All posts in category scandals
Benghazi… as it really happened
Posted by cyclimus on October 13, 2013
https://freedomsbrushfire.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/benghazi-as-it-really-happened/
The Death of the Republic:What next?
Yesterday, I named apathy and lack of passion as the cancer and disease eroding the foundations of this great country. These two problems are downright evil as they have colored gray all of the fundamentals that we once cherished as a country.
Instead of a dedication to God and our neighbors, we are now growing self-centered. The deeply rooted apathy we as a nation have exhibited toward current events and the scandals now being exposed to public scrutiny is rooted in this self-centeredness. Just focusing on the NSA data-mining revelation from last week I have heard personally people justify this destruction of the Fourth Amendment’s warrantless search and seizure protections by indicating that it doesn’t effect them personally, that they have nothing to hide, and if it helps to keep us safer, then it is well worth it.
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?
Patrick Henry
This is indifference on full display. Even after a full explanation of what the snooping entailed and how wide-sweeping it was as an affront to liberty, the people I asked all stood by their initial perceptions of it being no big deal because it didn’t impact their day-to-day life.
That is hedonism. They are living for the moment. That hedonism is in and of itself a chain of slavery I liken to modern-day bread and circuses as they appease that person’s need for pleasure at any expense. As long as the pleasure outweighs the pain, then they will accept it without second thought.
Apathy. Ambivalence. Passionlessness. Hedonism.
Americans are druggies. As long as our cortexes are teased and pleased on a fairly consistent basis with entertainment via movies, television, books, sex, music, pop culture, and other distractions, we will submit to ever-increasing chains from our would-be masters as they don’t personally effect “me,” or we rationalize away it as an inconvenience or a necessary evil.
This hedonism explains so much about our culture when you think about it.
- incumbency equals job security despite our displeasure with the government in total
- the destruction of the nuclear family as husband, wife, father, and mother roles are societally redefined to be more inclusive and fair to debauched behavior and living situations
- the run-away national debt as we spend the next generations economic output today in order to fund our lavish, irresponsible, hedonistic, pleasure and comfort-based lifestyles
- absolutely no forethought about the consequences of our actions either in part (individually) or in total (as a country)
All actions become devoted to the self. The problem that crops up with this devotion to pleasure though is that we rarely band together with others because of their problems, but only ours. We begin to not see the needs and threats to our neighbors or delegitimize them because helping does nothing for us personally – there is no pleasure or gain to be found in standing next to Eric Snowden, the man who revealed the NSA’s domestic spying operations, there can only be negative repercussions from a vengeful government out of control. Instead of standing as one in defense of the ideals of our founding and those that hold us together as a society – equality, justice, and liberty for all – we fall apart.
Imagine a society where neighbors only look out for themselves.
They hear a scream in the night from next door and double check their door locks rather than even risk glancing outside to see if their neighbor is in need of help.
They decide that married life is too hard and decide that they’d rather be single and free to pursue the lusts of the flesh – bouncing from bed to bed in search of momentary thrill.
They decide that the problems of the country are too big and they are not smart enough to know how to solve them so they stop paying attention and just elect whoever is running with the D or the R next to their name, or just choose to stop voting altogether.
At 30, they tolerate the new bureaucratic rules that establish that no life saving measures would be taken for anyone older than 60 years old because they are too expensive under a strapped medical care system hamstrung by Obamacare and the single-payer option passed years later to replace it.
Fear is people’s primary motivator after pleasure. They fear to criticize what they see as wrong in their hearts because the government has grown too strong and too big. It has eyes and ears everywhere and can cobble together truthful-enough evidence to silence opposition because the IRS, ATF, DHS, and NSA. They fear to point out corruption at work or in public because of the personal destruction of their careers or reputations that they fear from annoying the wrong person.
The people in power recognize these fears and play on them in order to further tighten the screws by enacting more onerous laws, rules, and modicums of behavior in order to further control the citizens and make them into slaves.
Because people are so focused on their own pleasure and are fearful of anything that might upset that, the birth rate will decline. “Why take on the challenge of raising children?” many will ask. “Why destroy my body?” “Why tie myself down?”
Listen to me — all of you out there! You were told by this man — your hero — that America is the greatest country in the world!
He told you that Americans were the greatest people — that America could be refined like silver, could have the impurities hammered out of it, and shine more brightly!
He went on about how precious America was — how you needed to make sure it remained great!
And he told you anything was justified to preserve that great treasure, that pearl of great price that is America!
Well, I say America is nothing!! Without its ideals — its commitment to the freedom of all men, America is a piece of trash!
A nation is nothing!
A flag is a piece of cloth!I fought Adolf Hitler not because America was great, but because it was fragile! I knew that liberty could be snuffed out here as in Nazi Germany! As a people, we were no different than them!
- Captain America
Posted by cyclimus on June 13, 2013
https://freedomsbrushfire.wordpress.com/2013/06/13/the-death-of-the-republicwhat-next/
The Death of the Republic: Symptoms
Yesterday, I made clear my belief that the Republic known as the United States of America is in grave danger. Today, I will show you why I believe that to be the case. The problem is apathy, or if you prefer: indifference, inattention, ambivalence, or detachment. These corruptions within the culture and system cancers that have taken root because of an even more dangerous toxin inherent within America.
But you have planted wickedness,
you have reaped evil,
you have eaten the fruit of deception.
Because you have depended on your own strength
and on your many warriorsLet him not deceive himself by trusting what is worthless,
for he will get nothing in return.The terror you inspire
and the pride of your heart have deceived you,
you who live in the clefts of the rocks,
who occupy the heights of the hill.
Though you build your nest as high as the eagle’s,
from there I will bring you down,”
declares the Lord.
We, as Americans, have been made to be apathetic. We feel untouchable, so we have neglected the public trust that citizenship in this republic was meant to bestow on each person. Diversity, fairness, and tolerance are riding high, our economy is the benchmark of the world (even despite the failings in our recent past), and liberty seems to be safe, but the seeds of our own destruction have been sowed. Our own understanding of liberty and freedom have been altered and changed from those demanding a responsible, attentive, and alert citizenry to those of a complacent one unwilling, unable, or uninterested in those same responsibilities, liberties, and freedoms.
Based on the Nielsen Ratings from the last few weeks, only two non-entertainment programs cracked the top ten watched television shows. Less than 7% of viewers watched news programs of the most watched programs on television. The majority of viewers watched The Voice, the NBA Playoffs, or other entertaining programs rather than informational programs. This is evident of a populace not engaged in the problems prevalent in our society, but rather wishing to ignore them or completely oblivious to them either consciously or unconsciously.
For years, with the notable exception of the youth turnout for then-Senator Barack Obama in 2008, the voter turnout has been decreasing as a percentage of eligible voters as they become more disengaged with politics and governmental affairs, apathetic in general, or dissatisfied with the process.
With the revelation of the IRS political-enemies targeting, Justice Department press wiretapping, and NSA wide-swath metadata collection programs, there has been little if any outrage outside of the politically knowledgeable, which make up a small percentage of the population. In fact, with all of the revelations of scandals of late dating from the ATF’s Fast and Furious gun-running program, through the Benghazi botched response and follow-through, and all of the rest since, the lack of outrage and even a baseline of knowledge amongst the hoi polloi has been shameful as I have observed generally and in the total lack of even a base understanding of what happened, let alone the causes or repercussions. This lack of knowledge is a sign of the apathy that has taken root amongst the generations today.
The surveillance programs in particular rely on an understanding of the political news cycle that the worst scandals can be swept under the rug in a hurry because the public en masse no longer has the desire to hold the government’s feet to the fire over abuses and usurpations as long as they disappear from the collective radar quickly so they can get back to their entertainment. The collective attention span has dropped so precipitously that the seriousness of each of these scandals has failed to register. The scandals, each one, would be enough to bring down an administration in the past, but the speed at which they are being revealed and then replaced in the public consciousness additionally produces a weariness in the public mind. This same weariness was observed during the last few campaign cycles because politicians never took an off day and the public eventually just tuned it all out.
When apathy becomes an useful tool of the politician to force the public to go along with their plans, that politician has become dangerous to liberty and freedom. It is not because they convince people to follow their ideas or even have great ideas, it’s that they proverbially beat them until the abused electorate acquiesces to the beatings and just says “whatever you say, I don’t care.” In addition, when those politicians intentionally obfuscate the political environment and make it difficult to understood who is involved, why, or in what way, they make it easier to fool the public. As a result blatant positional and topical contradictions go unnoticed because the people simply no longer care to rectify what they hear with what they see.
I. Don’t. Care. These are the three most critically damaging words in the English language. But is that not what we’re seeing in the response to the revelations about NSA’s Operation PRISM. The American public has been beaten over the head for over a decade as to the threat of terrorism and as a result, a majority thinks that the program is fine despite the fact that it casts a wide net and over half of the citizens of this country are under warrantless and illegal searches of their private communications. What makes it even worse is that these obvious Constitutional violations require an apathetic public, not just after-the-fact, but during it.
Apathy is destroying the United States of America – this is truth, but apathy is only partially to blame. There is a deeper fault that is causing the apathy even… the apathy is surely a cancer, but the deeper disease is a loss of and lack of passion.
Passion?
Look at the divorce rate (53% of all marriages end in divorce). What passion do men and women have for maintaining what was supposed to be a lifelong commitment? Maintain a lifelong love takes hard work and devotion and our culture celebrates this lack of passion now.
Look at the voter participation rate (barely half of the eligible population votes). What passion do we have as a people for participating in our democratic republic? When barely half of eligible voters even bother to cast a ballot, the other half is abdicating their right to choose their representatives. I may not agree with how you personally choose to vote in a particular instance, but a representative republic does not serve the people if the people do not make their beliefs clear through voting, petition, and redress.
Compare the government approval rate and how likely you are as an incumbent to be reelected (Congress approval rate is treading water at 16%, yet 90% of incumbents were reelected in 2012). What passion do we have about the problems of our day if we keep sending back the same disliked idiots every two or six years to keep just doing what they’ve been doing? We say that we hate the performance of Congress and then rehire them come November at a near-unanimous rate.
We do not have passion in this country or for this country.
We have apathy.
We have ambivalence…
and it is killing us.
Without passion for this country and passion in general, how can we honestly expect the next generation to understand the importance of our liberties and freedoms, of the moral, theological, logical, and philosophical foundations upon which those liberties and freedoms were derived?
How can we honestly expect the next generation to care if we do not care?
How can we honestly expect our government to abide by the constraints put upon it by mortal men nearly three hundred years ago if we do not understand those constraints and possess a heart and mind for defending them with words, deeds, and arms if necessary?
How will apathy end up killing us in the end? Tune in tomorrow.
Posted by cyclimus on June 12, 2013
https://freedomsbrushfire.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/the-death-of-the-republic-symptoms/
The Death Of The Republic
This will be the best security for maintaining our liberties. A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins.
Benjamin Franklin
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.
The opposite of love is not hate – it’s apathy. It’s not giving a damn.
Leo Buscaglia
Love cannot endure indifference. It needs to be wanted. Like a lamp, it needs to be fed out of the oil of another’s heart, or its flame burns low.
Henry Ward Beecher
I intend to explore for the rest of the week and beyond what seems to me to be the a serious threat to our republic, and what could ultimately be it’s death.
There is no doubt in my mind that we are staring at the gaping maw of tyranny – it is here, it is now, it is ongoing with the various and rapid-fire scandals at IRS, the Department of Justice, at NSA, and the full court press that these federal authorities are putting on the Bill of Rights and the liberties and freedoms enshrined therein.
You may say that scandals happen to every administration and the warning of encroaching tyranny is sounded every few years and nothing ever seems to come of it, but I believe we have entered a new highly dangerous point in the history of the experiment of American liberty.
I believe that we are under attack. The attack is not coming from some other country or even one person or group in particular. We are the enemy, because the root of the problem is apathy, indifference, and a lack of love.
Tune in tomorrow for why WE are the enemy to our own liberty.
Posted by cyclimus on June 11, 2013
https://freedomsbrushfire.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/the-death-of-the-republic/
Jackboots on the Clifftops
69 years ago today, two million Americans, British, free French, and Canadian men stormed the beaches of occupied France in a rural province called Normandy. The German war machine stood poised ready to throw the invasion force back into the sea and to defend fortress Europe from the Allied forces.
Today, that same jackboot of tyranny has found a willing caretaker in the alphabet agencies of the United States government.
That same jackboot of tyranny has usurped the freedoms and liberties that those free men bled and died for on the sandy beaches of western France.
Media members being wiretapped.
Religion under assault within the US military.
Content of prayers being demanded by the IRS.
The federal government smuggling guns across a foreign border to create the narrative that American gun owners and gun stores are to blame for another country’s violence.
Every phone call, email, text message, instant message, tweet, or other form of electronic communication or internet posting by every American citizen is scoured and stored by the federal government without warrant or cause.
We have been taught and indoctrinated from a young age, and even moreso our children now, that the government is just looking out for you and wants the best for you.
That is the great lie. What is best for you in their eyes is to shut up, get in line, and live your life in the prison that our society and country will become if these usurpations and abuses are tolerated or forgiven.
Unfortunately you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all of our problems. Some of these same voices do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.
President Barack Obama
Whether involved or just a hapless stooge, I don’t know, and it ultimately does not matter as the machine of tyranny – the approaching jackboot of slavery will advance with or without him unless we, the People, in concert and backed by the righteous hand of God – the Creator and source of our very life, liberty, and only true source of happiness – stand up and say no, that is enough. The dangerous fire of government that our first President warned about has come to the doorstep like a raging wildfire. It is powerful. It is fearsome. It will consume and destroy everything it wishes until it is cut off from fuel and air.
We have permitted ever more intrusions into a daily lives in the forms of extralegal bureaucratic rules, guidelines, and dictats that carry the force of law because the bureaucracy says they do.
We have permitted ever more chains of tyranny on our backs.
- The right of free speech is threatened
- The right of free expression of religion has all but been removed except when practiced in sanctioned “worship” houses
- The right to keep and bear arms is under constant assault by politicians wishing to secure their power.
- Our right to privacy is no more in light of extrajudicial wiretaps, data mining, unmanned drone aircraft, warrantless searches and seizures for the cause of public safety, and the seizure of genetic material (blood) of a person arrested but not yet even charged with a crime.
- We watched as the citizens of one of the most well-known and largest cities in the country stood by helpless as a state of martial law was put in place “for their protection” and the concept of shelter-in-place began to be used all over the country for ridiculous reasons rather than for the serious threats that such a concept was ever conceived.
There are just a few examples of the chains being laid upon us.
At what point will the American people say ENOUGH!!!!??? Is there no spirit of defiance and ruggedness that beats within the hearts of the people today? Have we been so inculcated and changed deep down that we no longer have the mettle of those men on those landing craft 69 years ago today? Are we no longer ready and willing to charge through the surf, up the beach and past the waiting defenses into the very heart of the enemy of humanity, of liberty, of freedom?
Are we able to admit that we are not alive today to enjoy our freedoms and liberties, but to protect and preserve them for our children, our grandchildren, and the generations yet to come?
I am. Whether you come with me or not is up to you, but like on that day nearly seven decades ago, we are at the waterline and the mortars and machine guns are zeroing in on us and you can’t stay here. What’ll it be soldier? Press forward or retreat into the sea?
Posted by cyclimus on June 6, 2013
https://freedomsbrushfire.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/jackboots-on-the-clifftops/
Lust and Power
If you’ve ever watched or read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the lust for power is well imagined in the lust for the One Ring.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
The lust for the ring of power was great. It was known to contain great power and endowed the bearer with magical abilities such as invisibility, unusually long life, and others, but at a great price. It was a corrupting force. Regardless of the intent of the person who possessed the ring, no matter how it was used, the ring only answered to the one who made it.
Let’s unpack the concept that Tolkien was trying to convey. The first and most obvious layer is that power corrupts.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”
John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, 1st Baron Acton
“Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.”
William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham and British Prime Minister from 1766 to 1778
The lure of the power in the ring was impossible to resist. Men would do anything to gain possession of that power – lie, cheat, steal, kill.
Take a look around at all disconcerting tyrannies that I have written extensively about to date. Those tyrannies are either aimed at obtaining, preserving, or strengthening power.
Yesterday, May 30th, the NSA’s Utah Data Center went live. The center has the capability to capture, record, and analyze every form of electronic communication in the domestic United States every single day.
The Department of Homeland Security has expanded it’s mission from just protecting modes of travel to protecting and actively policing within the United States.
The warrantless wiretaps on the AP, the targeting of individual reporters such as James Rosen, the IRS’ unequal treatment of conservative, Tea Party, and Jewish groups are all methods being used to silence opposition and whistleblowers through intimidation.
More than 70 percent of federal spending goes to dependency programs. The threat of removal of these programs ensures that dissension is unthinkable lest the life support that 128 million Americans rely on for subsistence be taken away. These people have become serfs of the new feudal masters within the government (both elected and unelected).
Schools in Florida, under the guise of an insidious program called Common Core, scanned and retained the irises of school children for their “safety” and “security.”
These are just a few instances of huge power grabs, shows of naked force. Each one by itself could be written off as nothing, an overreaction or overreach by overzealous bureaucrats, but together in concert they are much more. They take on the mantle of a full blown tightening of the vise of tyranny on the citizens of the United States.
Now you might even be saying that I’m overreacting because I disagree with President Obama politically on nearly every issue, but it goes far beyond that. I would disagree with these steps regardless of which party or President was in power at the time because I see these for the lure of power that they are and will be going forward. That power becomes a drug for the person who wields it – they need it, and not to know that they have it, but they will need to exercise it in growing frequency in order to fulfill their craving for it. The power will corrupt them. Even if they began with the best of intentions, that power will destroy them.
The bureaucrats and politicians that come next will see the One Ring before them. It will call to them, not with the clarion call of liberty, but with the sinister whisper of influence, authority, power, and strength, but those powers can only be wielded by the creator of the ring.
Who is the creator of the ring?
In Tolkien’s tale, Sauron, the Dark Lord, is the creator of the ring, but even he can be destroyed by it because he is ultimately dependent on it as well. So did Sauron create the authority, power, and strength that were endowed into the ring or did he simply channel them there? Let’s back this up to theology now… did Satan create the power that he yields?
The short answer is no.
God created Satan as Lucifer the angel. Satan is dependent on God for his very existence.
One day the angelscame to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them.
The authority, power, and strength that Satan holds were benefits of his created nature and were gifts of his position in the hierarchy of heaven. It is Satan’s intent to disobey and rebel against God that corrupts those gifts. Just as Satan rebels and corrupts those great and mighty gifts that God bestowed on him at his creation, the government – the politicians and bureaucrats, the authorities, the individual branches and big players have intents and purposes that run counter to the Constitutionally-directed role of the government and it’s relationship with the people altogether. The small tyrannies summed together will corrupt even the best intended of those men and women because they will beg to be used… the temptation is too great.
THAT is why we rail against these overreaches. THAT is why we sound the watchman’s call as the abuses and usurpations mount.
The enemy is not just at the gates.
The enemy is now within the city walls.
If we do not stand and fight and defeat these self-obtained powers, then we will lose whatever scrap of liberty that we have left on this Earth except for the hope that we have in Christ.
If power corrupts, we must rid ourselves of it. If we do not want a corrupt government controlling every step we take in our lives, we must disrupt and dismantle it’s power to do so or we will find ourselves prisoners in our own country.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Posted by cyclimus on May 31, 2013
https://freedomsbrushfire.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/lust-and-power/
Something Wicked This Way Comes
And the President claims that he knew nothing…
I call bull. The President was involved DIRECTLY in the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups, conservative PACs, and Jewish PACs.
The President claims that he went to bed. While that may in fact be true, it is a complete dereliction of duty regarding the Americans left to die in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. In this case, I call bull also. The truth is far more damaging – either the President willfully elected to deny support to sovereign US territory and US citizens under an active military attack, or was incapable of making a decision in the face of a live crisis. The question that will be answered eventually is why. Was the US State Department running guns via Benghazi and Turkey to the Syrian Islamist rebels against international law, a handful of treaties, and without the consent of Congress?
And now the Attorney General, Eric Holder, has committed perjury. He either lied to Congress about his involvement with the search warrants he signed regarding James Rosen of Fox News or he lied to a judge (or rather three). The search warrants listed Rosen as a co-conspirator or co-participant in the leak of classified information, but Holder testified to Congress that there was never the intent to prosecute. Then why argue for a search warrant? Why waste your time if you don’t intend to prosecute? I call bull. This Rosen issue follows the warrantless wiretapping of hundreds of members of the media.
Which narratives are left?
Benghazi – gun-running coverup? Presidential incompetence and dereliction of duty? Both are impeachable.
IRS – “punishing enemies” of the President? Top-to-bottom corruption of the tax-collection arm of the Federal government? If Obama is indeed complicit, and having the IRS commissioner visiting the White House more often than three of the most common visitors who hold Cabinet-level positions combined looks terribly suspicious, then that is 100% Nixonian and impeachable.
Wiretapping – Fourth Amendment violation folks? Justice Department corruption? Holder has already proven a liar (as I outlined above), so we can not trust him to properly investigate himself.
Rosen – Political targeting again? Anti-Fox News vendetta in the Administration?
The problem with each scandal is that it requires more than a modicum of civics knowledge to understand the underlying issues, motives, and precedents that will be set if such scandals are not pursued.
If we do not start seeing the connections between each scandal and drawing out the political motivations of EACH and EVERY scandal, then we will never fully expose the absolute threat to liberty and freedom that this administration has been and will be going forward if they are not stopped here and now.
Posted by cyclimus on May 30, 2013
https://freedomsbrushfire.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/something-wicked-this-way-comes/
Time to Abolish the IRS
The IRS internal investigation concluded six months prior to the 2012 Presidential election and was concealed from Congress (Daily Mail).
The official, Lois Lerner, that oversaw the division that processed tax-exempt organization applications has asserted that she has done nothing wrong or illegal and then invoked her Fifth Amendment right to not be forced to testify against oneself (FoxNews).
The IRS has failed to fulfill a House Ways & Means Committee demand for documentation (CNSNews).
The IRS has willfully lied to Congress, and the White House to the public via the media, about the depth and breadth of the politically-motivated targeting of conservative, Constitution-teaching, Jewish, and patriotic organizations applying for tax-exempt status. The IRS is also walking around with blood-red hands from the political-targeted audits of prominent conservative donors and media personalities (Fox19).
The IRS from top to bottom is proving itself to be a partisan weapon to be unleashed on political enemies of whoever is in charge. As such, it is detrimental to our free republic and itself has become a domestic enemy of these United States as it seeks to play by its own rules, use our own Constitutional protections to shield itself and it’s employees from inquiry, and to deny any and all who fall into their bad graces the same protections.
It has become time to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service completely.
Posted by cyclimus on May 22, 2013
https://freedomsbrushfire.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/time-to-abolish-the-irs/
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