The people who would revise history - just forget what really happened and make up a new scenario - would have you believe that the problems we are confronting today are all the problems brought on by Republican administrations. I will say at the very beginning that I have always been a registered independent voter; I don't care who wins an election, so long as that person will stand behind the oath of office - to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. We are privileged to live in the freest society ever in the history of the world! Many today are using that freedom to excess. Many today think they are so free they can do anything at all they want to do, regardless of how their actions may affect the lives of others in our society. It's time to review a few things, and set the record straight.
How many of you know what it was that caused our Founding Fathers to finally decide to break away from the rule of the king and Parliament? How many of you know that we already had a Bill of Rights before there was any thought of revolution? How many of you know what was contained in our Declaration of Independence? Take a little time for review.
With all the things that happened from 1763 to 1776, the single thing that finally brought the realization of revolution to the front was our loss of the legal recourse to law. The royal courts refused the pleas of those who still considered themselves loyal Englishmen; refused to accept the idea that their rights as Englishmen were being violated. If you can't get justice in court, you have little left but slavery... or revolution.
Over a period stretching from 1215 to 1689, the English developed the sense that man had an innate right to be free. Not all men, to be sure, but eventually that idea trickled down to the common folk. King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta by the nobility who grew tired of heavy taxation, and the lack of consultation between the king and the nobility. A list of other grievances were included in that historic document, and some things were gradually accepted by those who ruled in England. Over the years freedom of political speech evolved, and freedom from arrest or incarceration without warrant, and the right to trial by a jury of one's peers. As the power of the Throne grew, some kings were more inclined to rule without counsel, and to collect whatever taxes they chose. In 1628, Parliament had evolved to a state of reality, but without the power to curb over-eager monarchs... until they exercised the right of no taxation without the consent of Parliament. King Charles I, second of the Stuart line, was busy fighting wars to enlarge his realm, only he ran out of money. He went to Parliament for more taxes, and had to agree to another incursion on royal authority to get his new taxes, the Petition of Right. After he got his new taxes, he sent Parliament home and went about doing what he jolly-well pleased... for a while.
A political group called the Roundheads, led by a man named Oliver Cromwell, rose up against the king in what came to be known as the Glorious Revolution. After several years, the Roundheads caught the King and offed his head! Cashed in his royal chips, if you please. And England was ruled as a Commonwealth, under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, for about 20 years. When Cromwell died, Parliament could find no one who could replace him, so they asked the Stuart ruler to return, Charles II. This Charles knew a good thing when he saw it, and he ruled without rocking the political boat, but when he died, the next Stuart, James II, was rather a throwback to Charles I, only without the fortitude. When he learned Parliament had dispatched an army to take him out, James chose to take an extended vacation in France. Then, Parliament looked to the next in the Stuart line, Mary, who was the wife of William of Orange -the Netherlands - and since Mary wasn't deemed to be a strong leader - Parliament invited William to be her King, with some reservations. William could not continue as king should Mary die, nor could any of his descendants have a claim on the English Crown should he die. But the clincher was this: they both had to agree to an English Bill of Rights before they would be allowed to rule!
Among other things, that reasserted the idea of no taxation without representation, Parliament could not be dissolved by the king without its permission, no troops could be quartered in private homes without the owners consent, no search of homes or business without warrant, no imprisonment without warrant and trial, and a number of other things. In the 18th century, after the last of the Stuarts died, the next in line to the English throne was a German! The House of Hanover had as its head Prince George, who became George I of England. He never bothered to learn to speak English, so Parliament selected one of their own to be the go-between, the liaison officer, to the king. The first one of those was a man named Robert Walpole, who became the first Prime Minister. All this as background to the events which followed the Seven Years War in Europe.
There were so many wars in Europe they had to start naming them for the years they lasted. It had become the role of England to be the balance of power in those wars, and England and France generally ended up on opposite sides. By the 18th century, both of them had colonial interests in North America. All the royal charters of the English colonies granted land which would stretch all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The French had fur traders who had explored much of Canada, and the central portions of North America, along with French priests. The French had built a fort and trading post where the Allegheny and Mononghela Rivers flowed together and formed the Ohio River. That was called Fort Duquesne. A force of Red Coats were sent out, under the command of General Braddock, with the assistance of a Colonial Militia officer named George Washington, to take Fort Duquesne away from the French. The French had lived with the Indians in North America, and had the friendship of all the tribes except the Iroquois Nation. So the French teamed with the Indians, who hated the British, to resist Braddock's force. They fought as the Indians fought - from behind rocks and trees, setting ambushes, etc. And the British couldn't cope with that. Nearly the whole force was killed, including Braddock, and it became Washington's role to lead those who lived back to the east.
Folks, Washington didn't start the French and Indian war, as you have been told by the revisionists. He just rescued the survivors of that force! The war had started in Europe, and had a ripple effect on the English and French interests in North America.
So the war that started in Europe spread to North America between the French and English. In our own history, we call that the French and Indian War, because our settlers in the English colonies fought with the British against the French and Indians. When that war ended in Europe, England gained control of all the land the French claimed in North America - Canada, and all the land east of the Mississippi, except Florida, which was still a Spanish colony.
Then, it was decided to levy new taxes on the colonies to help pay for the war. Only the colonies had no representatives in the Parliament! British troops were stationed along the Allegheny Mountains to prevent colonists from moving into the new Ohio Country. Those troops were quartered in private homes, at the owners' expense! Merchants along the coast were arrested for smuggling, and their businesses and homes searched without warrants. They were imprisoned without trial. Some homes and businesses were burned because their owners were "smugglers". In some places martial law was declared without just cause. The Declaration of Independence, aside from stating some basic principles of freedom, listed all those things the British did which violated the colonists' rights as Englishmen. Revisionists today try to ridicule the list of grievances, and even have tried to "update" the words in the Declaration to "modern language". Revisionists have also tried to ridicule the document because it was written by Thomas Jefferson! He owned slaves, they say! [On the subject of slavery, we are being told that blacks have suffered for 500 years under slavery in this country. The fact is, there were no permanent English settlements in this country until 1607 - Jamestown. At best, slavery would not have been widely practiced in this country before 1650, and then it was a colonial possession of the English until 1776, and then slavery was ended by the War Between the States in the 1860s. In this country, slavery was legal for less than 100 years! In addition, those who initiated slavery in the first place were the English, French, Portugese, and Spaniards, not to mention the tribal chiefs in Africa who gladly sold their own people into slavery for the money they received. And the United States should pay reparations? I think not!]
Now, let's come up to the 20th century. We became involved in another war that started in Europe. The man who was president - Woodrow Wilson - had only recently been reelected using the campaign slogan "He kept us out of war!" Wilson was a Democrat.
The Depression came on us because of policies of Republican administrations in the "Roaring Twenties". Rightly or wrongly, the Republicans have to accept that responsibility. Then Roosevelt started his tenure by adopting the practice of deficit budgeting, the brainchild of John Maynard Keynes. Our total national debt in 1932, the year of Roosevelt's election, was $19.5-Billion -ah, that's with a "B"! Then, for more than 60 years, the Democrats continued to use deficit budgeting, and the national debt rose to just under a trillion dollars in 1980, the end of Carter's administration. In all that time the budget was balanced only 6 times, curiously, years that the Republicans had a majority in the Congress! Roosevelt supporters also claimed he got us out of the Depression, when in fact unemployment was still 17% in 1939, 14% in 1940, and 9.9% in 1941, even after he had gotten us onto a quasi-wartime economy. It was only after he had gotten us into World War II that we came out of the Depression.
During the seventies, the debt had continued to grow and we had to start borrowing money to pay the interest on the debt! Both the debt and the deficit (they are not synonymous figures) increased by more than $40-billion between 1974 and 1975. That was the blast-off that started the debt skyrocketing! Today it has risen to more than $6.29-TRILLION... that shows! And that is purely the result of the deficit budgeting introduced by the Democrats in 1933!
Roosevelt and Churchill worked for 2 years trying to figure out a way to get the United States involved in W.W.II. Then after W.W.II ended, Truman, another Democrat, was responsible for getting us involved in the Korean War. His Secretary of State, Dean Acheson declared in a speech in the spring of 1950 that South Korea was not within our perimeter of defense, and less than 2 months later, North Korea invaded South Korea, and Truman put our troops in the field without even consulting Congress! They finally decided to call Korea a "police action" for the United Nations, rather than a war.
Here's a little tidbit for you. Our armed forces are not supposed to be committed to combat without a declaration of war, and only the Congress can declare war. How many wars have we been involved in since W.W.II? Well, there hasn't been a declaration of war since December 8, 1941! Oh, the revisionists will tell you the president can order troops into battle if we are attacked, but even Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration of war after Pearl Harbor.
Eisenhower said only a fool would get involved in a land war on the continent of Asia. Still, he sent "military advisers" to South Vietnam to help train the South Vietnamese troops. Those advisers were not allowed to load their weapons, nor were they even allowed to return fire if attacked. There were about 5000 troops there in that role by 1960, and as soon as Kennedy was elected, he increased that number to about 15000, and allowed out people to "lock and load", and return fire if attacked. The word was that he was going to withdraw all our troops, and quit our involvement altogether, which became a reason why some thought he was assassinated. When Johnson became president, it didn't take him long to invent a lie about an attack on one of our destroyers in the Tonkin Gulf to give him an excuse to send over 250,000 troops there in what proved to be a futile attempt to repel the North Vietnamese.
Our troops were not allowed to fight a campaign to gain a victory; they were allowed only to react to attacks from the VC and the North Vietnamese, and ask permission to fire on the enemy! Robert McNamara was the Secretary of Defense, and he insisted on running the war from his desk in Washington. Nixon didn't change the pattern, and we ended up withdrawing without achieving a victory. Ted Kennedy was only too happy to denounce Nixon for having been responsible for losing the first war in our history. No! It was the failed policies of the Democrats for that horrific time in our history.
Just recently Senator Daschle stated that we are in the worst economic times since the Depression today. Guess again! When Carter left office in 1980, he left interest rates at just over 21%; inflation was at 14%; and unemployment was 9.9%!
Those were the worst economic figures since the Depression! Carter was a Democrat.
The recession that should have hit Carter landed on Reagan. But Reagan made a couple of large errors, too. He signed a bill in 1981 which allowed foreign investors to buy our Treasury securities. Now, more than 60% of our debt is owned by foreign investors! Reagan also allowed the sale of American companies to foreign entities at "firesale" prices.
Now, how about the Democrats accusing Dubya of lying about weapons of mass destruction just to have a reason for a war against Iraq? We have to do some backtracking to the efforts of their last "illustrious leader". Clinton, like all other elected presidents, swore and oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. Yet, he used the "traditions of the United Nations" as an excuse to send troops to Bosnia - without congressional approval! He put the Third Infantry Division under the command of foreign officers, which just isn't done! And he caused the air attack on Serbia to happen without cause! He didn't ask Congress, nor did he bother to honor the War Powers Act. Not only that, but he got NATO involved, even though NATO is a defensive organization, not to be activated unless one of the member nations is attacked! The only attacking done was the baseless bombing of Serbia, just to get Milosevich out of power. Which of those gallant Democrats were after his hide for lying to the nation about anything then?
And Clinton became only the second president in our history to have impeachment proceedings brought against him. Without any question, Clinton lied under oath in federal court about the affair with Lewinski, and without any doubt he obstructed justice by having others lie about their testimonies. Several Democrat senators even said as much in public statements before his trial in the Senate. Yet every Senate Democrat voted not to convict a president who had committed at least 2 felonies while in office! Talk about duplicity! Talk about failing to uphold their oath of office! It doesn't matter what the reason, when someone commits a felony, he should be removed from office! Therefore, No Democrat has any credence when it comes to accusing someone else of lying!
None of these so-called "Democrats" has any grounds for being accusatory about anyone else in office!