attack reality. 

Note that reality = truth = God. 

The Palsmist wrote "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers."  I will not gather with obstinate unrepentant sinners, I will not call untruth truth, and I will call a liar a liar.  I will continue to vehemently oppose Marxism and the un-truth of Scientism. 

If my brother wrongs me I will forgive him.  But I will not forgive the evil and determined disciples, demons and servants of un-truth. 

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. 

Regards,

Vic

---

Date:  Wed Aug 21 22:43:56 2013
From:  Sam (soul-mate of Bernice)
Email:   
Location:  Oakland CA
Comment: 

You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.  A softer tone might make your message appeal to more people.  You frequently hit someone right in the face with an insult, which may not be an insult to you, but it is to them.  A calmer approach over a longer time may prove more effective.  You can't do it all right now.  What's the rush?  You need to convince the opposition, not turn them off. 

---

Date:  Thu Aug 22 06:06:03 2013
From:  Vic Biorseth
Comment:  

Sam:

I no longer want to convince them; I want to defeat them. 

There is no more time.  The enemy is at the gate with a battering ram.  There might have been time for a softer approach a hundred years ago, or maybe even fifty; but not today.  It is too late to try to completely re-educate the whole moron vote.  It is too late to "mollify" any and all minorities who have been purposely recruited and alienated from us and turned against America by the Left.  It is too late to try to mollify any of the many minorities that were even created by the Left. They all, collectively, need to be politically defeated. 

Should the minority assimilate into the majority, or should the majority assimilate into the minority?  If the later, which minority?  Should the nation bend to the will of the minority, or should the minority recognized the supremacy of the nation?  Should the smaller tail wag the larger dog, or should the larger dog wag the smaller tail? 

Should we go back to being a nation of laws, or continue becoming ever increasingly disordered and lawless? 

Why does the Constitution even exist? 

So many commenters have said the same thing in so many different ways that I think it deserves its own webpage.  The headline may be "Tail Wags Dog!"  

Regards,

Vic

---

Date:   Sun  Oct 26 2014
From:  Vic Biorseth
Comment:  

Changes pursuant to changing the website URL and name from 
Thinking Catholic Strategic Center to
Catholic American Thinker.

Pulled the trigger on the 301 MOVE IT option June 1, 2014. Working my way through all the webpages.  . 

Regards,

Vic

---

This Form cannot be submitted until the missing fields (labelled below in red) have been filled in

ADD COMMENT

Please note that all fields followed by an asterisk must be filled in.

Name / Pseudo-Name:*

E-mail Address:

City / State / Country:

Comment:*

Please enter the word that you see below.

Copyrighted Material