A WARNING FROM HISTORY – AT 6:44 A.M. ET:  Thomas Sowell, one of the best minds writing today, and an African-American who won't go along with what is "expected" of him, warns that what is happening in Washington can lead to an increasing tyranny in America.  From Investor's Business Daily:

When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics.

Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler's rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions.

"Useful idiots" was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.

Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive.

In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.

Most of the people who are concerned are on the internet, not in the mainstream media.  The very press we used to depend on to safeguard our freedoms has become largely indifferent to them.

Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation?  Nowhere.

And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

And...

If our laws and our institutions determine that BP ought to pay $20 billion — or $50 billion or $100 billion — then so be it.

But the Constitution says that private property is not to be confiscated by the government without "due process of law."

Sowell's logic should make us fear President Obama's choices for court appointments, for the federal courts determine the shape of the Constitution, as it is actually applied.

With vastly expanded powers of government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution.

If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don't believe in constitutional government.

CONSIDER:  Two years ago, did you think that General Motors would be run by Washington? 

And yet, a clear-cut legal case for voter intimidation by the Black Panthers was shelved by the Justice Department, despite overwhelming evidence that it could easily be won, and voters protected.

A great fear being expressed by a number of writers on the right is that, after the Democrats are crushed in November, a lame duck session of Congress, heavily populated by defeated congressmen and senators, will pass sweeping legislation granting more power to the Obama White House.  Even a Republican majority would be incapable of reversing that legislation since Obama could veto anything the GOP could pass.

We're in danger, at home and abroad.  We've got to wake up.

June 22, 2010