In today's pages: Salazar, secrecy, and Pennsylvania

Religion and the 2nd amendment are used as a distraction while our other rights and protections from overreaching government are removed. This is not to say that the freedom of religion or the right to bare arms are not important; rather it is to say; do not be led astray. We have lost or given the government power where they have not had it before. The exact opposite of limited government proclaimed by many has happened. We have removed the protection of the individual, like due process, the use of federal military forces upon the domestic population, and the privacy of our person, place, papers and effects. We can cling to our Bible or our gun and it will not bring back the separation of powers, due process, privacy, or the rule of law and not of men. We always hear conservatives talk about their gun as a tool to defend against an overbearing government. That is a joke. The US government has the weaponry and surveillance to put down any armed insurrection by citizens without breaking a sweat. So it is a complete joke of an excuse when conservatives argue that their gun will protect them from the government acting in some intrusive manner. The only use for a gun is for hunting or personal protection from assault by another individual. The only way to protect people from intrusive, big government power is to keep the aspects of the entire constitution intact. The greatest threat to our Liberty is a Unitary Executive Branch (Unitary President) and the granting of power to the government while giving up the protections of the Bill of Rights. For the 2nd amendment to mean anything all the amendments have to be in effect. We have to understand that all the amendments prop up one another. They are codependent rights. With out privacy there is no freedom of speech; with out privacy there is no freedom of religion. With out due process and the Rule of Law your gun is nothing more than a decoration. The protection of our individual sovereignty is defended not only by the 2nd amendment; rather it is defended by what used to be the Constitution and the Bill of Rights prior to this administration. Weather you have religion or a gun will not stop intrusive surveillance of your every action or thought. Religion and a gun will not stop the value of the dollar from crashing. They will not stop pollution, job loss, sinking wages, corporate fraud or abuse, and government corruption. They will only give you a false sense of safety in a world ruled by lawyers, money, and big business interests. If you doubt me study the very religious people of Europe who were taken advantage of, they were called serfs or commoners. The serfs were people ruled by Monarchies that took advantage of their innocent faith in religion. They were told that Kings and Queens were a bloodline of Divine Heritage. When the truth was that they were slaves in a land of a privileged few. Religion can bring you spiritual comfort when times are difficult. But that is where it ends. Religion and guns cannot protect you from your government’s abuse or failure, yet we continue to pray for things to change. Nothing will change unless we do it ourselves. Obams is actually giving us the old conservative bootstrap argument, only in a different way.

The issue of people clinging to religion and guns is a statement that is true. It is not condescending to mention reality. There has been a push by conservatives to fuse religion and government, with out a doubt. Has any faith-based program solved any problem or political issue facing the US? No. Have the faith-based programs eliminated poverty, a poor economy, increased national security, fixed health care, or stopped the flow of jobs overseas? No. Does religion help end the hate of homosexuals, Muslims, or Atheists? No.
Has religion created a more tolerant or non-discriminatory society? Not much. You cannot run an economy or a government on faith. You cannot conduct a scientific research project with faith. People in small towns or large cities have been herded like sheep into believing that secular government is evil, Atheists are out to convert you, and that faith-based programs can do a better job than the government. Conservatives have been in charge of government for the majority of the past 20 years, so if government has failed, it is because they do no believe in it and they have let it fail. It is easy to claim that government does not work if you do not believe in it in the first place and continually dismantle its foundations. It is easy to claim that regulation or government is defunct or broken when they have broken the governmental system from the ground up. Then many conservative republicans or libertarians usher in the church or free market solutions as a replacement for government. This is not good for Liberty, Justice, and the Constitutional American Way. Has the faith-based program of abstinence only for teen sex problems worked? No. Many conservatives fall back on the gun issue or the 2nd amendment as the only amendment that is under threat. They cling to the 2nd amendment while ignoring the rest of the constitution. At the CPAC meeting conservatives applauded John Yoo and his lack of respect for the constitution. What good is the 2nd amendment if we have no privacy, due process, or equal branches of government? Nothing! We can cling to our guns while living in a nation with a constitution that is the victim of legal termites. We can cling to the 2nd amendment gun rights while all the other aspects of a free society go the way of the Dinosaur. Does Posse Commutates or Habeas Corpus mean anything? Do the same conservatives who cling to their guns care about the Executive Branch (the President) grabbing the power of a King? I am afraid that the gun rights issue is used to distract people from the fact that most of the constitution no longer is in effect. While they pry your gun from your cold dead hands, those who take your gun did it by removing your other rights first. We should cling to the constitution, for that is all that matters.

The Manichean mind set of Bush was further reinforced by the teaching of a tiny cohort of 15 Neocons who were invited by Bush to a luncheon meeting ,which Bush described as a "literary luncheon" in Febrary 2007 as quoted by Glenn Greewald in his book,"A tragic legacy".The five lessons taught in that meeting were simply promotion of Neocon agenda ,having no consideration for the actual American interest, objective realities and the consquences for future gernerations.
What has Bush administration done to the fundemental rights of Americans for the satisfaction of his whimsical and Manichean drives is fully explained by Greenwald in his book,"How would a patriotic act?"How a born again Christian, evenglist and proclaimed hard core republican ,negates the values of his faith and political philosphy ,can become stark nakedly clear but stripping off the charades and disguised facade of a shallow character in blistering contradictions of sayings and doings covertly through so called executive orders which thawarted and negated the directives and the spirit of resoultions passed by the Houseand the Senate after lengthy discussions..