Ann Coulter has had a taste of what liberals will do if you disagree with them, having been assaulted at almost every college campus where she has been invited to speak. What threat could Ms. Coulter pose that college students feel the need to bombard her with vegetables, push her from the stage and hold unruly demonstrations? Apparently dissent and debate is not something liberals can easily tolerate if it’s directed toward them. Karl Rove was similarly accosted by an antiwar activist while onstage during a panel discussion. Funny, no high-profile liberal has ever been pelted with fruit by a group of young conservatives. Al Franken has never had to suffer the humiliation of picking rotten tomatoes out of his hair or trying to outshout some idiot with a bullhorn and yet he encourages, even demands, the very same action be taken against his conservative opponents. 

And then, there are the thugs - the ones that show up to disrupt speeches, meetings and events being held by conservatives. The mainstream media spends little time examining the motives and resources of liberal thugs. When they are mentioned, it’s almost always in the context that the targeted conservative truly deserved to be assaulted, or that the conservative’s viewpoints where somehow dangerously inflammatory, controversial or racist. Therefore, these thugs were fully justified in their actions.

The thugs appear wherever pressure is required. St. Paul, Minnesota is probably not a hotbed of liberal thuggery and so one can assume that they were imported specifically for the 2008 Republican convention. Who paid for their travel, food and lodging? It could be some of the many liberal front organizations that receive money from wealthy donors like George Soros or Peter Lewis through intermediaries. The money could have come indireclty from the campaign coffers of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, or possibly the Democratic National Committee. It’s easy to do. If the Obama campaign can accept millions of dollars in untraceable prepaid credit card donations, it’s likely the money can flow out of the campaigns in equally devious ways. The more likely scenario are private foundations that laundered the money through several layers of middlemen. In any case, liberals feel that the ends justify the means. If a little muscle can get us all to the promised land just a little quicker, so much the better. Lenin would agree.

The media monkeys are patting themselves on the back these days. They managed to pull off a coup, installing a Marxist in the White House and consolidating leftist power in Congress. Besides the $400 million tax credit to media producers hidden inside the bank bailout bill, there must be something else they’ll receive in exchange for bamboozling the American voter. Whatever it might be, you can count on the media to continue their cheerleading for what could become the most oppressive regime in America history. There’s no going back. There’s no time out. What Obama and Congress do with their newly acquired power will be irreversible. One thing is sure: productive, working Americans will pay for it all, in economic terms and personal freedoms.

Once the Obama Nation becomes a reality, merely voting him and his leftist compatriots out of office won’t matter. The structural changes he intends to make place government first, above all else. That means the government no longer serves the people and is no longer accountable to the people. Rather, we, the citizens, work for the government, and we are accountable to the government. Unelected, unaccountable officials deep within a vast bureacracy will hold the power of life and death over us. And no, we can’t just take it back. No one in power ever relinquishes that power without a fight. It only happened once in human history — when the founding fathers of this country drafted and ratified a Constitution which accomplished precisely that.

No, the middle class will literally have to wrest control of their lives and this country away from the bureaucrats and elites. It will get ugly. That Brooks Brothers suit is going to get wrinkled manning the barricades on Main Street.

Senator Barack Obama is now President-Elect Obama. The crowds went wild in Grant Park and Times Square. Certainly, it’s a historic event - an African American candidate breaks the color barrier. But, there are many more accomplished and experienced African Americans who were ignored by their own parties, the media and voters in general. Why this guy? In any case, we’re stuck with our choices good, bad or indifferent. The Obama administration and a largely Democratic Congress will now shove through legislation and programs that will grow government and limit our personal and economic freedoms. It will be unprecedented in American history. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a socialist elitist who firmly believed in and enforced a class hierarchy in the US. Lyndon Baines Johnson was a socialist elitist who firmly believed in a morally and ethicly ambivalent society. But, neither man was so brazen as to promise he would dismantle the protections of the Constitution and call for an internal, civilian security force equal in power and funding to our military. And neither man openly promised forced redistribution of wealth, pitting one class of Americans against another.

This will come as a rude shock to those who think that Obama will pay for their gasoline, pay their mortgages and give them ‘free’ health care. It will never happen. Instead, every form of taxation will be increased and new taxes will be instituted. Everyone will suffer. If you thought medical care was expensive, time-consuming and frustrating, wait until the government gets involved. You’ll be waiting line for an aspirin. There is nothing that our government does exceptionally well, with a few colossally expensive exceptions — aerospace and defense. And the reason these two areas can point to incredible technical and operational achievements is because cost, the taxpayer’s liability, is no object. Get ready for a $20 bottle of aspirin coming to a drugstore near you. Oh, that triple bypass that will save your life? You’ll have to wait 10 years. But, if you’re politically connected, perhaps a Democratic party apparatchik, you’ll be in and out in 4 days.

About 200 years ago, the founding fathers limited voting to men with property. And, for about the first 10 or so years, it was a fairly small group. At the same time, however, new landowners by the tens of thousands were being created as the new country essentially gave away land it had wrested from indigenous natives to newly landed settlers. Rightly or wrongly, that confiscated land provided voting rights to a huge number of men who could not have purchased that land in Europe even if they possessed the means to do so. In short order, even a subsistence farmer working a few acres of land cleared by hand could step up to the polling booth. Being a man of property didn’t necessarily mean the man was wealthy. It did mean he was a man of commitment and responsibility, because to work the land was a backbreaking, all-consuming task. Over the years, our government gave land away or sold it cheaply under the condition that it be worked for a minimum of 5 years before title passed to the new owner. Not a year, not a few months, but 5 years. That’s a serious commitment. From 1803 to 1891, a signficant number of men and their families tried and failed, returning to the cities in the East.

The underlying reason for a property ownership prerequisite was simple: the founding fathers were concerned that extending voting rights to everyone would quickly tip the balance in favor of those benefiting from the collection of taxes. In other words, those who fed at the public trough would outnumber and out-vote those who worked to fill that trough. It’s a sad reality that there are more poor people than there are affluent people. The facts and circumstances have been debated for centuries, but that doesn’t change anything.

Over the years, all pre-requisites for voting have been removed. Now, the only pre-requisite is to show up at the polling booth or return an absentee ballot. Some states don’t even require a photo ID or proof of citizenship. Others allow same-day registration and voting. This is absurd. It encourage ballot stuffing and other forms of voting fraud, something that Democrats have turned into an art form. If someone responsible is ever voted into the White House, one of the first measures to push through Congress would be a uniform voting standard. That means proof of citizenship and photo ID must be shown to poll workers. But another, even more critical requirement should be introduced. Anyone allowed to cast a vote in the US cannot be a dependent of the state. Otherwise, the dependents will keep voting themselves more benefits, to the detriment of all who work and pay taxes. Americans are stupendously generous. No dependents of the state will suffer or go hungry. Instead, they’ll find yet another tremendous incentive to become productive citizens and carry their own weight. Who are these dependents? You’d be surprised. It’s not the usual stereotypes, but a slice of the spectrum that includes the richest and poorest among us. Dependency isn’t necessarily an economic state. It’s a state of mind.

It’s too bad that most Americans are so totally self-absorbed that they missed the passing of their personal and economic freedoms. Somewhere between NFL Monday night football and that second helping of potatoes and gravy Americans forgot why we exist and what purpose America has served. For all of those sleeping off the stupor of too many pork rinds and beer, this is a gentle reminder: We are the children of those who came here to make a life that would be impossible to duplicate in the Old World. We are the children of those who brought Europe and Asia back from the brink of totalitarianism not once, but three times. (If you’re thinking only WWI and WWII, don’t forget the Cold War). When calamity strikes anywhere in the world, all eyes turn toward America. No country has ever defeated us. Instead, we have defeated ourselves from within, a not a single shot was fired.

What Communist Russia and the Peoples’ Republic of China had tried to do unsuccessfully for decades, we managed to do ourselves. No one was minding the store. America reveled in its material success, in its puerile fascination with sexuality and permissiveness. We allowed a culture to develop that apologized for sloth, stupidity, depravity and dependence. And while the party raged, politicians, bureaucrats and the liberal elite took apart our guarantees and opportunities. The news and entertainment media played the part of rodeo clowns, distracting us while the power elite took aim at American principles and ideals. Our government grew explosively, eating away at the GDP and our personal incomes. And now, some are wondering if our best days are behind us.

They are. It may take a half-century to right the ship of state with no guarantee it will ever sail like the one commisioned by the founding fathers. The damage to the American psyche, to the spirit of optimism and self-reliance is considerable, and probably mortal. Who knows if we’ll ever recover. At the moment, those who benefit from government largesse can out-vote or out-lobby those who actually pay taxes. Once that dynamic is in place, the situation corrects itself only when the treasury is completely empty and the parasites have nowhere else to turn. It won’t be pleasant. But, it will signal bottom.  From there, it’s anyone’s guess.