Our View: 'Our republic is gone'

Most of the time, we try to devote this space to pertinent local and state issues. But now and again, national and international events are just too compelling to stay silent.

This is one of those times. Bundy … Benghazi … Stirling … IRS … Ukraine … Obamacare … Russia … Putin.

The daily diet of it all is enough to get you down, to sap your American optimism.

Sorry about that. But it is. Can’t we score a success about which to feel good?

Take the swirl of the recent week:

Every national media outlet has moved from ill-educated rancher Cliven Bundy (thank goodness) to the despicable comments of Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling. And then they obsess over them, rubbing them in the public’s face day after day, fueling the race to the cultural bottom.

Then The Wall Street Journal and NBC tell us Americans don’t want to be the world’s leader anymore. To that, you certainly can argue we have a commander-in-chief fulfilling that wish. You know the list: Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Putin, et al. No one in the world has reason to trust us.

Oh, let’s not forget Secretary of State John Kerry doing his part to unravel our world status — with his infamous “apartheid” remark about Israel.

And what does this say about the state of and security of your freedom: Remember the furor and outrage over the IRS targeting? Whatever happened to the president “getting to the bottom of it”? Not a thing. No one held accountable.

Indeed, there has been barely a peep in the mainstream media about an IRS attack on a 501c(3) that was even more notorious than stalling the tea-party groups’ not-for-profit applications. Few people have heard about the IRS overtly targeting and completely revoking the tax-exempt status of the Patrick Henry Center, an organization that has been in existence since 1998 and which also happens to be a critic of the president. This was one of the agency’s most egregious political hits, but nothing on it. (Read about it at WND.com.)

Benghazi. Judicial Watch had to sue our own federal government — the “most transparent administration in history” — to force it to release emails and other White House documents to find out.

Lo and behold, the emails said what common sense told us: The White House staff covered up the attacks with the bogus video story to protect the president’s candidacy. It took a year and a half to begin to reveal the truth — and only because the “people” sued to find out.

What’s more, when you read the Judicial Watch report, it is highly implausible to think then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not know what was going on Sept. 11 or Sept. 12, 2012. To wit:

Sept. 11, 2012, 4:49 p.m. — “State Department press officer John Fogarty reporting on ‘Libya update from Beth Jones’:

“‘Beth Jones [acting assistant secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs] just spoke with DCM Tripoli Greg Hicks, who advised a Libyan militia (we now know this is the 17th Feb brigade, as requested by Emb office) is responding to the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi.’”

Sept. 11, 2012, 6:41 p.m. — Senior Advisor Eric Pelofsky to Susan Rice: “As reported, the Benghazi compound came under attack, and it took a bit of time for the ‘Annex’ colleagues and Libyan February 17 brigade to secure it. One of our colleagues was killed — IMO Sean Smith. Amb Chris Stevens, who was visiting Benghazi this week, is missing. U.S. and Libyan colleagues are looking for him … ”

Then, an email among the obtained documents, addressing “talking points” for the Sunday TV shows: “The first draft apparently seemed unsuitable … because they seemed to encourage the reader to infer incorrectly that the CIA had warned about a specific attack on our embassy.

“On the SVTS, Morell noted that these points were not good and he had taken a heavy hand to editing them. He noted that he would be happy to work with [then deputy chief of staff to Hillary Clinton] Jake Sullivan and Rhodes to develop appropriate talking points.”

All of this — the day-to-day swirl — is building up in the psyche of Americans. We’re not feeling like the Americans who believe our country can win the most gold at the Olympics. We’re not feeling confident about our place in the world. And thousands and thousands of us are worrying seriously about the increasing reach and power wielded by our national government.

A Florida taxi driver, known on his blog as “Taxi Hack,” expressed this worry recently in an 8,300-word blog entitled “The Pig Trap.” It should resonate and scare every American — Republican and Democrat alike. As this cab driver puts it, what is happening to us is neither Republican nor Democrat. It’s eating away at the core of what our Founders established.

You wouldn’t expect this from the typical cab driver. And the fact we don’t know his identity somewhat taints his commentary. But his perspective on what he sees happening in the United States and the way he tells it — sometimes in raw language — are powerful and stirring.

“The Pig Trap” is starting to go viral. If you read it, you’ll see why. We have excerpted a portion of it below. We encourage you to go online and read it in its entirety. (Go to: taxicabdepressions.com/?p=1193)
When you finish, you’ll probably agree. As the Taxi Hack puts it: “Our government is utterly lawless. Our representative republic is gone. These people no longer serve the interests of the American people, they serve their own elite interests, and the citizens of the United States have become tax cattle to be managed, milked and controlled. And the security state they have erected is not designed to protect US, it is designed to protect THEM.”
 

A TAXI DRIVER’S LAMENT: WHAT WOULD THE FOUNDERS THINK?

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from “The Pig Trap,” a blog by a Florida taxicab driver. To read the entire article, go to: taxicabdepressions.com/?p=1193.

So in the context of the early 1770s, what would the Founders think about the government secretly and illegally trafficking thousands of military-grade arms to criminals, brigands, and pirates, knowing full well that those criminals will kill thousands of innocent people with said arms, as a ploy to disarm their own citizenry …and when caught red-handed in this criminal and despicable act, the governmental appointee responsible for executing this disgraceful policy lies, dissembles and stonewalls and suffers no sanction or penalty?
What would they think of the government reading, and oftentimes copying and warehousing, every single letter of their correspondence, their diaries, their conversations, their most private and intimate of communications?

What would they think of government agents standing on rooftops and street corners, monitoring and documenting the comings and goings of every citizen every day of his life, whom they speak with and associate with, and what they purchase and from whom?

What would they think about their government spying on journalists, town criers, and pamphleteers and swearing out false oaths to judges to have them surveilled?

What would they think about government tax agents given specific orders to harass, intimidate, penalize and obstruct any person who speaks for peaceful, legislative reform of the government or is critical of the government, even demanding that they document the content of their prayers?

What would they think about a government that routinely ignores laws already on the books solely for material and political gain, a government that creates punitive laws through specious methods, and then exempts themselves from being subject to those laws, and when their agents, officials and appointees are caught in serious crimes and malfeasance, they are simply reassigned and protected by the government, never to face trial or pay any penalty for their acts or the harm they inflict on ordinary citizens?

I’ll tell you what I believe … I believe the shooting would have already started.

It’s not that I want something terrible to happen, it’s that I am positively astonished that something terrible hasn’t already happened.

The Founders set out to create a limited government. They did not create a Constitution that spelled out what the government may not do, they created a Constitution that detailed exactly and precisely what the federal government MAY do, and nothing more. This far, and no further.

All other powers were specifically and deliberately left to the individual states, and to the people themselves. The Bill of Rights was added at the insistence of several of the Founders to protect the individual citizen from future tyranny and avaricious government.

Yet today, our government has no compunctions about monitoring all my communications, tracking my movements, deterring my business success with punitive taxes and onerous regulations, accessing my banking records, compelling my participation in an ill-conceived healthcare system that will most assuredly give me substandard care and higher prices and may violate my personal wants and perhaps even my religious beliefs, and regulating almost every aspect of my day-to-day life, right down to the type of the car that I may drive, the lightbulbs I am allowed to buy, and the kind of toilet I am permitted to [blank] in …
So tell me again … just what are the limits of my so-called limited government?

— Taxi Hack