Those are the words that have been strongly in my mind the past few days, growing out of reflections about your previous discussions about “those of the Left.”

If there are those of the Left, then there are those of the Right, and who are we and what do we stand for….

“My Country ‘Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty.” (Samuel F. Smith -1832)

My country, ’tis of Thee,
Sweet Land of Liberty
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From every mountain side
Let Freedom ring.

Our fathers’ God to Thee,
Author of Liberty,
To thee we sing,
Long may our land be bright
With Freedom’s holy light,
Protect us by thy might
Great God, our King.

Thy safeguard, Liberty,
The school shall ever be,
Our Nation’s pride!
No tyrant hand shall smite,
While with encircling might
All here are taught the Right
With Truth allied.

Vassar, I guess I was feeling philosophical today, and I love the patriotic hymns. May it truly be that the people are rediscovering the true meaning of Liberty.

I really hate the word “intellectual.” I don’t think it means what they think it means. For the umpteenth time… You can have all the knowledge of the universe at your fingertips and not have the wisdom to use a tenth of it. And even if they realize that, their usage of the word intellectual is still wrong.

For the rest, primaries are just around the corner for many states and November is fast approaching. If they don’t start understanding soon, they’ll surely understand when they’re no longer employed by the people.

if you don’t use it, and few use it. Most tread the narrow path dictated by government schools, peer pressure, and popular media, never daring to step off the path. Since they’re doing what everybody else is doing, they think they’re living. Sure, there’s a lot of libertinage in that narrow path; America is a rich and fairly degenerate country. I understand why the Muslims hate our popular culture But, there really isn’t liberty in all that libertinage because everybody is doing that too.

The frontier has been gone for a century except in remote areas of the mountain West and Alaska. The best way to make a small fortune as an entrepreneur is to start with a large fortune of mommy and daddy’s money. Now you can live off mommy and daddy until you’re 26! I don’t get it! I couldn’t get out of my parent’s house fast enough and haven’t spent a night there except as a guest since I left for school in 1967. Liberty doesn’t mean much to people whose first instinct when facing any difficulty is to call their mommy.

constantly astonished at the utter tone-deafness of the politicians who think that it’s still business as usual, the only difference being that things are turning more in the direction of the Republicans than the Dems at the moment.

What they don’t understand is that we are now looking at ALL of them as the ones who are taking away our country right from under our very feet. John McCain is the poster boy for this kind of behavior. He waxes conservative now that his fortunes are looking a little dim, but he will wax once more bipartisan if he wins the primary. I’m for throwing pretty much all of them out of office and electing the untried. And keeping them on very short leashes.

…but the times, they are a’changing. The Tea Parties are going about this like college kids going after a business degree, 40 years ago. Something to see.

I guess we have two bets, now, huh?

Cheers

Conservatives: Unless we demonstrate to the Republican incumbents — each of them — that “we the people” have become a “well organized resistance” capable of actually defeating each of them in their next primary election, we will not have an effect on their behavior. We need to organize INSIDE the Republican Party. At the monthly committee meetings. (You know these exist, right?)

I imagine this conversation took place before the Obamacare vote:

Congressman X: “But, madame Speaker, if I vote for it, I’ll lose my seat — did you see the videos of my townhalls? Have you seen the video of the Tea Parties in my district?”

Madame Speaker: “So what? If they aren’t becoming politically relevant by actually becoming “card carrying members” of the Republican Party, so what? History tells us that without a strengthening of the other party, we’ve all got a greater than 90 per cent chance of getting re-elected. Don’t believe me, believe history.”

I’d like to describe what might have been going on behind closed doors at strategy sessions between Steele, Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, Kyl and McCain, but I’m confident none ever took place. But I do believe this: NONE of the current crop of Republicans in the House and Senate — NONE — will risk letting the cat out of the bag that the power of political change lies within actual participation in the grass roots ranks of the party workers (gulp — I shouldn’t have said the word “worker” — that’s when most turn and run). They will NEVER tell conservative Republican audiences that the ONLY way to change the Republican Party is . . . drumroll . . . changing the grass roots ranks IN it. By changing the makeup of the grass roots ranks. By filling up the one-half of the existing seats that are VACANT with conservatives. I can’t say this enough times: precinct committeemen ARE the Party because they, and only they, elect the Party leadership.

Conservatives, INVADE the Party and we might have a chance to change the behavior of our servants. INVADE the Party, and we have a great chance of replacing those of our servants who won’t change.

But thinking rhetoric alone will change them is, simply, foolish.

Thinking marching around with signs, delivering yet another petition, giving yet another speech that ends with “let’s take our country back” without having explained HOW is, simply, foolish.

The incumbents really don’t care.

Indeed, they KNOW that without more, those actions won’t change a thing.

But they do watch how the grass roots rolls of the Party ebb and flow. In Nevada, Sue Lowden, the Nevada GOP Chairwoman and Senate candidate, resigned her chair rather than face the prospect of running in the Republican primary for Reid’s seat after having suffered the disgrace of being ousted from her perch in the chair by all the new conservative delegates fed up with the old guard.

In Utah, the grass roots conservatives have come into the Party after boning up on the basic civic rules there and now believe they’ll shock the political world on May 8 when they depose RINO Sen. Bob Bennett.

Here in Arizona, every Republican incumbent and new candidate knows that, for example, in Maricopa County, the state’s largest, conservatives have swelled the precinct committeeman ranks from about 31 per cent to about 53 per cent in a year — and the results of off election year Party elections show that the vast majority of the new PCs are conservatives. And now they’ve got me to contend with every month at the Executive Guidance Committee meeting where I (and other conservatives) ask hard questions and demand answers. Where, for example, when the County GOP can’t even create a decent web site, we find volunteers to do it on a shoestring. You don’t get to change a Party web site unless you get INSIDE the Party. Have you checked your county’s web site? How’s it look? Does it say anything about Liberty and our love of it? Or why one ought to be a Republican? Or how the Party needs lovers of Liberty to unite within it?

Let me know. I haven’t checked them all, but I already know the answer.

Telling the powers that be that they better change doesn’t work.

Demonstrating to them that we conservatives have created a “well organized resistance” INSIDE the Party gives them no choice but TO CHANGE or face ouster.

So, will YOU, if you haven’t already, become a precinct committeeman? We conservatives already in the trenches need you. Plus, it’s a helluva lot of fun!

But now I will be deadly serious. Are you willing to risk losing our country? Or will you get to a committee meeting?

Thank you.
ColdWarrior, PC
Conservatives, UNITE! CHANGE the Republican Party and save the world by UNITING INSIDE the Party as precinct committeemen. NOW!

RIGHT & WRONG! If the Republicans still running around looking to hold hands and sing kumbaya with these hard core leftists who only want the Government as powerful as the Constitution some how make it through this election, I will damn well guarantee you they won’t make it through the next because Americans are AWAKE and they want their LIBERTY back!

I see within 3 election cycles a coming around to smaller government and more LIBERTY then TYRANNY and for me there will no longer be someone just spouting rhetoric, I will call them out the minute they forgo what they have promised to WE The People, each and every time they do it! Take Scott Brown and his promise to hold the line on spending well each time he votes to extend un-employment benefits WITHOUT paying for it he has BROKEN HIS WORD! He will no doubt have a fight for his job that unfortunately will be harder then it needed to be because he had his kept his word on this ONE thing he would still have had my respect and my money but alas it is not to be because in the end he FORGOT why he went to Washington!

especially in the Senate are so hopelessly lost, and living still in the day when the Democrats still retained a shred of decency in the Demorcrat party. The Progressives got rid of the reasonable Democrats, and have turned the rest into walking talking Alinsky role models. Even the pres. is a daily dose of riducle against his opponents and those that do not adore him. The old guard Republicans think they are still working with people with reason and rationality, when in reality they are dealing with a whole new game in town, right up to changing the rules as they go along. The Republicans are still playing by the old rules, and become mute when the rules are not what they used to be. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, period. Time to go home and join a bridge club. You hear that John McCain and Mitch McConnell, and those that go along with you to get along?

A discussion of Liberty? Among our currently constituted and duly-elected Representatives?

I fear you’re setting yourself up for some awful disappointments when you use the words “Liberty” and “Congress” in the same sentence, much less insinuating that anyone there could discuss it coherently. They certainly couldn’t say anything in less than 30 seconds that would sound intelligent.

Don’t you know that Congress is now just a legalistic means of spending people’s money and redistributing it according to economic formulas (and whimsy) that come from think tanks run by people whose Congressional representatives recommended them for the Board?

The problem is that our elected officials have no respect for the money they spend, but they require everyone in the country to respect sending it to them. If they had the slightest shred of respect, they’d be very reluctant to use it instead of arguing how much more they’re going to need.

outside the blogoverse. Yeah, those of us who like to wax eloquent over Kirk, Burke, WFB, Reagan and Toqueville may be getting all philosophical, but the run-of-the-mill American just wants Obama to get the hell out of their life and stop growing the government. They don’t care if it’s socialism or fascism or neo-communism or whatever. They just see their job either gone or in danger and their house value going towards zero.

Philosophy is phun for us, but for the average member of the publick, well, they don’t give a rip.

The way you write, I think you must have. You hint at The Fourth Turning (“four generations”). If you haven’t read it, you should. You are a Gray Champion. (See http://www.fourthturning.com/html/gray_champions….html)

Fla Mom