The New American

Constitution Party Chooses Baldwin

John F. McManus — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

At its April 24-27 national convention in Kansas City, the Constitution Party nominated Florida pastor/political activist Charles O. “Chuck” Baldwin as its candidate for president of the United States. Baldwin received 383.8 votes to 125.7 garnered by Maryland’s Alan Keyes and a few given to minor candidates. During the proceedings, hundreds of delegates from across the nation heard speeches from a slate of seven candidates and also from party founder Howard Phillips, conservative activist Richard Viguerie, Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt, popular author Jerome Corsi, and myself.

Younger looking than his 56 years, Chuck Baldwin was born in northwest Indiana and received his education at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan; Liberty University of Lynchburg, Virginia; and the Christian Bible College of Rocky Mount, North Carolina. In 1973, he married the former Connie Kay Cole, and they are proud parents of three children and now enjoy six grandchildren.

As pastor of the Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida, Baldwin once served in the 1980s as Florida chairman of the Moral Majority founded by the late Jerry Falwell. Before Falwell passed away in 2007, Baldwin distanced himself from his former mentor because of Falwell’s continuing support for President George W. Bush and other GOP headliners who had “strayed from positions vitally important to conservatives.” In the widely read Internet news column he has authored for many years, Baldwin endorsed the 2008 candidacy of Texas Congressman Ron Paul for the Republican nomination, and he specifically spoke out against the candidacies of Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and John McCain.

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A consistent critic of the current occupant of the White House, Baldwin has regularly chided fellow Christian Right pastors and their flocks for “blind support for President Bush in particular and the Republican Party in general.” He has faulted them for refusing to “honestly face the real danger confronting these United States,” the loss of sovereignty.

Among the many stands appearing in the party’s 39-page platform and totally supported by the candidate, one can find unequivocal support for both the right to life and the right to keep and bear arms. The party opposes conscription and any type of constitutional convention. It calls for repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and the “anchor baby” loophole used to provide legal status within our nation for border crossers. It seeks abolition of the Departments of Education and Energy; withdrawal from the United Nations, NATO, NAFTA, and the WTO; termination of all foreign aid and all tax-supported benefits for illegal immigrants; phasing out of the Social Security system; and ending the practice of sending military forces into battle without a congressional declaration of war. Believing that reducing the size of government to constitutional limits would enormously cut government’s monetary needs, the platform calls for the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service and the repeal of the income-tax amendment.

A strongly religious man, Baldwin emphasized his belief in the right of all to choose the religion of their choice. He made note of his friendship and admiration for Roman Catholic Alan Keyes during his acceptance speech, mentioning that he had welcomed his opponent for the nomination to speak to his Baptist congregation. Perhaps the strongest of Baldwin’s issues is the matter of abortion. He emphasized support for Ron Paul’s “Sanctity of Life Act” (H.R. 2597) that declares human life “shall be deemed to exist from conception” and bars the Supreme Court from ruling on the matter. Once legally defined as a person, insisted Baldwin, every infant in the womb would thereby be guaranteed the right to life — under the U.S. Constitution. He thundered, “If the Republican Party had been serious about life, it could have already ended legal abortion in America.”

As the party’s vice presidential candidate in 2004, Baldwin campaigned with presidential candidate Michael Peroutka, a Maryland lawyer. Considered even then as a possible candidate for the party’s nomination, Baldwin admits that the question of his future plans had arisen frequently, but while denying that he had ever sought the top post, he added, “I am always open to God’s will.” After having been named the party’s nominee, he asked the convention to nominate Tennessee attorney Darrell Castle as his running mate, and his request was honored.

Baldwin announced plans to gain the kind of attention Ron Paul achieved through the Internet where he succeeded in “showing how to circumvent the media.” He found while campaigning during 2004 that “the American people haven’t rejected our message; they haven’t heard our message!” And he blamed that deficiency on the dominant news media leading Americans to believe “there are only two political parties.” The conventioneers roared their agreement when he pledged, “This we intend to change.”

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No Compromise Against Gun Control

John F. McManus — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

Interview of Aaron Zelman by John F. McManus

Aaron Zelman is executive director of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, a pro-Second Amendment group based in Milwaukee.

THE NEW AMERICAN: What is your organization’s main goal?

Aaron Zelman: Our main goal is to destroy gun control. We are an organization that believes we have the moral authority to point out to the rest of the world the evils that have come from gun control and how humanity has suffered because of gun-control schemes.

TNA: Are people who aren’t Jewish members of your organization?

Zelman: We have members of our organization that have told us they are not Jewish. We don’t ask people what their religion is. And we are not an organization that is preaching religion to anybody.

We think the history of gun-control schemes has been so harmful to Jews that we have the moral authority to speak out. We welcome anybody who accepts the JPFO position that gun control must be destroyed.

We’re not interested in compromise. We are only interested in the destruction of something we consider to be a very evil and deadly policy known as gun control.

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TNA: How did you become involved in something like this?

Zelman: Well, I’ve been involved in promoting gun ownership because of my family history to some degree. When my father was about six months old, his family had to leave the Ukraine in Russia because Stalin came to power. Stalin was not interested in kulaks owning land.

And so they lost everything they had, essentially, and fled to Canada where my dad was raised and served in the Canadian Army during World War II. So, I learned at a very, very early age what happens when you can’t defend your life against a government gone bad.

TNA: Could you give us some examples of what has happened in other nations where gun control was in place?

Zelman: Well, there are several. Why don’t we start with the film we created called Innocents Betrayed? The film shows the history of and the connection between gun registration, confiscation, and how a police state is able to come about. It shows how the police state can target individuals they don’t want to live and murder them — otherwise known as genocide.

TNA: Where has this happened?

Zelman: Historically it happened in Turkey, known as the Armenian Genocide, and then, of course, in China, Russia, Germany, Cambodia, Rwanda, Uganda, and even now in Darfur.

TNA: You’ve actually obtained some of the documents from these different countries, and you’ve translated them so that we who read only English can read them?

Zelman: A number of years ago we started this project of trying to find out if there was a connection among governments and if governments did the same thing. As we put it, these folks all go to the same dictators’ school. Indeed, there is a connection because there is a pattern.

They realize they can’t stay in power if the peasants have pitchforks and can march on the gates of the city. The way to bring about a dictatorship or police state is to make sure the people are disarmed.

TNA: I understand you have done work showing the source of the 1968 gun law here in the United States.

Zelman: The 1968 Gun Control Act, as we know it today, became law during the Johnson administration. The history behind the 1968 act is indeed fascinating.

The author of the federal Gun Control Act, Senator Thomas Dodd, was an attorney with the U.S. Justice Department at Nuremburg. He obtained the Reichsgesetzblatt, which is the German equivalent of our Federal Register. He was able to use the German gun-control laws after giving them to the Library of Congress to translate for him. They did indeed translate the laws for him, and that was the model, the basis, for the 1968 Gun Control Act in America.

TNA: Many Americans believe that it is the duty of police to protect them. Comment?

Zelman: The police do not have a duty to protect individuals. The shield on the side of the car may say “to protect and serve,” but the reality is, and by state law and the state statutes and case law, you do not have a right to police protection.

We have a book we publish entitled Dial 911 and Die. It’s written by an attorney named Richard Stevens. The book details laws in every single state in the Union, the state statutes as well as case law, concerning calling 911.

You can sue the police if they fail to protect you, and your heirs can sue the police if you die during a criminal’s attack on you, but you won’t accomplish anything because the judge will finally tell you that there is no duty for the police to protect an individual unless there’s been a prior agreement that they will offer you protection.

If you’ve been an informant for the police, if you are involved in some type of work for the police where the police are not able to protect you, if it’s dangerous work, you are entitled. But short of that the police have no duty to protect you.

TNA: Could you tell us about “Goody Guns”?

Zelman: Goody Guns is a program we started to save our children from the clutches of the gun prohibitionists in the public school system. Goody Guns are cookie cutters in the shape of revolvers or pistols, and the purpose of using them as you bake cookies for your children, or grandchildren, is to teach them firearm safety while they are eating their cookie.

You tell them to eat the cookie from the back of the gun where the handle is to the front of the gun where the muzzle is. And so they learn an important fact on firearms safety — controlling where the muzzle is pointed. You start early with the Goody Guns, and by the time they get to the public school system and they hear all the propaganda about guns being bad, they will know better.

When we first introduced Goody Guns, gun prohibitionists had a conniption fit because they knew the psychology behind our program. They realized they can’t get into your home when the kid is two years old; they have to wait until your child is six years old in the school system, and by then they’ve lost.

Once Goody Guns went up on the Internet, everybody knew about it. We had, concerning Goody Guns, a call from a television station in England that was producing a program on guns in America. And they were curious about Goody Guns.

The person who called me wanted to know what the rationale behind Goody Guns was, and I sensed from the way she was asking the questions that she was trying to figure out a way to maneuver something to cause us a problem. Finally, she acknowledged, after we were almost done, that this was very clever and would probably be very effective. End of conversation. She put the phone down.

TNA: Have you been blasted by the media for this?

Zelman: Well, the media is being true to form. They want to ignore anything that JPFO does. But the gun prohibitionists remain incensed. They had to speak out against it.

TNA: What’s the greatest threat on the horizon right now for the right to keep and bear arms?

Zelman: I think there are numerous threats, but one is that the American public really doesn’t understand a need for an armed citizenry. Our country became independent because citizens were armed. This is why an organized, state-controlled militia received attention in the U.S. Constitution. So we have a lot of work to do.

We have to reach out to people and help them understand why citizens must be armed, and what’s happened to citizens throughout the world and throughout history when they couldn’t defend themselves against a government gone bad.

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Presidential Front-runners

Editor — Fri, 26 May 2006 12:00:00 CDT

In the three cover-story articles that are linked to on this page, we profile the top three heavyweights for president. On the Democratic side, Barack Obama appears to be the probable nominee, but Hillary Clinton is still in the running and neither candidate is expected to gain enough pledged delegates to lock up the nomination. On the Republican side, John McCain already has the delegates he needs to win.

What would these three major contenders do as president? What do they say they will do? How different are their platforms? And how similar are they, once the political rhetoric is stripped aside? We encourage you to evaluate their positions and judge for yourself.

If after making this evaluation, you are unhappy with the choices or do not find much of a choice at all, please keep in mind that there are other presidential candidates. Republican Congressman Ron Paul, though not expecting to win, continues to campaign to spread his message in support of the Constitution. (See our review of his new book in the article "Revolutionary Ideas.") Rev. Chuck Baldwin recently won the nomination of the Constitution Party (see "Constitution Party Chooses Baldwin"), but he is still largely unknown.

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Also, please keep in mind that Congress, not the presidency, is the most important branch of the federal government. It is also the branch closest to the people. That’s the branch where Ron Paul already is — and where more constitutionalists need to be.

— EDITOR

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Links to Related Articles:

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Hillary Clinton

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John McCain

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Barack Obama

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"Revolutionary Ideas" (Review of Ron Paul's The Revolution: A Manifesto)

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"Constitution Party Chooses Baldwin"

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Hillary Clinton

Brian Farmer — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

Last December, prior to the start of the primary elections and caucuses, every poll showed Senator Hillary Clinton leading all other Democratic Party candidates who were running for president of the United States. There seemed to be a sense of inevitability about her candidacy, which caused her campaign to underestimate the challenge put up by Senator Barack Obama.

As a result, going into the Iowa caucuses in early January, the Hillary campaign apparatus was not as well organized as Obama’s. Hillary’s advisers were so ambivalent about competing in Iowa that they even considered skipping that state altogether. Since Democrats in Iowa were staunchly opposed to the war in Iraq, her staff worried that Hillary’s vote to authorize the war would make it very difficult for her to win there, no matter how much time, effort, and money they might spend. Only after realizing the dangers of losing to Obama did Hillary’s team finally start to seriously contest Iowa. But it was too little, too late, and Obama’s victory caused his candidacy to take off.

After a string of primary victories allowed Obama to take the lead in pledged delegates, it appeared that his campaign’s momentum might be stopped in mid-March, when it was revealed that his minister and mentor of some 20 years had been delivering venomous, anti-American sermons to the congregation and videotapes of them were posted on the Internet. Intense media scrutiny induced Obama to deliver a rapturous speech in Philadelphia (home of Rocky Balboa, fittingly enough), in a desperate effort to salvage what appeared to be an irretrievably damaged campaign. He explained that Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s sermons reflected a racial divide still existing in America, but that Wright’s sermons should not be a distraction from the sufferings of the American people, and that we should move on and not let Wright’s comments poison the national dialogue.

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That “moving on” was expedited by the late-March fallout from a speech Hillary gave at George Washington University, during which she remarked, “I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia.... I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”

Internet fact checkers quickly debunked the story but, amazingly, Hillary not only clung to the tall tale but even embellished it further: “We had to be moved inside because of sniper fire. There was no greeting ceremony. Now, that is what happened.” Within days, a video was posted online that revealed no sniper fire and no running for cover. Instead, Hillary was shown taking part in a greeting ceremony and receiving flowers from a young girl.

Faced with proof of her prevarication, Hillary huffily responded, “You know, I think that a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things — millions of words a day — so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement.”

The pundits pounced, claiming that landing under sniper fire is the kind of thing that is hard to forget, but harder still for a memory to invent, unless one is a pathological liar. It was pointed out that this was no isolated incident and that New York Times columnist William Safire wrote, 12 years ago, “Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our first lady is a congenital liar.”

The expectation that Hillary would have an easy stroll through the primaries, on her way to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, is now gone. The hubris of her earlier campaign has been replaced by panic, as she finds herself on the ropes, desperately trying to stay on her feet in the fight for convention delegates.

But it is said that a week is a long time in politics and that two weeks is an eternity. Given that, there is still plenty of time for Obama to self-destruct and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, as April’s “Bittergate” incident (in which he made the assessment that small-town Americans “get bitter” and “they cling to guns or religion”) hinted. Who knows how many more time bombs are out there with Obama’s name on them, ready to explode? Just as Bill Clinton became “The Comeback Kid,” so could Hillary.

With that in mind, let’s see where she stands on the issues of the day, in an attempt to divine what Hillary might try to do as president.

Iraq War: Recent testimony on Capitol Hill by Army General David H. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker made it clear that U.S. troops aren’t going anywhere anytime soon and that getting out of Iraq is going to be the next president’s problem. Hillary has stated that ending the war in Iraq would be one of her “top three priorities” and has criticized President Bush for not setting an end date. On the other hand, during a candidate debate at Dartmouth College last September, she was offered the opportunity to set an end date anytime before 2013, but declined, adding, “It is very difficult to know what we will be inheriting.” Nevertheless, Hillary offers a three-part plan for bringing the war to an end:

Phased redeployment of our troops starting within the first 60 days of her administration.
As we bring our troops home, stabilize Iraq by directing aid to entities most likely to get it into the hands of the Iraqi people and by supporting the appointment of a high-level United Nations representative to help broker peace among the feuding parties.
Launch a diplomatic initiative by convening a group composed of key allies, other global powers, and all of the states bordering Iraq, which would work to develop and implement a strategy for securing Iraq’s future.

Healthcare: Providing quality, affordable healthcare to all Americans is another one of Hillary’s top three priorities. Her American Health Choices Plan “is based on the principles of shared responsibility and choice,” as she puts it. If you are already insured and like the plan you have, you can keep it. Otherwise, you would be able to choose from the same plans available to members of Congress or opt for a public plan like Medicare. Individuals would get a tax credit to help pay for their health insurance premiums, and small businesses would also get tax credits to defray the costs of offering their employees healthcare benefits. Insurance companies would not be allowed to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions.

Hillary claims that her plan will lower costs and improve quality by modernizing the system, focusing on preventive care, coordinating and streamlining care for chronically ill patients, and getting rid of the hidden costs of providing healthcare to the uninsured. However, a comprehensive study from the National Taxpayers Union Foundation found that implementing her healthcare proposals would boost federal spending by at least $113.6 billion annually.

Hillary also claims that her plan “ensures that all who benefit from the system share in the responsibility to fix its shortcomings.” Those who benefit from the system are specifically identified: individuals, employers, healthcare providers, drug companies, insurance companies, and the government. Although one is left to wonder how the government benefits (outside of increasing its control over one-sixth of the economy), Hillary makes it very clear what its responsibilities will be: “Government will ensure that health insurance is always affordable and never a crushing burden on any family and will implement reforms to improve quality and lower cost.”

Economy: The last of Hillary’s top three priorities is strengthening the middle class through “a progressive commitment to shared prosperity.” While her healthcare plan is certainly part of her strategy for accomplishing that, there are a number of other planks that make up her “economic blueprint” platform.

The first is tax relief for middle-class families by extending the child tax credit and marriage penalty relief, offering new tax credits for healthcare, college and retirement, and expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and the child care tax credit. To address her concerns about widening income disparities and the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots, Hillary calls for reinstating the pre-Bush income tax rates for those earning over $250,000 a year and ending tax breaks for American companies that move jobs overseas.

Secondly, since the most significant contributor to higher corporate profit margins over the past five years has been a decline in labor’s share of national income, Hillary wants to raise the minimum wage, enhance the role of labor unions, and ensure that trade policies work for average Americans by raising our standard of living and having strong protections for workers.

Thirdly, to address the housing crisis, Hillary is proposing a comprehensive plan that would take three immediate steps: impose a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures; freeze the fluctuating rates on subprime loans for at least five years, until they can be converted into fixed rate, affordable loans; and require regular status reports on the progress lenders are making in converting unworkable mortgages into loans families can afford.

Finally, Hillary wants to restore a commitment to fiscal responsibility. After seven years of President Bush’s fiscal irresponsibility, she wants to move back toward a balanced federal budget and surpluses. She believes that we should develop a set of budget rules similar to those we had in the 1990s, which required the federal government to fund new expenditures with new taxes or cuts in other areas.

However, after reviewing Hillary’s economic plan and other programs, Len Burman, director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, said that the notion that all the revenue that would be lost in a middle-class tax freeze can be made up by higher taxes on the wealthy “is not tenable.” Furthermore, the Congressional Budget Office points out that any revenues coming from expiration of the Bush tax cuts have already been assigned to deficit reduction and will not be available to fund new programs. And freezing the rates on subprime loans will cause the mortgage holders to make back any losses by charging more to new homeowners, making them bear the brunt of that plan.

Education: Hillary’s education agenda ties in with her priority to strengthen the middle class. In addition to the college tax credit, she proposes annual increases in the maximum Pell Grant (federal aid for low-income students). She wants to end the No Child Left Behind program because schools are struggling to meet the mandates imposed by the NCLB Act without the resources that were promised. In its place would be a system that measures the progress of every child and rewards schools that make progress towards the proficiency goals. She also proposes spending $10 billion to ensure that all four-year-olds attend pre-kindergarten classes.

Immigration: Hillary favors comprehensive immigration reform that includes toughening security at our borders, cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, and providing a path to earned legal status for those who are working, paying taxes, respecting the law, and willing to learn English and pay fines. Seeing that our immigration policies have a direct impact on American workers, she opposes a guest-worker program that creates a supply of cheap labor that undermines the wages of U.S. workers. That raises an interesting question: “If Hillary opposes a guest-worker program, then why doesn’t she, for the same reason, oppose legalizing the millions of aliens who have entered the United States illegally?”

Energy: Hillary has three major goals: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, to cut foreign oil imports by two-thirds, and to transform our carbon-based economy into a green economy. Those goals would be accomplished primarily through the establishment of a $50 billion fund for investments in alternative energy (the money coming primarily from oil companies) and through increasing motor vehicle fuel efficiency standards to 40 miles per gallon by 2020 and 55 miles per gallon by 2030. She would also support tax credits for home improvements that make houses more energy efficient (such as the installation of rooftop solar panels) and call for a cap-and-trade system that would set a cap on total carbon emissions. Businesses would be allowed to trade credits for emissions among themselves, allowing the market to help regulate costs. Given that the U.S. Senate unanimously rejected the Kyoto Protocol in a 1997 resolution because it would cripple the American economy, it’s hard to imagine how Hillary’s even more stringent greenhouse gas emission standards could avoid doing the same.

Social Security: Hillary is strongly opposed to Social Security privatization. To solve the long-term insolvency crisis, she wants to set up a bipartisan process that would consider a range of fixes to strengthen the program. In addition, she wants to promote retirement savings by introducing an American Retirement Account with matching tax cuts of up to $1,000 for middle-class families.

Second Amendment: Hillary claims to respect the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms. She also believes that we need protections in place to prevent guns from getting into the wrong hands. To protect Americans from gun violence, she supports background checks at gun shows, reinstating and extending the assault weapons ban, and giving law enforcement access to data that helps track down guns sold to criminals.

She claims these are common-sense regulations, yet Americans who rely on guns for personal protection or who wish to own guns for sport are leery of Hillary’s gun plans for several reasons: other countries around the world — like England and Australia — that have tracked guns have eventually confiscated the guns, increased gun tracking has not led to more criminal arrests, and it’s very costly. Hillary has repeatedly voted for antigun proposals, and cosponsored many of them. For example, when the U.S. Senate voted 84-16 for a homeland security appropriations rider stating, “None of the funds appropriated by this Act shall be used for the seizure of a firearm based on the existence of a declaration or state of emergency,” she was one of the 16 who voted “no.”

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John McCain

Alex Newman — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

During the primaries, Republican presidential candidate John McCain has variously been called a liberal, a bipartisan leader, a maverick, and even a conservative. The media has bashed and praised him.

McCain, on the one hand, was an easy choice as far as Republican candidates went for the New York Times, the editorial board writing in its endorsement for the GOP nomination: “With a record of working across the aisle to develop sound bipartisan legislation, he would offer a choice to a broader range of Americans than the rest of the Republican field.” On the other hand, his positions have been criticized by a diverse group of Republicans including Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Rob Haney (a Republican Party chairman in McCain’s home district who called McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” bus the “Forked Tongue Express”), and constitutionalist GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul, who refused to support McCain unless he has a “change of heart,” citing policies McCain advocates that he finds “un-American, un-Constitutional, immoral and not Republican.”

But most GOP and major-media criticism of McCain has been very nuanced, balanced by a lot of positive words about him. Some former GOP frontrunners who eventually dropped out of the presidential race have even endorsed him. “I am honored today to give my full support to Senator McCain’s candidacy for the presidency of the United States,” said Mitt Romney at a joint press conference with him. “This is a man capable of leading our country in this dangerous hour.” After being booed for mentioning the Arizona senator’s name at a Conservative Political Action Conference, Romney did cite differences “on a number of issues.” Rudy Giuliani also endorsed McCain while ending his failed run for the nomination. “John McCain is the most qualified candidate to be the next commander in chief of the United States,” he said.

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So with author and GOP enthusiast Ann Coulter saying publicly that she would become a “Hillary girl” before supporting McCain because, according to Coulter, Hillary “is more conservative than he is,” and with McCain himself telling MSNBC’s Tim Russert that “Senator Clinton would make a good president,” where does McCain really stand on the issues? Despite constant exposure to the sharp rhetoric of his critics and the dedicated support of his backers, a brief perusal of his words and his past reveal that there is more to the “maverick” than meets the eye.

Some Conservative Stands

McCain’s least contentious stands among conservatives are these three: he wants to end affirmative action programs because they are discriminatory, balance the budget, and reform the U.S. healthcare system through less government involvement in the system, not more. He said about affirmative action in a Washington Post presidential candidate poll: we must “aggressively enforc[e] our nation’s anti-discrimination laws. It means taking seriously our commitment to educate all of America’s children so they have the necessary tools to compete and succeed in life. It means building a strong, vibrant economy where opportunity is always abundant for all who seek it. It also means rejecting affirmative action plans and quotas that give weight to one group of Americans at the expense of another.”

On the budget, in the Post’s presidential candidate survey, he said: “If I’m elected President, I won’t leave office without balancing the federal budget. And I won’t do it with smoke and mirrors. When I leave office, I want to leave a budget that stays balanced after I’m gone, and can weather the occasional downturn and unexpected contingency. I’ll do it by spending less and encouraging economic growth.” His plans include stimulating the economy through lowering corporate taxes from 35 to 25 percent, reforming the Alternative Minimum Tax to ease taxes on much of the middle class, and making permanent the Bush tax cuts. All told his tax cuts would lower government tax receipts $3.3 trillion during his theoretic eight years in office. He believes his tax cuts will be offset by economic growth, vetoing all pork-barrel legislation ($18 billion per year), closing tax loopholes ($30 billion per year), having a one-year spending freeze for many programs ($15 billion per year), canceling $65 billion of unspecified federal programs, making government spending “transparent,” and reforming Medicare. His plan has been lambasted from both sides of the political aisle as unworkable. Conservatives say he isn’t cutting enough spending to offset his tax cuts, thereby setting the country up for more deficits.

On at least two of these three pro-conservative issues, McCain’s present stands are at odds with stands he has taken in the recent past. After an interview in 2005, the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore wrote that McCain’s perspective “often leads to populist and parasitic economic policy conclusions like higher taxes on the rich.” Despite his current defense of the 2003 tax cuts, McCain actually voted against them. He also stood with Democrats on continuing the slow and incremental expansion of socialized medicine. “We’ve got to expand the children’s health insurance program,” he proclaimed during a debate.

Other Controversial Stances

McCain’s stances on other issues are more contentious. John McCain the politician would be the first one to tell you that he is an ardent supporter of treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. In a November/December 2007 article published in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization to which he belongs, he suggested using the Central American Free Trade Agreement to “move the process of completing a Free Trade Area of the Americas forward.” McCain is relying on these trade agreements to boost the U.S. economy so that he, as president, can balance the budget. But these trade agreements have many critics because “free trade agreements” are really treaties that are called “agreements” so they can be unconstitutionally ratified, containing hundreds and thousands of pages of regulations that establish what critics refer to as “managed trade.” And while proponents of NAFTA, including John McCain, stand by the claim that the trade agreement has boosted the economies of the three countries, there is little doubt that the poor and middle-class citizens of the three countries hitched as NAFTA partners are not benefiting from the agreement.

The United States saw the massive relocation of whole industries — such as North Carolina’s textile plants — to Mexico, while in Canada manufacturing jobs declined by eight percent and Canadians saw a major decline in per capita income. In Mexico, NAFTA resulted in huge numbers of small farmers being put out of business, prompting a spike in illegal immigration to the United States. As THE NEW AMERICAN reported in 2007, the Mexican economy stagnated after NAFTA, “never coming close to the healthy 6.5 percent average growth in GDP from 1950 to 1980. Real wages, in fact, are lower now than they were 25 years ago, and overall economic growth has averaged a paltry 1.3 percent per year, more than 30 percent behind the average growth rate of comparable middle-income countries around the world.” Opponents to such free-trade agreements also point to consequences of a decades-old trend of surrendering national sovereignty to regional and global authorities.

Like the early foundations of the European and African Unions, one of NAFTA’s stated purposes is to “establish a framework for further trilateral, regional and multilateral cooperation.” The European Free Trade agreement accomplished precisely this in Europe while Section 511 of NAFTA has already forced the United States, Canada, and Mexico to adopt “Uniform Regulations regarding the interpretation, application and administration” of laws on everything from cars to food products. Along with the regulations come the supranational enforcement mechanisms. The United States has, in fact, already been sued in a NAFTA tribunal for “allowing” North Carolina to violate United Nations’ standards with “right-to-work” laws. In another more recent case, a NAFTA panel ruled 3-2 against America, claiming U.S. and even State Supreme Court decisions are not binding on the “trade” tribunals. According to the 2007 ruling, “Provisions of the agreement constitute international law, or ‘law of nations’ obligations of the United States.” (Emphasis added.)

McCain describes the effects of the treaties on America as “positive,” but how much more “cooperation” with Mexico, Canada, and other foreign nations would he support? His own words offer a clue. According to the New York Times, McCain called the agreements “the future of America’s economy” in February of this year. “The U.S. should engage in multilateral, regional and bilateral efforts to reduce barriers to trade, level the global playing field and build effective enforcement of global trading rules,” McCain said on his campaign website. In a speech to the National Press Club, he proposed entering into trade agreements “with any country except security risks.” In addition to pushing the Free Trade Area of the Americas, McCain also announced in Foreign Affairs his support for “creating a transatlantic common market tying our economies more closely together” with the European Union and even establishing “a worldwide League of Democracies” because the American military is serving with international forces and “these troops are not all part of a common structure.” He also supports Bush’s plan to build a “free trade area” in the Middle East by 2013, stretching from Morocco to Afghanistan.

Very Internationally Minded

McCain is a strong advocate of all types of legislation that he believes forward international cooperation. Consider his open support for global regulations on carbon dioxide. He recently proposed a “bipartisan plan” that he claims would “ensure a sustainable future for humankind.” The bill he proposed, the McCain/Lieberman bill, which would cap the amount of carbon dioxide the country would emit and set up a carbon-trading program amongst entities that release carbon dioxide. McCain “would require a reduction in carbon dioxide emission levels to 2000 levels by the year 2010 by capping the overall greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity generation, transportation, industrial, and commercial economic sectors,” according to a McCain press release.

He obviously understands that such a mandate would stifle U.S. economic growth because he makes clear that the United States must not be allowed to be penalized by such an agreement; we must enforce such restrictions on all nations, not on just some of the developed nations. “We need a global agreement, but it has to include India and China,” he told MSNBC’s Tim Russert at a GOP candidates’ debate. Then he added, “Suppose that we are wrong, and there’s no such thing as climate change, and we hand our kids a cleaner world.” But we must consider whether we really want to stifle economic growth worldwide in order to accomplish this.

Whether all nations get on board with his plans or not, here in the United States, he intends to set up a system of government rewards for technological innovation to encourage car companies to improve gas mileage. He says he will reduce government regulation so that companies can build new power infrastructure, like new nuclear power plants.

An avid internationalist, McCain favors a world where the United Nations has the ability to tax, legislate, and even raise armies. On the 2004 Congressional National Political Awareness Test, McCain said the United States should continue to contribute U.S. troops for UN missions. He recognizes that the UN has problems but adds that the United States “should pay arrears” to the UN after it “implements management reforms.”

McCain has earned the enmity of many concerned Americans in his stance on illegal immigration. For years, he has worked with Democratic Senator Kennedy on a bill to give illegal immigrants amnesty and even citizenship as a reward for ignoring the border and breaking the law. He also voted to let them collect Social Security benefits upon being granted legal status. Now he says that he has learned the error of his ways and will safeguard the border before giving illegal immigrants “comprehensive immigration reform.”

In other areas where he has shown “bipartisanship,” McCain has taken verbal lashing as well from constitutionally minded Americans. Much criticism of McCain stems from legislation called the McCain/Feingold Act. Working with Democratic Senator Russ Feingold (Wis.), McCain sponsored what opponents have dubbed a “federal speech code” enforced with up to five years in federal prison. The “Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act” has given the Federal Election Commission unprecedented new powers to regulate political speech before elections, and it has already been used in countless cases to suppress useful information. Among other things, the bill essentially prohibits unions, corporations, and nonprofits from running ads 60 days before an election if they refer to a federal candidate and reach a certain number of people. By contrast, the First Amendment prohibits Congress from making laws abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.

Walking the Conservative Walk or Just Talking the Talk?

According to his critics, even on some bread-and-butter conservative issues where he takes a seemingly strong conservative stand, McCain is not genuine. For instance, Senator McCain stated strongly that he wants “no gun control.” Yet despite that campaign assertion and the fact that Congress has no constitutional authority to arbitrarily forbid certain types of guns, McCain actively supported bans on so-called “assault weapons” and “Saturday night specials,” two classes of guns demonized by anti-gun activists for their affordability, magazine capacity, and other irrelevant characteristics such as having military-style “looks.” He also helped Democrats in an effort to further regulate gun shows. Gun Owners of America gave him an F- rating in 2006 for his positions on gun rights and reported that a bill McCain supported (S. 890) would have threatened gun-show operators with a five-year prison sentence if a single show attendee “were not notified of his obligations under the Brady law,” meaning that “an organization would be foolish to even sponsor a gun show.”

Though McCain’s record on life issues is better than his Democratic counterparts and he has said he would support ending Roe v. Wade, some of his statements about abortion could have easily come from Hillary or Obama. “Certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade,” McCain told the San Francisco Chronicle after claiming he was hoping for an eventual end to the demand for abortion. He also supports federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research.

Like Bush, McCain is a firm believer in the doctrine of “preemptive” war. He didn’t just vote for “Operation Iraqi Freedom”; when asked about another 50 years in Iraq, McCain said it would be fine with him to make it 100. He later issued a “clarification,” saying he supports permanent bases in Iraq, not 100 years of active war.

Under a President McCain, the U.S. military would continue policing the world with American lives and treasure. About rogue states, he announced on Larry King Live, “I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments.” He didn’t rule out further undeclared military strikes and nation-building either. “You really kind of have two choices: you react militarily, risking American lives, or you try to overthrow that government.”

When asked if he would need to seek congressional authorization for an attack on Iran, McCain said it “depends on the scenario.” Even Bush asked for permission. Iran is currently deepening its ties and alliances in the region with powerful countries like Russia and China. A nation-building project kicked off by McCain could easily escalate into a wider conflict, and according to analysts, the U.S. military is already stretched too thin.

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Alex Newman is the president of Liberty Sentinel Media, Inc. and the executive editor of the Liberty Sentinel of North Central Florida.

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Barack Obama

Gregory A. Hession, J.D. — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

Just four years ago, when Barack Obama was an obscure Illinois state senator running a long-shot campaign for the U.S. Senate, he quipped regarding his then-largely unfamiliar name, “Just call me Alabama.” That same year he was invited to give the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, and he gained valuable name recognition and glowed in the national limelight when he delivered that widely acclaimed speech. He then went on to capture a Senate seat. Today, everyone recognizes his name and knows how to pronounce it.

In the late 1980s, Obama also glowed at Harvard Law School, where he became president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. That means that he occupied the most elite student position in the most elite legal education establishment in the world. That is like being the first violinist in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the best of the best.

Prior to Harvard, Obama worked for three years as a community organizer in Chicago in the mid-80s, where he strived for “change” in hopeless ghettos and bleak housing projects. However, change did not materialize as he had hoped, and he entered Harvard Law School in 1987. During his first summer, he obtained an internship at a large Chicago corporate law firm. It was there that he met his wife, Michelle, who had just completed her own law degree at Harvard and was a young associate at the same firm. As fate would have it, she was the one assigned to monitor his summer internship there. They were later married, and soon Barack Obama became restless to enter elective politics, launching his political career with his election to the Illinois state Senate in 1996. He is now not only running for president but has more pledged delegates than Hillary Clinton and appears much more likely than she to capture the Democratic nomination.

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Obama has pulled ahead of Clinton, contrary to the political wisdom of just a few months ago, by effectively projecting himself as a reasonable populist who transcends race, religion, and ideology. But what exactly does that mean in the world of real politick? If his stance transcends the political divide, where does he stand?

Man of the Government

Most everyone looks at government in one of two ways: one group wants government to do something for them, while the other group seeks either to have government stop doing something to them or taking something from them. Obama came from political obscurity and wants to be the next president, so he can run the government. He is smart enough and well spoken enough to have convinced a majority of the first group — the ones who want government to help them — that he is the one to make it happen. The members of the second group, those who must pay for those sparkling promises, are not so enthused. However, both groups have a great curiosity about this man who would operate the levers of power. What does he believe? What are his core values?

Fortunately, Obama has written two books, The Audacity of Hope and Dreams From My Father, which give insight into his mind, soul, and politics. The information in these books is supplemented by a long stream of campaign speeches and position papers. The oft-repeated media line that Obama is a great orator but says nothing is inaccurate. Before and during his presidential bid, he has given us a reliable record of his beliefs and their historical development. Thus, we have clarity on his general political philosophy, as well as his positions on most of the significant issues in the current presidential race.

“My job is to inspire people to take ownership of this country,” Obama said in Essence in March 2004. “Politics is not a business. It’s a mission. It’s about making people’s lives better.” Obama is a man of the government. By taking “ownership of this country,” he does not mean limiting government to its constitutional size so that the people can take care of themselves and manage their own lives; he means instead empowering government to manage the economy and provide for the people, thereby (in his view) “making people’s lives better.”

In his 2004 senatorial election night victory speech, Obama said, “What we know is that government can help provide us with the basic tools we need to live out the American Dream.” Such a perspective signals a profound and disturbing trend — that only by involving government in all aspects of life, instead of getting government out of the way, will we be able to achieve the American dream.

It is easy for Obama to promise government help to his rapt audiences, as long as he never talks about who pays or how much. His speeches foster a culture of entitlement, directed toward empathetic targets such as “working families.” Thus, he can appear to be oh-so-compassionate as he lays forth the goodies for those who are willing to be enticed to accept money that has been forcibly taken (dare one say “stolen”) from their fellow citizens. Obama’s government gets a commission as middleman in the transactions.

He disguises this process well. In The Audacity of Hope, Obama describes the hopes and dreams of those who seek state intervention in reasonable-sounding words: “Although they didn’t expect government to solve all their problems, and certainly didn’t like seeing their tax dollars wasted — they figured that government should help.” But government cannot provide help to someone without hurting someone else. That is, government cannot give to “Peter” without taking from “Paul.” There is no such thing as a free lunch. Yet the hopes and dreams that Obama offers come across with such force and conviction that it almost seems as if there could be. Which has caused economist Thomas Sowell, who like Obama is black but who unlike Obama supports market solutions, to observe: “While Hillary Clinton tells lies, Barack Obama is himself a lie.”

Many perceive Hillary Clinton to be more liberal than Barack Obama. But when it comes to the amount of money that would be required to pay for all of the goodies both candidates have promised on the campaign trail, Obama is actually the more liberal of the two according to a study released in late January by the National Taxpayers Union that examined the proposals of both Republican and Democratic Party candidates. According to the NTU, Obama’s proposals would boost federal spending by $287 billion annually, as opposed to Hillary Clinton whose proposals would boost spending by $218 billion, making her the second-biggest spender.

The Issues

In a 1996 candidate questionnaire submitted during his Illinois state Senate run, Obama set forth some of his views with sparkling clarity. He believes that government schools should “nurture and support” young people, and receive a lot more tax money. Homosexuals and lesbians should be “actively recruited” for government jobs. He favors a graduated income tax to redistribute the wealth, and a government-controlled healthcare system with more tax funding. He wants to “ban the manufacture, sale, and possession of handguns.” And he wants publicly funded abortions, with no parental notification or any restrictions whatsoever.

Recently, on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania, Obama revealed how strongly pro-abortion he is when he said he would not want his daughters “punished” with an unwanted baby. “I’ve got two daughters, nine years old and six years old,” he said. “I’m going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

The Obama campaign website proposes one socialistic program after another. By way of illustration, just in the field of education Obama would:

“create Early Learning Challenge Grants to promote state ‘zero to five’ efforts”;
“quadruple Early Head Start, increase Head Start funding”;
“provide affordable and high-quality child care to ease the burden on working families”;
“reform NCLB [No Child Left Behind], which starts by funding the law”; and
“create new Teacher Service Scholarships that will cover four years of undergraduate or two years of graduate teacher education.”

On foreign aid, Obama supports the Millennium Development Goal of cutting global poverty in the world in half by 2015 and has called for doubling U.S. foreign aid to $50 billion to achieve this goal. Regarding healthcare, he would establish a new national health plan which will guarantee eligibility to everyone regardless of pre-existing illness or conditions. On global warming, he would impose a “cap-and-trade system” to reduce carbon emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

This bundle of issues places Obama at the absolute far-left edge of the political spectrum. While he is personally affable and is an acknowledged natural leader, the content of his message is radical in the extreme. Leadership does not consist only in being able to persuade others to follow, but also in persuading them to go in the correct direction.

Recent Stumbles

In the space of a few weeks leading up to the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, Barack Obama went from champ to chump in the eyes of many mainstream Democrats because of a series of well-publicized gaffes and the exposure of some politically embarrassing associations.

His recent sequence of problems started when a sermon by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his longtime pastor and mentor, was posted on YouTube and caused such a sensation that the story was picked up by mainstream news. In his sermon, Reverend Wright, who is black, ranted, fulminated, and screamed venomous epithets at what he views as racist America. “Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people,” Wright preached. He even went so far as to say: “The government … wants us to sing God Bless America. No, no, no. Not God bless America; God d*** America.... God d*** America for treating us citizens as less than human.” Obama’s decades-long association with Rev. Wright raised questions regarding Obama’s own message of racial equity and collaboration, and how he could reconcile that message with the message of hatred and anti-Americanism emanating from the pulpit of his church. In fact, the title of Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope, as Obama himself states in the book, comes from a sermon by Rev. Wright.

Obama devoted his Philadelphia speech of March 18 to trying to defuse the time bomb Rev. Wright had thrown his way. He said that “Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive.” However, he also said that “as imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me” and “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.”

He even tried to explain Rev. Wright’s anger in terms of “the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up” — segregation, discrimination, and a lack of economic opportunity. Yet Wright did not grow up in a segregated neighborhood; his parents had good jobs (his father was a pastor and his mother a high-school vice principal); and he attended an elite high school in Philadelphia called Central High School where, according to other black attendees, there was no discrimination.

More recently, after Wright began speaking out and making other inflammatory comments, Obama further distanced himself from Wright, calling the comments “appalling” at an April 29 press conference.

After the initial Wright “YouTube” bombshell came the so-called “bitter” comment, made at a closed forum in San Francisco. Explaining why he has trouble attracting white working-class voters, Obama said: “It’s not surprising they get bitter, then they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment, as a way to express their frustrations.” Unfortunately for Obama, the remark was taped and later became public.

Many people interpreted this remark as revealing a secretly held elitism and gross condescension toward “regular Americans,” while hypocritically trying to sound like he identified with them and their troubles. Particularly troubling was his mockery of religion as something that people cling to only because they are frustrated.

The hits just kept on coming. Obama was also linked with a radical Weather Underground couple, William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn (Ayers), who boasted of involvement with 30 bombings in the ’60s and ’70s, at places like the Pentagon, police stations, and banks. Not only are the two revolutionaries unrepentant about their bombings, but they have asserted that they didn’t go far enough. Mr. Ayers has also been quoted as saying, “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at.” Now married, they are both university professors and Mrs. Ayers teaches law.

The relevant datum here is that Mr. Ayers hosted a fundraiser for Obama to help launch his 1995 state senate campaign, and they allegedly maintain a close or at least a cordial relationship. Such sentiments by avowed revolutionaries, if tolerated by Obama, cast doubt upon the veracity of his soothing rhetorical emoluments.

These disclosures have tarnished Obama’s image in the eyes of many voters, but the fallout has not enabled Hillary Clinton to catch up in the delegate count. Clinton’s campaign has been plagued with its own problems, in particular Clinton’s embarrassing embellishment of her Bosnia trip. Though Clinton breathed some hope into her campaign by winning Pennsylvania on April 22, she swapped victories with Obama on May 6 when Clinton captured Indiana and Obama North Carolina. With few primaries remaining and the number of uncommitted delegates dwindling, the odds are now heavily in Obama’s favor.

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Revolutionary Ideas

Charles Scaliger — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

The Revolution: A Manifesto, by Ron Paul, New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2008, 173 pages, hardcover.

Every now and then a book changes the course of human history. Such were the political writings of the American founding era — the pamphlets of Thomas Paine, the Federalist Papers, and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations prominent among them. The history of political freedom has been singularly blessed with epochal writings, from the musings of Cicero to 20th-century luminaries like Hazlitt, Mises, Nock, Garrett, and Flynn. Recent years, however, have seen few political statements as pithy and readable as The Law or as tightly reasoned and erudite as Human Action.

Congressman Ron Paul’s new book The Revolution: A Manifesto changes all that. Here is an elegant summary of both the philosophy and the praxis of limited government, neatly encapsulated in seven brief, masterly written chapters. The Revolution is one of those rare books that dares to tackle issues usually regarded as dauntingly complex (monetary policy in particular) and manages to render them in language both comprehensible and enjoyable to read. Nor is there a trace of the demagogy that so often passes itself off as good political prose, in this as in most other eras. The Revolution is not a rant but an impassioned appeal. It is Dr. Paul at his principled, gentlemanly, scholarly best.

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After an introductory chapter on false choices and how the terms of modern political discourse typically exclude the crucial option of freedom, Dr. Paul tackles one of the topics for which he is best known and also most controversial: foreign policy. His language, as befits the subject matter, is diplomatic but to the point. In just 30 pages, Ron Paul gives an overview of foreign-policy issues that leaves no doubt as to the wisdom of the noninterventionist policy of the Founders. Here is a summary of American foreign-policy history, along with a brief but thorough discussion of just-war theory. Here also is a timely demolishing of the conceits that brought about the undeclared and illegitimate wars on terrorism and against Iraq, including a luminous rebuttal of those who have used Dr. Paul’s criticism of the reaction to 9/11 as an excuse to marginalize him. Who, after reading The Revolution with an open mind, could fail to reach the same ineluctable conclusions as Dr. Paul, namely, that American meddling in the Middle East has provided a strong incentive for terrorists to target the United States?

Following foreign policy, Dr. Paul devotes an entire chapter to that oft-maligned, almost universally misunderstood document, the U.S. Constitution. Here many of the most important principles of constitutional federalism are explained, including the separation between presidential and congressional war powers. Concerning the latter, Dr. Paul recounts a discussion in the House prior to the outbreak of the Iraq War, in which the then-chairman of the International Relations Committee (the late Henry Hyde, though Dr. Paul is too decorous to mention him by name) chided Ron Paul for insisting on a congressional declaration of war. “There are things in the Constitution that have been overtaken by events, by time,” the Republican congressman, who was once viewed as a champion of conservatism in the House, told Dr. Paul. “Declaration of war is one of them. There are things no longer relevant to a modern society. We are saying to the president, use your judgment. [What you have proposed is] anachronistic; it isn’t done any more.” Congressman Hyde’s statement is emblematic of the vast ideological gulf between those few souls in Washington who, like Dr. Paul, actually honor the Constitution and the vast majority who don’t.

Prominent also in Dr. Paul’s discussion of the Constitution is the bedrock principle of federalism. Nowhere in the Constitution are limitations on power more clearly delineated than in the Tenth Amendment, which reserves all powers not delegated to the federal government to the several states or to the people themselves. Yet no principle of the Constitution has been more systematically ignored or misconstructed than this one, almost from the inception of the republic. From at least the election of Andrew Jackson onward, the federal government has steadily accumulated power at the expense of the states, with major wars and economic crises along the way hastening the process. Dr. Paul points out that, regardless of almost two centuries of abusive precedent, the Tenth Amendment has not been repealed nor the principle of federalism successfully repudiated. No matter how much the opponents of federalism argue the point, the fact remains that the Founders did not intend for the American presidency to become an elective monarchy, nor the federal government to become the master of supine state legislatures.

Other chapters lay out Dr. Paul’s philosophy on economic freedom and personal liberty, seamlessly wedding the historical (Prohibition, for example) with the contemporary (the misnamed war on drugs). Especially commendable is a late chapter on the “forbidden issue in American politics,” money, which is really an explanation of what the Federal Reserve does (and doesn’t do) and why a paper money system is at variance with the policy of the Founding Fathers. Here is as concise and readable an account as you will ever find of how complex central banking isn’t. The operations of the Federal Reserve, shorn of numinous banker’s terminology, amount to a counterfeiting racket. The more paper money the Fed prints, the more the dollar’s value declines. Try printing your own money supply in your basement, and you’ll earn a prison sentence. Do essentially the same as Fed chairman, and earn the plaudits of a swooning financial press and a servile Congress. The beguiled public, meanwhile, pays the price for Fed policies in the form of economic crises, like the ongoing mortgage debacle and the steady devaluation of savings.

Congressman Paul, despite his years of being Capitol Hill’s oft-derided “Dr. No” because of his consistent voting record against unconstitutional legislation, is an optimist at heart. He recognizes that people, in the main, do not prefer bondage to freedom, despite the direction of our country or the statist politicians people vote into office. A majority of Americans, contrary to what historians have been telling us, did support the American Revolution, as Dr. Paul comments in a late footnote. Regarding our time, Dr. Paul insists that “liberty is not given a fair chance in our society, neither in the media, nor in politics, nor (especially) in education. I have spoken to many young people during my career, some of whom had never heard my ideas before. But as soon as I explained the philosophy of liberty and told them a little American history in light of that philosophy, their eyes lit up.... We are engaged in a great battle of ideas, and the choices before us could not be clearer.”

Fair enough. But a good manifesto needs to have a plan of action, not merely a statement of beliefs. And here Dr. Paul also delivers, albeit with a program that will leave the politically ambitious with the vapors. We must begin allowing people to opt out of Social Security, as a prelude to phasing out the program altogether. All cabinet budgets must be frozen immediately, and extra-constitutional departments, like the Department of Education, must be terminated. Monetary freedom, specifically, the freedom to transact business in gold and silver, should also be restored, allowing people to choose between precious metals and paper money in their business. It is not hard to see that such a step would make the elimination of the Federal Reserve much easier.

In foreign policy, Dr. Paul enjoins the recall of U.S. troops serving abroad and he makes the case that following the Golden Rule in international affairs is a much surer route to peace and stability than aggressive war.

Ultimately, Dr. Paul’s book is not so much about freedom but about consequences — what will surely come to pass if we continue to abuse our Constitution, reject free-market principles, and wage war across the globe under the spurious banner of democracy. One way or another, the militarism, the squelching of personal liberty, the “robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul,” in Kipling’s unforgettable phraseology, must come to an end, as inevitably as night follows day. From our mad careen toward insolvency and national humiliation we can either withdraw voluntarily or wait until the inexorable laws of economics and history force our hand. “I know which option I prefer,” Dr. Paul says in his concluding remarks. “Ours is not a fated existence, for nowhere is our destiny etched in stone.... If freedom is what we want, it is ours for the taking.”

Here’s hoping that Americans choose ultimately to stand with the Constitution — with freedom! We are yet a long way from the successful revolution on behalf of freedom that Ron Paul envisions, but this book is a very fine start.

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Charles Scaliger is a teacher and freelance writer.

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Ron Paul Fights On

JBS Staff — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

Although Senator John McCain has been the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee since early March, Congressman Ron Paul has continued his campaign for president. “Victory in the conventional political sense is not available in the presidential race,” Paul told his supporters in March. Yet he also said that “many victories have been achieved.... The most significant achievement of our months of dedicated efforts has been the degree to which the message of liberty has spread.”

Paul and his supporters continue to use the presidential campaign as a means for spreading their message of liberty, and voters continue to proclaim their support for that message by voting for Dr. Paul, despite the fact that McCain has been the presumptive nominee for months. In the April 22 Pennsylvania Republican primary, Paul garnered 16 percent of the vote, his highest percentage in a primary to date.

The message is also making Ron Paul a best-selling author. His new book, The Revolution: A Manifesto, debuted at number seven on the New York Times bestseller list and then rose to number one the following week. He dedicated the book to his supporters. “I have never been more humbled and honored than by your selfless devotion to freedom and the Constitution,” he wrote. “The American Revolutionaries did the impossible. So can we.” (The book is reviewed in the article "Revolutionary Ideas.")

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Did McCain Really Say the Iraq War Is About Oil?

JBS Staff — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

Has the United States gone to war in the Middle East for oil? That allegation has generally emanated from opponents of our military interventions in the Middle East, and it has been dismissed by the neoconservatives who have supported those interventions as far-leftist propaganda. But all that changed on May 2, when Iraq War supporter John McCain told a town hall meeting in Denver: “My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will — that will then prevent us — that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.”

Asked about this statement later in the day after he had flown from Denver to Phoenix, McCain told reporters he was referring to “the first Gulf War for several reasons” — one of them being “we didn’t want them to have control over the oil, and that part of the world is critical to us because of our dependency on foreign oil.” However, when he was later asked during the same exchange with reporters if he “were thinking about the first Gulf War,” McCain answered: “No, I was thinking about … our dependency on foreign oil.”

He also stated: “I hope that there’s no confusion about my support for the war in Iraq, and it wasn’t to do with oil, it had to do with Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction.”

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The DNA Train Has Left the Station

JBS Staff — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

The passage of two recent bills — by both the Senate and the House, and the signing of those bills into law by the president — provides an object lesson in the workings of the state, and full illustration of the type of logic that must necessarily govern the actions of that coercive body.

The bills in question are known as the Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA). GINA, which had been under discussion in one form or another since 1995, passed by a vote of 420 to 3 in the House and 95 to 0 in the Senate. Apparently, it gained some momentum in the 13 years it had been around.

The Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act was passed by voice vote in both the House and Senate. The Newborn Screening Act, among other things, essentially creates a nationwide database of infant DNA, and effectively precludes any parent from opting out of the program. GINA prohibits any non-governmental entity (read: insurance company) from using this now-mandatory information for what could quite factually be called “screening” for genetic defects. The most striking irony might be how one bill effectively seeks to limit the possible negative effects of the other. In effect, one law generates the data while a second law seeks to protect the public from its use. In an upcoming feature, THE NEW AMERICAN will examine this interaction fully.

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A Growing Number of Scientists Is Reconsidering Climate Change

JBS Staff — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

The past couple of years have seen many prominent scientists, including former leading global-warming alarmists, converting to the climate “skeptic” or “realist” camp. However, most Americans are unaware of these defections, since the major media censor these stories, while continuing to hype unfounded predictions of impending climate catastrophe.

One of the most recent scientists to switch sides is Dr. Kerry Emanuel, professor of Atmospheric Science at M.I.T. and the most famous proponent of the claim that man-made global warming is causing more frequent and intense hurricanes. But in March Dr. Emanuel and two associates pulled a great reversal, publishing an article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Association reporting on their new computer modeling that suggests hurricane frequency and intensity may not rise over the next two centuries even if warmer trends continue. “The results surprised me,” Emanuel said of his work in an interview with the Houston Chronicle in April. “The take-home message is that we’ve got a lot of work to do. There’s still a lot of uncertainty in this problem.”

Dr. Miklos Zagoni, one of Hungary’s most prominent physicists and global-warming activists, now says: “Runaway greenhouse theories contradict energy balance equations” and the most recent research data. Emanuel and Zagoni join many other recent converts from climate alarmism, such as: Canadian fisheries expert Dr. Tad Murty; French geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre; Australian mathematician Dr. David Evans; Canadian paleoclimatologist Dr. Ian D. Clark; Polish physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski; and Israeli astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv. Famed British botanist and climate alarmist Dr. David Bellamy now calls global-warming fears “poppycock” and says “global warming is largely a natural phenomenon.”

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Climate-change Bill Would Devastate Families and Industries

JBS Staff — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

Undeterred by record cold temperatures worldwide for the winter of 2007-2008 and recent admissions by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization that global temperatures have been in decline for the past decade and will continue to drop through most of 2008, politicians at the local, state, and federal levels are continuing to push for more carbon dioxide emission controls. If passed, these new restrictive laws will have zero-to-negligible impact on global climate, but enormous economic impact on families, industries, communities, and countries. The most imminent threat is the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (S. 2191), which is expected to come up for a vote in the United States Senate in June. “First, this bill will force energy prices even higher,” warns Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the Senate’s leading opponent of climate alarmism. “Supporters of this bill are going to be asking the American people to pay even more for energy at the pump and in their homes at a time when energy prices are already on the rise. If this bill passes, electricity prices are estimated to skyrocket 35 percent to 65 percent within just seven years, forcing a huge economic hit on American households.”

Sen. Inhofe cites studies showing the legislation killing 1.5 million to 3.4 million American jobs by 2020. On May 5, the American Petroleum Institute released an evaluation of Lieberman-Warner showing that passage of the bill would dramatically reduce domestic natural gas production and drive American refinery capital, production, and jobs overseas. The API report warns that refinery investment would move overseas because U.S. plants would be required to obtain greenhouse gas allowances for emissions when most foreign refineries would not. Domestic refinery investment could drop by more than $3 billion/year by 2012 and $11.5 billion/year by 2020, it says.

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Administration Pushes Dangerous Law of the Sea Treaty

JBS Staff — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

President Bush startled conservatives in his own party in 2005 with his support for U.S. ratification of the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). The Republican rank-and-file has adamantly opposed this effort to give the UN regulatory and taxing powers over all the world’s oceans and territorial seas since President Reagan torpedoed U.S. participation in the LOST scheme in the 1980s. Besides granting unaccountable UN bureaucrats power over navigation, marine life, fisheries, and minerals, LOST would provide the UN with enormous revenues, potentially in the hundreds of billions of dollars. President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have urged the Senate to ratify this UN convention. Secretary Rice will lead a delegation to Ilulissat, Greenland, for a conference on Arctic territorial claims on May 27-29. The five-nation conference, which is to include representatives from the United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark, and Norway, will hold discussions on territorial claims in the Arctic Ocean. The Greenland conference is expected to signal a new push in the Senate for ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty.

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Iran Drops the Dollar, Begins Selling Its Oil in Euros

JBS Staff — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

On the last day of April, according to a CNN report, Iran’s government confirmed that it has begun selling its oil in euros and in yen, something it has long threatened to do. After a failed attempt during last year’s summit of OPEC leaders to persuade the cartel to begin selling its oil for currencies other than the dollar, at which Iranian President Ahmadinejad called the falling U.S. dollar a “worthless piece of paper,” Iran has begun unilaterally selling its oil for currencies that, of late, have been far stronger internationally than the dollar.

The potential impact of this decision on world markets would be difficult to understate. For decades, OPEC countries accepted only U.S. dollars for oil, effectively pegging to oil a currency unbacked by gold or silver. The phenomenon of the “petrodollar” has probably helped to maintain international confidence in the dollar in spite of the Fed’s inflationary policies. But if other countries, like Venezuela, follow Iran’s lead and begin selling their oil for other currencies (a financially prudent if politically risky choice, given the dollar’s recent free-fall), fragile confidence in the dollar’s long-term viability could suffer irreparable damage. Among other possible consequences, countries with large dollar holdings could decide to liquidate those assets, creating a flood of dollars and inflationary side-effects beyond any American consumer’s wildest dreams.

Iran, which has every political incentive to undermine the American dollar, has also been reducing its central bank’s dollar holdings, according to the CNN report. While the Iranian regime can scarcely be regarded as a trendsetter, it is possible that Tehran’s actions may be a portent of worse to come.

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Arizona Legislature on Verge of Nixing Real ID Program

JBS Staff — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

On March 19 the Arizona state House passed a bill (HB2677) that would prohibit the state from putting Real ID into effect without the legislature’s approval by a vote of 51 to 8. On May 6, the state Senate passed their stronger version of the bill, which would flatly prohibit participation in the Real ID program, by a vote of 21 to 7. Next, the House must approve the Senate’s version of the bill.

Arizona would become the seventh state to pass a law prohibiting implementation of the Real ID program for driver’s licenses. Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Washington have already passed laws in 2007 barring implementation of Real ID in their states. A dozen more states have approved resolutions calling for the costs of the Real ID program to be fully covered by Congress or the act repealed.

Although the citizens of states which had not implemented Real ID were facing the possibility of not being able to use their driver’s licenses to board airplanes and enter federal buildings after May 11, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has relented. Due to the widespread Real ID rebellion among the states, DHS has been forced to extend the deadline for compliance with Real ID to the end of 2009.

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Spreading Liberty With a Bayonet

Becky Akers — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

The United States has embroiled much of the world in its War on Terror, occupied Iraq since 2003, and bombed Afghanistan — all to “spread liberty.” Karl Rove alleged in 2006 that George W. Bush “is committed to something no past president has ever attempted: spreading liberty to the broader Middle East.” Bush himself insisted last January that “our strategy is to spread liberty.” Apparently, freedom spreads around as easily as peanut butter.

Or does it? Can one country impose liberty on another? Does freedom come at the point of a gun, sifting from the air with the debris of a bombed village? Or must people individually crave it, so badly they will fight and die for it rather than live as slaves?

From the way this administration spouts the word “liberty,” you might think its members know something about it. For example, in his Second Inaugural alone, Bush invoked “liberty” 15 times and “freedom” 27 — yet the speech only ran 32 paragraphs. Bush seems to define both concepts as “following the American government’s orders.” That definition diametrically differs from both the dictionary’s and our Founding Fathers’.

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The Founders recognized that liberty is government’s opposite; the more we have of one, the less we have of the other. Free people act, think, and speak as they wish, without anyone’s forcing them to behave or believe otherwise — even if that “anyone” wears a government uniform. Liberty means an absence of governmental force.

But force is government’s essence. The marble monuments and soaring rhetoric, fluttering flags, and stirring ceremonies disguise the State’s ugly soul: force. Behind every law, regulation, program, and agency lurks the threat of force — lethal force ultimately. So expecting government and its armies to “spread liberty” is expecting what never was and never can be.

Behind Banding Together

Americans understood this when they confronted the British Empire’s overwhelming force in 1775. The rebellious colonists triumphed at Lexington and Concord that April when the Redcoats policing Boston marched out of it to disarm the countryside. Instead, farmers and shopkeepers chased the soldiers back to the city, then camped around it in siege lines to keep them there. The British clawed their way out, over Bunker’s Hill, in June. But success cost them so many casualties that Patriots joked about selling them another hill at the same price. And the British victory was an empty one: the colonists merely dug fresh lines a bit further from Boston. The few feet of new ground did their captives no good. One of the British commanders, Gen. Thomas Gage, was shaken enough to plead with the Secretary of War for reinforcements: “A large army must at length be employed to reduce these people.”

Everyone knew that “large army” would soon cross the Atlantic. General George Washington and his commissary and quartermaster desperately needed more men and supplies before then. The Patriots manning the lines lived in whatever crude huts they cobbled together, not tents; Washington devised a series of colored sashes to distinguish rank in the absence of uniforms; and he constantly urged his excited farmboys-turned-soldiers to conserve ammunition. Though he cloaked these orders under the rubric of “military discipline,” they hid a painful truth: reserves of ammunition — and everything else the Continental Army needed, including soldiers — were shockingly short. Once the Redcoats’ reinforcements arrived, those shortages would defeat the Americans faster than the British Army could.

But help lay to the north in Canada. It had the supplies: Washington had heard there was “an Abundance” of powder and arms, blankets and clothing. It had the men: scattered across eastern Canada were some 60,000 people, most of whom spoke French and farmed land belonging to wealthy seigneurs. And it had the oppression that should make those folks want to shake off the British government: the Quebec Act had taken effect May 1, 1775.

This legislation abolished representative assemblies elected by the people and replaced them with an appointed council — read “cronies” — to advise Canada’s governor. The act also restored the legal authority of the Catholic Church, with canon law replacing the more liberal English civil law. It suspended habeas corpus and trial by jury, both hallmarks of a free people. This gave the seigneurs and clergy life-and-death power over citizens, especially those who ran afoul of them.

Perhaps even more tragic because it was more far-reaching was the return of feudal land-tenure: the seigneurs would again require tenants to work for them three days annually. Yet farmers already paid rent and taxes to these landlords as well as fees for the use of almost anything on the estate, whether gristmills, streams and creeks, or forests. The Church also extracted taxes, and these fell on all citizens. Catholic or not, everybody tithed crops and incomes. Everybody would also be harassed by the army of assayers, spies, and bureaucrats who monitored harvests and sales of merchandise — an IRS without the computers.

General Guy Carleton, Canada’s military governor, had spent the four prior years lobbying King George III for passage of the act. Carleton claimed he wanted to restore sovereignty to the French population Britain had inherited with its victory in the French and Indian War. More likely, he worried that he had only 600 or so red-coated enforcers. The act compensated by increasing his own power as well as that of the Roman Catholic clergy and the seigneurs.

It’s no surprise that Carleton and other powerful Canadians — as well as modern historians in love with big government — hailed the act as humane and tolerant. But farmers abhorred it. They had languished as peasants when the French ruled Canada, then gained some freedom when the British took over in 1763. But the act reduced them to peasantry and poverty once more. On the day of its implementation, protestors urinated on a statue of George III.

The Quebec Act also terrified Canada’s southern neighbors. They considered it a warning of what awaited them. Americans were sure the British administration longed to steal a portion of their crops and incomes, too. They loathed the thieves as much as they did the theft: they’d already shown that by tarring and feathering some of the bureaucrats who levied taxes. So furious were the colonists that Thomas Jefferson listed the act among his indictments against the Crown in the Declaration of Independence: “For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument for introducing the same absolute Rule into these colonies.”

Americans assumed Canadians wanted to live free as much as they did. And there were the practical advantages of uniting with Canada. The Continental officers in 1775 feared they could not withstand Britain’s fury without Canada’s help. If ever a country had reason to “spread liberty” to another, with or without the spreadee’s permission, it was Revolutionary America.

Tough Terrain

And yet, when Major General Phillip Schuyler and Colonel Benedict Arnold received orders to march twin columns on Canada’s only cities, Montreal and Quebec, overpower the Redcoats there, and invite Canadians to join the lower 13 colonies, Congress and Washington both stressed the “invite.” Gen. Schuyler should “take possession of St. Johns [a fort near the present Canadian-U.S. border], Montreal, and any other parts of the country” only if this were not “disagreeable to the Canadians.” And Col. Arnold was to discover “the real sentiments of the Canadians towards our Cause.” If they were “averse to it and will not co-operate or at least willingly acquiesce … you are by no Means to prosecute the Attempt,” though the “present enterprise” was “of the utmost consequence to the interest and liberties of America.”

Washington also appealed directly to the Canadians in a broadside:

We have taken up Arms in Defence of our Liberty, our Property; our Wives and our Children: We are determined to preserve them or die.... The cause of America and of liberty is the cause of every virtuous American Citizen Whatever may be his Religion or his descent, the United Colonies know no distinction, but such as Slavery, Corruption and Arbitrary Domination may create. Come then ye generous Citizens, range yourselves under the Standard of General Liberty, against which all the force and Artifice of Tyranny will never be able to prevail.

On September 12, 1775, Gen. Schuyler led troops to St. John’s and asked Canadians to join the rebellion. Four days later, his second-in-command sailed up Lake Champlain with another 1,700 men. Brigadier General Richard Montgomery would join Schuyler at St. John’s. Fortunately for the Americans, the delicate and plodding patrician Schuyler fell sick, leaving energetic Montgomery in charge. He besieged the British garrison at St. John’s until the heavily outnumbered Redcoats surrendered. Montgomery marched victorious into Montreal.

All military campaigning in the 18th century was arduous, but Montgomery’s men enjoyed a cakewalk compared with the second column under Arnold. Short, scrappy, and brilliant, Benedict Arnold was arguably the most talented officer on either side of the Revolution. The nightmare of his treason was yet undreamed; at this point, he was a hero who had helped capture Ft. Ticonderoga and its invaluable guns for the Continentals earlier that year.

Now the colonel decided to reach Quebec via an old Indian trail, most of which wound through Maine’s wilderness. The path had a reputation for harsh, almost impassible conditions, something few men would attempt, let alone an army. This was especially true with the fierce northern winter just weeks away. Which was precisely why Arnold chose it: Canada’s Gov. Carleton would never expect troops to debouch from the backwoods at a time when soldiers of any sense would be snuggling into winter quarters. Should he hear rumors of an army slogging through such forbidding terrain, he would doubtless discount them.

Arnold hoped to build on that and surprise Quebec’s Redcoats. Since he lacked a million-man army and was 150 years shy of aerial bombardment, surprise was essential: Quebec was virtually impregnable, even with only a couple hundred Redcoats protecting it. The city perches on sheer, 100-foot bluffs above the St. Lawrence River, too high and steep to be scaled. As if river and bluffs weren’t protection enough, it also boasted a wall 30 feet high — the lone walled city in North America. Only a couple of commanders had been mad enough to attack this fortress since its founding in 1608. It succumbed just once, in 1759, when its defenders ventured outside the walls to fight on the neighboring Plains of Abraham. They lost in 15 minutes after withstanding a siege of almost three months inside the walls.

Arnold recruited roughly 1,100 men from the army gathered around Boston and shipped them along New England’s coast to Fort Western on the Kennebec River (near modern Augusta, Maine). They would row, pole, and tow large, clumsy, heavy boats known as bateaux up this river, not only against the current but primarily through white water as they ascended into high wilderness. Thereafter, the route alternated between raging rivers and portages through marshes, swamps, and bogs with the troops bearing the burdensome boats on their shoulders. Any dry ground the column hit usually went uphill — more torture for men struggling under 400-pound bateaux.

The trail had never been adequately mapped, and the maps that did exist were inaccurate by design: King George’s cartographers had sabotaged them. They showed the distance to Quebec at 180 miles; it was actually closer to 400. Arnold had calculated that 180 miles through wilderness would require 20 days’ travel. Being a thorough, practical campaigner, he provided rations for 45 days. But his men were on the road almost a week longer than that. Those extra days would have exhausted the rations even if most of them hadn’t spoiled first. “I have been much deceived in every account of our route,” Arnold sighed, “which is longer, and has been attended with a thousand difficulties I never apprehended.”

The march quickly degenerated into a struggle for survival. The river ruined the rations; the men’s noise and smell scared away game. Indeed, the troops were soon “almost destitute of any eatable whatever, except a few candles [dipped from animal fat], which were used for supper, and breakfast next morning, by boiling them in water gruel, &c.,” according to 22-year-old Isaac Senter, the column’s surgeon. But worse was to come: “In company was a poor dog,” Senter continued, “[which had] hitherto lived through all the tribulations [but which] now became a prey for the sustenance of the assassinators. This poor animal was instantly devoured, without leaving any vestige of the sacrifice. Nor did the shaving soap, pomatum, and even the lip salve [like the candles, these toiletries consisted primarily of edible fats such as tallow and lard], leather of their shoes, cartridge boxes, etc, share any better fate.”

Eventually, even the candles and cartridge boxes were gone. Some men eyed the animal skins that had been “for several days in the bottom of their boats, intended for to make them shoes or moccasins.” They burned the hair off these hides, boiled them, and drank the broth. Others tried different recipes: “No one can imagine,” one soldier sighed, “who has not experienced it, the sweetness of a roasted shot-pouch to the famished appetite.”

Nor did the weather take pity on these starving sufferers. A storm pelted them for three days with rain and wind so high the troops had to huddle under fallen trees lest other falling trees kill them. The swollen river flooded one night after they had bedded down beside it. Not only did it swamp their camp, it obliterated their guiding ribbon to Canada. Temperatures plunged bitterly and early: on the first of October, the men woke to find their wet clothes “frozen a pane of glass thick.” Things were so bad that half the column mutinied and turned back. The rest splintered, with every man for himself. Some lost their way and wandered for hours or even days out of their way. A few never returned.

Eventually, the bearded, ragged skeletons staggered out of the wilderness onto the first farms suburban to Quebec. The peasants warmly welcomed them, eager to succor such heroes — though the gold Arnold paid for supplies didn’t hurt either. “Surely a miracle must have been wrought in their favor,” a Canadian marveled. “It is an undertaking above the common race of men.”

Alas, the miracle went for naught: Carleton knew they were coming and, worse, had reinforced Quebec. But men who will brave frozen clothes and roast dog are not easily thwarted. Arnold’s exhausted troops flopped down on siege lines around the city while their indomitable commander scouted a means for overthrowing the British government inside. Gen. Montgomery marched north from Montreal to join the fun, but he and Arnold both knew that even their combined columns could not defeat Quebec’s wall.

Tepid Treatment

Meanwhile, though the peasants were not “averse” to the Americans’ mission and would “co-operate or at least willingly acquiesce,” they had their limits. They happily sold the army supplies, and they worked as auxiliaries to construct siege materials. But they did not join Continental ranks in enough numbers to make a difference. Perhaps they yearned to live free, but not if they had to die for it.

The siege was an imperfect one since reinforcements and supplies still reached Quebec from the St. Lawrence. In fact, the siege could continue indefinitely without much harm to the British but with yet more agony for the Americans as they shivered through a Canadian winter. Montgomery and Arnold realized an outright attack on Quebec was suicidal, but they lacked other options. So once again they resorted to minimizing the odds, as Arnold had tried to do with his Indian trail. Their columns would attack in a classic pincers movement — during the next blizzard, when the British were least expecting it.

That storm hit on December 31, 1775. And just as with Arnold’s march, this new attempt to outfox the enemy backfired. The snow made a virtually impossible attack completely impossible for the Americans, while the British stood laughing atop their invincible wall. A cannonball killed Montgomery almost immediately while a bullet in the leg disabled Arnold at about the same time. Most of his column was captured. Montgomery’s escaped to resume the siege, with Arnold commanding from his hospital bed.

American reinforcements trickled in over the winter — only to sicken and die from small-pox. Arnold’s gold gave out and, with it, the peasants’ goodwill. Then, in May 1776, British ships with fresh troops sailed up the St. Lawrence. The Continentals scrambled south in a rout so frenzied they left their dinners cooking for the arriving Redcoats to enjoy. Even Benedict Arnold, who had persevered through blizzards and floods, candle soup, back-breaking portages, a mutiny, siege and battle, finally admitted defeat: “Neglected by Congress below; pinched with every want here; distressed with the small-pox; want of Generals and discipline in our Army, which may rather be called a great rabble; our late unhappy retreat from Quebec … our credit and reputation lost, and great part of the country; and a powerful foreign enemy advancing upon us, — are so many difficulties we cannot surmount them.” Most disheartening of all, Canadians saw America’s invitation to join the rebellion as an invasion then and now. A plaque in Quebec that marks the spot of Arnold’s wounding reads: “Here Stood Her Old and New Defenders Uniting, Guarding, Saving Canada Defeating Arnold at The Sault-Au-Matelot Barricade on the Last Day of 1775 Guy Carleton Commanding at Quebec.”

The lesson resonates today: bombs and bullets can’t spread freedom, and even invitations can be misinterpreted as invasions. Only by enshrining liberty in our hearts and in our own country will we gleam like a beacon for all the Earth.

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Becky Akers writes frequently about the American Revolution.

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