MANIFESTO OF THE AMERICAN INDIVIDUAL
In the decades following World War II and the Great Depression, our society, consisting of individual Americans, has been blessed with an ever-increasing economic prosperity, and a realization of civil rights and individual liberties unparalleled in human history. A superpower for decades, we were able to defeat an evil empire of tyranny and oppression that saw its peoples not as unique individuals, but as masses which needed to be taken care of, controlled by the state, and owned by the state, under the guise of a classless utopian society. It was defeated with the might of our economy and resolve. It was defeated by the idea that every individual had value, and that we were given that value by God; not by a state, a law, or a king. This value contains within it a right and will to pursue our individual prosperities and interests without interference from a state.
At this point in history, those individual rights, the very liberties that our Founding Fathers believed (and that I believe) were God given, are under assault. These attacks are not coming from outside our borders, but from within. The custodians of our government, those who were elected to be the servants of the people, now see themselves as the masters of the masses. Our great Constitution, which spells out the very limitations of our government, has become the favored door mat of those who come to the Capitol Building to work, or call the White House home. Our leaders have recently begun to refer to 300 million individual Americans as the masses. They have inspired hatred amongst the many thousands of classes contained within our nation. This hatred festers from a lie which has been fed to American children for generations: A lie that causes individuals to believe that they are incapable of taking care of themselves, and therefore need a government to care for them. It is a lie that causes some to believe that they need government to administer happiness equally. It is the lie that makes us believe that fairness is an equal score board, not a level playing field. It is the lie of an economic zero sum game, and that if one individual has increased prosperity, it can only be accomplished by taking prosperity from another. It is a lie that is brought about by the belief that liberty is not a divine right. It is a lie that causes some who are (by freedom of choice) less financially fortunate, to curse and gnash their teeth at the very same hands that feed them. This lie has taken over our government, and has caused our once limited government to threaten, acquire, manipulate, and steal from those individuals who have acquired the most in our country, and then squander that wealth on perpetuating and growing itself. It is the great lie which was conceived of after the industrial revolution, and that had people believe that they could live in a classless society without envy, without jealousy, guaranteeing equality of result from each individual’s efforts regardless of the many different degrees of effort, drive, determination and fortitude exerted.
One may ask, how can this be? How can we as Americans have allowed such powers to begin consuming our great country, and punishing those of us who achieved the most? And furthermore, what can I do about it? We can blame the liberal teachers for not teaching our children about our country and for re-writing its history (and they should be blamed). We can blame politicians who steal from you and me (and we should). We can blame a man, who while writing his manifesto about a classless society, allowed his children to starve to death; A man known as Karl Marx whose classless society led to a two class society consisting of “the masses” whose lives were owned and controlled by “the elite”; government officials with limitless power to destroy any person or idea that contradicted their own. We can also blame ourselves.
Since the founding of our country, there has always been a majority of Americans who believed in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have exercised our divine rights, and even spelled out those rights in our Constitution, so that no portion of our government would tread upon them. We have entrusted these sacred truths to elected officials for generations, while at the same time, being a silent majority. We pay attention to the news once in a while, and assume that those who feed us the news have not poisoned it with too much bias. We speak out softly now and then, casting a ballot every two years or so, with the expectation that if we are lied to, the vigilant press will tell us about it, and we can silently wander back to the polls two to four years later and remedy the problem. We work for the bounties offered within this great nation, and then enjoy the fruits of our labor, not wishing to be bothered by the “partisan bickering” on Capitol Hill. We never raise our voices at the government like the hippies of the 1960s, fearing that our neighbors might label us as hateful or mean spirited. We have believed our government officials when we were told about things being done in our best interest. After all, they’re Americans just like us! Why would they lie to us? It’s not like we live under a totalitarian regime that sees us as the masses which must be kept under control! Fellow patriots, I think we have allowed ourselves to become a people who naively continue to entrust our country to a group of perpetually re-elected representatives of no moral character who have become increasingly corrupt and mad for power.
If our great country is to survive, if we are to continue being a shining City upon a Hill, if our government is to become limited in power, size and scope, we must teach ourselves to be an un-silent majority! We must fight with our pens and tongues, before our last freedoms are stripped away by a completely out of control president and congress. How can we do this? What can be done? Who is speaking out? At this moment, there are very few voices which speak of freedom, liberty, and love for country over government. Those voices could be snuffed out at a moment’s notice, in the blink of an eye by a government that has no regard for true freedom of speech: that’s the speech of opposition to those in power. If Rush and Sean were killed, who would be left to speak out? Would there be an uprising? Or would people change the station and listen to music? What about the preachers? Most of our preachers are already silenced with the threat of taxation. They are already afraid to speak out against the godless leaders of our government, for fear of not being considered a tax exempt charitable organization. Who then is left to speak out? We must fight with our pens and tongues, but how? Could you change your behavior and speak out? Would peace be as sweet if you had no tongue? Will you write your Congressman, telling them to speak up if they are conservative, or telling them to knock it off if they’re liberal? Are you willing to protest like a hippie for a recall election or balanced budget amendment?
I am so very angry. Anger is not a social sin. Anger is not something that I am ashamed of. Anger is an emotion we feel when we are wronged or threatened. I am righteously angry. Am I mean spirited? My rights are being threatened. I no longer care if some idiot that is filled with hate and bile and venom thinks less of me because I’m angry. Don’t you think there was a little anger at the Boston Tea Party? During and after the Boston Massacre? At Bunker Hill? At Yorktown? It was a righteous anger directed towards those who wished to control lives and take away individual freedoms. If an individual won’t be angry for those reasons, then they do not deserve to be free. IS life so dear and peace so sweet? I have reached a point of no longer caring whom I offend with my opinions or beliefs. Have you?
If you have reached your boiling point, then do something. Say something. Do not do something that will merely make you feel better, or feel patriotic, or feel satisfied. Do something that will make a difference. Most of us who feel this way would run a community organizer type off our land in an instant. But what do they know that we don’t? They know how to make noise. They know how to be noticed. They know how to get people’s attention. They know how to protest loudly. It is against their very nature to ever be a silent majority, or minority. Learn from them. Be a little “in your face” with your beliefs. It was a liberal who said never discuss politics. I’m sure of it. Who cares if you get into an argument. Afraid you won’t know what to say? Who cares! Say something. If the cat has your tongue, just start name calling. Chances are, they’ll run out of substance and start name calling and cliché using long before you do. I vow that every time I go to the supermarket and have to look at a magazine with Obama’s face, I’m going to say something. “Can’t I just pick up a gallon of milk without having to look at that communist’s face again? There are more pictures of him in here than Paul Newman!” Most mealy-mouthed moderates support him because he’s the president. If they think enough of us are against him, they just might follow suit if we appear to be the majority. By the end of the Bush Administration, with his approval numbers so low, I just wanted to avoid the subject of him altogether. I was so wrong. It is our turn to make the Liberals feel defensive. We must speak out so they can’t speak the word “Obama” without sharp criticism from all directions. The “People” who voted for him aren’t going to wake up one day and throw Obama out on his ear. If they were, then they’d have done it to Clinton years ago. Oh how I long for the whimsical days of the Clinton Presidency. If your freedom is worth it to you, do something that matters. Say something that matters, NOW. What makes you think there is going to be another election in two years? You can’t make a difference by wearing an American flag. Obama does that too. Besides, how many of us have, (after being educated by government schools), an understanding of what our flag means or what the Constitution actually says? How many children (and parents) celebrate the 4th of July, thinking that it only means cookouts and fire works. It won’t help our country if you stay at home and watch “The Patriot” or “Braveheart”. It won’t help our country if we vent on each other. We might feel better, but will it help? Each of us can be an activist in our own way. Do you have the gift of gab? Can you write well? Can you hold up a sign? I can wear my NRA hat and follow my wife through hippiemart—I mean Whole Foods. They need to know we’re out there and no longer silent. If you’re extremely shy and the threat of tyranny isn’t enough to make you speak, can you join an organization who can speak up for you? The NRA? The Heritage Foundation? Can you put a bumper sticker on your car that speaks out against the systematic and progressive tyranny of liberalism? It is time we start buying liberal bumper stickers like “Question Authority”. You can put an Obama sticker diagonally over the word Authority. Is your car’s paint job worth more than your freedom?
I was offended, deeply offended, by a bumper sticker I saw. It read, “Hide your money, hide your guns, hide your bibles, Obama won!” Is this what has become of us? Are we all cowards? If all of us see our freedoms like this, we will soon have our money squandered, our guns confiscated and our bibles burned! Try to tell me they haven’t started doing this yet.
The government has already taken away so much from us, and there has been so much that we’ve let them take. Would it do you any good to hide your money from Barack Hussein Obama? He doesn’t need the money that you have stuffed into your mattresses. Why should he come for that when he can just steal your identity (by calling you the masses), take out a credit card with no limit in your name (the American people) called the national debt, and charge you each $16,000 individually, plus interest for the rest of your life. He doesn’t even need our guns yet to do that. Can you imagine a wage earner coming home to tell the family that there’s a budget problem, that he or she can’t make enough money to make ends meet, but has solved the problem by getting credit cards with no limits? That would be astronomically stupid! What if that same person said, “don’t worry honey, the credit card’s not even in our name. One of our neighbors is going to have to pay for it!” How is that different than when Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Hussein Obama charge everything on you and your children? Is it okay because they tell us that it’s for our own good? After all, we the masses could never understand that many zeros. Why should they cut open our mattresses when it’s easier to print money. The only thing that’s easier for an out of control government to do than spend money, is to make that nation’s money worthless. The ultimate way to punish everyone who is rich is by making all of their liquid assets worth zero. Just keep printing money and it happens. This actually could be the goal of the Obama regime. Instead of hiding the money we have left, we must demand that the government cut up its credit cards.
Are we now to hide our guns too? What good is a gun if it stays hidden all the time? That bumper sticker should read, “Preach your Bibles, buy more Guns, convert to gold, because Obama Won!” There are still some states left in our union where it’s not a crime to wear your gun, loaded, un-registered and un-concealed. There are still some states that allow an individual citizen to keep a gun in their glove box for self protection because their car is considered an extension of their home. So we have guns to protect ourselves. From who? Many people who own guns don’t even know why our right to bear arms is in the Constitution. It is not so that we can hunt for food, though many early Americans used guns for just that purpose. It’s not so that we can shoot at Pocahontas’s raccoon when it tries to steal our corn. It is not for the constitutionally protected sport of target practice. It is not so that we can protect ourselves from an intruder. There are actually some people in jail in the United States who were convicted of murder because they shot an intruder in their home at night while trying to protect their families. Want to know the dirty little secret that many gun owners can’t even comprehend? We have the right to bear arms as a last line of defense of our freedoms against our own government! Do you remember the story of little Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban refugee whose mother died after trying to get him to the United States? In a pre-dawn raid, U.S. federal agents, donning swat gear and assault weapons, under the direction of Attorney General Janet Reno, invaded Elian Gonzalez’s home, seized him, and took him away from his Miami relatives in order to return him to Cuba. This was 3 days after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request by Elian’s relatives to allow him to stay in the United States. That was the day I leaned what atrocities my government was capable of. That was when I decided to join the National Rifle Association. That’s why liberals try to hide and ignore the horrific acts of governments with absolute power. Acts such as public rape, public torture and mass execution by the governments of Saddam Hussein, Hitler, and Stalin are always ignored by liberals.
Are you concerned about other’s gun rights or are you only concerned if your specific handgun or rifle model has been banned? If you’re only concerned about the legality of your own gun, then keep your mouth shut when they try to take mine. You’ll make a good little subject of the Obama regime.
This is what happens when the government believes it knows what’s best for the masses. This is what happens when the government has too much power. How much more control does the government have over us? How long will it be before the government decides that children can only be properly educated in government (public) schools. What happens if there’s a pre-dawn raid on your house because you refuse to send your children voluntarily to be indoctrinated by these tyrants? Will you have turned your gun in voluntarily before that, believing that you will be safer with fewer guns ‘on the streets?’ Is life so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains “for your own safety” and slavery to the government? Don’t forget that in this country, we are the blue blood. We are the individuals who are kings and queens of our own destiny. Almighty God has blessed us with a gift of success and failure by our own hands. This government was originally given specific limitations. It was created to serve us. We are not the subjects of a crown. The government is the servant and we are the master.
A liberal once told me that guns were bad, and that violence begets violence. I said to him “You’re damned right, violence begets violence. If anyone tries to do something violent to my family, then they will beget violence the likes of which they can not imagine.” We wouldn’t have had a Continental Army if Britain had confiscated our guns from the very beginning. Would we have thrown rocks at the Redcoats? Would we have won? Why has it been nearly 200 years since any foreign power has tried to invade the United States. Most of our troops are on bases, many of them over seas. Why not invade the United States and take our wealth by force. There are so many guns in the U.S., that any invading army, in order to ensure their success, would have to go door to door in order to conquer us. Too many of them would die. No army in the world is that large. The death of our liberty can only happen from within.
It was Chairman Mao that said, “Political Power grows out of the barrel of a gun!” After government permits, then a ban on private ownership, then prison or death to anyone resisting a government program, Nationalist and Communist China slaughtered between 20 and 35 million of her own people. Adolf Hitler said, “History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms, prepared their own downfall!” Nazi Germany started with regulation and licensing, then strict handgun laws, then a ban on possession. Then, finally, 20 million Jews, critics, gypsies, and critics were exterminated. Vladimir Lenin said, “One man with a gun can control 100 without one!” He was right. 20 million plus were murdered within the Soviet block. It all came after licensing, then bans, then severe penalties. But our Patrick Henry said, “…give me liberty or give me death!”
So what do countries do that hate America (besides cheer Barack Hussein Obama)? They finance our debt in order to own our country and control us, like communist China has been doing to us for years. If our government wanted to take complete control of us, the task would be simple. Slowly and incrementally, over a period of time, they would take away a tiny portion of our freedoms, of our rights and liberties, while we were sleeping, or while we were consumed with the pursuit of our own personal goals and luxuries in such an affluent and blessed society, believing the whole time that our freedoms were being guarded by those very people who are trying to steal them from us. They would see us not as individuals but as the masses. You have to be looking from pretty high up, down a very long nose, to see our society of 300 million individuals as ‘the masses’. The government would have to invent crises, and under the guise of protecting their people, would then exert more control over us, taking over more of our economy, abridging more of our rights. When the nationalized media begins reporting a lot of gun deaths, you know a gun ban will be proposed soon. When the nationalized media talks of unfair criticism of our new president, you know that soon they will try to shut someone up. When the nationalized media and the elected officials talk of how unfair it is that some people have accumulated massive wealth, they want to make you jealous, using class envy to take away rights of those who have more. The government will unfairly tax the Americans that it first demonizes as being too rich. The government will fire the CEOs of companies like General Motors, that it declares were unwise with their money, then start pitching cars to us that we don’t want to buy. The government will sue Microsoft for being a monopoly, and in the same breath try to take over an entire section of our economy where competition once existed. When you need protection from mean insurance companies and hospitals that charge too much, the government is ready to step in and take over a sixth of our economy. Your health care won’t be free. Someone always has to pay for it.
When has the U.S. Government ever been fair? Can you imagine having a very sick child, taking it to the hospital, and having to deal with an idiot government employee so your child’s life can be saved? How would you like to deal with a motor vehicle department clerk type or a welfare office receptionist type, while your child is dieing in your arms. You’d say or do anything, give up anything, to get that child seen by a doctor wouldn’t you; they know it too. That’s why they keep championing the malcontents of our society. “Was this a gun related accident ma’am? How many guns do you have in your home? You have to fill out this 8 page social questionnaire while my supervisor decides whether your child needs to be seen! Do you have your child’s government insurance card? Your papers are not in order. It is a requirement in order to prevent fraud. Is your child considered a minority by the Federal Government? Your account was flagged by the EPA because your carbon footprint is too large, adversely affecting your neighbors and their health. You need to attend a seminar on energy and when you have completed it then you will be eligible for these services again. Your federal healthcare allotment needs reviewed and my supervisor is out to lunch right now and will return in an hour and a half.” The liberals will tell you “but Cuba has nationalized healthcare and they have the best doctors in the world!” I don’t know about doctors, but if you’re a Cuban citizen and your kid cuts his head open and needs stitches from the best doctors in the world. You provide the Needle. You provide the thread. You buy the anesthetic or your child doesn’t get any. Need a bed in their hospital? Better bring your own blanket, pillow and gown. The list goes on and on. I don’t need protection from my fellow Americans. We need to protect ourselves from the government.
Whenever I think of the Obama regime, I remember a story told to me by a guest lecturer who was a very young man when the Soviets took over his home country of Poland after World War II. His neighbor was a twelve year old girl. In order to put fear into the masses, the Soviet soldiers would invade her home, drag her into the street, and rape her. This happened to her seventeen times. Did her father own a gun? They were forced to watch in horror. Worse atrocities have happened by governments who have unlimited control. This is why we have the right to bear arms. This is why we must strictly limit government control. This is why we must speak out.
You might say, I don’t think our soldiers, our police, or our Marines are capable of doing something like that. But how many liberals do we know that have this much hatred, bile, and venom in them. These liberals would gladly don an Obama regime uniform with an acorn on it and keep the peace like the Soviet solders did. They would gladly man a guillotine. The liberal version of peace is not the presence of justice and individual liberty, but simply the absence of opposition. Groups like Acorn (who have been funded by the U. S. Government in the latest stimulus package) are already spreading venom and hate outside the homes of certain bank employees who were given bonuses that were large enough to make liberals hate them; bonuses that were known and allowed by the Obama regime before the bonuses were issued. It was a setup to get you to hate fellow Americans through class envy. It is true that in the aftermath of Katrina, local law enforcement began confiscating firearms from law abiding citizens for “their own safety.” How easy would it be for good cops to invade your home if the government told them a lie about you. For example, that you were guilty of civil disorder, or inciting violence or hate (because of an essay you’d written about evil within your government)? How hard do you think it would be to obtain a warrant like that from a liberal extremist judge? How many days will it be after you listen to or read this that I hear from the NSA or the IRS? Those policemen who might otherwise be freedom loving Americans wouldn’t know any better if they were given a warrant like that, would they?
If an individual receives welfare all his life, he begins to believe that he can never obtain more than he has. He begins to blame those who have more, thinking it’s their fault that he has less. There was less wealth in our entire country 200 years ago than there exists now in the city of New York! How can this be? It can only be because wealth is created. It is created by free, creative, hard working individuals who pour their blood and sweat into an idea that can benefit their fellow man. This rising tide of affluence and prosperity of individuals is a rising tide that raises all ships. The individual who wants to expand her company must hire people. If the wage is too low, no one will work for her. If the wage is too high, she will go bankrupt. If the business is run poorly then another business will open with a better or cheaper product and win that business, and expand even more. There used to be far more business owners (i.e. farmers and smiths) than employees in this country. Employment for those who choose not to participate in capitalism is a bi-product of, not the reason for capitalism. So what does the rich guy do for you? When he buys a jet, hundreds of engineers, designers, and manufacturers have a job and get paid. Dozens of licensed mechanics are on call all over the country waiting to fix something on that jet if it breaks. The fixed base operator at the airport and their employees get paid because the jet needs to stop and refuel. Two or more pilots are employed. The limousine driver makes money picking the guy up at the airport. The company that caters the jet makes money too. The local airport generates revenue by charging a fee for the use of the runways, and employs tower controllers. Nowhere in the world are poor people better off than in a country where the rich live. If that were not the case, we could go to the Sudan with a bull horn and say “help each other!” and they would all prosper. Instead of hating someone who has more than you, learn from them. Ask them how they got to where they are in life. Over 80% of this country’s millionaires are first generation. Wealth created, not inherited.
Do you really think that the government could have ever invented such things as a light bulb, a refrigerator, a dust buster, a glow worm, a gas log, or a transformer? Governments can only steal, control and destroy if they aren’t kept in check and strictly limited. We are, despite these things, still entrusting the government with our happiness, our prosperity, our healthcare, our banks, our car factories, our food, and our liberty. Our government has to contract with private companies to acquire things like fighter jets, lunar modules and toilet seats. The Soviet war machine consisted of nothing more than cheap replicas of what our private industries conceived and produced.
So here we are, the silent majority, sitting at home watching Fox News or playing Wii Fit, shaking our fists at Barney Frank for ruining the housing market and running our economy into the sewer, but are we willing to do nothing more? “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
Would you give your life for your children’s freedoms? Will you just teach your children about their freedoms and the truth of our American history? Will you teach them about places like Valley Forge and Yorktown? Will you tell them the truth about John Adams and Patrick Henry? Will you learn about them yourself, and take a few minutes to read the Constitution? Will you loudly oppose your out of control government before it is too late? Will you speak out against our Destroyer in Chief when he speaks at you, the masses? Will you go to a tea party, and then take real action afterwards? Is life so dear and peace so sweet? I tell you, a couple of times in my life I have experienced quite a bit of physical pain due to an injury and due to surgery. Once I started bleeding a lot and had to be rushed to the hospital. You know, the bleeding really didn’t hurt that much. It just made a mess. Wouldn’t tyranny be more painful in the long run than death? Tyranny is more painful but requires less courage. Will we take action, individually, when it is uncomfortable to speak up? Will they take our guns when our hands are warm and willing or when they are cold and dead? So help me God, Only from my cold, dead hands!
-J.T. Quintana, Author of the political thriller THE TEA PARTY PATRIOT
The author releases all rights of copy to anyone willing to make this document freely accessable to those who wish to read it.
