Mason Tvert, our own Michael Moore

Editor: If you define a Michael Moore as someone who practices political provocation, lacks manners, and dishes it out but can't take it, Denver's own Mason Tvert, pot prophet and McCain hater, would seem to qualify. So our contributor Jim Krefft can testify from experience. He writes: My War with Mason Tvert

Standing up for conservative values means more than just voting for conservative candidates. It also requires the backbone to debate and stand up to fringe radically liberal elements in a respectful but decisive manner. I thought about this during a recent go-round with Mason Tvert, the leading advocate for legalized marijuana in Colorado.

Several weeks ago Mason Tvert and minions launched the website Drugdealercindy.com as a rather tasteless advocacy for marijuana and against consumable alcohol. The website features a number of unproven claims against prospective First Lady Cindy McCain and is strange in its singling out of one of the only women in the beer industry. Among them are claims that Mrs. McCain is a drug dealer due to her ownership of Hensley & Company, an Arizona beer distributor, and the statement that she “makes millions of dollars dealing a drug far more harmful then marijuana”.

Disturbingly, the site also calls for patrons to download and print out wanted posters of Cindy McCain for display in public locations. Finally, the site asks for people to sign a petition so that: “…Our country should not punish adults for simply making the rational, SAFER choice to use marijuana instead of alcohol for relaxation and recreation.” Some of these themes seemed in error to me so I called Mason Tvert to ask about them. What happened next is the purpose of this writing.

After leaving a question on Tvert’s machine, I received a call from him. After a rather heated exchange he claimed that I was the only person in America who felt this way about the website. I was about to respond that this was unprovable when Mason hung up on me, saying he didn’t “have time for this.” If you’re wondering why someone who has control of his own schedule would call someone else and then hang up on them, then you’re thinking like me. In general it is not proper phone or debate etiquette to hang up on someone when you yourself are the initiator of the conversation.

So I then wrote Mason asking him for a discussion of both debate etiquette and phone manners. He responded once but has since declined to comment on my inquiries on the subject. By email he informed me: “When you made it clear your sole purpose was to argue and not to discuss anything relevant whatsoever, I came to the conclusion that the discussion was not worth my time.” After a few more ideological grenades Mason informed me that he felt that “You heard this message, hence I consider the effort successful.” I think this is a shame. By ducking discussion and ignoring proper debate procedures, Mason discredits his own movement and his as yet evident message. Moreover, by being rude, and displaying bad phone manners he brings up serious questions about himself as a political advocate. I hope Mason reads this writing and I hope he accepts my challenge to a debate on phone manners, etiquette and the responsibilities of a political advocate.

In this political season we are often faced with those who disagree with us or those who disparage things that we hold dear. I for one look forward to such times, and certainly think that it is free debate and respectful conversation that has made this country what it is today. A good debate is important not just for the people but for the issues themselves and even more, the fundamental ideas behind those issues. But what happens when the debate stops being respectful? And what does it mean for the ideas, and for America in general, when the debate ceases to be about substance or the people and becomes about raw emotion and personal vanity?

Ford vs. Carter again?

Our electoral situation feels like the 1970’s again. McCain is Gerald Ford, Obama is Jimmy Carter with a college kid cool factor. His speech at Invesco will have a JFK-like media aura about it, and even many Republicans, especially in the party hierarchy, will join in the swooning. Conservatives are in the wilderness for the time being, as Churchill, Thatcher, Reagan and every other political great often was.

Don’t give money to the Republican Party. Give it to your church and do what you can to help revitalize Christian faith in the U.S., beginning at home if necessary.

Conservative resurgence will not come without spiritual resurgence; conservatism and the national strength and identity it brings are fundamentally spiritual.

When we find faith again, we will find another Reagan. Not much else to talk about between now and November.

SF Mayor flunks civics

"They don’t like our Constitution," asserted Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco. That incredible remark, uttered on television the other day by the chief executive of "Baghdad by the Bay," referred to the supporters of real marriage, who qualified a constitutional amendment for this November’s general election ballot to reaffirm what the voters decided with Proposition 22 in 2000. Suddenly, the California Constitution that never—repeat, never—protected any "right" by persons of the same sex to marry each other becomes "our Constitution." How did this happen and what does it mean? There are no more intense and full-fledged opponents of constitutional government than liberal politicians like Gavin Newsom. The purpose of a written constitution is to check the exercise of political power by the government and the abuse of liberty by the citizens. Just as every legislator, executive and judge is obliged to uphold our Constitution and laws, so too is every citizen. Constitutional government is all about restraining passions.

But there is no evidence that Mayor Newsom believes this. The same man who solemnly intones that "our Constitution" is not liked by those who disagree with him about marriage, has publicly stated that he will not comply with any federal legislation that criminalizes efforts to help illegal immigrants.

Such defiance is not out of character for Newsom, who began the campaign to legalize same-sex marriage by defying openly state laws which restricted marriage to one man and one woman. Remember all those "gay marriages" at San Francisco City Hall that had to be nullified because they were illegal? "Our Constitution" then had not the slightest connection with same-sex marriage, but somehow the Mayor knew all along that it did.

The question for us is whether Newsom "knew"—in a theoretical or a practical sense—that the ultimate outcome of his then lawless actions would be a State Supreme Court decision giving a fantastical interpretation of the Constitution’s equal protection clause. That is, was he merely another "idealist" who believed so strongly in his judgment that he was willing to defy the law? Or did he have inside knowledge of the Court’s deliberations and intended decision?

One difficulty with the first possibility is that Newsom is a government official, just like those southern politicians who appealed to "states’ rights" for 60 years before the Civil War to defend slavery, or to impose racial segregation for a century afterwards. The claim of civil disobedience seems a sham when one government official is simply defying another set of government officials.

The merits of civil disobedience aside, the only proper name for Mayor Newsom’s planned defiance of federal laws on illegal immigration, and his already demonstrated disregard for state laws on marriage, is lawlessness. For the same man piously to invoke "our Constitution" now that the state’s highest court has reached the same pernicious decision that he has, is enough to engender outrage in any law-abiding citizen.

Newsom’s public embrace of "our Constitution" following a history of lawless behavior should also make us very suspicious. What does "our Constitution" really mean? The old one that upholds the rights of all citizens to do what the law permits or does not forbid? Or is it the new one that invents rights whenever a majority of the Supreme Court reaches that conclusion? What did Newsom know and when did he know it? We are unlikely ever to know.

Our republican government is as wary of judicial tyranny as it is of legislative or judicial tyranny. Abraham Lincoln was severely critical of a United States Supreme Court decision which held that Congress had no power to restrict slavery in federal territories and that black persons had no rights which white persons were bound to respect. While not challenging the ruling between the parties in Dred Scott v. Sanford, (1857) Lincoln refused to accept the Court’s ruling as the last word on the subject. As he said in his First Inaugural Address (1861):

"[I]f the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."

The citizens of this state who seek to overturn the decision of our highest court to defy thousands of years of sound practice, based on "the laws of nature and of nature’s God," are acting in the spirit and following the good example of our nation’s sixteenth president. They understand, as he did, that the people—not the mayors, not the judges, not even the legislators—are the sovereign rulers.

Unlike Mayor Newsom or the California Supreme Court, these citizens understand that the Constitution is based on what Thomas Jefferson correctly referred to as the "moral law." The whims of mayors and judges cannot be permitted to corrupt marriages and families.

Diagnosing Obama's religious confusion

Barack Hussein Obama needs to straighten himself out. Growing up between Islamic teachings and socialist theories apparently has confused his concepts. We are not a Muslim nation, a Jewish nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, or a nation of nonbelievers as he stated in a speech in June 2006 to the liberal Christian group, Call to Renewal. I would classify him as a nonbeliever who pretends to be a Christian, similar to the National Socialist “German Christians” who used the Christian language to promote their Nazi ideology. The theology of liberation uses the same principle namely deceiving those who are weak in practicing a Christian way of life and therefore blind towards reality by hiding the true nature of its program. Our nation is unique in human history. Based on the Christian faith of her people and leaders, and on the truth of the Holy Bible, Americans made it possible for people of all faiths to come here and practice it in freedom, something they could not do at home. Nobody forced them, neither then or today, to become Christians. It was the welcoming of strangers by warm-hearted Americans that made this nation great; not a government program. The presence of some Muslims or Buddhists and people with other religions in the United States does not change our history or tradition, nor does it transforms us into a Muslim, Buddhist, or any other mixture of nations. It is a ridiculous statement from the senator from Illinois. Not being a Christian, Obama talks nonsense -- "a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution," as said correctly by Dr. James Dobson.

I must also correct him when he speaks of the “Christian Right,” a concept which logically assumes the existence of a “Christian Left”. There is no right or left in the Christian teachings. There is sin and the cleansing of sin. The Sermon on the Mount is directed at every last person in the world, including Obama. He doesn’t live up to the message. You either are a Christian or you are not; it depends on what you believe in and how you live accordingly. Obama’s “faith” has little to do with the teachings of Jesus and St. Paul. Going to church doesn’t make a person a Christian, especially if the pastor is a Communist and vibrates with hatred just like Obama’s pastor of twenty years does, Jeremiah Wright, who has also a record of being a Muslim.

Christians have not “hijacked faith to drive us apart” as Obama states. It is his immorality and the immorality of his Socialist fellow travelers’ political programs that, if applied, will destroy the rest of the moral infrastructure of this nation which is the principal factor in dividing the American people. Did he overlook the fact that Jesus was crucified because the government and religious establishment of the Jewish Nation did not like his moral teachings, and because the Roman governor was an appeaser whose own comfort came first? Jesus did not try to unite different views; He challenged the morality of the godless and their naïve followers.

Presidential candidate Obama wants to unite. Unity with people, institutions and nations which promote murder of other human beings is not possible. You can’t unite with what is wrong. The unity Obama’s speaks about is Marxist double-talk – unity for them means the prevailing of their own views. Obama uses the tactics typical for the theology of liberation. This “theology” decades ago has developed into a subversive Communist political action program. I have described the process in my recent article “Obama and the Theology of Liberation” (www.voncampe.com) It means in short in this case using the Christian language to fool the church goers and push them into his direction – a Socialist environment ending with a totalitarian United Nations world government financed by the United States and some dumb other Western governments.

He divides the Christians in two groups, the faithful whom he classifies as “radical right wing” and the superficial “peace, comfort, and security seeking” rest which he tries to get into his unity program which includes voting for him.

You can’t be a Christian when your personal and political moral platform includes mass murder. Obama thinks it is the right of a woman to have a defenseless human being inside her body cruelly killed for her own convenience. The Nazis had similar convictions and killed six million Jews and some ten millions of Germans and people of other nations. Islamic jihadists kill innocent men, women and children and delude themselves that it will get them into paradise sex. Obama voted against a bill to protect babies that survive abortion attempts and also believes that the Sermon on the Mount justifies his support for legal recognition of same-sex unions. Whoever votes him and his many brothers in arms into power makes him- or herself an accomplice in murder. Such a person is offending God and hostile to our Constitution. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th circuit defined a person protected by the Constitution in a 7:4 ruling as an "individual living member of the Homo sapiens, including the unborn human being during the entire embryonic and fetal ages from fertilization to full gestation." It is not for nothing that Marxists, socialists and communists have formed a block to "support their favored presidential candidate," Obama, and calling for a revolution against "the U.S oppressive regime." WND broke the news about these stories. Wake up America!

The United States of America was overwhelmingly founded by European Christians. They founded a nation in which God was placed into the center of society. The constitutions and charters of the original 13 states began (and still do) with a reference of God. This reliance on Him was ultimately expressed by all subsequent states joining the Union including the one I currently live in. The Preamble of the state Constitution of Alabama states: “We the people of the state of Alabama invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God, to ordain and establish the following Constitution.” There was no Allah (not identical with God) or Shiva, no Buddha, no unbeliever. Our Constitution is based on Christian truth as was the Declaration of Independence with the opening statement “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 that among them are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” This is the firm foundation on which this nation was built.on. Presidential candidate Obama wipes this truth off the table. It represents a denial of God. Furthermore it is not only an insult to our founding fathers but neglects the spirit and the letter of our Constitution, which he is supposed to uphold.

There is no other country in the world, with the exception perhaps of prosperous Switzerland, where the people were free to select their own way of life and to install a legal and social infrastructure which had room for people from every corner of the earth. Obama does not even respect the Christian teachings which made this nation. With it we became the richest nation on earth and look where we are heading for now – to be slaves of our creditors and energy providers who mostly are our enemies. Our soldiers fight and die for the people of two Islamic countries. In spite of it, Christians and Jews are being persecuted in many Islamic states which are guided by their religious and political intolerance.

In addition, America has a mission to make freedom available to all nations. No other nation has such a mission. But freedom without truth cannot last. Absolute truth must be at the heart of a free nation if freedom should prevail. And here today America falls short of the required. We have become a nation where indifference, greed, sex, comfort-seeking, lying and attacks on our Constitution become normal and where power-seeking liars who are out for themselves lead us in the wrong direction. This we cannot wipe off the table either, it has to be addressed and changed. Real change is the result of people changing and becoming different and not because of more money from the vote-seeking government establishment I haven’t heard Obama or McCain speaking about it.

Barack Hussein Obama’s real problems are not of a racial nature. They are only meant to cover up the ideological position. He would lead America into the wrong direction. He is not bringing any real change to our society but more immorality and prescribing un-American Marxist remedies by taking money from some people and giving it to others. This kind of help really is no help because it makes the people who receive it dependent on those who give it to them. It is more of a bribe. The unity Marxists want means “Do as I say.”

The global ideological war is about the role of God in human society. The battle field is morality, the battle line is the choice between truth and lies. There is no neutrality, it is either or. This choice is accessible to everybody everywhere, and for every nation. Liars are the enemies of freedom and of their nation. The call for Americans, citizens and legal residents, is to stop lying, stand up, fight for God’s absolute truth and create a sane nation under God. It must be the second American Revolution.

Hick's weakness shows again

"Thank you, Miss Marie, that was beautiful. And now, since it's important to honor our country and our flag on such an occasion as this, I invite all of you to stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance." That's what Mayor John Hickenlooper could have said, but didn't, when the self-aggrandizing singer "switcheroo'd" her political message song for the national anthem on July 1. When I was Senate President in 2003-2005, presiding daily over formal ceremonies much like the Mayor's State of the State, I wouldn't have hesitated a heartbeat before reclaiming control of the proceedings with some such polite but firm words as those, had someone tried to hijack the occasion as Rene Marie did.

But not only did Hick assert no such leadership in the moment, it clearly never even occurred to him that he should have, judging from his clueless, shrugging comments to the media later on Tuesday. (Dave Logan on KOA was one recipient of those that I know of; there may have been others.)

Not until the anthem affair became a local and national storm did the Mayor finally muster up some "anger" a day later. Even then it seemed to be more about the embarrassment of finding himself out of step with an aroused public, than about the "disrespect" (Gov. Ritter's word on KOA Wednesday morning, and a good one) shown by Marie to America itself.

This blunder by Hickenlooper is much like the mess he made of Christmas a couple of years ago -- initially announcing that Yule greetings would no longer appear on the lighted City and County Building, then hastily reversing himself after an outcry arose.

Hick has shown us once again that under the boyish exterior he's a doctrinaire liberal, and in cultural matters a rather leftish one. Likable and capable as he is, the man is instinctively captive to PC globalism and secularism, tone-deaf to the deeply held patriotic and religious beliefs of most Americans.

As for Rene Marie, the only time I ever heard, or heard of, her until this week was when she performed at the Colorado Prayer Luncheon last May. She talked the Christian talk quitely glibly on that occasion, but we now know her beliefs have the same anti-American slant as those of Jeremiah Wright.

At the luncheon she sang (and, significantly, modified on the fly) Reinhold Niebuhr's famous Serenity Prayer. You know the one: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference."

In this instance neither the weak-kneed mayor nor his headstrong guest lived up to those sentiments (which are as much a personal code of behavior as they are a petition for divine help). After Marie rudely arrogated to herself the role of change agent, Hickenlooper was timid and passive when he could have courageously taken command. Nor did either have the wisdom to even realize how badly they both had disgraced themselves.