Resist and Question Boldly

"Rifles are inanimate objects that have no will of their own. As such, they may be used by evil men for evil purposes. While an evil man may not be persuaded by propaganda, he may certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."
-- Col. Jeff Cooper
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View From Bippus

VERBATIM POST

Greetings, dear Reader,

Got myself into an interesting conversation in a restaurant at breakfast this morning. This fellow was telling me all about the additives in unleaded gasoline, the substitutes for lead, that boost the octane level, that after being burned are emitted as benzene and are destroying the environment. And (somehow) the conversation came around to the subject of eminent domain, where he *suggested* that Abraham Lincoln used the power of the presidency to prevent the cutting of redwood trees and *saved* the redwoods, and created the National Park System in the process.

Now this statement bothered me on several levels. But I asked- – - “where did the president get the authority to prevent the cutting of trees on private property”? to which he replied that *they* have the power; yeah, *they* have the power to blah, blah, blah and so on. And he proceeded to tell me about how the local grub’mint used the power of eminent domain to *take* land away from people to build a hotel. So, because this *taking* had occurred, in his mind the grub’mint (local and state and federal) has the authority to steal land.

So I say that you have described an example of an eminent domain taking, but WHERE did Lincoln (if it WAS Lincoln) get the authority to use eminent domain and he says I will show you and he pulls out a well worn copy of the United States Constitution and starts thumbing through it. All red lined and highlighted and I suggest that he ain’t a going to find it in there, and I am late getting to work but I will look in my well worn copy of the constitution and look once more, and will see him tomorrow at breakfast and continue our conversation.

So all this conversation got me to thinking that the *Ruling Class* does not have this authority, but they exert it anyway, all the time, and the reason is that people like my buddy here just accept that since *they* did it once, that it must be right.

I call BULLSHIT! Resist. Question boldly. Article I Section 8 describes ALL the authority congress has to maneuver with. Article II describes what authority the president has. I have yet to re-read it again, but (check this out yourself) I will bet you right now that there is no authority granted for the president to *protect* redwood trees, or spotted owls or billions of other things that presidents have done since the time of Lincoln. So, tomorrow we will revisit this non-authority, and grow awareness that the Ruling Class has been, and IS ripping us off.

We must grow the resistance. At every opportunity, we must learn what is allowed, and question what is being done. And raise public awareness so that the line of acceptability gets redrawn. Resist, at every opportunity. Resist, and question boldly. Resist.