Association of Free Citizens

Theodore Dalrymple:

Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to. — HT: Brett McS

Courtesy of American Digest.

Constitution Class taught by Michael Badnarik.

The National Center for Constitutional Studies will send you 100 pocket copies of the Constitution for $30.00, hard to beat.  They have a variety of other resources as well.

The proposed Constitution was presented to the people for debate prior to it’s ratification.  It was vigorously debated in a flurry of pamphlets, many of which have come down to us.  Some of these can be accessed online for free.

Another source for pamphlets about the Constitution can be found at the Online Forum for Liberty.  They have other useful resources as well.

David W. New has written a short work entitled “The Constitution for Beginners” which can be purchased at the Institute for the Constitution, which has plenty of other resources.

The Online Library of Liberty also provides a nice compendium of resources.

U.S. Constitution Online provides not only information about the Constitution but also resources to teach it, including to kids at various levels.

Constitution Facts . com offers not only the text of the Constitution and the Amendments, but the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Founding Fathers and more.  They also sell pocket editions of the Constitution, including a free copy for individuals, but you must pay shipping.

As the national debate on health care intensifies it is interesting and disheartening to note the tactics used by both sides. On the Republican, Libertarian and generally conservative side the opposition is general, widespread, deeply felt and increasingly vocal and articulate. On the Left’s side support for the administration’s position is move away from highlighting the benefits of the program to attacking the opposition with a view to silencing them.

The Democrats have undermined the opposition by preemptively labeling them as “Nazis” and “Brownshirts”. This is in keeping with the general line of attack used against the Bush administration. After the charge of Racism there is no more powerful denunciation than Nazism to force an opponent who cannot be defeated by reasoned argument into silence.

Yet these charges, patently false as they are, serve to lay bare the Left’s battle plan. They will use the Gestapo field manual as their own. I strongly suspect that increasingly the public meetings will be dominated by administration supporters organized from traditional Democratic constituencies which will systematically intimidate and exclude non members who would likely voice their concerns about the so-called reforms. This is already happening and I believe it will accelerate.

The long and the short of it: Chicago Rules. I am no Hillary fan, but what happened in 2008 is just plain wrong. I guess everybody knows that politics is dirty business, but if this is the new standard of dirty business for politics then we are guaranteed blood going forward. What’s worse is that this was allowed to stand. Go watch the video and see if you don’t weep for America.

Wowsers! This gal does what I should have been doing.

Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapters 2 & 3

Dr. Zero has a terrific post today over at Hot Air.

Oh, yeah.

A few gems from Theo Spark.

“The thing they forget is that liberty and freedom and democracy are so very precious that you do not fight to win them once and stop. You do not do that. Liberty and freedom and democracy are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them and then keep fighting eternally to hold them!” – Sergeant Alvin York

“The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.” – Samuel Adams, in a letter to James Warren, on November 4, 1775

“Never forget, even for an instant, that the one and only reason anybody has for taking your gun away is to make you weaker than he is, so he can do something to you that you wouldn’t let him do if you were equipped to prevent it. This goes for burglars, muggers, and rapists, and even more so for policemen, bureaucrats, and politicians.” – from the novel Hope by Aaron Zelman and L. Neil Smith

“When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about how much he spends and how he spends it.
When a man spends his own money to buy something for someone else, he is still very careful about how much he spends, but somewhat less what he spends it on.
When a man spends someone else’s money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about what he buys, but doesn’t care at all how much he spends.
And when a man spends someone else’s money on someone else, he doesn’t care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And that’s government for you.” -Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman

“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.” – Mark Twain

“Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized: In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident.” – Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher, 1788-1860)

“Three groups spend other people’s money: children, thieves, politicians. All three need supervision.” – Dick Armey