With Zohran Mamdani On The Cusp of Becoming Mayor, NYC Embraces Its Own Demise

As a child of the Cold War with the Soviets as America’s enemy, when the wall came down and the threat of Communism faded, I was under the illusion that the world had inexorably turned a corner and that history was on the march to bring freedom, Capitalism and prosperity to the whole world…

The events of September 11 exposed that illusion for what it really was, a delusion.  There were actually people out there who wanted to start a war with the United States.

With 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq Islam went from an almost nonexistent issue for most Americans to front and center.  Suddenly Islam and Muslims are in the news on a daily basis, doing unspeakable things to one another and others. 

Knowing nothing of this threat and wanting to know more I picked up books like Dore Gold’s Hatred’s Kingdom and Benny Morris’ Righteous Victims, and even a copy of the Koran, which honestly, I couldn’t get through. And I read a lot more online from guys like Steve Emerson, Robert Spencer and David Horowitz.

Over the following years you had everything from the Shoe Bomber to the Ft. Hood shooter to the San Bernardino attack and countless others.  And elsewhere in the west you had everything from the murder of Theo Van Gogh to the London 7/7 attacks, the Charlie Hebdo attacks and others.  It seemed like Islam was at war against the entire world.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the news, despite everything we were seeing with our own eyes, the blood, the carnage, the innocent victims, we were told that Islam wasn’t the problem, but rather the individual terrorists who just happened to be Muslim. “Islam isn’t violent” we were told despite the fact that most of the wars going on in the world involve Muslims and the Koran itself both directs and allows killing in Allah’s name.  Seemingly we see Muslim violence everywhere but we’re told that there’s no connection to Islam, despite the fact that most of the time the perpetrators actually invoke Allah’s name during their attacks.

So the west, seeking to demonstrate their lack of “Islamophobia” decides to open the floodgates to Muslims from around the world with blind expectation that they would integrate into their societies – despite decades of proof of the exact opposite. And that held for the United States as well. You visit places like Dearborn, Michigan or Minneapolis, Minnesota or increasingly even places as far afield as Texas and it sometimes feels like you’re not actually in America.    

But if one looks, it’s not hard to understand why.  For the west, for most of the last 500 years there have been two poles seeking to influence life, the state and the church. The result of that pull between the state and Christianity is a civilization with extraordinary scientific and economic advancement, unprecedented levels of individual freedom and the miraculous levels of prosperity that came with them.

But for Islam, there is no such separation.  There is one law and it covers everything.  Freedom of speech and religion don’t exist. Both are tolerated when the numbers of Muslims are small in a nation, but once the numbers grow, they’re strangled.  About 15 years ago Evangelist Peter Hammond demonstrated how this works:

1)         As long as the Muslim population remains around or under 2% in any given country, they will be for the most part be regarded as a peace-loving minority, and not as a threat to other citizens.

2)         At 2% to 5%, they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups, often with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs.

3)         From 5% on, they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. For example, they will push for the introduction of halal food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarkets to feature halal on their shelves — along with threats for failure to comply.

4)         When Muslims approach 10% of the population, they tend to increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions.

There’s more, but you get the point. Couple that with the fact that Islam has basically been on a 1400 year quest to take over the world and one wonders why western leaders have not only opened up their countries to followers of an ideology that literally seeks their destruction, but funds them a well! 

Islam’s not a religion, it’s a supremist, expansionist and tyrannical ideology that is anathema to the very foundations of western civilization. Don’t take my word for it, take the words of Imams across the west.  They seek to use demographics to overwhelm natives politically then impose a caliphate.  Very soon western leaders are going to have to confront the fact that they have injected their polity with a virus that seeks to kill it. 

Europe successfully defended itself from the first Islamic invasion in 732 in behind the leadership of the French Duke Charles Martel at Tours.  It did so again in Vienna in 1683 following King John III Sobieski of Poland.  Those men were true leaders. Today, with few exceptions, the west is led by cowards and traitors to their civilizations, more interested in being feted by their fellow globalists than defend their heritage.  Indeed, today Europe isn’t even fighting for itself.  It’s invited the enemy into its bosom and allowed him to thrive.

Why?  White guilt, of course.  To the point that the west will literally sacrifice their daughters so as not to be called Islamophobic. Across the west we’ve seen Hammond’s observations play themselves out. Sweden, formerly one of the safest countries in the world is today overwhelmed with rapes and bombings, and native Swedes aren’t responsible. Is any western city better off for having invited in hundreds of thousands of Muslims?  London?  Paris?  Amsterdam? No. The story is the same across Europe, yet most “leaders” pretend otherwise. 

Winston Churchill, a son of Britain and America understood the threat.  While he admitted “Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities” he knew the score.  “No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.”

And why does any of this matter? New York, of course. One need only to look at the dystopian nightmare that London has become to understand what lays ahead for New York. Once America’s greatest city, the disaster it already is has been driven by grievance, victimization and illegal immigration.  And now the guilt ridden college educated whites have essentially elected a terrorist supporting Communist as mayor. 

This does not bode well for freedom, prosperity, New York or for America. Freedom of speech and religion are literally written into our founding documents. They are fundamental to our nation.  Islam, tolerates neither.  At the end of the day, Islam is not a religion, it’s an ideology that seeks to overthrow the west.  It’s well on its way in Europe.  We should not allow it to do so here.     

The NFL has become the No Freedom League - How Wokeness Helped Bring America to the Brink of Revolution

I grew up in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, before they had satellite TV. As such, on the Monday after the Super Bowl everyone on the entire base would try and get through the day without knowing who won the game. That night, after a tape of the game had been flown down from the US, we'd watch the game and be riveted to our TVs. The military TV stations weren’t allowed to show private commercials so we would all greet a Pepsi or McDonalds commercial that might slip by the censors with wondrous applause. The NFL was my passion, along with my sainted Dolphins, with Gods Bob Griese and Dan Marino at the helm. Today however, I doubt I’ll watch another NFL game and most certainly won’t spend a penny on NFL merchandise.

Why? It’s simple. The NFL, helmed by men who are ostensibly some of the smartest businessmen in America, literally helped bring America to the brink of revolution, maybe even led the way. Of course we’re talking about Kaepernick and Black Lives Matter.

The NFL, and to a lesser degree, MLB and the NBA used to be oases from which all Americans could seek refuge from the slings and arrows of daily life. Monday at the office used to be “Did you see that catch?” or “The zebras blew another one!” Since Kaepernick started his grandstanding however the conversations became more about who was kneeling, what star was lecturing America about this grievance or that and ceased to be about the excitement or pain or joy of the actual games.

In a sad irony, Charlie Daniels once wrote an anthem called “In America” where he used an NFL team to demonstrate American's unity. 

And we may have done a little bit of fighting among ourselves, 

but you outside people best leave us alone...

Cause we'll all stick together, and you can take that to the bank,

that's the cowboys and the hippies and the rebels and the yanks...

You just go and lay your hand on a Pittsburgh Steelers fan and I think you're gonna finally understand”

It’s almost apropos that Daniels died in the very year when it’s not outsiders who have started a revolution, but other Americans, and they were set on that course by the NFL.

Had the “geniuses” who run the NFL understood anything about America and put a stop to Kaepernick’s on field preening four years ago, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Freedom of speech had nothing to do with anything. Kaepernick had and has every right to say what’s on his mind. The NFL however did not have to allow him to hijack their platform to trumpet it. Had they not helped him become a media darling, he probably wouldn’t have walked away from is multimillion dollar contract and become the least worthy “martyr” in the history of martyrs.

And just to be clear, it's not because they couldn't have done anything.  The NFL controls virtually every single thing about its games and programs. It choreographs everything!!! Uniform colors… check. Shirts tucked in… check. Fines for faux cellphone celebrations after a touchdown? Check. Yet somehow they weren’t able to tell players that they could not disrespect the American flag and National Anthem. They could have required standing, or required those not wanting to participate to stay in the locker room, or they could have kept all the players in the locker rooms and let the fans sing the song… But they didn’t. Instead, they allowed what would have been a flash in the pan to become a raging inferno that has the potential to turn the United States and its Constitution into ashes.  The fires and riots and attacks on police and federal buildings and America are simply the progeny of the boiling tempers fueled in part by the victim mentality emboldened by the NFL's wokeness.

Today in the United States the idea of free speech is vanishing and the NFL, by showcasing a struggling, marginal, spoiled quarterback with a chip on his shoulder helped make it so. Today in America, everything is political… science, education, healthcare and now, sadly, even sports. Sure politics in sports has been around for a while, go back to the 1968 Black Power Olympic protests or Muhammad Ali, but those were news, not everyday life.

Now politics has infested every corner of American life and you can’t help but see it everywhere from shopping to going to the movies to wedding cakes to science. Not to mention workplaces.  Up until about 2016 Americans had at least one refuge from the cancer of political rage… that was sports. Americans of different colors, of different religions of different national origins could get together and cheer for (or against) the Cowboys, the Raiders, the Patriots or the Steelers and feel like they were part of something bigger than themselves, members of the same team.  "How'd we do this weekend?" or "Where are we at this Sunday?" wasn't reserved for players or coaches... Fans were part of the team, the 12th man, they weren't just observers, they were family.  Sports made fans' differences inconsequential, even if only for as long as they were cheering together or drinking beer together or wearing the their matching Giants jerseys.

In putting politics front and center of their offerings, in letting their platforms become a cultural litmus test, in actively turning their sport into a vehicle for wokeness, the NFL has destroyed their brand as an American icon. Never again will many Americans look to it for a welcome respite from the chaos of everyday life. Never again will it have the capacity to change American life the way the Heidi Bowl did.

The NFL may continue to be a viable business for some time, but its place in history will be sealed by its engagement in wokeness. The thing about wokeness is that there are always new victims to be supported, new causes to be championed and new targets for expropriation and destruction. The geniuses who run the league shouldn’t be surprised that eventually they will be on the wrong side of some victims rights group and their businesses will be targeted, their directors will be hounded and eventually their assets will be taken, one way or another. When that happens they shouldn't be surprised that more than a few people might be whispering feelings of Schadenfreude.

Gratitude at Christmastime... For our Freedom of Speech

Christmas is, among other things, a time for gratitude. Gratitude of course comes in many shapes and sizes. Some people feel gratitude for family, others for health, others for prosperity and some for all of those things and more and no doubt some for much less.

Whatever one’s situation here in the United States, we, as a people, have much to be thankful for. Perhaps there is nothing more deserving of our gratitude than the Constitution, that imperfect document upon which our nation was founded. It has much in it that has allowed our nation to not only survive, but thrive. Separation of powers. Limited government. The Amendment process. And of course the Bill of Rights.

Of all of the rights protected by the Constitution, arguably the most important is found in the 1st Amendment: Freedom of Speech. Why? Because human interaction of all kinds is based on communication. Whether it’s talking to a girl in a bar, arguing politics with someone at work, discussing the gospels after church or advocating for less regulation in front of the city council, speech is typically the mechanism through which we share ideas, have our theories challenged, test our persuasive skills.

Free speech is of course a messy proposition. If you allow free speech to flourish, eventually you’re going to come across some speech with which you disagree. Which is of course why the 1st Amendment exists in the first place. We don’t need a 1st Amendment to protect singing Jingle Bells or Sandra Bullock movies or Archie comic books. No, speech that everyone likes – or speech that people don’t care about one way or another – rarely needs to be protected. It’s all that other stuff that needs protection. It’s the Playboy magazine in the 1950’s, it’s the Seven Dirty Words, it’s the right to say your congressman, or president or local sheriff is a jerk. Basically the 1st Amendment protects one’s right to say things that other people disagree with.

And there’s the rub in our holiday ointment. Although the Freedom of Speech is possibly the most important freedom protected by the Constitution, it is coming under fire across the country. From university speech codes and “safe areas” to wishing someone “Merry Christmas”, it seems that the fictional “right” to not be offended is superseding the actual right of free speech. That is a serious problem, and it brings to mind the answer Ben Franklin gave after the close of the Constitutional Convention when a woman outside Independence Hall asked him what kind of government we had: “A Republic, if you can keep it”. When the Freedom of Speech begins to be undermined, the Republic itself won’t be far behind.

Earlier this year a US Senator from Rhode Island suggested using RICO laws to prosecute those skeptical of the “climate change” hoax. Not long after a group of prominent “climate change” professors seconded that suggestion. Although President Obama voiced his support of the notion of Free Speech in the face of recent crybaby university protests, two years ago his administration encouraged universities to ban “any expression related to sexual topics that offends any person”, which might at some point put someone whistling at a girl or commenting about her beauty at risk of official censure. Also on the university hit lists are the countless incidences of conservative speakers being shouted down and turned away from campuses. And then there are the terrorists who attacked the Texas Draw Mohamed contests and Muslims who advocate for Sharia law.

Whether from the government or from aggrieved minorities or even environmental activists, the movement towards silencing critics or opponents is a troubling one because it cuts at the foundation of our liberty and our Republic. The danger of creating an echo chamber is that eventually there are no dissenting voices to highlight possible errors in judgment, miscalculations, biases or simply reality conflicting with theory. And invariably those things end up in legislation, which further diminishes other freedoms as well.

As painful as conflicting ideas might be, as unsavory as offensive speech might be, having them on the periphery of good taste or “settled science” strengthens the core of our Republic. Rarely are ideas or values stronger than when they must be defended. It is in building that defense that we find our ideas or values to be worthy… or lacking, which, at the end of the day is how ideas advance, how values are forged and how our nation prospers. That is something we cannot forget and something we cannot allow governments or groups to undermine.

So this Christmas, with a toast of egg nog, perhaps a nod of gratitude to the Founding Fathers for giving Americans a gift that so few people on the planet enjoy… the right to open our mouths and be found a fool or a genius or a rabble rouser or just another voice in the cacophony that makes up the tapestry of our Republic.

King Leonidas, ISIS and the Culture War Barack Obama Refuses to See… Nevermind Fight

A week and a half ago fascist thugs of ISIS attacked Paris. Three days later President Obama addressed the world from Istanbul and said the attack was “an attack on all of humanity and the universal values we share.”

That is a wonderful sentiment, but like most things that come out of Barack Obama’s mouth, it’s wrong. There are not universal values.

Take freedom of speech. Across the planet, from China to Saudi Arabia to Russia to Venezuela, (and most places in between) nothing resembling freedom of speech such freedom exists. In the West, from Australia to England to Italy to Canada, freedom of speech ostensibly exists, but the restrictions continue to grow. Even here in the United States where freedom of speech is enshrined in our Constitution, it is under siege everywhere. On universities, the very places where ideas are supposed to be studied and debated, speech codes are suffocating liberty and mini fascists seek to limit your ability to say anything they disagree with. In everyday life criticizing anyone for anything opens one up for accusations of being racist or sexist or homophobic or some other form of intolerance.

Freedom of religion? One wonders how Coptic Christians in Egypt feel about freedom of Religion. Try wearing a crucifix in Saudi Arabia. How free do the followers of Falun Gong feel in China? Jews in Europe… Here in the United States Christians are under assault for refusing to participate in gay weddings while atheists seek to eliminate even the shadows of Christianity from the public square.

Freedom in general is not something found on most parts of the planet… Across the Muslim world women are slaves and getting raped is a crime for which one can be ostracized, jailed  or even killed. South America and Africa are rife with failed states where graft is the natural order of things and the populations are mired in poverty (real poverty… not what passes for poverty in the United States) while government officials and their connected cronies live in luxury. In China the government or government aligned corporations control virtually everything, even down to reproduction.

All in all, the values that Obama is suggesting are universal are nothing of the sort. Widespread notions of freedom of speech, freedom of religion and individual liberty simply don’t exist. The vast majority of people living on the planet today do not share or experience any of those values. There has never been a time in human history where a majority of people shared such values. Indeed it’s never even been close.

It is only with the rise of the West, where such freedoms and values were developed and flourished and codified, that the notion of “universal freedoms” could even be imagined. Such freedoms hit their apex with the writing of the United States Constitution. For the first time in human history there was a document that not only explicitly spelled out the rights of citizens that could not be impeded, but more importantly, explicitly limited the power of government to only those things it was specifically empowered to do by the citizens.

The reality is, the “universal freedoms” Barack Obama talks about simply don’t exist. They never have. But somehow he, along with the rest of the left pretend that they do, which is exactly why they seek to shift power away from the constitutionally constrained government of the United States to the unconstrained United Nations. They live in a fantasy world where if everyone would just put down their weapons and embrace one another that the world will suddenly be all right. They feel like if everyone simply kept the “fair share” of their income then magically the world become a nirvana in which every family enjoys a lifetime of Norman Rockwell dinners.

And that tells you exactly why ISIS is a problem and the West is in decline. Europeans, along with the left in America, willfully ignored what made the West a success in the first place… culture inspired by Christianity – although at times hindered by it as well, built on intellectual curiosity and empowered by individual liberty and freedom. The notions of freedom of religion and speech and private property as we know them today evolved in the West over a period of 800 years. They were not codified by an edict by a Pope or Martin Luther or Napoleon or Queen Victoria or even James Madison. These decidedly non-universal values came about as the result of a struggle between church and state and citizenry as well as between churches, states and citizens. Much bloodshed was spilled in the process of developing those values. They were hard fought for and won, and to the degree that they exist in other places around the world, for the most part they were brought there by westerners.

It is not so much that the West is collapsing because it’s being invaded (which it surely is) but rather rotting from within because it has spend the last half century protected in a cocoon of security provided by the American military. After rescuing much of the world from the Nazis and the Japanese in WWII, for more than half a century the United States has provided a bulwark against the Soviets and the Chinese and later the Russians. Under the protection of American power, the West - including the United States – deluded itself with the notion that peace was now the norm and that civilization had finally come to humanity. As such, it was possible to create vast social programs to nurture citizens from cradle to grave with little concern about fiscal or social responsibility. In addition, they opened their doors to allow millions of immigrants to enter their countries and enjoy those programs without ever being required to assimilate. Indeed, in many European countries assimilation could be almost impossible even if it were desired, which it rarely was.

Today we have the logical conclusion of the argument that no culture is superior to any other. Because Western culture is no better than any other, there is no basis to demand assimilation. Migrants by the millions move to the West and then seek to establish mini-me versions of the failed states and dysfunctional cultures they left behind… Indeed, across Europe there are movements under foot to implement Sharia law above national law while France, Britain and other nations are peppered with “No-Go” zones.

Given that it’s seen as racist or xenophobic to suggest that one’s culture is superior to another, it’s verboten to ask who put men on the moon, mapped the human genome or invented mobile phones. Such questions do not matter because all cultures are equal. And so it goes. As the self loathing West derides the very things that made it successful in the first place it finds itself under siege by those who are not only proud of their culture and values but are willing to both kill and die for them.

To see how this juxtaposition of passion and cultural apathy might play itself out, read or watch something about the Battle of Thermopylae. Observe how a small force of highly motivated and passionate fighters can have an impact exponentially larger than their numbers might suggest. King Leonidas and his men lose their lives and the battle… but the Greeks win the war. Unfortunately for America and the West, our impotent and incompetent leader is Barack Obama, who refuses to even see that we’re in the midst of a culture war, nevermind recognize that for the other side it’s literally a fight to the death. Let’s hope the next occupant of the Oval Office understands that America and the values she holds are not only, not universal, but they are exceptional, and indeed worthy of both praise and protection.

The Paris attacks and the Mizzou protests are two sides of the same coin…

The ISIS attacks on civilians in Paris and the attacks on common sense across the country are two sides of the same coin.

Both were carried out by those who hate freedom…. Not their freedom of course, but yours. With ISIS (as well as fanatical Muslims around the planet) you are expected to live the way they want you to, to act the way they want you to, but most of all you must believe the way they want you to… or they will simply kill you.

At Mizzou, Yale and Amherst, protesters, (as well as liberals everywhere across the country, including the BLM movement) you are expected to understand their feelings of offense, recognize their “plight” and appreciate how difficult their lives are. Essentially you must believe them when they tell you the world is unfair for everyone other than straight white males. If you don’t agree they probably won’t try and kill you, but they will seek to kill your livelihood.

Both groups have their rules about what you can and can’t do and say. For the former it’s be Christian, be gay, drive a car if you’re a woman, be a girl in school, punish your rapist if you’re a woman or express a view that doesn’t comport with their interpretation of the Koran.

For the latter it’s pointing out that exponentially more black men die at the hands of other black men than white cops every year, support colorblind college admission standards, try police misconduct trials in a courtroom rather than the media, suggest women and men are indeed different with different abilities or that college students might be slightly over sensitive when it comes to being offended.

Neither group believes in the notion of free speech. Across the Muslim world one sees journalists and bloggers killed for the crime of speaking out against terrorism while in the west you have the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the murder of Theo Van Gogh and the fatwa on Ayaan Hirsi Ali among others.

At the same time, here in the US on the rare occasions conservative speakers make it to the podium on a college campus, they are usually shouted down; counter intuitive “free speech zones” greatly limit a speaker’s ability to be heard; and memorializing the victims of 9-11 is somehow racist. And when there aren’t enough actual incidents of racism or sexism or this or that ism, they must be contrived…

At the end of the day, Paris, Mizzou, and bakers being bankrupted for not participating in a gay wedding are all about one thing… intolerance. Your ideas don’t matter. Your freedom doesn’t matter. Your life or livelihood doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you understand our “pain” and agree with our ideas and bend to our will. If not, we will strike.

One might bristle at the notion of equating the terror in Paris with the “crybullies” on the left, but the parallel is appropriate. Terror is not an ideology, but a tactic, just as hunger strikes and temper tantrums by football players and other “aggrieved” groups are. In both cases the goal is the same: silence dissent, quash freedom, and coerce obedience. Whether it’s a threat to life and limb or a threat to the order of civilized society, both the demands and the actors should be rejected. The actors of the former should be hunted down and killed while the actors in the latter should be ignored, ostracized and in the case of students who think they have a right to interfere with the education of others, they should simply be expelled.

The poorly named “War on Terror” is a war we have no choice but to engage in and win.  We didn't start it, but we must win it in order for our civilization to survive.

The protest war of aggrieved crybullies on the other hand is one that we win by not engaging in. Like a child that bumps his knee, the attention is what propagates the wailing. Ignore him and his attention goes elsewhere. So too with the crybullies. Ignore them and their insipid demands and eventually they will have to start focusing on things of consequence such as getting a real education and learning to be productive members of society.

Barack Obama, Free Speech and Operation Choke Point... you'd better watch out, you might be next!

The Constitution guarantees every American the Freedom of Speech. The very first Amendment to the document says “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech…” Of course, what is speech that it needs such protection? Speech is more than just saying what’s on your mind, regardless of how profound or silly it is. Speech is communication. That’s the speech that needed protection and was incorporated into the First Amendment. It was the communication of thoughts and ideas that needed protection. Speech needed protection because of the impact it could have on others. Kings don’t like their authority questioned and a freedom of speech could potentially rile up his subjects.

It is that very reason that our Founding Fathers sought to protect speech: For the people to keep the government in check.

So now, today, we are all lucky enough to have that freedom. But it’s not literally the words coming out of your mouth that need the protection. After all, you could stand in your shower and say whatever you want and no king or president would likely care. No, it’s your ability to communicate ideas to others that is real value and has the power to effect change.

Knowing that communication was such a central element of the Freedom of Speech, how would you feel if the government used its various powers to say “We’re not going to try and stop you from speaking, however we are going to threaten anyone who listens to you.” You’d be dumbfounded to say the least – no pun intended. That doesn’t make a bit of sense and it’s likely unconstitutional as it puts a dagger into the very heart of what free speech is about.

Thankfully the Obama administration has not yet decided to do quite that, yet… although the IRS scandal was certainly an attempt to accomplish the same thing. They are however using that very same tactic to shut down a wide range of legal businesses they don’t like. They are doing it to gun and ammunition dealers. They are doing it to the porn industry. They are doing it to payday lenders. They are doing it to Colorado marijuana retailers. In every one of these cases the administration is seeking to close down legal businesses by using its regulatory powers to stop banks from doing business with them. It’s called “Operation Choke Point” and it’s a joint effort by the Departments of Justice, Treasury and a handful of other agencies to effectively shut-down industries that the Obama administration doesn’t like.

How do they accomplish that? By contacting the banks servicing those businesses and “encouraging” them to stop doing business with the frowned upon businesses. Although the businesses are perfectly legal, the banks, recognizing that the price for not adhering to those “suggestions” would be a regulatory nightmare from which they might not be able to survive, acquiesce.

The problem however is that the government doesn’t have the legal right to coerce businesses out of business arbitrarily just because they don’t like them. That’s the whole point of the Constitution in the first place, particularly the 10th Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Government can not legally rule by executive fiat. But somehow Barack Obama thinks he can.

Maybe you support what he’s doing. Maybe you’re against gun ownership or porn. The question becomes however, what about the next president? Maybe he’s against different things, even if they are legal. Let’s say Rick Santorum becomes the next president and decides to use the Treasury Department to force banks to stop servicing abortion clinics and their employees. The 21st Amendment repealed prohibition, but what if the next president felt that thousands of innocent deaths annually due to drunk driving was too many and decided to use the Department of Agriculture to outlaw the growing of hops, barley and grapes? What if the next president decides that unions are a threat to the nation’s prosperity and uses Homeland Security to, while in line with the 1st Amendment, allow them to meet, but to limit them meeting in spaces no larger than a Starbucks? What if the next president thinks electric cars require too many resources to manufacture so he uses the Energy Department to tamp down demand by having power companies shut off electricity to owners’ homes? Where does it stop?

The whole point of the Constitution and the rule of law is that citizens know the bounds of what is legal and what is not and understand where government action is appropriate. Those who operate within those bounds should be free from arbitrary government coercion. If “Operation Choke Point” is allowed to stand then it changes the United States from a nation (government) of laws to a nation of men. That’s a big problem, and not only because we have statists like Barack Obama and Eric Holder controlling the reins of power.  More importantly,  it undermines the very foundation of the nation. Once that which defines legal becomes a moving target based on who’s in power, then no one can be secure in their businesses, their homes or anywhere in their lives. One of two things follow: anarchy or tyranny. People will choose to either do what they want regardless of what the law says or they will do what they think the people in power want, regardless of what the law says. One or the other will prevail. Neither of which is fertile ground for freedom or prosperity for anybody other than those in power.