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----- Original Message -----
From: Kim
Weissman
Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2001 9:14 AM
Subject: CONGRESS ACTION: March 18, 2001 CONGRESS ACTION: March 18, 2001 ================= GONE -- AND FORGOTTEN: This week (March 16) marked the 250th birthday of the man who had more to do with the establishment of our Constitutional republic than any other single individual, a man known as the "Father of the Constitution" -- James Madison. It is sadly fitting that, in this modern age of widespread Constitutional ignorance, in this time when the individual rights that our Founders fought to protect are under daily assault and our individual liberty is being subsumed by a massive and ever expanding government, that the birthday of the father of our Constitution should be subsumed in that catch-all travesty called "President's Day", a day better known for school vacations and sales at local car dealerships than for honoring the giants of the 18th century who preserved our liberty.Liberty doesn't mean very much to us any more these days. We take it for granted while we give it away with both hands. From our front row seat to the decline of America as a free nation, we can see that liberty has come to mean freedom from responsibility, freedom from the necessity inherent in a self-governing republic to keep ourselves educated and informed, freedom from the burden of thinking for ourselves. The preservation of individual liberty is hard work. Dependency and whining about unfairness are so much easier. What we want is to be taken care of, to absolve ourselves of all responsibilities. We see this in California's current energy crisis, caused by the extreme policies of radical environmentalists who are now trying to blame anyone but themselves. We see this in our current economic slowdown, caused in large part by burdensome regulations, legal impediments, and high taxes, instituted by left-wing democrats who are now pretending that they are nothing but innocent bystanders and ludicrously trying to blame Bush for "talking down" the economy. Given the dismal state of critical thought today, these claims are likely to be believed. The absence of any public celebration of Madison's 250th birthday is in keeping with our modern-day preoccupation with small matters, while we ignore the great dangers that confront us. We don't want to be reminded of how far down the road to serfdom we have traveled, from those heady days when our liberties were clearly understood and valiantly defended. Our hypersensitivity has invented a right not to be offended, and so freedom of speech has been banished from most college campuses by politically correct totalitarians. Our self-obsession has invented a right to slaughter over a million innocent unborn babies every year and has eliminated the concept of morality from public discourse, and so our most fundamental right to defend our own lives is slowly being regulated out of existence. Our arrogance has convinced us that we have the power to drive entire species to extinction and to alter the very climate of the planet, and so we have lost the right to use and enjoy private property, which is at the root of all liberty. When Constitution Day rolls around on September 17, the great intellectually vacuous American public will miss that one also. "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." -- James Madison SPEAKING OF EUROPE…: James Madison observed that "In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example...of charters of power granted by liberty." It is a distinction that many people no longer even understand, a distinction that we forget at our peril, as Europe drifts closer to totalitarian socialism, and as American politicians drift closer toward following the lead of the European Union in matters ranging from the Kyoto Treaty on Climate Change to the International Criminal Court.In one of his late steps toward globalism, Bill Clinton directed the United States to sign the treaty agreeing to join the International Criminal Court, claiming that joining the ICC would be a "profound contribution" to combating human rights abuses around the world. Nice sounding words from the former president, and as we have come to expect from the former president, utterly false. As the Europeans themselves have been proving. For years, the globocrats at the United Nations have considered the use of the death penalty in the United States to be an abuse of human rights. In 1998, the World Court at the Hague had the temerity of ordering that the United States not carry out a legally set execution of a legally convicted murderer in the State of Virginia. And just last week, a delegation of three European officials proceeded to lecture Secretary of State Powell about the "strong sentiment" in Europe against the American use of the death penalty. It is, they contended, a violation of international human rights norms. But while European bureaucrats whined about abusing the human rights of convicted killers, another European body was demonstrating how little they care about the human rights of those who are not convicted killers. The day before the Europeans lectured Powell, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that freedom of speech can be stifled if someone dares to criticize that body. Defying a half century of case law precedent on civil liberties from the European Court of Human Rights, as well as centuries of English common law, the ECJ ruled that it was legally entitled to restrict criticism that damages "the institution's image and reputation". Here in the United States, we tend to take our freedom of speech, and our right to criticize the government, protected by our Bill of Rights, for granted. We shouldn't, especially when our own elected politicians take steps to make our own national sovereignty subservient to European socialism; and when major politicians (McCain and Feingold) of both major parties in this country are embarked on a crusade to stifle our freedom of speech and our right to criticize the government, in the "Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2001" (S.27). Yes, socialism is the proper word for the ideology that rules most of Europe. There are 626 members in the existing European parliament. Of those, the largest bloc (232) identify themselves as the Group of the European People's Party and European Democrats; the second largest bloc (181) is the Group of the Party of European Socialists; 52 are the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party; 46 are the Group of the Greens and European Free Alliance; 42 are the Confederal Group of the European United Left and the Nordic Green Left; and the rest (73) claim non-alignment with any groups -- "moderates". This month, the socialist parties in nine European Union members called for the creation of a European government, complete with cabinet officers, a prime minister, and a president. Then consider the recent visit to Europe of Zimbabwe's president Mugabe. Under Mugabe's rule and with the active encouragement of his government, blacks have been invading white-owned farms in Zimbabwe, often murdering the white owners, and routinely intimidating them into abandoning their farms. This Marxist style land reform has been going on for several years, and because of the government sanctioned campaign of expropriation and intimidation, the country faces food shortages and the possibility of starvation for the first time ever. This campaign of lawlessness has been criticized by some of Zimbabwe's highest judges, who have as a consequence been forced out of office by threats and intimidation. So when Mugabe recently visited Europe, was he shunned? Condemned? Chastised by the self-proclaimed defenders of human rights? Not at all -- he was honored by those European leaders. GLOBAL WARMING REVERSAL: There was considerable reaction to recent pronouncements by EPA administrator Whitman and Treasury Secretary O'Neill in support of the Kyoto global warming treaty and advocating curbs on carbon dioxide emissions. Confounding environmental activists with visions of the imminent ratification of Kyoto, President Bush issued a statement that the science of global warming is still uncertain and there would be no regulatory curbs on carbon dioxide emissions. This seeming reversal of policy from campaign statements to policy implementation has the environmentalists and the media in a tizzy (those who spent the last 8 years idolizing "Honest Bill" Clinton are apparently astonished by what they consider presidential dishonesty). Relying on another recently released vision of the apocalypse from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and on the mythological consensus of scientists who believe we are all about to be roasted alive by global warming, the media has been awash in editorials condemning Bush's "betrayal". A few facts are needed to set the record straight. Here's what some of the scientists who actually contributed to the IPCC's most recent apocalyptic pronouncement have to say about that report:"It [the IPCC report] is presented as a consensus that involves hundreds, perhaps thousands, of scientists and none of them were asked if they agreed with anything in the report except for the one or two pages they worked on. It uses summaries to misrepresent what scientists say; uses language that means different things to scientists and laymen; exploits public ignorance over quantitative matters; exploits what scientists can agree on while ignoring disagreements to support the global warming agenda; exaggerates scientific accuracy and certainty; exaggerates the authority of undistinguished scientists; and poses leading questions." -- Dr. Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The world is in much better shape than this doomsday scenario paints. There are 245 different results in that report, and this was the worst-case scenario. It’s the one that’s not going to happen. It was the extreme case of all the different things that can make the world warm." -- Dr. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. "Based on the science you simply can't make the statement that it is going to warm faster." -- Dr. Andrew Weaver, Canada Research Chair in atmospheric science at the University of Victoria. And as for the so-called "consensus of scientists", that group started out at about 3000 scientists agreeing with the theory of human induced global warming. A recent editorial in the Boston Globe let the cat out of the bag, however, admitting that the so-called consensus has dropped by half, to about 1500. There is, however, another consensus that the fearmongers prefer to ignore: the 19,200 (and growing) scientist signatories to the Oregon Petition protesting adoption of the Kyoto Treaty, being circulated by Frederick Seitz, Past President of the National Academy of Sciences. DEATH BY TAX CUT: Tax cuts cause school shootings. You didn't know that? In their hysterical opposition to returning your money to you in the form of the tax cuts proposed by Bush, leftists have gone off the deep end into irrationality. A recent editorial in the Boston Globe tried to make the case that we can expect more school shootings if those tax cuts are enacted into law. Here was the reasoning: tax cuts are just a disgusting appeal to our gluttony. We will use the extra money to buy more cars, bigger homes, and bigger televisions. What will be the inevitable result? The editorial explained, "We can give our children computers and private bedrooms with skylights, but with those televisions delivering violent, vengeful entertainment in ever more digital detail, we must consider whether we are defeating our best intentions. It is obvious that when many of our boys and a few of our girls become angry, they no longer look for hugs from mommy or daddy. They look for a gun." Understand clearly -- It isn't the "violent, vengeful entertainment" that causes the depravity leading to school shootings. It isn't the culture of death, in which leftists cheer as over a million unborn babies are slaughtered every year, that leads to school shootings. It isn't the self-absorbed emotionalism and lack of self control championed by leftists that leads to school shootings. It isn't even the banishment of public morality that leads to shootings at schools. No, its tax cuts. These people have absolutely no shame.
FOR MORE INFORMATION… ======================== Oregon Petition: http://www.oism.org/pproject/CONGRESS ACTION Newsletter can be found with most web
searchers,
and is available at: http://www.velasquez.com/congress_action/ |
