“There are citizens of the United States … who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt … to destroy our industries … and to debase our politics to the uses of foreign intrigue…. We are without adequate federal laws…. I am urging you to do nothing less than save the honor and self-respect of the nation. Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out.”

Was this a Right-wing nut proclaiming the pending peril and potential dissolution of the United States as we know it? Is this the declaration of an impassioned uber-patriot proclaiming the assault on America’s sovereignty by Leftist, Marxist, Socialist, Communist, Progressive (Bingo!) agents provocateur working to kill the American Dream and while so doing enslave honest hard working patriots? Is it a statement authored to slander the present incumbent Democrat Party hack “fundamentally hoping to change” the American reality in comparison to American ideals?

NO. Woodrow Wilson (Democrat) said this in his December 7, 1915 State of the Union address before Congress asking for the passage of the Espionage Act as legislation. It was an impassioned plea for control and has been argued was an effort to abrogate certain entitlements enumerated in the Bill of Rights. As the speech he sought to control, condemn and deny was occasionally in controversy to his policies and political ideology of the moment, it would be difficult to accept his motives were without a certain level of self-service.

Contrast this with a later President speaking at a commencement ceremony. “Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all of our problems. Some of these voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny’s always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

We have never been a people who place our faith in government to solve our problems. We shouldn’t want to. But we don’t think the government is the source of all our problems either. Because we understand that it’s not about what America can do for us, it’s about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government.”  (Obama: Ohio State University May 5, 2013.)

If history held no chapters evidencing the tragedies of the Third Reich and its ability to use pressurized, self-serving legislation developed by proponents of Hitler’s ignominy, I would say Obama was at least partially right. But we’ve seen where charismatic, compelling and appealing public speakers have captured the imagination of the people in direct opposition to their ability to recognize snake-oil peddlers vs. true medical knowledge seeking to cure what ails us. If history had no pages documenting the travesty of Communist control and abuses under Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Mao we might accept the idea these abuses couldn’t happen here.

But we know they can happen anywhere the people release their hold and control of the leadership and conduct of government. The day the people “ignore” what any entity says as it concerns political debate and discourse, they start a chain reaction that won’t immediately destroy our republic but will crack the walls of the citadel because of lack of maintenance. Internal rot destroys more than external force much of the time.

Look at the last sentence in the quoted paragraph above: “…they suggest … our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

Who are the “we” you refer to Mr. Obama? After all: YOU are the government. I’d suggest the statement you made (and again I quote): “They’ll warn that tyranny’s always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices”; is very telling of your purposes. Isn’t that the moral equivalent of “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

Of course the man behind the curtain is you Mr. Obama. You’re the one telling us to ignore what you do in favor of swallowing hook, line and sinker, what you say. I’d suggest any person a member of an entity (in this case government no longer of the people by the people or for the people) is guilty of the oligarchical posturing of legislators and presidents considering themselves smarter than and thus, better than those same people.

Wilson was trying to stop espionage which we all understood was happening. Bush “43” dealt with 9/11 and gave us the Patriot Act. Rights became imperiled in a perceived need to prevent terrorism. Obama’s seeing spies in the press, the people and behind every shrub twitching in the breeze. We’re assured we’ve stopped “dozens upon dozens” of terrorist enterprises since the advent of Data Mining. This was said by the Director of the NSA on 6-12-2013. But, there’s no way to prove or disprove this.

It’s all so secret.

And in the darkness of secrecy is where we hide what others should fear the most. It’s in the darkness lives the most unimaginable things any person can commit against the person of another. Hitler rose to power in the darkness of Kristallnacht.

Thanks for listening.