Should you harbor a politically correct bone in your body, you may find this post particularly offensive. Recommend you delete before reading. Ed.

For you, tolerance is at an end. Patience has no virtue. Resignation has no appeal. Tom Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, an anthem dedicated to a single precept — Individual Liberty.* Jefferson’s devotion to individual freedom was explicit, incontestable — a doctrine that unleashed Mankind’s greatest advance in human history. But just 24 decades later, that precious birthright is MIA, butchered and banished by Governments at all levels. Sadly, despite the soaring lyrics of the National Anthem, America is not free. Anyone who agrees with this judgment, at the very least, will be accused of distortion or gross exaggeration, perhaps even deception. Accusers will ask, “How free does anyone need to be?” You travel where you want when you want. You can own a home or invent a business. You can freely buy and sell, worship or not, surf the net or not, own a weapon or not, burn the flag or not, kneel or not. So how free do you need to be? Specifically? Free to be a racist. Free to hold prejudice against anyone or anything, for any reason or no reason. As a restaurant owner, free to post a sign that says, “Whites Only,” or “Blacks Only” or “Jews Not Allowed.” As a bakery owner, free to refuse service for a Gay Wedding. As a private business owner, free to discriminate — against any ethnicity, age or gender. As an atheist, free to condemn God and religion. As a private business owner, free to ban unions. As a business owner, free to reject the Affordable Care Act. As an individual, free not to pay taxes on  “earned” income. As a business owner, free to ignore the NLRB and EPA. As a parent, free to expel the Federal Government from your child’s public school education. As a driver, free to rebuff seat belt laws. As an everyday citizen, free to ignore the millions of regulations made by agency officials who were never elected and never empowered by The Constitution to write and enforce laws. Sorry, citizen, you are no freer, arguably less free, than the colonists were under British rule in 1774. You doubt this, of course. But first, reconsider: Your government controls education, healthcare, the banking system and the discredited justice system. Your government regulates every aspect of business life, intrudes on your personal life and has unrestricted spending power, including the obscene power to tax your “earned” income. If you care to study the 16th Amendment, ratified in 1913, you’ll discover that your recent ancestors were sold a deceitful bill of goods. Or put another way, the Government lied. But, then, the Government always lies. The Government sold the 16th Amendment on the premise that the “income” to be taxed would be “unearned income,” — that is, it would be profit from investments, interest, dividends, capital gains, and net income from business and corporate earnings. Hallelujah! In other words, it was a “soak the rich” amendment. “Income tax” would not apply to the wages and salaries of the “working class.” Suckers, all. Here you are, 104 years later — paying taxes in 2017, to feed the insatiable Federal beast — already $21 trillion in the red. Here’s the bottom line, citizen. You are the Servant. The Government is the Master. Get used to it. Not exactly what Tom and his pals had in mind, although they did predict the outcome. You want to find fault but how can you fix blame? Pogo said everyone’s to blame. That’s not true. There is, prima facie, an original guilty party; and as often is the case, it’s the very one that wears the venerated mantle of wisdom — The Supreme Court of the United States. The SCOTUS decided early on that the Founders’ work needed the benefit of a modern intellect, that their work should be interpreted — continuously sliced and diced, reformed, remodeled and repaired. Presto, their meddling has given America what is known as the Annotated Constitution — The Constitution you live by. No one in America lives by The Constitution as it was written. No, you are not free. Not free as the Founders intended. Nor free as God ordained.

* Critics enjoy attacking Jefferson and his peers because many owned slaves. Was he truly a champion of Liberty or just another hypocrite? You decide. The following paragraph was in Jefferson’s original draft, eventually removed. Had it not been removed, you would not have celebrated July 4, 1776. Decades later, Jefferson blamed the removal on delegates from South Carolina and Georgia as well as Northern delegates who represented merchants actively involved in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Ed.

Jefferson’s Original Draft
“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”

Postscript
In his essay “How to Understand Slavery and the American Founding,” Matthew Spaulding writes: “. . . no charge of insincerity or hypocrisy can be fairly laid to their charge. Never from their lips was heard one syllable of attempt to justify the institution of slavery. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened upon them by the unnatural step-mother country and they saw that before the principles of the Declaration of Independence, slavery . . . was destined . . . to be banished from the earth.”

It was never your intention to be famous. You went about your business doing the ordinary things ordinary people do. Work a little. Play a little. Pay the bills. Pay attention to family. Invest time in worthy causes and worthwhile people. Open your mind. Speak your piece. And stay under the radar. But your fame would not be denied. That reality came today when Donald Trump tapped you for his Presidential Advisory Board (PAB). You placed the handsome, embossed membership card in the safest of places. Well, to be perfectly accurate, it was the National Republican Committee that did the tapping. Nonetheless, the NRC would never choose you for this seminal assignment without Trump’s personal OK. You should have predicted this call would come. For some time now, important lawmakers, highly touted political organizations and political newsmakers have sought you out by name, keeping you informed, asking for your counsel, involvement and support. You met Newt Gingrich years ago but never expected he would remember you with weekly letters. And this fame has a way of accelerating. Rand Paul and Speaker Ryan are among dozens of Senators and Congressman who entrust you with their insider knowledge. These courageous lawmakers wage war against seemingly insurmountable odds to restrain an overreaching and spendthrift Federal Government. Try as they might, struggle as they might, they turn to you for help in tipping the balance of power. But they aren’t alone. They get heavyweight help from the likes of Carl Rove, John Bolton, Allen West, Sarah Palin, Bill Kristol and other luminaries who never let a day pass without either asking your opinion or inviting you to join their missions. You never expected this kind of notoriety from so many bigwigs. You haven’t met most of these celebs, but they actually call you by your first name. You can’t ignore such friendly people, can you? Of course not. And because these political stars choose to admire and appreciate you, so do these special interest groups who also exclaim how hungry they are for your opinion, guidance and backing:

Patriot Update
Patriot Tribune
RedState Spotlight
Heritage Foundation
Jay Sekulow, ACLJ Chief Counsel – Amer. Center for Law & Justice
Personal Liberty Digest (Bob Livingston)
Winning America
Chaplain Klingenschmitt
The Weekly Standard
Project To Restore America
Jonathan Garthwaite (Townhall Daily)
The Daily Signal
Trump Train News HQ
American Action News
Election Alert
Constitution
American Update
Elbert Guillory’s America
American Patriot Daily News Network Solutions
Hot Air Daily Express
Sheriff Joe (Legal Defense Fund)
NRCC Victory
Trump Impeachment Alert (Defense Team)
The Club For Growth
Great American Daily Newsletter
Hillsdale College
AMAC (Association of Mature American Citizens)
Tea Party Patriots
Great American PAC
Eagle Rising
Washington Examiner
Justice Network
Right Wise (Tim Mathew)
The Daily Grind
The Club For Growth

When leaders of your country — beginning with the Man in the White House — seek your counsel, you must remember to stay grounded. Much too easily, you could forget your humble roots. Much too easily, fame’s limelight could blind you to lose sight of your greater purpose. People well above your station have brought you in to their inner circle because they value your intellect, experience and strategic mind. They brought you in for a reason — and now you must decide which of them should receive your generous twenty five dollar contribution.

The declarative sentence is dead. No, that’s not a true statement. Let’s be more precise. The spoken declarative sentence is gravely ill, the victim of continuous, mindless abuse. By all means, this “news” holds zero interest for people who couldn’t care less about language and those who don’t even know what a declarative sentence is — which is almost everybody under the age of 60. To be explicit, nearly every sentence is declarative. So far, every sentence on this page, including this one, is declarative — namely, simple, straightforward, definite, positive statements, not to be confused with sentences that are imperative, exclamatory or interrogative. To clarify further, statements do not equivocate. Unfortunately and exasperatingly for picky people who think the English language still deserves some respect, America is in the grip of an epidemic that has placed the declarative sentence on life support. The contagion appeared first on the Left Coast, where almost all language decay originates. The pestilence has a name. The name is “Uptalk.” You didn’t create the name and don’t know who did. Whoever did, nailed it. Nothing can be done about the epidemic. Almost certainly spawned  by female millennials, Uptalk could have been confined to local Valley Girl gabfests. But America wasn’t that lucky. The virus penetrated, then permeated broadcast media — media that reaches millions of viewers every minute of every day. Television and radio, already immersed in the process of dumbing down American culture, welcomed a new weapon to its shallow arsenal. You won’t hear Uptalk spoken in 20th century movies or with most product advertising. But you definitely get your fill listening to any conversation on any talk show. If you have the stomach for it, you hear political pundits, show biz celebs, sportscasters, interviewers, interviewees — hear them systematically make consecutive statements that end with an upward tone or inflection, essentially in the form of a question. These are people infected or addicted to the most annoying affectation of this new century. Uptalker “statements” leave this impression — “I’m not sure you agree with what I’m saying and I’m not even sure that what I’m saying has any merit. I’m not sure you’ll agree with me. I certainly don’t want to offend you by acting decisive or appearing dogmatic.” Psychology Professor Hank Davis says, “Uptalk is basically telling listeners you’re open to different viewpoints . . . to suggest that you’re willing to back down, or restate your point, or change your viewpoint altogether if your listeners don’t (promptly) nod their approval. It’s a nasty habit. . . the very opposite of confidence or assertiveness . . . (and) it’s out of control. . . even statements about which there should be no question or doubt are presented in this tentative, timid and deferential manner.” To make matters worse, the infection has spread to almost everyone you know. Only they don’t know it. So omnipresent is it that people who routinely “uptalk” are completely unaware — they have been “normalized” to adopt this pattern of speech, brainwashed to an extent that prevents them from hearing themselves or others. Since this epidemic is as virulent as the Bubonic Plague that killed millions in 14th century Europe, your complaints are a speck of dust in the wind. But at least you can protect yourself. Always use closed captioning with TV news and talk shows.  And avoid extended conversation with individuals under the age of 60. Get used to it. Uptalk isn’t going anywhere. And neither are you. If you badger people, you risk disapproval. If you avoid people, you risk alienation. So put aside your discontent and put up with the inevitable. Shouldn’t you just chill and accept Uptalk? By the way, that’s an interrogative sentence.