True North

I was just asked a question that has me spinning. The question was "How much time do you think we have to reform America before the bureaucrat-special interest-unionists make it impossible for us to make a difference ever again?"

Whoever asked that of Drew has a defeatist attitude and then some. I'd further say that this person must not be paying attention to what's happened the last 6 months.

Remember the 'Grand Bargain' amnesty legislation? When it was unveiled, the elitists in Washington told us that there wasn't a need to amend it, that the bill needed to be passed immediately. Big business was cheering for the bill's passage. It died. TWICE. It crashed twice because people who cared passionately about not granting amnesty to illegal immigrants called in such massive numbers that we melted the Senate switchboard down.

our voice, spineless politicians joined with principled Republicans to vote against cloture. That wouldn’t have happened a decade ago. That bill would’ve sailed through the House & Senate, followed by a big signing ceremony in the Rose Garden.

Remember John Murtha declaring before the entire nation that the Haditha Marines had “killed innocent civilians in cold blood”? Remember him claiming that the cover-up “went up the chain of command”? That story broke on May 17, 2006. Seventeen months later, Lt. Gen. James Mattis has dropped the charges against Justin Sharratt, Randy Stone, Sanick de la Cruz & Lucas McConnell. Lt. Col. Paul Ware has recommended that the charges be dropped against Stephen Tatum, too.

A decade ago, the Haditha Marines would’ve been railroaded by the NCIS and the JAG corps. Now they’re being exonerated because a group of determined former Marines started digging into the Haditha Marines. Thanks to Al Gore’s internet and these gentlemen’s determination, they uncovered facts that the Agenda Media would’ve kept buried a decade ago.

Remember Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi declaring that the surge had failed? A decade ago, that would’ve been accepted as Gospel fact by the media. We The People didn’t have a way of disproving that back then. Now we’re reading Bill Roggio, Michael Yon and Ralph Peters. They’re telling us that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi don’t know what they’re talking about.

It’s important that we take a step back and notice the impact that we’ve already had. It’s more important that we realize that our ability to change policies is growing at a clip unimaginable a decade ago. It’s happening because we’re able to access more information than at any point in history.

That’s what has the elites worried. They don’t control the storyline anymore. The NY Times, NBC and the Washington Post can’t protect them like they once did. It’s important to keep this in mind: Elitists are control freaks. They can’t stand the thought of ‘commoners’ like us changing their preferred storylines. They don’t like the fact that blogs can be used to remember things they said. They don’t like the fact that citizen journalists are holding their feet to the fire by injecting detailed facts into stories.

Remember that they’re used to a lapdog press that didn’t question them. They’re used to getting away with the most outlandish spin. They’re used to essentially telling us to shove it.

Look at how David Obey overreacted when Tina Richards confronted him on ending the war. Look at how John Murtha reacted when Jason Mattera of the Young America Foundation pushed Murtha about the Haditha Marines.

The lesson to be learned from this is to keep pushing. When we drive these elitists outside their comfort zone, they say really stupid things that’ll eventually get them in trouble at the ballot box.

It’s also critically important that we push these elitists for the right reasons. Pushing them simply for the sake of getting them upset isn’t wise. Pushing them for the right reasons is imperative. Otherwise, we become like the MoveOn.org types that we berate.

We shouldn’t start pushing until we’ve done the research and we’re the authority on that specific subject. Doing the research puts us in the strongest possible position to carry an intelligent conversation with our legislators. Doing that research for the right reasons puts us on the side of the angels, which eliminates the possibility of our getting ripped as partisans, too. Another benefit of being the authority on a subject is that it tells the politician that he can’t spin us. Having that type of control of a situation is an important factor in winning people over to our side.

Isn’t it time that we realized just how powerful a force we are? Isn’t it time that we stopped believing the Strib when they say that something is inevitable? It isn’t like they’ve got a great track record on predicting this stuff lately.

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog