Through a Southerner’s Eyes

Through a Southerner’s Eyes
Sovereign States, Nullification, Etc.
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

The Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, ratified by the Congress of the Confederation on January 14, 1784, and by the King of Great Britain on April 9, 1784 (the ratification documents were exchanged in Paris on May 12, 1784), formally ended the American Revolutionary War between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United States of America, which had rebelled against British rule. The other combatant nations, France, Spain and the Dutch Republic had separate agreements; for details of these, and the negotiations which produced all four treaties, see Peace of Paris (1783). (SOURCE)

The American Revolutionary War formally ended with the signing and ratification of the Treaty of Paris. That treaty may prove to be as important today as it was in 1783-84.

I am now in my seventh decade on this earth. I am what we call in the US – a “southerner.” My generation of southerners has a strong sense of exactly who we are.

In our youth we were drenched in Western History, American History, the history of our state, and our southern history and heritage, most of which came from our Scot-Irish ancestors who flocked to these southern shores early on.

We are a proud, independent, freedom loving people with little hesitation to challenge anyone when our liberties are threatened.

You may recall, having heard somewhere, that our ancestors were actually forced to go to war to defend our freedom after legally seceding from the United States after the US Congress nearly succeeded in bankrupting our economy -- much as they are doing the US today. (It WAS the ECONOMY – even then!) The US could not afford the loss of the southern states -- because — the southern states were paying the bills for the US.

But our southern ancestors, many of whom had grandfathers who had fought the British for our freedom, remembered something very important -- the Treaty of Paris signed in 1783 and ratified in 1784.

As noted above, the treaty of Paris officially ended the American Revolutionary War with Great Britain. But – it also did something else, which few remember today.

Article one of the treaty acknowledges the Thirteen Colonies to be free, sovereign, and independent States. (SOURCE) To this day – the states have never given up their sovereignty!

Last Friday, we southerners celebrated the day when the delegates from six southern states, which had already seceded from the Union, met in Montgomery, Alabama to officially create the Confederate States of America (February 4th, 1861) -- one hundred and fifty years ago. See, they remembered Article One of the 1783 Treaty of Paris.

The southern states had been nullifying those harsh laws, aimed directly at the southern states, whose gross national product at the time far, far, exceeded that of the “northern” states. Those laws, which had crippled the southern economy, and were sucking the life out of the southern states, would no longer be tolerated. Why? Because the southern states WERE sovereign and they did not have to put up with it any longer.

The US government refused to accept the sovereignty of the states and vowed to crush them and force them back into the Union, much as Saddam Hussein attempted to do with the so-called 19th Province of Kuwait.

After four of the bloodiest years in the history of this country, the Union DID succeed in forcing the southern states back into the Union – at bayonet point.

Today, one hundred and fifty years later, we face another hostile government bent on foisting laws on ALL the states that the states do not like, do not want, and are vowing to nullify. Many of those laws come in a neatly wrapped package we call ObamaCare. We have come full circle.

I am continually amazed at the professionals in the news media, and even in the blogoshere (both left and right), who do not seem to know, or understand, that the fifty states of the United States have always been sovereign “states.” Literally interpreted, they are 50 countries that have joined together for their common interest.

The original 13 colonies (states) decided to form a central governing body that would do their bidding and speak for all 13 (now 50) of them. It made sense, and it made for “good order.”

Forgotten, somewhere, somehow, is the fact that the federal government was created to act as an agent of the states. I cannot stress that enough. The states were never to be subordinate to the federal government. To even consider that, meant taking the states right back into subservience again, only to their own government instead of King George’s government. It would have made NO SENSE. They knew that. They did NOT DO THAT!

So -- for the federal government to mandate, to compel, to demand, to order “sovereign states” to carry out edits from the federal government bears no weight, at all, with those states that do not agree with the terms of those edits, those mandates.

Example: Suppose the pastor your congregation hired simply announced next Sunday morning that Sunday morning worship services would be held at 1 PM instead of the traditional 11 AM hour and all those who did not attend the 1 PM service would have their tithes doubled for the first month, and if their behavior did not change to comply with the new worship service hour, they would be unceremoniously tossed from the church’s membership role, or some such punishment.

Remember, this is a pastor your church membership had hired. He is on your payroll. Yet, the church belongs to the membership … not the pastor. He is your hireling – to put it bluntly. (I know many of you, not of the evangelical faiths, and not of the independent denominations, may have trouble with this analogy, but – there it is, nonetheless.)

The board of deacons, or elders, or whatever the governing body of the church is known as, is elected to their positions by the membership and serves at the pleasure of the congregation.

If, then, the membership decided, NO WAY – and continued to assemble for the Sunday morning worship service at the 11 AM hour -- what will the pastor do about it? What CAN he do about it? Well, he has two options: He can deliver his sermon at 11 AM -- or – he can leave that church. What he CANNOT do – is force the membership to attend worship services at 1 PM.

The analogy above describes what happens when states get their backs up about something the federal government is mandating THEY do. It is called “NULLIFICATION.” States can do this because they are, and have been since the formation of this country, free, sovereign, states.

Over the next couple of years, expect to hear the word “nullification” tossed about, rather much. If the Supreme Court does not overturn ObamaCare as unconstitutional, I predict you will actually get to see nullification in action.

Most worrisome to me, is the possibility that the Supreme Court will eventually rule nullification as unconstitutional. Then America will have a very real tyrant cracking the whip over her – the federal government.

J. D. Longstreet

Global Warming? I Don’t THINK So!

Global Warming? I Don’t THINK So!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

As I sit here tapping out theses few thoughts on the keyboard, I am awaiting the arrival of more sleet – and rain—and maybe a few stray snowflakes. And I am in sub-tropical North Carolina -- just four blocks from my city’s own, centrally located, downtown, SWAMP!

Last month we had to shovel four inches of “Global Warming” (which looked suspiciously like snow) off our driveway. That was the second snowstorm this winter in our little piece of paradise where the average temperature is somewhere in the 70’s.


It seems fact is finally catching up to fiction.

Here’s the thing. The truth is, well, the truth. It has the tendency to stand up to all attempts to distort it, or to suppress it. “The Truth” will out, as the old adage goes. Indeed, it will.

We have been telling you, and anyone who would stand still long enough, that global warming was a hoax; perhaps the greatest hoax ever to be played out on mankind. But the propaganda machine, commonly referred to as the Mainstream Media had latched onto the glamorous ruse and continued to proclaim the mantra that all the earth is going to succumb to rising temperatures and, well, basically we’re all gonna DIE! Scared the hell out of a whole lot of people.

Now, I’m an ole country boy, literally, having been raised on the edge of a pine forest amongst the red clay hills of piedmont South Carolina. I was the first generation off the farm. My father, raised a farmer, taught me to read the weather much as one would read a book. If you look closely, nature will forecast coming climatic events in ways a person not versed in the science of meteorology can interpret in useful ways. Every country boy and gal of my generation knows exactly want I am talking about.

One of the most important lessons my father taught me about projecting changes in the climate was this. Never project more than a day, or two, into the future, and never, ever, expect to be correct in your forecast every time. Rather, expect to be wrong, and plan accordingly.

Even today, I measure and record the rainfall, the relative humidity, the barometric pressure, the dew/frost point, the 24-hour high temperature, the 24-hour low temperature, the direction of the winds and the speed of those winds, as well as the sky conditions every single day. And yes, I do report this information to a major university every day.

I am connected to the weather, I think, because my roots still derive sustenance from my farmer ancestors to whom weather was a way of life, indeed, a deciding factor in whether they fed their families – or not. It was of extreme importance to them and somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind I perceive genetic echoes of that importance and feel the urge, yet, to maintain a “weather eye” upon the skies.

I tell you this only to underscore the fact that when I write of the global warming hoax, I am not just making use of someone else’s terminology to, hopefully, sway your political philosophy, one way, or the other. No. I warn of what I honestly believe is a hoax, because I do not see it, nor do I sense it.


In fact, what I DO see and sense, is just the opposite.

Nature is slowly but surely cooling down the earth.

Allow me to make an analogy, if you please. Suppose you threw a ball straight up as hard as you could. When that ball reaches the apogee of its climb, for a very brief moment in time -- it actually stops. It is neither going up, nor down. Then it slowly begins to fall back to earth gaining speed as it falls.

That is where I think the earth is today – the apogee. Temperatures are, generally speaking, flat at the moment. They are not climbing, nor falling.

See, the earth goes through warming and cooling periods – naturally. These run in cycles of roughly 11,500 years.

For a rather long time now, we have been coming out of the latest warming period and are at the point where direction changes (the apogee) and we are about to begin the cooling cycle. I hasten to add that, as my father taught me, I must expect to be wrong. Therefore, I urge you to do your own research on this and satisfy yourself, one way, or the other.

Here’s the thing: If this ole country boy is correct this time, then we can expect more winters like this one – only worse. I expect the winters to slowly lengthen and grow more intense. In fact, I am convinced we are about to begin the slow plunge back into the next cooling period some would call a “new ice age.”

There are all sorts of scientific names for this progression and lots of scientific data supporting and disproving what I have just expressed in the form of an opinion. You may believe – or disbelieve. I wouldn’t blame you either way.

But, I will tell you this: My family is preparing for the expected cooling tend. We are taking sensible steps to prepare our living quarters for the prolonged winters I expect are ahead of us.

The frantic, near hysterical, warnings of a global meltdown, of coastal cities underwater, of polar bears endangered, when in fact their numbers are growing, is nothing more that high comedy, very entertaining, but extremely costly to our nation’s treasury. It will be even more costly when, the powers that be discover all the money spent on preparations for global warming was wasted and should have been spent of global cooling.

Hey! I could be wrong. But, experience leads me to believe that we are in for a lot more cold – and – a lot less warm.

J. D. Longstreet

Democracy Is Wrong For Islamic States

Democracy Is Wrong For Islamic States
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet


Does anyone really believe the government of Egypt will ultimately become a democracy like unto that of the US?? I mean -- anyone other that a few eggheads in Washington and in the cloistered halls of academia, of course.

Naw! Ain’t gonna happen!

When all the smoke finally clears in Egypt the chances are extremely good that another strongman-type government will reign supreme in Egypt. And, honestly, I don’t think that is all bad.

A very astute friend came to visit me today, and as we sat in my office discussing the situation in Egypt and the Middle East, we agreed that the Arab countries and the Persian country of Iran are not what one could describe as “fertile soil” for democracy. Not by a long shot.

Look. For a democratic government to survive it takes commitment by the people of that country to work, every day, at maintaining control of their government… as we Americans are learning today – much to the chagrin of many US citizens!

A people of a democracy must think of themselves as a single entity and not as a member of multiple tribes, or clans, or religions, etc. And that is where democracy crashes and burns in the countries of the Middle East. Democracy hasn’t a chance, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Iran, in Egypt, in Jordan, in Syria, in Lebanon, in Pakistan, in Yemen, in Tunisia, in Saudi Arabia, etc.

Sadly, all the American blood shed in Iraq and in Afghanistan will have been wasted in the attempt to bring democracy to both those countries.

I am convinced that once US troops leave Iraq and Afghanistan, they will revert to their former ways and their former strongman-type governments -- or anarchy and chaos – or all three. In a startlingly short time, I am convinced the attempt to introduce democracy to those countries will be nothing more than a memory and a memory that will fuel only more resentment towards the US.

In the beginning of the wars in Afghanistan, and in Iraq, we advocated a scorched-earth policy on both battlefronts. Utterly destroy the countries, especially their infrastructure, and leave them both as piles of smoking rubble -- and bring the troops home.

As I see it, there was no reason to make efforts to win hearts and minds in that region. It led only to a bog-down and an extended stay, which is costing us great gobs of our treasure for which I see no return on the investment of our blood and money.

I do not support the US government’s policy of promoting democracy and so-called “human rights” by favoring certain Middle Eastern countries with loads of foreign aid, military aid, etc. I also do not support any attempt to spread democracy at the point of the gun or the bayonet.

I live in a part of the United States -- that IS a part of the United States -- as the result of my ancestors having been forced back into the US at the point of that bayonet. I am 150 years removed from that incident -- and it STILL smarts!

A century or so from today, if, and when, the Middle Eastern countries decide they want to experiment with democracy and request our assistance, then, by all means extend a helping hand. Until then, the US, in my estimation, has no business creating a government the people don’t understand, do not respect, and one that appears weak and unstable to them.

Until they are ready and willing to forsake their “tribal mindset” democracy has no chance of a long life in the aforementioned countries.

The US Government could save itself some sleepless nights worrying about protecting the continuous flow of oil from the Middle East if our inept government would allow the oil companies the right to explore for and drill for our own oil beneath our own soil and our own ocean bottom.

It has been established that America has enough oil of its own to service our needs for hundreds of years into the future even at today’s daily consumption of petroleum products including gasoline, and natural gas -- not to mention one of the worlds largest deposits of coal.

We know from experience that the moment our own oil fields are opened and the threat of a decrease in the demand for middle eastern oil drops, even by a tiny bit, the middle eastern oil countries will drop their prices for crude as if it were a white hot stone.

One way to get the ball rolling on our own shores would be for the US Congress to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, or at least, cut its funding to the point that it becomes totally impotent.

If I had any advice to give the US government on the Egyptian crisis, it would be short and simple, and, I believe, would save us some trouble down the road a few years. That advice would be: Stay the hell out of the Egyptian “revolt” and allow it to play out without interference from the US. We can only make more enemies by injecting ourselves into an Egyptian domestic problem.

Another bit of unsolicited advice to the current regime in power in the US would be this: If the Obama regime really wants to do something that would actually be constructive in the Middle East, I would advise bolstering Israel with whatever Israel needs to insure that she is not overrun by the Islamist nations surrounding her.

Unfortunately, we currently have a presidential administration that is hostile to Israel and openly friendly to the Islamist states. That attitude by Obama was seen as an open invitation to mischief by those Islamist states that have sworn to utterly destroy the state of Israel and wipe her from the map.

Mr. President: Fortify Israel – forget Egypt. Egypt will work out its own problems with, or without, input and interference from a US President they have concluded is a weak, naïve, chief of state who will be out of office in a couple of years, in any event.

J. D. Longstreet

The State of the Union: President Obama hasn’t learned anything

Commentary by James Shott


For a long, long time the State of the Union address has been anything but a mechanism for communicating useful information about the state of the nation to the Congress, but despite the overwhelmingly political atmosphere that dominates this annual spectacle, President Barack Obama was able to send an important message.

The president noted in his address that America does “big things,” and who could argue with that? “America is the nation that built the transcontinental railroad, brought electricity to rural communities, constructed the Interstate Highway System,” he said.

“We’re a nation that says, ‘I might not have a lot of money, but I have this great idea for a new company.’ … From the earliest days of our founding, America has been the story of ordinary people who dare to dream. That’s how we win the future,” and “the first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation. None of us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be or where the new jobs will come from. Thirty years ago, we couldn’t know that something called the Internet would lead to an economic revolution.”

He continued: “What we can do – what America does better than anyone else – is spark the creativity and imagination of our people. We’re the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices; the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers; of Google and Facebook. In America, innovation doesn’t just change our lives. It is how we make our living.”

That’s all true; America is all of those things. But what followed clearly sent the message that Barack Obama does not understand how the country he was elected to lead was able to achieve such great things.

He believes that the government should “invest” your tax money in research, and that doing so will produce results that research funded by private sources will not, or cannot produce; that without government funded research the “correct” things will not happen.

Now, it is true that government funding was involved in significant advances and discoveries. But is it true that these things would not have been developed without “government investment?” Is the president suggesting that the same innovative energy that caused Edison to produce the best incandescent light bulb exists only because the government invests in research? Well, not in Edison’s case, nor in the case of thousands of other research triumphs.

“Our free enterprise system is what drives innovation,” he correctly noted. “But because it’s not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout our history, our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and inventors with the support that they need,” and he proceeded to suggest that without government funding the Internet, NASA’s man on the moon project, computer chips and GPS would not exist today.

But the president is mistaken.

The government has not funded scientific research “throughout our history,” and the idea that government must fund scientific research is a big myth, according to Terence Kealey, professor of clinical biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, England, and author of The Economic Laws of Scientific Research, in an article for the Cato Institute in 1997. “The argument is that private companies will not fund science, especially pure science, for fear that their competitors will ‘capture’ the fruits of that investment. Yet, in practice, companies fund pure science very generously,” Professor Kealey wrote. “The more a firm invested in basic science, the more its productivity grew,” he said, citing research conducted by University of Pennsylvania economist Edwin Mansfield.

He went on to explain that “if a company is sited in a country that has low taxes, it simply invests its own money; if it lies in a country with high taxes, it lobbies its government to fund its R&D,” concluding that high taxation interferes in the normal economics of funding scientific research, and that “government funding displaces private research money.”

When government directly funds research, those projects and areas preferred by government receive funding. But government should not determine what or who gets funding; that isn’t what made America great. The funding of science should be economically, not politically, determined.

What Mr. Obama calls “investment” is just “government spending,” and even if its purpose is good and valuable, it is still “government spending.” Our government has amassed a $14 trillion national debt and a budget deficit this year of $1.4 trillion. That is the problem we have to solve, and more spending is obviously not the solution to that problem.

“We need to take responsibility for our deficit and reform our government,” the president declared. But his plan does not reduce the budget deficit; it merely substitutes some deficit spending with other deficit spending.

The fact is that government didn’t build America. The American people built this great nation through a mostly-free-market capitalist system.

In Mr. Obama’s narrow view, the only way to solve any problem is with a government solution. Government has an important role to play, but that role isn’t to make all our decisions for us; it is to assure the individual liberty and the market freedoms that built the nation.

Statists like Barack Obama seem incapable of understanding that.

Cross-posted from Observations

A Bridge Too Far

A Bridge Too Far
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

Turns out we conservative bloggers are not as far off the beam as our leftist antagonists would have you believe, right?

We have been decrying ObamaCare as unconstitutional from day one. And now a US District Judge agrees with us.

Federal Judge Roger Vinson wrote of his decision: "I must conclude that the individual mandate and the remaining provisions are all inextricably bound together in purpose and must stand or fall as a single unit…. To now hold that Congress may regulate the so-called ‘economic decision’ to not purchase a product or service in anticipation of future consumption is a ‘bridge too far.’ It is without logical limitation and far exceeds the existing legal boundaries established by Supreme Court precedent.” (SOURCE)

Ok. We now have to wait for the US Supreme Court to rule and that could happen anytime within … oh, 3 years. Obama’s minions have made it clear they have no intention of asking the federal judicial system to put this on the “fast track” for consideration by the Supreme Court. Chances are, it will happen before 2014, in any case. And what takes place in November of 2012? The Presidential Election – that’s what!

So now the stage is being set for the presidential campaigns of both parties and it is beginning to look as if ObamaCare will be the centerpiece of both campaigns. There can be no doubt that the November 2012 election will be another referendum on the increasing size of the federal government and the ever-growing reach of the federal government into the lives of every American.

So how will the Supreme Court rule? I have absolutely no idea. If there is a change on the court, and we lose a single conservative justice, there will be no question the court will rule that ObamaCare IS constitutional. It ought not be that way ... but it IS.

The judicial system in America is as politicized as the Congress. It is obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense that rulings are handed down these days depending upon the political leanings of the judicial officials.

Where’s the evidence? Try this: “So far, two federal judges — both Clinton appointees — have upheld the individual mandate. Vinson and U.S. District Court Judge Henry Hudson, who ruled against the requirement last month, were both appointed by Republican presidents.” (SOURCE)

ObamaCare is just flat-out Un-American. It is high socialism masterminded by the socialist branch of the US Government – the executive branch -- and the liberal-socialists in the Democratic Party.

If America is to be saved – then ObamaCare must be stopped. If you think the economy in America is bad NOW… believe me, when socialism becomes the norm in America and capitalism is sent packing, we will have an America with the economy of the former socialist Russia with Americans standing in line for hours to buy a single roll of toilet tissue!

ObamaCare is the vehicle that will speed America into full out socialism. At that point, the America you and I have known will be lost forever.

Much of that America is already gone. I had the good fortune to grow up in an America where people were strong independent individualists who didn’t want the government anywhere near them let alone in their lives from the cradle to the grave. Yet, it is exactly that depth of government involvement that much of the American people seem to crave today.

Over the past seven to eight decades the federal government has grown exponentially until it no longer serves the people of the country, it now demands that the people of the country serve it!

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are instruments designed to limit the power of the federal government over the American people. Unfortunately, the constitution these days is seen as an inconvenience, and an outdated document, or worse, a living, breathing, document.

Yes, the constitution is an inconvenience to liberal-socialists. As more and more Americans become aware of the limits placed on the government by the constitution, they have awakened to the overreaching power grabs of the liberal-socialists of the Democratic Party and the hyper-socialist Obama Regime.

ObamaCare is socialism. It is socialized medicine. If the US Supreme Court does not ultimately strike it down it will enslave America in a form of godless socialism so beloved by leftists in America and in every third-world socialist dung heap country around the globe.

J. D. Longstreet