The 12th Commandment - By Craig Dixon (on Facebook)

The Twelfth Commandment: Forget the Eleventh Commandment
By
CRAIG DIXON
April 13, 2009


When I was a wee little Craiglet at the tender age of 15, I was the stuff of Al Franken’s nightmares.

I was as hardcore Republican as they come. I was glued to the party line. I stuck to Reagan’s ‘Eleventh Commandment’ like red mud on a boot: “Thou shall not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”

I loved guns, beer, and pretty southern girls. My favorite book was “Conscience of a Conservative” by Barry Goldwater. I thought of “Red Dawn” as an educational film. I made PETA cry and tree huggers cringe in disgust as I carnivorously consumed rare steaks and chugged along in my parent’s Ford Explorer.

Life was good.

Then President ‘Dubya’ came along. I gave this guy a chance in 2000, honestly, I did. He was, after all, a Republican. He was on my team. He had to be one of the good guys… right?

President Reagan, you were wrong sir. Your Eleventh Commandment be damned. Bush sucked.

Bush isn’t a fiscal conservative, he's a big spender. He ran up one hell of a credit card bill on the American people and then finished us off with a “bailout.” His administration massively increased the size of the federal government. The security apparatus grew into a mushroom cloud after 9/11.

Under Bush, America saw the emergence of no-fly lists, DHS, the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act, wire tapping programs devoid of judicial oversight (and of highly questionable legality), “enhanced interrogation techniques” (also known as water boarding, a technique many organizations and authorities classify as torture), and the suspension of Habeas Corpus for any American citizen deemed an ‘enemy combatant’.

Suddenly, being mud stuck on the boot wasn’t so cool; Bush’s foot was in it he was stomping all over conservative ideals.

Is anyone having fun at the airport these days?

America initiated two wars under Bush (after he’d already run on a platform in 2000 of ‘not policing the world’), one under decidedly false pretenses (Remember those WMDs that still haven’t been found?). Both wars are still ongoing (with costs both monetary and human).

Reagan may have held his tongue, but Benjamin Franklin wouldn’t. Franklin didn't suffer from the constraints of any such commandment; he was unaffiliated with any parties. “He who would trade his liberty for temporary security deserves neither liberty nor security,” he once said.

Can someone explain to me how we didn’t do just that by allowing Bush to make all these crazy changes?

Just before America said sayonara to Bush in January, he passed his “bailout”... quite similar to Obama’s. We now have 1.175 trillion dollars in planned “bailout” spending for 2009 alone.

The end result? Your grand kids will owe quite a bit of money to some private bank in New York for the duration of their lives. Oh and maybe hyperinflation, but we’ll see.

We just “bailed” out a bunch of companies on Wall Street with money that we don't actually have. Is using a fiat currency that is issued by a privately owned institution (the so-called "Federal" Reserve, which is not actually federal.) helping things? Should the GOP be supporting this?

Let me get this straight, we are letting Wall Street keep what they make, but paying for their losses? Privatizing gains and socializing losses? The GOP is supporting this?

That’s certainly not free market-capitalism. It is one thing though, it’s dangerous.

Jefferson agreed with me at least, when he said, “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

Jackson didn't like these guys too much either, central bankers. His exact words were, "Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out.”

Scary, but perhaps he’s right. Tent cities are springing up all over the nation, and foreclosures are soaring. USA Today reported in February that the foreclosure numbers for 2008 were over 3 million. Sure sounds like a lot of ruined families to me.

Something isn't right.

The GOP betrayed the free-market.

“Why did we lose?” I keep hearing GOP members ask.

The GOP lost because it has failed to represent the type of conservatism that most people actually want. It pushed neoconservatives to the front and tried to silence the rest, it pushed a security state that nobody likes, and jumped into bed with authoritarians, banksters, and big-government.

During the election, a popular term, “Rudy McRomneyson” (An amalgamation of Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson) caught on amongst circles of voters. That’s just the result of the GOP peddling more of the same.

The last thing people want are more big-government Bush clones like McCain.

GOP Governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, touched upon this in a recent commentary for CNN, “Conservatives didn’t lose the election, the GOP did.”

“Republicans have campaigned on the conservative themes of lower taxes, less government and more freedom -- they just haven't governed that way. America didn't turn away from conservatism, they turned away from many who faked it,” he said.

Congressman Ron Paul tried to point out the inconsistencies of the current Republican policies during the primaries. McCain and Guiliani, both ganged up on him for a laugh fest in what was supposedly a series of official presidential debates.

When the moderators of these so-called debates are putting words into the candidates’ mouths and the GOP leadership isn’t outraged, something seems very wrong.

I’d recommend checking out the Fox News debate from September 5, 2007, for Chris Wallace’s smarmy assertion that Paul takes his “marching orders” from Al Qaeda.

The GOP should have called for Wallace’s head, and condemned him for a lack of journalistic integrity. Instead the front liners all giggled like little school girls.

They then proceeded to lose the both houses of Congress and the White House. Nice work.

Is the GOP still laughing?

I thought Republicans advocated smaller government, insuring my privacy, promoting free market capitalism, avoiding wars, and letting people speak their minds.

At least, that’s what I was told throughout my young-adulthood while the Republicans endured their 90s exile from Washington. With the exception of Paul, Sanford, and a few others, I’ve yet to see the GOP really practice what they preach.


Dear GOP, want to win in 2012? Want disillusioned people like me to rejoin your party?

I have a new commandment for you then… The Twelfth Commandment: Thou shall forget the Eleventh Commandment (A repeal of a prohibition if you will. Why not? It worked out once before back with the booze ban didn’t it?).

Kick the neoconservatives to the curb. Libertarian ideals made the GOP revered. Neoconservatives have made the GOP hated.

Political Activist Celeste Craig coined a term I’ve heard catching on: ‘RINO’. It means Republican-in-name-only. I think it's time for the GOP to call in Animal Control. It was supposed to be an elephant party and RINOs weren’t invited, but they barged their way in and now we have nothing short of a circus.

I didn’t leave the GOP until the GOP left me. I’m still the same kid I was all those years ago.
I still give Al Franken nightmares. I strike fear into the hearts of socialists. The Soviet Union fell in ‘91 because it was scared of what I might do to it when I grew up.

I just don’t like being taxed. I don’t like being watched by people I don't know. I don’t like having my rights to self-defense reduced. I don’t like having my children and their children living in perpetual debt. If that makes me un-Republican, so be it. I'm a conservative first.

Finally, I don’t like being told what to do, and I don’t think other Americans do either.

If the Republicans want to win, they need to have the same attitude. If Republicans want to win, they must disassociate themselves with ideas of a 'security' state. They must disassociate with ideas of amnesty for illegal aliens, tax-payer “bailouts”, and bigger government. If Republicans want to win, they’d better start remembering the ‘republic’ part of their name and work to restore the republic. If Republicans want to win, they need to re-inject a little ‘Don’t tread on me’ back into their mainline.

America started out as a nation of independent rebels who hated authoritarians. Now we have the largest civil government in history and we're taxed left and right. There's something wrong with that picture and the GOP should take notice.

Cut spending. Protect property. Condemn torture. Fight invasions of privacy. Speak out against run-away spending, banking scams, and theft. Work to shrink government size. Hold government accountable (that includes GOP members) to the public. Defend the second amendment. Respect the sovereignty of states. Exhaust diplomacy before starting more wars—they’re too damn expensive.

A few years back, a couple of guys mapped out a game-winning plan for you guys to follow in 2012. They called it the United States Constitution.

Thoughts on Christian Life

From Pope Benedict XVI's interview with E. von Gemmingen, the head of the German section of Vatican Radio on August 15, 2005:

“I want them to understand that it is beautiful to be a Christian! The generally prevailing idea is that Christians have to observe an immense number of commandments, prohibitions, precepts, and other such restrictions, so that Christianity is a heavy and oppressive way of living, and it would therefore be more liberating to live without all these burdens.

But I would like to make it clear that to be sustained by this great Love and God’s sublime revelation is not a burden, but rather a set of wings – that it is truly beautiful to be a Christian. It is an experience that gives us room to breathe and move, but most of all, it places us within a community since, as Christians, we are never alone: first of all, there is God, who is always with us; secondly, we are always forming a great community among ourselves: a community of people together on a journey, a community with a project for the future. All of this means that we are empowered to live a life worth living. This is the joy of being a Christian; that it is beautiful and right to believe!"


Pope Benedict XVI, From a Homily given on April 24th, 2005:

"And only where God is seen does life truly begin. Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is. We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution.

Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary. There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him."

Good

I've had some things running through my head lately, and this blog is the first of those thoughts I have decided to put into writing.

Have you ever somebody make the outrageous claim that they are a good person? Have they ever used reasoning like: "I'm a good person, I've never killed anyone." or "I'm a good person, I don't steal things."?
Perhaps that claim isn't so outrageous. After all, it is good if you haven't killed anyone (but does this mean that soldiers are bad people?), or don't steal things. However, there are a couple of problems with the claims. First off, by whose standards are we living a "good" life? Good according to society? According to the laws of the United States?
What is God's standard? I used to believe that human beings were inherently evil. I used to believe that society taught man to be good (Keep in mind that I do mean man/woman, he/she, and his/her throughout this blog). However, the more I read the Bible, and the more I learn about the world in general, is that mankind, by his very nature, is good. When God created man, in fact, when he finished his creating, he saw that all that he had made was good! So, if this is the case, that all mankind, although sinful, is good.
God does not call man to be just good, though. He calls them to be Holy. And if you're standard is holiness, then "good" does not seem to impressive on the totem pole. He calls us to be like Jesus - the perfect HUMAN! When Christ died, he achieved perfect humanity.
This idea springs into my head whenever I hear someone claim they are a good person. While I am far from holy (that's why the term is "practicing Christian"), I hope my life is a countinuous process of achieving holiness.