American Exceptionalism (Part 5)

Last week we talked about the differences between a nation which put liberty ahead of equality, and those who put equality ahead of liberty. This week we will discuss more from de Tocqueville and what he had said on the differences between Americans and Europeans as well as the gap between rich and poor

Then too there is the assumption, blithely accepted by the party of economic equality, that the gap between rich and poor—or even between the rich and the middle class—self-evidently amounts to a violation of social justice. Yet far from being self-evident, this assumption stems from a highly questionable concept of social justice—one that rules out or minimizes the role played by talent, character, ambition, initiative, daring, work, and spirit in producing unequal outcomes in “the pursuit of happiness.”

Furthermore, both the assumption and its correlative concept of social justice run counter to the American grain. As study after study has shown, and as the petering out of the Occupy Wall Street movement has recently confirmed, what Tocqueville observed on this point in the 1830s remains true today: Americans, unlike Europeans, he wrote, “do not hate the higher classes of society” even if “they are not favorably inclined toward them . . . .” Which is to say that most Americans are not prone to the envy of the rich that eats away at their self-appointed spokesmen on the Left.

Nor are most Americans subject to the accompanying passion for economic egalitarianism that made for the spread of socialism in other countries. What explains the absence of that levelling passion is that it has been starved by the opportunities America has afforded millions upon millions to better their lot and the advantage they have been free to take of those opportunities—which in turn explains how unprecedented and unmatched levels of prosperity have been created here and how they have come to be shared more widely here than anywhere else.

Tocqueville also put his finger on a second and related reason for the persistence of this particular feature of American exceptionalism: “The word poor is used here in a relative, not an absolute sense. Poor men in America would often appear rich in comparison with the poor of Europe.” A story I was once told by a Soviet dissident provides an amusing illustration. It seems that the Soviet authorities used to encourage the repeated screening of The Grapes of Wrath, a movie about the Great Depression-era migration of starving farmers from the Dust Bowl to California in their broken-down pickups. But contrary to expectation, what Soviet audiences got from this film was not an impression of how wretched was the plight of the poor in America. Instead they came away marvelling that in America, “even the peasants own trucks.”

Tocqueville further observed that in America, “the poor, instead of forming the immense majority of the nation, as is always the case in aristocratic communities, are comparatively few in number, and the laws do not bind them together by the ties of irremediable and hereditary penury.”

One thing I had found interesting is what de Tocqueville observed in America, as he wrote in the last paragraph, that the poor are “comparatively few in number, and the laws don’t bind them together by the ties of irremediable and hereditary penury.” Looking at America of the 21^st Century you would have considered de Tocqueville crazy for writing that, but if you look at some of the plantations in the South, as well as some of the homes in the North, during the times before the Civil War you would think different. Actually, it was AFTER the Civil War (or the War Between the States, the war of Southern Independence, whatever you want to call it) where you see the lack of the nouveau riche and the sophistication that was popular before 1861. Keep in mind the South was in a total state of disarray and their main lifestyle was almost obliterated. The South had to rebuild somehow during reconstruction, but the economy had undergone a change in the south, and as such the poor (not only in the south but in the north as well) began to form the immense majority of the nation.

And if you look around the world, this is what Socialism and socialistic policies bring about as well. I am thinking Podhoretz is warning against this in the article, and if we fail to heed his words, then we will wind up like what we had read and seen in Atlas Shrugged.

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Rundown for August 10, 2013

join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter ( Host of the Cotter Café on Own The Narrative) as they give you the news of the week. This week Reince Preibus, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, has lashed back against CNN and NBC for planning to air the Hillary Clinton film. What did he say? How did CNN and NBC react? Also, there are major changes at Fox News Channel and it has one host over at CNN up in arms. Who is this host and what did he say? All that and more including your phone calls, on the show today

Come join us today at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central, for another wonderful episode of Red, Right, and Blue. I will be in the chatroom (located at http://www.ownthenarrative.com/live) 30 minutes early for some last minute show prep and a meet and greet. If you want to engage the conversation during the show, there are three ways to do it:

• Call 832-699-0449
• Skype in to OTNNetwork
• If you are on Twitter but unable to access the chatroom, you can use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and #OTNN throughout the show.

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a Liberal. This is bound to be a wonderful show as always complete with an announcement by me as well. If you want to know what the announcement is, you are going to have to tune in to see what it is or wait until I announce it on my blogs.

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American Exceptionalism (Part 4)

 

So far as liberty is concerned, until recently no one but libertarians have been arguing that we were insufficiently free in the United States. If anything, some conservatives, dismayed by such phenomena as the spread of pornography and sexual license, thought that we had too much freedom for our own good. But thanks to modern liberalism’s barely concealed hostility to the free market, not to mention the threat posed by Obamacare to religious and economic freedom, many conservatives are now echoing these libertarian arguments, if in a milder form.

Judging by what they say and the policies they pursue, modern liberals are not all that concerned about liberty. What they really care about, and what they assign a higher value to, is economic equality (as reflected in the now famous phrase, “spread the wealth around”). Yet here is what the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote in 1976 about this very issue in connection with the redistributionist ideology then regnant at the United Nations:

And equality . . . what is the record? The record was stated most succinctly by an Israeli socialist who told William F. Buckley, Jr. that those nations which have put liberty ahead of equality have ended up doing better by equality than those with the reverse priority . . . . This is our case. We are of the liberty party, and it might surprise us what energies might be released were we to unfurl those banners.

Four years later, Ronald Reagan came along to unfurl those banners. And just as Moynihan predicted, the result was the release of new political and economic energies that reversed the political and economic decline of the Carter years and that led to our victory in the Cold War.

Of course, the party of liberty Moynihan was talking about was the United States of America and the party of economic equality was the socialist countries of what was then called the Third World. But within America today, an analogous split has opened up, with the Republicans constituting the party of liberty and the Democrats more and more becoming the party of redistribution. Hence the Democrats never stop claiming that the rich are failing to pay their fair share of taxes. Yet after surveying the numbers, the economist Walter Williams of George Mason University asks an excellent question: “What standard of fairness dictates that the top ten percent of income earners pay 71 percent of the federal income tax burden while 47 percent of Americans pay absolutely nothing?” To which an editorial in the Wall Street Journal replies: “There is nothing fair about confiscatory tax policy that reduces growth, denies opportunity, and keeps more people in poverty.”

Normally I would not agree or endorse anything a Democrat says, but I think Moynihan hits the proverbial nail on the head with this statement in regards to American Exceptionalism. Read that one part once more:

The record was stated most succinctly by an Israeli socialist who told William F. Buckley, Jr. that those nations which have put liberty ahead of equality have ended up doing better by equality than those with the reverse priority (emphasis mine)

Even Moynihan, who was a sociologist, recognized the need of putting liberty ahead of equality. In doing so, the nation had ended up doing better by equality than those who put equality ahead of liberty. Today under Obama, and I will go so far as to say under the other two Democrats (Carter and Clinton) as well, America is putting equality ahead of liberty, and as such we are failing. There had been a couple of times (from 1981 – 1989 under Ronald Reagan and also in George W. Bush's first term from 2001 – 2005)  in which America was successful because we put liberty ahead of equality, but that is only 12 years in the past 36 years. All the other times (and granted I did vote for George W. Bush for reelection in 2004) the presidents put equality ahead of liberty, and this is the mess we are in now.

This also leads to the Tytler Cycle that I had mentioned many times in the past.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.
"From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.  These nations have progressed through this sequence:
"From bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to apathy;
from apathy to dependence;
from dependency back again into bondage."

There had been a few times in which both Reagan and Bush 43 have kept or put us back into the courage to liberty stage, but more often than not the presidents had moved us into the selfishness to apathy or even apathy to dependency stage, with Obama doing his damnedest to put us in to the dependency to bondage stage. The reason he has not is because of we the people and how WE maintain those traits which make America great and exceptional.

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Rundown for August 3, 2012

Join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter (host of the Cotter Café every Sunday at 7 PM Eastern on Own The Narrative) as they bring you the week in news. An editor at a newspaper in Chattanooga was fired for putting out a rather unflattering editorial of Obama. What was the editorial and why was the editor fired? Also, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (Moonbat Democrat from the Texas’ 18th District) is in the running for Secretary of Homeland Security. Is she a better choice or a worse choice than Janet Neapolitano? And New York City is having their welfare food not going toward Welfare. Where is it going and how much? All those questions and more will be answered today.

Join us today for Red, Right, and Blue at it’s original time of 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central. I will be in the chatroom, which can be accessed at http://www.ownthenarrative.com/live, 30 minutes early for a little last minute show prep and also for a lil meet and greet. If you want to engage the conversation during the show, there are three ways you can do it:

• Call 832-699-0449
• Skype in to OTNNetwork
• If you are unable to access the chatroom but are on Twitter, use the hashtag #RedRightBlue and #OTNN

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a liberal. The show is bound to be a real blastyhoot, and you never know what will be said next.

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American Exceptionalism (Part 3)

Last week we had explored what Alexis de Tocqueville and Henry Adams had said about American Exceptionalism. This week I will just ask a simple question: Compared to what is America so bad?

On the other hand, there have always been defenders of American exceptionalism as a vital force for good. Thus, several decades before switching sides, Henry Adams charged America’s foreign critics with blindness to the country’s amazing virtues. Whereas, Adams wrote, European philosophers and poets could see only rapacity and vulgarity here, the poorest European peasants could discern that “the hard, practical money-getting American democrat was in truth living in a world of dream” and was “already guiding Nature with a kinder and wiser hand than had ever yet been felt in human history.” It was this dream, Adams went on to say, that beckoned to the poor of the old world, calling upon them to come and share in the limitless opportunities it offered—opportunities unimaginable anywhere else.

For a long time now, to speak personally, I have taken my stand with the young Adams, to whom America was exceptionally good, against his embittered older self, to whom it had become exceptionally bad. In my own younger days, I was on the Left, and from the utopian vantage point to which leftism invariably transports its adherents, it was the flaws in American society—the radical 1960s trinity of war, racism, and poverty—that stood out most vividly. It rarely occurred to me or my fellow leftists to ask a simple question: Compared to what is America so bad?

From our modern perspective, much more was wrong with Periclean Athens, or the Italy of the Medicis, or England under the first Queen Elizabeth, or 19th-century Russia under the Romanovs. But this has not disqualified them from being universally ranked among the highest points of human civilization and achievement. After more than 40 years of pondering the question “Compared to what?” I have come to believe with all my heart that the United States belongs on that exalted list. It is true that we have not earned a place on it, as the others mainly did, by our contribution to the arts. Yet it is worth pointing out that even in the sphere of the arts, we have not done too badly. To speak only of literature, names like Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Robert Frost, and many others attest that we have, in fact, done far better than might generally have been expected of a nation conceived primarily to achieve other ends. These ends were social, political, and economic, and it is in them that we have indeed excelled the most.

We have excelled by following our Founding Fathers in directing our energies, as our Constitution exhorts us to do, to the preservation of the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, as well as to the pursuit of happiness tacitly understood by the Declaration of Independence to require prosperity as a precondition. (In his original draft of the Declaration, of course, Jefferson used the word “property” instead of “pursuit of happiness.”) By remaining faithful in principle—and to a considerable extent in practice—to the ideas by which the Founders hoped to accomplish these ends, we and our forebears have fashioned a country in which more liberty and more prosperity are more widely shared than among any other people in human history. Yes, even today that holds true, despite policies unfaithful both to the letter and to the spirit of the traditional American system that have resulted in a series of political and economic setbacks.

The question Podhoretz asked (Compared to what is America so bad?) is one we should be asking all of our liberal friends. See if this will get them to think and find out just WHY they think America is so bad. This will force them to do what Andrew Breitbart had said in Righteous Indignation when he brought up his Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries. If you remember, Rule 9 of the Primer dealt with not letting them pretend to know more than they do. In fact, let me read just a small excerpt from it when I did my editorial on that particular rule.

“Your opponents will pretend to be experts if you don't, but that's okay, because you can always puncture their balloon with one word: why. Asking them to provide evidence for their assertions is always fun, and it's even more fun asking them to provide the sources for that evidence. Attacking the fundamental basis of their arguments if fun, too - if they tell you health care is a right, ask why. Liberals don't have a why, other than their own utopianism and their dyspeptic view of the status quo and America. Reason is not their strong suit - emotion is. Force them to play on the football field of reason.”

As Andrew said, there is one word which we can use to puncture the false narrative propagated by the left, and even a few kooks on our own side. That word is why, a simple three-letter word with a lot of power and oomph behind it. If we ask why they think that, then they will have to come up with a reason. As we all know, reason is not their strong suit because they always rely on emotion.

As I had said at the end of that particular editorial, “We have the tools to force our opponents to play on the football field of reason. The thing of it is do we have the WILLPOWER to confront them and force them to play on that football field of reason, or are we afraid to do it?”

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Rundown for July 27, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter as they give the week in news. Today is mostly going to be Open Phones due to the fact that Rick has his High School Reunion today. However, here ARE a couple of topics up on the plate for today as well. Governor Chris Christie (Republican from New Jersey) calls Senator Rand Paul (Republican from Kentucky)dangerous. Why did he do that? And the HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebellius is recruiting Bloggers to help sell ObamaCare. Why did she do that? What will come out of it? Those questions and more including YOUR CALLS will be coming up on Red, Right, and Blue today

Come join us today for Red, Right, and Blue now at a SPECIAL TIME of 12 noon or 12:30 PM Eastern (11 or 11:30 AM Central) today. The chatroom (which is located at http://www.ownthenarrative.com/live) will be open no earlier than 11:30 AM Eastern (10:30 AM Central) for me to do a little last minute show prep and do a meet and greet with those who show up early. If you want to engage the conversation during the show, there are three ways to do so:

• Call 832-699-0449
• Skype into OTNNetwork
• If you are on Twitter, use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and #OTNN. Also, feel free to join the Red, Right, and Blue Twub at http://twubs.com/RedRightBlue

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a liberal. The show might be early today, due to me attending my 20 year high school reunion, but it is always bound to be a blastyhoot (h/t to Bailey Connell [“Bail of Rights”] for that word) so come join us!

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American Exceptionalism (Part 2)

Barack Obama says that there is no such thing as American Exceptionalism as much as there is British Exceptionalism or Greek Exceptionalism. Well there are many reasons to make America MORE exceptional, and I brought it out in last week’s editorial. Now we will discuss just how people had lost sight of American Exceptionalism.

At first, anti-American passions were understandably fuelled by the dangerous political challenge posed to the monarchies of Europe by the republican ideas of the American Revolution. But the political side of anti-Americanism was soon joined to a cultural indictment that proved to have more staying power. Here is how the brilliant but volatile historian Henry Adams—the descendent of two American presidents—described the cultural indictment as it was framed in the earliest days of the Republic:

In the foreigner’s range of observation, love of money was the most conspicuous and most common trait of the American character . . . . No foreigner of that day—neither poet, painter, or philosopher—could detect in American life anything higher than vulgarity . . . . Englishmen especially indulged in unbounded invective against the sordid character of American society . . . . Contemporary critics could see neither generosity, economy, honor, nor ideas of any kind in the American breast.

In his younger days, Adams defended America against these foreign critics; but in later life, snobbishly recoiling from the changes wrought by rapid industrialization following the Civil War, he would hurl the same charge at the America of the so-called Gilded Age.

We see a similar conflict in Tocqueville. Democracy in America was mainly a defense of the country’s political system and many of its egalitarian habits and mores. But where its cultural and spiritual life was concerned, Tocqueville expressed much the same contempt as the critics cited by Henry Adams. The Americans, he wrote, with “their exclusively commercial habits,” were so fixated “upon purely practical objects” that they neglected “the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts,” and it was only their proximity to Europe that allowed them “to neglect these pursuits without lapsing into barbarism.” Many years later, another Frenchman, Georges Clemenceau, went Tocqueville one better: “America,” he quipped, “is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone from barbarism to decadence without the usual interval of civilization.”

The main reason for the enduring power of the cultural critique was its fervent embrace, beginning in the late 19th century, by the vast majority of the writers, artists, and intellectuals who followed Tocqueville. And so it still goes in 2012, when the putative materialism and crassness of American life are harped upon in movies, television shows, novels, volumes of social criticism, and op-ed pieces too numerous to count.

Like Tocqueville and the foreigners cited by Henry Adams, moreover, these more recent works attribute this crassly philistine attitude to the love of money and “the exclusively commercial habits” that went with it—in other words, to the species of freedom that has done more than anything else ever invented to lift masses of people out of poverty and that would later be known as capitalism. America, these critics were declaring, was exceptional all right—exceptionally bad, or even downright evil.

We had seen the decline of American Exceptionalism in the late 19th century with the advent of the Gilded Era. This was also about the time that the government decided that they are best suited to teach out students and also when many had thought America was a democracy and not a Republic, but I will get to them in a later editorial. Today we see many not interested in politics (when it is all around us) or even sat that greed is bad and we need to share the wealth. That is NOT what American Exceptionalism is supposed to be about, and the more we fall down that path the worse off America will be.

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Rundown for July 20, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter as they bring the week in news. George Zimmerman was found not guilty of killing Trayvon Martin. What does the Justice Department say about that? Also, what had Obama and the celebrities said in regards to it? Also, Detroit had filed for bankruptcy yesterday; however, a Michigan judge declared it unconstitutional. What was the reason he gave? And the Nobel Peace Prize Committee just got back at Obama. What did they do? Those topics and more including your calls and Schmuck of the Week will be highlighted on today’s show.

Come join the fun and frivolity that is Red, Right, and Blue today at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central. I will be in the chatroom (which is accessed at http://www.ownthenarrative.com/live) 30 minutes early for some last minute show prep and also a meet and greet. There are three ways to engage the conversation during the show:

• Call 832-699-0449
• Skype in to OTNNetwork
• If you are on Twitter, use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and #OTNN

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a Liberal. Today’s show is going to be wonderful, and I will be announcing something hugely interesting, so you almost have to stay tuned to hear the big announcement.

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American Exceptionalism

A couple of weeks ago I had said that someone had said that a friend and I just destroyed 60 years of “American Exceptionalism” for him. That got me to thinking, and in the Hillsdale College publication called Imprimis, there was an interesting article by Norman Podhoretz, former Editor-in-Chief of Commentary Magazine, entitled “Is America Exceptional?” Over the next few weeks I will be reading from it during this editorial. Here is the first part:

ONCE UPON A TIME, hardly anyone dissented from the idea that, for better or worse, the United States of America was different from all other nations. This is not surprising, since the attributes that made it different were vividly evident from the day of its birth. Let me say a few words about three of them in particular.

First of all, unlike all other nations past or present, this one accepted as a self-evident truth that all men are created equal. What this meant was that its Founders aimed to create a society in which, for the first time in the history of the world, the individual’s fate would be determined not by who his father was, but by his own freely chosen pursuit of his own ambitions. In other words, America was to be something new under the sun: a society in which hereditary status and class distinctions would be erased, leaving individuals free to act and to be judged on their merits alone. There remained, of course, the two atavistic contradictions of slavery and the position of women; but so intolerable did these contradictions ultimately prove that they had to be resolved—even if, as in the case of the former, it took the bloodiest war the nation has ever fought.

Secondly, in all other countries membership or citizenship was a matter of birth, of blood, of lineage, of rootedness in the soil. Thus, foreigners who were admitted for one reason or another could never become full-fledged members of the society. But America was the incarnation of an idea, and therefore no such factors came into play. To become a full-fledged American, it was only necessary to pledge allegiance to the new Republic and to the principles for which it stood.

Thirdly, in all other nations, the rights, if any, enjoyed by their citizens were conferred by human agencies: kings and princes and occasionally parliaments. As such, these rights amounted to privileges that could be revoked at will by the same human agencies. In America, by contrast, the citizen’s rights were declared from the beginning to have come from God and to be “inalienable”—that is, immune to legitimate revocation.

As time went on, other characteristics that were unique to America gradually manifested themselves. For instance, in the 20th century, social scientists began speculating as to why America was the only country in the developed world where socialism had failed to take root. As it happens, I myself first came upon the term “American exceptionalism” not in Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, where it has mistakenly been thought to have originated, but in a book by the sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, who used it in connection with the absence in America of a strong socialist party. More recently I have discovered that the term may actually have originated with Joseph Stalin, of all people, who coined the term in the same connection but only in order to dismiss it. Thus, when an American Communist leader informed him that American workers had no intention of playing the role Marx had assigned to the worldwide proletariat as the vanguard of the coming socialist revolution, Stalin reputedly shouted something like, “Away with this heresy of American exceptionalism!” And yet Stalin and his followers were themselves exceptional in denying that America was exceptional in the plainly observable ways I have mentioned. If, however, almost everyone agreed that America was different, there was a great deal of disagreement over whether its exceptionalism made it into a force for good or a force for evil. This too went back to the beginning, when the denigrators outnumbered the enthusiasts.

Notice the three things that Podhoretz said which made America exceptional:

1. A self-evident truth that all men are created equal.
2. To become a full-fledged American, it was only necessary to pledge allegiance to the new Republic and to the principles for which it stood.
3. In America, the citizen’s rights were declared from the beginning to have come from God and to be “inalienable”—that is, immune to legitimate revocation.

Other characteristics had come about in the 20th century that also made America exceptional, but for the purposes of today’s editorial I will focus on these three just briefly because these three have caused a lot of controversy today. Numbers 1 and 3 go together because we see them in the Declaration of Independence with the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that ALL MEN  (i.e. humankind) are created equal, that they are endowed BY THEIR CREATOR WITH CERTAIN INALIENABLE RIGHTS, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” This proves that America was founded on a JUDEO-CHRISTIAN heritage. However, not many believe we were founded on a Judeo-Christian heritage, and I will be devoting an entire show to it. I will say to start of with that if Jefferson were to see what people had done to the phrase “Separation of Church and State” today as opposed to when he wrote it in 1802, he would be livid.

The second cause of what made America exceptional deals with citizenship. Not only were we the first nation to say that if you pledge allegiance to the Republic and the principles for which it stood, then you are a citizen but I will go ONE STEP FURTHER and say that if you recite this when you are a child AND you are born here, irregardless of your parents’ citizenship status, then you ARE A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN. Many people say that the ONLY time children are national born is if their citizens are parents, and that is so far from the truth it is unreal. I can spend an entire show on this in the future, and I will, but today is not the day to do it.

Look for me to bring these three issues out in a later editorial and possibly show. America IS and ALWAYS HAS BEEN exceptional, and I aim to bring that out more on this show.

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Rundown for July 13, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter as they bring you the week in news. The show is in Verdict Watch because the jury had received their instructions in the George Zimmerman trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin. What happened the last few days? Also, why was the judge so hard on the Defense team? The White House is now distancing itself from the Trayvon Martin case and also from Barack Obama’s previous comments. In other news outside of the George Zimmerman murder, Elisabeth Hasselbeck is making the move from ABC’s “The View” to Fox News Channel, where she will take over for Gretchen Carlson (who will be moving to a show in the afternoon) on the “Fox & Friends” Curvy Couch in between Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade. What did Elisabeth say on her last day? What did Kilmeade say about The View? All that and more including your calls and the ever popular Schmuck of the Week coming up.

Join us today at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central for Red, Right, and Blue. I will be in the chatroom, which can be accessed at http://www.ownthenarrative.com/live, 30 minutes early for some last minute show prep and also a meet and greet. If you want to engage the conversation during the show, there are three ways to do so

• Call 832-699-0449
• Skype in to OTNNetwork
• If you are unable to be in the chatroom, then use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and #OTNN

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a liberal. While we are on verdict watch here on Red, Right, and Blue, we still manage to condense 168 hours of news into 2 hours and have fun doing it too!

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Jimi Hendrix: A Great American and Patriot

I had played this video for the 4th of July last year, and it is just as relevant today as it was then

For today’s editorial, I will introduce you to a great American Patriot. Listen to this clip by Alfonzo “Zo” Rachel of “ZoNation” as he speaks on the Great American Individual and Patriot

And for those of you who had not heard the entire version, you can catch the entire clip here.

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Rundown for July 6, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter as they deliver the week in news. This week America celebrated it’s 237th birthdate. However, many people do not know why they celebrate or even who we declared independence from.We will get into that. Also, many people do not even know that the actual birthdate of America is NOT July 4 as people think but rather July 2. Why is that? What is the history behind such? Also, there were a couple of brow raising things said from a couple of celebrities (I know. Surprise, surprise, surprise) this week. What was said and who said it? All that and more including your phone calls and the ever popular Schmuck of the Week.

All that and more on Red, Right, and Blue today at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central. I will enter the chatroom (which is located at http://www.ownthenarrative.com/live) 30 minutes early for a little last-minute show prep and also a meet and greet. If you want to engage the conversation during the show, there are three ways to do so:

• Call 832-699-0449
• Skype in to OTNNetwork
• If you are on Twitter, use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and #OTNN

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a Liberal. With everything that has happened during the week, things are bound to be huge and you do not want to miss a single second of the show to find out how I react to certain things that had happened.

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Time to give up or time to fight on? (Part 2)

In my editorial on January 5, I read from the December 2012 issue of Imprimis where Hugh Hewitt had an interview with the president of Hillsdale College Larry P. Arnn. Here is just a short sampling of that editorial:

. There was a very interesting dialogue at the beginning of the newsletter in which Hewitt had mentioned that “there are a lot of people who are close to saying “game over,” who are tempted now to retreat from politics—to go do missionary
work, for instance—and give up on the republic. But you have made your life’s work the studying of leaders who have refused to do that.” Dr. Arnn’s answer is one in which many people should read many times and commit it to memory.

That’s right. And the reason you can’t do that, by the way—the reason you can’t retreat into private life and give up on politics—is that the cost of doing it is overwhelming. If you don’t live under good laws, life becomes truncated and less happy, injustice becomes customary, civilization is compromised. And one
cannot acquiesce in that. One has to be involved. And since politics is natural to us—man is essentially political, as Aristotle says—and since we do live in the greatest modern country—founded that way at least—we owe it a lot. And many of the people who have seen the republic
through to where we are today have gone through things that are worse than this. So first of all, it’s a duty not to give up. But second, there are good reasons to
know that the game isn’t over.

When pressed by Hugh what he meant, Dr. Arnn went on to say,

One of them is that the election is shot through with contradictions. The obvious contradiction is that we have a divided government. The presidency and the Senate are in the hands of one party, and the House of Representatives and most governorships are in the hands of the other. A second contradiction is that a large majority of people continued to say in the exit polls that they were against raising taxes in order to cut the deficit.
One might be cynical and put that down to an irresponsible refusal to pay for existing benefits—to get more and more “free stuff.” But for a long time now, opinion polls have pointed towards the existence of a broad majority of Americans who favor smaller government. This obviously contradicts the re-election of the president and the Democratic gains in the Senate. The
country is still a house divided against itself, and that’s dangerous. But it doesn’t mean that there’s been a resolution. It means in fact the opposite: there is not a
resolution. That resolution still has to be made, and the making of it lies ahead of us, and not behind us.

Later on in the same interview, Hewitt said someone will go and the transcription and say that Arnn is comparing Obama and our government now to Hitler and the Third Reich. Arnn then replied by saying that the principles of Progressivism that animate our government today, which are antithetical to the principles of the American Founding, lead to policies that cannot work, will not work, and result into obvious injustices. you can read the entire issue here and also subscribe to Imprimis for free here.

We definitely see that with Facebook and how it bans conservatives for speaking out against Obama but allow sites such as “It sickens me to wake up and see Sarah Palin is still alive” to remain. In fact, that is what this show today is about. Many conservatives have been banned from Facebook for certain things, whether it is sending too many friend requests or posting things that they knew FOR SURE they did not post or even speaking out in many ways against the Obama regime. That is why this Thursday there is an event put on by my guests Diane Sori of The Patriot Factor and Joe Newby of The Examiner called Freedom from Facebook Day. Diane and Joe are two people who had not given up the fight against Obama and are continuing to fight on even when Facebook shows its liberal bias. They are TRUE PATRIOTS and two people I am glad are on our side. I asked the question at the end of the editorial on January 5, and I will ask it again.  “Will you give up, or will you fight on?”

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Rundown for June 29, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter as they bring you the week in news. Today they will be speaking with Diane Sori of The Patriot Factor and Joe Newby of The Examiner on the problems Conservatives have been having with Facebook. Many had been blocked from using Facebook in one form or another for various reasons. Some had been blocked from sending out friend requests (which had happened to me a couple of times) for a week or two. Others (like Diane) had been blocked from posting to Facebook due to posting the same thing incessantly. And even others had ben blocked from posting for things which they had not posted. This had gotten to the point of frustration for Diane and Joe that they are forming a Facebook event on July 4 urging all to boycott Facebook for a day, and that will also be discussed on the show. Your calls and stories about Facebook are welcome as well.

Come join me for the fun and frivolity that is Red, Right, and Blue at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central. I will be in the chatroom (which is accessed at http://www.ownthenarrative.com/live) 30 minutes early for some last minute show prep and also a meet and greet with those who show up early. If you want to engage the conversation during the show, there are three ways to do it.

• Call 832-699-0449
• Skype in to OTNNetwork
• If you are on Twitter, use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and #OTNN

Tell your friends. Tell your neighbors. Hell, tell a liberal. The shit just got real with Facebook banning conservatives, and this is one show you do NOT want to miss, especially with more information for the Facebook event on July 4 if interested in attending

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The IRS

Over the past few weeks we had been hearing of the IRS denying certain statuses to organizations that have the words “Tea Party", “Patriot”, or “Constitution” in it’s name. That is in and of itself profiling, and one of the things that the IRS should NOT be a part of. In fact, the IRS should be defunded and/or abolished because they are rewarding bad behavior and punishing good behavior.

I know most of you are asking what to replace the IRS with if it is abolished. The answer in my mind is simple. I had devoted earlier rants on this blog (see my Second Rant and my 13th Rant back in 2005 as well as my 19th rant in 2010) to the messed up Federal Tax System and said that we should go to the Fair Tax. In later editorials I will go into why I think the Fair Tax is the way to go, but will ask you this. Take a look at the following picture and tell me just which one you prefer.

The two paychecks look similar, don’t they? Well take a closer look. The current paycheck has you losing all your hard earned money before it even reaches your hand due to all of the taxes that Uncle Sam inflicts. This is called taxing PRODUCTIVITY. Normally people who make $5 an hour (for instance) should expect to take home $400 every 2 weeks (not counting taxes) but instead they are taking home $275 – $300 (I know it might not be just like that, but am trying to give an example) every 2 weeks due to Uncle Sam taking that hard earned money out of your pocket.

Now with the FairTax, when you make $5 an hour which leads to $400 every two weeks you TAKE HOME $400 every two weeks. “Well now what about all of the taxes? How does the government get it’s share?” you ask. Well the answer is simple. Let’s say you go to the hardware store and buy a $10 hammer. The hardware store get $7.70 of the money and the remain $2.30 goes to the government. That is called taxing CONSUMPTION or WHAT YOU BUY.

If you want to know more about the FairTax, I will go into the truth of it in later editorials, but one thing I recommend is to go to the Fair Tax website at http://www.fairtax.org and check it out. There are also some videos as well on YouTube which I will be playing and discussing in future rants. However, I will say that the FairTax will bring money, jobs, and growth back to the United States of America.

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Rundown for June 22, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter as they give the week in news. Barack Obama had gone to Germany prior to the G8 Summit and gave a speech, and the crowd was very sparse. Has Obama worn out his welcome? Also, the Federal government has decided to charge Edward Snowden with espionage after he blew the whistle on the NSA. Why did they do that? Who is really behind the charge? All that and more including the ever popular Schmuck of the Week.

Join us for the fun and frivolity that is Red, Right, and Blue today at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central. I will be in the chatroom, which can be accessed at http://www.ownthenarrative.com/live, 30 minutes early for some last minute show prep and also a meet and greet with those who decide to enter early. If you want to engage the conversation during the show, there are three ways to do it:

• call 832-699-0449
• Skype in to OTNNetwork
• If you are on Twitter, use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and #OTNN

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a Liberal. Today’s show is expected to light off a few fireworks, and you do not want to miss a single second of it.

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Impeaching Obama? Not a wise idea

It really frosts me when I hear people say how we should impeach Barack Obama because of Benghazi and Fast and Furious. While I do feel that Obama should be held culpable for Benghazi and Fast and Furious, impeachment is not the way to go, and here is why. There have only been two sitting Presidents who have been impeached in the history of the United States. The first one was Andrew Johnson in 1868 and the second one was Bill Clinton in 1999. Both Johnson and Clinton were acquitted, as the votes in the Senate to impeach failed with 2/3 of the Senate not voting guilty, as seen below:

Year	President	House charge (vote to impeach)	Senate vote to impeach (number required to impeach)
1868	Andrew Johnson	Vote to impeach the president of high crimes and misdemeanors (126 yea, 47 nay)	Vote to impeach the president of high crimes and misdemeanors - 35 guilty, 19 not guilty (36 required out of 54)
1999	Bill Clinton	2 charges that stuck 1.) Perjury to a grand jury (228 yea, 206 nay) 2.) Obstruction of Justice (221 yea, 212 nay) 2 charges that failed 1.) Second count of perjury (205 yea, 229 nay) 2.) accusing Clinton of abuse of power (148 yea, 285 nay)	1.) Perjury to a Grand Jury – 45 guilty, 55 not guilty 2.) Obstruction of Justice – 50 guilty, 50 not guilty (67 required out of 100)

Diane Sori of The Patriot Factor had written a very interesting Op-ed on this very subject.

In order to impeach a sitting president the House of Representatives needs a simple majority vote, but to obtain a conviction in the Senate a two-thirds majority (67 votes) is needed. Unfortunately, with the current Democratic controlled Senate this is NOT likely to happen, so the Republicans are looking forward to the 2014 elections to try to take back the Senate.
But another year is too long to wait to avenge the MURDERS of Ambassador Stevens, Information Officer Sean Smith, and ex-Navy SEALS Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. Too long and with NO guarantee that the Republicans will even take back control of the Senate for we all know that Obama will ‘fix’ the mid-terms with voter fraud and machine ‘irregularities’ just like he did in November.

After all, this time his neck is on the line…literally.         
And even if he was by an outside chance impeached, impeachment gives credibility to his presidency and all his misguided policies and laws would still stay in place…something we surely do NOT want. Also, remember that once charges are brought for impeachment and they fail in the Senate, it’s over and cannot be brought back again.

“If we cannot impeach Obama, then what CAN we do?” Well, Diane gives us the answer later on in her blog entry:

The simple fact is that Barack HUSSEIN Obama can and should be arrested for treason under Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution which states, “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort…”
Meaning in NO uncertain terms that the betrayal of the United States of America by consciously and purposely acting to aid her enemies is indeed grounds for treason.
And treason fits Obama to a tee for this man NOT only sends monies to our enemies (like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas), but I believe that Barack HUSSEIN Obama was sending, without Congressional approval, guns and weapons to Syrian rebels, rebels with direct ties to al-Qaeda, got caught by Ambassador Stevens, who then had to be silenced at all costs.

She then finishes it up by saying:

So my friends, impeachment is but a slap on the wrist and won’t do for Barack HUSSEIN Obama or for Hillary Clinton for that matter. Arrest, try, convict, and sentence carried out for treason, aiding and abetting the enemy, murder, and crimes against America is the way to go.
And along with Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution there is a possibly that the military could arrest Obama and bring him before a military tribunal. A military tribunal is a military court designed to try members of enemy forces during times of war. A definitive case can be made that Barack HUSSEIN Obama, by his actions or should I say deliberate lack of actions in regards to Benghazi, is a member of our enemy’s forces.
And it’s also appropriate to subject a private citizen to a military tribunal if that person is being tried for treason, which would be the case with Hillary Clinton…a now private citizen who knew of the gun-running…who covered it up…and who lied about it all thus aiding and abetting the enemy.

Read the whole thing on The Patriot Factor, and support a TRUE PATRIOT, a REAL AMERICAN in Diane Sori!

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Rundown for June 15, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter as they bring you the week in news. Someone is giving a lesson in how NOT to operate a social media site. How is the lesson given? Also, Congressman Louie Gohmert (Republican from Texas District 1) is hot on Attorney General Eric Holder ignoring subpoenas. What is Gohmert recommending? And a Democrat Congressman is saying something stupid. Who is it and what did it say? All that and more including the ever popular Schmuck of the Week coming up on today’s show.

Come join in the fun and frivolity that is Red, Right, and Blue today at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central. I will be in the chatroom, which can be accessed at http://www.ownthenarrative.com/live, 30 minutes early for a little last minute show prep as well as to meet those who entered the chatroom for the show. If you want to engage the conversation during the show, there are three ways you can do it.

• Call 832-699-0449
• Skype in to OTN Network
• If you are on Twitter you can use #RedRightBlue and hashtag #OTNN

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a liberal. As always, there is a lot happening in the Unites States and in the world, and we try to give you the TRUTH of what is happening.

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I am an Andrew Breitbart Conservative!

A while back on Facebook I had read somewhere that a couple of people call themselves Frederick Douglass Republicans. Well I would like to toss another term into the mix: Andrew Breitbart Conservative.

Over the past 13 weeks I had been going through the Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries during these editorials, and in my research on the topics, I realize that I am an Andrew Breitbart Conservative. When I began introducing the Pragmatic Primer, I mentioned that this battle is not Left v. Right, Liberal v. Conservative, or even Democrat v. Republican. This battle is one step DEEPER than that: Alinsky v. Breitbart. The seeds for the major part of this battle were laid when Andrew gave his wonderful speech at the 2012 CPAC just a few weeks before his death.

During that speech he said that many are on to the “Saul Alinsky Bullshit ways” of the Progressive Left and that the 2012 election would be forever known as the “dogwhistle” election. We were right on the cusp of victory with Mitt Romney only to have it grabbed away from us at the last minute. It also showed down the ticket as we barely kept the House and failed to grab the Senate.

In order for us to win the Senate and increase our lead in the House in the 2014 midterms, we have to learn where we went wrong in the 2012 House and Senate elections. Then when we find out where we went wrong we have to learn to not repeat the same things if AND ONLY IF we are serious about winning in 2014 and carry that momentum into 2016. One of the main things that Andrew said, and I use it as my own motto ever since, is “Anyone that’s willing to stand next to me and fight the progressive left, I will be in that bunker, and if you’re not in that bunker, more than shame on you. You’re on the other side!” In fact, let me just play that entire clip for you right now:

 

After hearing that speech, I knew I was an Andrew Breitbart Conservative, but did not fully embrace it until after I got his book Righteous Indignation for Christmas and then went through the Pragmatic Primer. Now, after reading it many times and going over the Pragmatic Primer on my radio show, I fully embrace it because just like Andrew said at the end of the book on page 232 in the hardback edition:

“These are the years that we will look back on and question whether we did enough for our country and for out children. That’s why I’m so determined, so pissed, so righteously indignant. Excuse me while I save the world.”

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Rundown for June 8, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter as they review the week in news. With school out for the summer, there had been a few incidents where so-called “zero tolerance” in schools has gone over the edge. What had happened to put it over the edge? Also, the big story this week is the Tea Party coming before the House Committees and speaking on the harsh treatment to them by the IRS. What was said during the hearings? The hearing also included a classic meltdown by a Democrat and a royal beatdown on the Democrat by a Republican. What happened? Those questions and more, including the ever popular Schmuck of the Week, on today’s show.

Come join us for the fun and frivolity that is Red, Right, and Blue today at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 Central. I will be in the chatroom, which is at http://www.ownthenarrative.com/live, 30 minutes early for a little last-minute show prep and also to meet the audience. If you want to engage the conversation during the show there are three ways you can do it:

• Call 832-699-0449
• Skype in to OTNNetwork
• If you are on Twitter, use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and #OTNN

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a Liberal. Every week we try to condense 7 days worth of news into 2 hours, and have a good time doing it.

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