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Tom Hoefling
The fear of God is the missing ingredient in our politics today - on the part of the people themselves, and on the part of those they elect to public office who are required to take the oath. Our system presupposes a just and perfect judgment on our words and actions in the hereafter, as the mainstay against abuses and usurpations in the civic here and now. Without that healthy dread in our hearts and minds, and in the hearts and minds of our chosen representatives, the whole edifice of constitutional republicanism falls apart. "Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths?" -- George Washington "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding." -- Proverbs 9:10 Tom Hoefling
A people that scoffs at the Sovereignty of God will inevitably lose their own sovereign ability to govern themselves in liberty. Hatred of God, and the denial of His natural moral order, can only produce tyranny, destruction, abject poverty, and servitude. "The rectitude of our intentions...with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence"6/30/2014  Tom Hoefling
The “lesser of two evils” philosophy is by definition godless Utilitarianism. That philosophy excludes faith, the belief that if we will simply align ourselves with right, and do right, God will, in His good time, step in on our behalf. It destroys the foundations of American independence, liberty, and self-government. George Washington, and the rest of the founders, made constant reference to divine Providence, crediting that Providential Power as the Source for all their successes. Unless we are willing to return to their attitude, and emulate their moral, courageous actions, there truly is no hope for the republic they fought so hard to establish. “If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.” - George Washington “We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” — Closing lines of the Declaration of Independence "If you perform your part, you must have the strongest confidence that the same Almighty Being who protected your pious and venerable forefathers, who enabled them to turn a barren wilderness into a fruitful field, who so often made bare His arm for their salvation, will still be mindful of you, their offspring...May this Almighty Being graciously preside in all our councils. May He direct us to such measures as He Himself shall approve, and be pleased to bless. May our land be a land of liberty, the seat of virtue, the asylum of the oppressed, a name and a praise in the whole earth, until the last shock of time shall bury the empires of the world in one common undistinguishable ruin!"
-- Dr. Joseph Warren, March 5, 1772 Tom Hoefling: "Way to go Iowa Gun Owners, and all of my fellow Iowans who love liberty enough to fight for it, at every level of government!"  Iowa Gun Owners
“I can’t believe how quickly the members of Iowa Gun Owners stepped in and helped us with this local problem. Tell them that gun owners in George extend a huge ‘Thank you’ to them and a bunch of us will be joining IGO immediately!” This was the call that I got this morning from multiple residents of the city of George, IA, who were mobilized yesterday en masse with the help of Iowa Gun Owners as the George City Council was poised to vote, today, on a proposal to ban all defensive weapons on city property. But unlike some of city bans that we’ve seen, this small town in NW IA has a true “Boss Hogg” mentality as the language had a carve-out for elected officials like the very City Council members who would be voting to end your ability to defend your family! That’s right, “elected officials” would still be allowed to carry at the town hall, town pool, town baseball complex, etc. But the taxpayers who pay to build and maintain these city properties would have to hope that a deputy could make it to town in time to save them should a violent criminal attack them. Read this story at iowagunowners.org ... Tom Hoefling:
"Kids need us, but we also need kids. I've been in many places around the country in the last few decades that have an incredible lack of children anywhere in evidence. Those places seem kind of lifeless and cold and sad, frankly. Anyhow, yesterday I observed something remarkable that led to this post. I was in the Des Moines downtown skywalk system. It was kind of cold and lifeless in there, as it usually is. A few hundred adults moving here and there, about their own business, pretty much ignoring everybody else as city folks are wont to do. You know how it is. But suddenly everything changed. A long line of hundreds of grade school aged kids came filing through, and the noise level went up exponentially. The place was filled with the wonderful sound of children's voices. And you know what? I watched the demeanor of the adults completely change right before my eyes. People relaxed. They began to smile and talk to one another as they watched the little ones going by. It was a really beautiful thing to observe. The moral of the story? America, quit killing off the future, and get your eyes on what is truly important. Because, in the end, all that matters is people, and especially the children, who are our posterity. It's not all about us, it's about them. But by serving them, we will ourselves receive the greatest blessings of liberty." "But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of license; though man in that state have an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions; for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker; all the servants of one sovereign Master, sent into the world by His order and about His business; they are His property, whose workmanship they are made to last during His, not one another's pleasure. And, being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of Nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us that may authorise us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another's uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours. Every one as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he as much as he can to preserve the rest of mankind, and not unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another."
-- John Locke, Second Treatise, An Essay Concerning the True Original Extent and End of Civil Government "The foundation for our claim to liberty is a moral claim. Take away that moral basis and enduring liberty is simply not possible."
-- Tom Hoefling “Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature. … it is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or any number of men, at entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights; when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defense of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are Life, Liberty, and Property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.”
– Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists, The Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting, Nov. 20, 1772 "Lady Justice is often rightfully depicted as an expectant mother with scales in one hand, a sword in the other, and a blindfold on. The perversion of American government we are now experiencing, at both the national and the state levels, aborts posterity, removes the blindfold - constantly showing favoritism concerning whose equal rights to life, liberty, and property will be protected and whose won't - wields the power of the sword against the upright rather than against evildoers, and uses the scales of justice, not to honestly weigh justice, but to weigh out the thirty pieces of silver the politicians and judges have sold us and our children for." -- Tom Hoefling  "Open your mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy."
-- Proverbs 31:9 "Without justice being freely, fully, and impartially administered, neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our property, can be protected. And if these, or either of them, are regulated by no certain laws, and are subject to no certain principles, and are held by no certain tenure, and are redressed, when violated, by no certain remedies, society fails of all its value; and men may as well return to a state of savage and barbarous independence."
-- Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833 "Other nations have received their laws from conquerors; some are indebted for a constitution to the suffering of their ancestors through revolving centuries. The people of this country, alone, have formally and deliberately chosen a government for themselves, and with open and uninfluenced consent bound themselves into a social compact. . . .
"Our Union is now complete; our Constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties: We may justly address you as the decemviri did the Romans, and say: 'Nothing that we propose can pass into a law without your consent. Be yourselves, O Americans, the authors of those laws on which your happiness depends.'” -- Samuel Adams, On American Independence, 1776 "If we want to save the country, and to deliver a free republic to our posterity, as our forefathers delivered to us, we're going to have to give up the idea that government exists to take care of us. It does not. It exists to secure our rights, our sovereignty, our security, our borders, our constitutional form of representative self-government. We have to relearn how to take care of ourselves and our own families. The church and the local communities will have to once again step up where the individual and the family cannot. But as long as we're looking to our state and national capitals for sugar daddies, we will continue on the course of national destruction."
-- Tom Hoefling Frederic Bastiat: "Try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works."1/31/2013 "God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well as a human form. And these social organs of persons are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of Liberty. Away, then with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their governmental schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations! And now that the legislator and do-gooders have so futiley inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works."
-- Frederic Bastiat, The Law, 1850 "Not only will we fight to remove every single politician from office who attacks our God-given, unalienable, equal rights to life and liberty, including our right to keep and bear arms, we will also oppose every craven, cowardly politician who remains silent in the face of this encroaching anti-God, anti-American, anti-life, anti-liberty tyranny. Speak now or get out of the way and go home."
-- Tom Hoefling, January 5, 2013 "Godless atheism, socialism, liberalism, whatever you want to call it, is fatal to many innocents in this country every single day. And, unless decent people are willing to fight back, it will inevitably be fatal to American liberty. "
-- Tom Hoefling, December 15, 2012 "Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful; but we have many friends, determining to be free, and heaven and earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves."
--Joseph Warren, Boston Massacre Oration, 1775 George Washington's stern warning concerning those who seek national disunion and dissolution11/12/2012 "Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment.
The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts. For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes. But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole." -- George Washington, Farewell Address By Tom Hoefling "For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it." -- Patrick Henry, 'Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death' Extreme radicals may, for the moment, control our White House and the U.S. Senate. The U.S. House of Representatives may, for now, be run primarily by spineless, unprincipled men, selfishly and stupidly doing what they ought not, while despising their oaths and neglecting to do what they ought. The Supreme Court may currently be filled with those who have little or no understanding of the actual law; of the eternal, moral, natural law principles of the Declaration of Independence or the clearly-stated purposes and explicit, imperative requirements of the United States Constitution. Our great historic political parties may have been made into completely corrupted, co-opted, propagandistic shams. Media and academia may be moral and intellectual wastelands. Business and the economy may be anemic as they are slowly bled dry by statist, socialistic, out-of-control, illegitimate, unconstitutional government. And yet, God Almighty remains on His Throne. We the People remain, to this day and hour, a sovereign people, under God. Many of us still "hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness..." and "That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..." Millions of us retain our firm allegiance and unwavering commitment to the Constitution and righteous, republican, representative self-government. We remain free to defend ourselves, and to freely exercise our God-given, unalienable rights to worship and pray, to associate, to assemble, to petition, to organize, to speak, to write, to publish. My friends and fellow Americans, please, exercise your God-given rights to the maximum now, while you can, not just for yourselves, but for your posterity. As you do so, take heart from the fact that we have the truth on our side. Take courage and resolution from your faith in the One Who rules forever. Draw strength and sustenance from one another. For we know that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. His providential Hand has always moved on behalf of those who walk in faith and obedience to Him. He will help us, if we will only humble ourselves, seek Him, and boldly and courageously stand up to fight for what is eternally good, and true, and right. Speak the truth in love, and live out that love toward your fellow citizens, so that they can understand that, in fact, what you are saying is real. Please, do it now, I beg you, before it is too late for us, for our children, and for the United States of America. "They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a...guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power....millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains...! The war is inevitable²and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come. It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace²but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? 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!" -- Patrick Henry, 'Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death'  "I am commonly opposed to those who modestly assume the rank of champions of liberty, and make a very patriotic noise about the people. It is the stale artifice which has duped the world a thousand times, and yet, though detected, it is still successful. I love liberty as well as anybody. I am proud of it, as the true title of our people to distinction above others; but...I would guard it by making the laws strong enough to protect it."
-- Fisher Ames, letter to George Richard Minot, 1789 "God forbid that we should ever be purveyors of such an artifice. May our actions show consistently that what we strive for is the strengthening of the true moral basis of liberty, and that we are in truth, not just in word, servants of the people." -- Tom Hoefling, October 4, 2012 "Our liberty depends on our education, our laws, and habits...It is founded on morals and religion, whose authority reigns in the heart, and on the influence all these produce on public opinion before that opinion governs rulers."
-- Fisher Ames |
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