Dec 3 2016

Bad For Thee, Good For Me

I have made the public statement that I daily hope and pray that President-Elect Donald Trump will continue to prove me wrong. To this point, the overarching consensus from the TMCV (The Maine Conservative Voice) is that the future President has done the just that. I use the word “overarching” so the reader can assume the caveats implied.

For example, General Mattis is a fantastic pick for defense. He brings back the sense of a disciplined, tempered, steely, ferocity in our military that Americans are desperately needing to see in the forces that protect this Nation in the face of the unspeakable horrors that surround us. In contrast, if not just slightly, I think the jury is out on Betsy DeVos, for education. Much depends, sadly, on whether she was lying when she said she opposed common core or lying when she supported it.

This brings me to my final thought for today. A critique of not only of the President-Elect, but of Conservatives also. Let’s just call it, if I may fall back on some lingo from my birth state of Arizona, a burr or a bullhead in my saddle.

Under the file of “Bad for Thee,But not for Me”, the Carrier deal is crony capitalism plain and simple. You can’t slap Republican on something and somehow think it makes it right. That’s called hypocrisy….plain and simple. We railed against liberals for this. But now we celebrate it because it’s “our side” screwing with Free Market? It was wrong for Solyndra, it was wrong for GM, and it’s wrong for Carrier.

Again the pendulum swings and we are not trying to stop it. This is the burr in my saddle. We have always as Conservatives preached against the “end justifies the means” approach of liberals, yet much to my chagrin (I speak for myself), it seems many Conservatives had no problem employing said approach this election cycle.

The response I consistently hear as of late is “Hey, we won!” While I feel increasingly in the minority among those who profess to be my conservative allies, I still contend that, for me, social and fiscal conservatism is not a campaign tactic, but rather, a reflection of my core convictions. Perhaps I am a relic of the past that deserves to be kicked to the curb as some assert, but a quick perusal of history will confirm that the “end justifies the means” ascent to power only assures a destructive exposition in the end, of this I am certain.

I understand give and take. I understand compromise is essential to effective statesmanship. I probably break with many fellow conservatives when I say I think Mitt Romney would make an excellent Secretary of State. His calm, measured demeanor is sorely needed on the world stage. Yes, I am fully aware that he certainly lacks in his conservatism.

I differ with many of my learned and far more talented contemporaries, such as Matt Gagnon, when I say Sarah Palin would be a great pick for the VA. I think we have forgotten what propelled her to the Governorship. Remember, her dogged investigation of the corruption in the oil companies in Alaska?

This I say simply to point out that I understand the give and take among the conservative ranks. What I cannot fathom however is how some so easily abandon their professed convictions for “Hey,we won!” Yes, I am aware one former Governor of Alaska certainly was the first to seemingly toss conviction to the wind for “the win”.

So there is contention within the conservative ranks that must be resolved. Can a candidate be a person of conviction and be successful? Or must the candidate simply profess conviction as tactics to be removed and reinstated as political atmospheres dictate? Is there really a right or wrong? Or does it have to be the present cycle of “bad for thee but not for me”? I foresee some soul-searching in my horizon. Is soul-searching allowed in politics?

Dec 1 2016

Endowed

It’s a word that has many different connotations. For the purposes of this article, I would like to explore the denotative meaning in the Declaration of Independence, when our Founding Fathers declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,”. It has been distressing to find how few know the value of this document, its meaning, and the ideal it declared, from which sprang a new Nation.

Often today when we say someone is “endowed”, it is accompanied with a wry grin or a flush of jealousy as we often are referring to certain physical characteristics, often gender specific, that make a individual more attractive in the beholder’s eye than, perhaps, the “average” person. While “the rest of us” struggle with feelings of inadequacy when in the presence of those that are “endowed”, the writers of the Declaration of Independence had a different perspective of the physical endowments of humanity that were inclusive to all humans, yes, even the much less than spectacular such as I. This springs from the words “unalienable rights”, which is directly linked to the word “endowed”.

The writers of our Founding documents also used the term “Natural Born Rights” interchangeably with with the term “unalienable rights” in their conversations concerning the founding documents. So whether you believe in a Creator or that you were simply born, you can be assured that the Founding Fathers were steadfast in their belief that certain truths were “self-evident”, that we are all “created” or born equal, and when formed in the womb we all are created or “endowed” with “certain” Natural Born or “unalienable” rights. These “certain” endowed rights differed from other natural endowments of prowess, intellect or beauty, of which mankind is not created equal, these “certain” endowments were not only endowed or hard wired into our very being, our DNA, but were the same for everyone, “equal”.

“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”, these endowments are “certain” because they are few, specific, and without question, “self-evident”. The Founders did not write the Founding documents to prescribe or give us these rights; instead, these natural born rights are cited as evidence to the reasoning behind the Declaration of Independence. What was “self-evident” to them was that natural born right for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness has been “endowed” in mankind from the beginning of time and that no ruler or system of governance could or should try to take it away.

This is the great contention of our day! Do our rights come from government or are created in us, natural born? Our Founding Fathers were willing to die for their belief that our rights are natural born not government issued.

But many of the political establishment dating back to Woodrow Wilson have despised the ideal declared in our Founding documents. Progressives have worked tirelessly since the turn of the century to relegate our rights to words on documents rather than the ideals the documents protect. Rights created by documents can be lawyered, wordsmithed, and debated into futility and absurdity, but if “certain rights” are “unalienable”, natural born, they cannot be dissuaded by the rulings of contentious men and women.

“Unalienable” means they cannot be separated, set apart, taken away, or divested from us because they are woven into the very fabric of our life being. Just as your fingerprint makes you unique, our “unalienable rights” unite us all as humankind. In those aspects, we are all the same.

Yes, some civilizations have allowed regimes to suppress their natural born rights, yet, despite the brutality of man, each child born dawns anew the natural born desire for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. The gift that we have as Americans is the light of illumination that our Founders shined on the natural born freedoms we possess in the words they wrote in our Founding documents. In light of the confusion that surrounds us in these days, it behooves us as a people, so gifted and Blessed, to revisit the Foundation on which we stand free and learn its meaning.

Nov 21 2016

The Thanksgiving In ME

The thanksgiving in me
Looks forward to see
What blessings this season does bring

It’s more than the feast
The dough and the yeast
It’s freedoms we hale, we sing

We gaze misty eyed
At heroes who’ve died
To insure that we celebrate free

A child’s pleading eye
For a big piece of pie
In part is thanksgiving in me

To view nature’s charm
With my wife on my arm
Indeed, this is heaven on earth

The trees shed their leaves
Children play as they please
Oh, how I treasure their birth

This dinner of cheer
Heralds winter is near
Soon, “Dad, cut our big Christmas tree”

Mom’s final say
Picks the tree that will stay
I love this thanksgiving in ME

The land soon will bow
With snow covered boughs
We’re all warm and cozy inside

This land that I love
Blessings sent from above
Is why I still live here with pride

The things dear to me
The thanksgiving in me
Is why I will never refrain

To thank God above
For my family I love
This is Thanksgiving in ME

-Andy Torbett

Nov 9 2016

Hunting for a Blind

Throughout this battle over the Universal Background Checks referendum here in Maine there has been a recurrent question asked with a thematic persistence. “What about ‘shall not be infringed’ and ‘never be questioned’ don’t they understand?” The simple answer is many don’t understand and some have found that a feigned lack of understanding is a convenient blind to mask a far more insidious agenda.

For instance, the now infamous picture of Emily Cain dressed in full layered flannel and fleece hunting garb, fresh and crisp from the package, in the sweltering August sun smiling through the dripping sweat to say she supports the “right to hunt” has confounded and bemused Mainers to say the least. The immediate reaction from Maine sportsmen was to remind Ms. Cain, in no uncertain terms, that in her own Dukakis moment she had forgotten that the Second Amendment refers to the Right to Bear and Keep Arms not the “right to hunt”. Still, Cain’s lack of knowledge or omission by design is not the fundamental flaw with anti-gun elitists approach to the Second Amendment.

By relegating the Second Amendment to a written statement which grants citizens the “right to hunt”, gun haters attempt to not only narrow the protective scope of the Bill of Rights but also try to intimate that the rights we so cherish are provided for by the Amendments in question, and therefore, can be haggled over by lawyers and wordsmiths. Nothing is further from the truth. As it pertains to this debate, the Second Amendment is not the “grantor” of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. It is the “protector” of the this Right, which our Founding Fathers viewed as a Natural Born Right, a God-Given Right.

The “shall not be infringed” wordage in the Second Amendment was intended to be the walls on the outer perimeter, a bulwark if you will, to protect this most treasured Right. The Natural Born Right of the citizen to protect his or her family, wealth, home, and things treasured against the aggression of government and the tyranny of those elitist who believe that their wealth and station in life is the prerogative by which they can use that wealth and means to rescind or deter their fellow citizens of this Natural Born Right to protect and retain their own wealth. We now see this aggression being played out before us here in Maine.

Bloomberg and those who are on his payroll are so blinded by their self-importance they cannot fathom that those they hold in lower esteem would not except their opinions as superseding that of the Natural Order ordained by God. So sure are they of their self-worth, Bloomberg and associates are willing to come into our lands and our homes and launch millions of dollars in a barrage against the bulwark that protects our Natural Born Right to self defense. In the end, it is nothing more than the age-old attempt of a wealthy baron trying to bring those he deems lesser then him into subjugation.

Yes, behind all the blinds, the end goal is about subjugation. It is left to us, the citizens of Maine, to decide whether we will allow such arrogance to defeat us or will we defend the bulwark that protects our greatest treasures. Let the breakers crash upon its venerable walls. We The People will remain steadfast in the maintenance of the grand bulwark, the Second Amendment, for behind its immovable presence is treasure of our Natural Born Right to self-defense given and ordained by God Almighty.