Archive for Tuma's Voice

Abraham Lincoln’s feet of clay: “The Great Emancipator” was a racist tyrant

Posted in Tuma's Voice by R Lee Wrights on December 31st, 2007

by Kevin Tuma

courtesy of Kevin Tuma“My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.”

- Abraham Lincoln, August 22, 1862, letter to newspaper editor Horace Greeley

In recent news, the Press has begun to pillory Ron Paul over his unconventional views of the US Civil War. It is unknown what they hope to accomplish by spotlighting a 147-year old historical event as a campaign issue; but the inference, since the discussions concern slavery, suggests a subtle attempt to smear Paul as a racist.

Before the socialist tyrant lovers in the mainstream media wax too orgasmic about using Paul’s position against him, it is worth pointing out that his position is the intelligent and informed position. It’s long since past obvious that the MSM is uninterested in reaching an intelligent, informed audience—but I’m not too sure this Lincoln debate is something they really want to dredge up into a national controversy. The odds are much too high that modern-day people may actually learn something new.

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Principles of Liberty: 16 affirmations for those who would live free

Posted in Tuma's Voice by R Lee Wrights on November 3rd, 2007

by Kevin Tuma

courtesy of Kevin TumaI. I was born free. No government can sanction my freedom, or take it away.

II. I believe the government should be as small as possible, and its laws should be as minimal as possible.

III. I acknowledge that free speech is a fundamental human right; any controls upon speech or ideas represent tyranny. There is absolutely no such thing as “treasonous” or “politically correct” speech. No one has a right not to be offended by ideas.

IV. I understand that the government’s only legitimate use of military force is to protect its citizens from foreign invasion.

V. I understand that the government’s only legitimate use of police force is to protect citizens from crimes of violence or theft.

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The two gravest dangers facing America — and how to take back our liberties in spite of them

Posted in Tuma's Voice by R Lee Wrights on October 10th, 2007

by Kevin Tuma

courtesy of Kevin Tuma“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.”

-George Washington

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

-Thomas Jefferson

As the Twenty-First century plods on, so does the War on Terror, or–as it might be more accurately called, the “Reign of Terror”. There seem to be no intrusive spy powers that are too much for our federal government to reach for–without any expressed permission from the electorate, or special exemptions from the Bill of Rights, Habeas Corpus, or judicial review. Some hopeful wisps of media and Congressional dissent have breezed about lately, although it’s unknown how long these fragile noises of oversight will last. We will know soon enough, if and when the Patriot Act is finally renewed by Congress. (Any ‘patriot’ worthy of the word, of course, would spit on that voluminous set of documents, and toss their unconstitutional pages onto a fire.)

Contemporary critics of the Bush administration often quote Patrick Henry and Ben Franklin, who both warned against trading liberty for security. The inference is made that modern-day GOP loyalists are fearful to the point of willingness to trade anything for promises of security against terrorism. These points might have been true in the winter of 2001, but are not too accurate in our current situation. More relevant quotations for today would be those warning against political parties, found in George Washington’s Farewell Address.

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Hillary frightens me … Not

Posted in Tuma's Voice by R Lee Wrights on September 4th, 2007

by Kevin Tuma

courtesy of Kevin TumaIf anything is desperately needed now in America, it is a vigorous housecleaning of the corrupt morons who were elected under the hollow pretense of being the “lesser of two evils.” Any political candidate who is so lackluster, so soulless, so devoid of leadership that his only point of promotion is that “the other guy is worse” (whether true or not), is a candidate who will ultimately prove to be a dangerous wastrel in elective office. For over a decade, people who listened to talk radio and cable news elected a huge pack of such candidates to Congress and the White House—and they have proven to be a spectacularly sorry bunch of amoral scoundrels. These people are Republicans.
 
They are now like rats leaving a sinking ship, huddled in frightened circles, and throwing their friends overboard with each new erupting scandal. Meanwhile, the hand-picked “front runners” in the Republican presidential race could not possibly look more ineffectual or backward-thinking. The GOP is going down in flames. The party’s only hope, at this writing, is that Bush will make as few headlines as possible in the next fourteen months, and that conservative voters will recoil in horror at the presidential nomination of Hillary Clinton.

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1905 Then and Now

Posted in Tuma's Voice by R Lee Wrights on August 25th, 2007

by Kevin Tuma

courtesy of Kevin TumaI got another forwarded feel-good e-mail today. It was an upgrade of a similar e-mail I’d read a year before, which had been making the rounds for quite awhile. It went thus:

“THE YEAR 1905

This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine! The year is 1905. One hundred years ago. What a difference a century makes!

Here are some of the U.S. statistics for the Year 1905:

-The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years.

-Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub.

-Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

-The average wage in the US was 22 cents per hour.

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Why the Libertarians must draft Ron Paul

Posted in Tuma's Voice by R Lee Wrights on July 3rd, 2007

by Kevin Tuma

courtesy of Kevin TumaIt’s prognostication time: I will now indulge in egotistical predictions.

I predicted, in one of my first online columns, that if the GOP did not turn back to the old Right and stop abrogating the Constitution, the party would “reap the whirlwind”. It took a little longer than I thought, but it happened…and indeed, it is still happening. If the tea leaves did not reveal a furious conservative electorate, GOP senators would not be scrambling to confront the President on his silly immigration schemes, or to undercut the Bush war in Iraq. They smell blood…and it’s their own.

However, the neo-con dominated GOP is not going to remake itself, cast away all its corruption, and start practicing Jeffersonianism just because of some little thing like staring into the dark, gaping maw of a political abyss.

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It is Time to Shatter the Hegemony of the Two Party System

Posted in Tuma's Voice by R Lee Wrights on May 28th, 2007

by Kevin Tuma

courtesy of Kevin Tuma“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”

-Henry David Thoreau

An Open Letter to Ron Paul:

Mr. Paul, you have served the cause of individual liberty superbly, and honorably, in your role as the last living statesman remaining in the United States Congress.

You have recently gone on to score great rhetorical victories-and achieve much fame in the public eye-in the debates, where you have so adroitly told the world The Emperor Has No Clothes.

You have earned the respect of virtually every libertarian in America, as well as every true conservative.

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What is a Conservative?

Posted in LFA Flashback, Tuma's Voice by R Lee Wrights on April 6th, 2007

by Kevin Tuma

courtesy of Kevin Tuma“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

- Ronald Reagan

“A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.”

- Barry Goldwater

It’s unsure whether or not we have had a real conservative in the White House since the Nineteenth Century. There were no conservative Presidents in the last century who were Democrats. There were no obvious Republican conservatives in the Oval Office, either. Eisenhower certainly wasn’t a conservative. Nixon was openly socialistic. Ronald Reagan wasn’t a conservative, either, at least in governance–although he espoused conservatism forcefully on a rhetorical level. Perhaps in that sense, we may define Reagan as a Rightist philosopher, like Robert Taft or Barry Goldwater. Unfortunately Reagan’s beliefs did not transfer into presidential leadership–due in large part to the fact that Reagan was an anachronism, and he had already outlived the effective lifespan of conservatism itself.

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The Whirlwind Approacheth

Posted in Tuma's Voice by R Lee Wrights on March 28th, 2007

by Kevin Tuma

courtesy of Kevin Tuma“War is sweet to those who have never experienced it.”

-Pindar

“If a man does not know to which port he is sailing, any wind is unfavourable.”

-Seneca

TIME’s cover for March 26 is heartfelt and sad. Swiping a line from Pat Buchanan–”How the Right Went Wrong”–it depicts a troubling photo of a forlorn Ronald Reagan with a computer-generated tear running down his cheek, and asks the question “What would Ronnie do?” The image is hauntingly reminiscent of the crying Indian in the ‘Keep America Beautiful” ads from the 1970s. The evocation of a weeping Reagan is powerful testimony to the love and respect most Americans feel for our 40th president. The TIME article then goes on–in classic news media fashion–to babble meaningless half-answers to the cover question, missing the mark more often than not.

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The Ugly Truth About the Republican Party: The Myth of GOP Conservatism

Posted in Tuma's Voice by R Lee Wrights on November 1st, 2006

by Kevin Tuma

courtesy of Kevin Tuma“An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.”

-Thomas Jefferson

“Degrees do not matter…one does not bargain about inches of evil.”

- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

As a paleoconservative, I find myself these days looking back at the Clinton Administration with a sort of warm, golden nostalgia. Much has changed since those days…and not for the better. To anyone with even a basic understanding and respect for the Bill of Rights, the United States, since September 11, 2001, has begun a nightmarish descent. To put it simply, the Bush White House has put the Constitution on the chopping block in ways the Clintons would have never dared to attempt.

The US public—naive and obedient as always–blithely sucked up the maudlin flag-waving and crocodile tears that accompanied the passage of the Patriot Act and the Office of Homeland Security. Authorities can now invade homes without warrants, arrest people without charges, and jail people without trials.

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