Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

What makes America unique? Look in your pocket:

Mrs. More and I just had the good fortune of attending a dinner commemorating Flag Day. The speakers were Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dennis Prager (pictured) –Didymus, eat your heart out. They have markedly different styles, but both delivered fine messages.

The Governor told us of his childhood in Austria, which is where his love for body building and America first began. In fact, he told an amusing story about his mom being worried that a 15-year old Austrian boy had so many pictures of big, oily men and an American flag hanging on his wall. She asked their local doctor: “Shouldn’t those be pictures of girls and an Austrian flag?” Apparently not.

As he progressed in the competitions, he was eventually invited to America. As he got off the plane in Miami, he bent down and kissed the ground and said: “I’m home.”

That’s what got me. How is it that a young man from Austria, who had never been here before, would think of the U.S.A. as “home”? There is really no other place in the world–despite all the naysayers–that people yearn to come to so much. But beyond simply wanting to be here–which might be for simple economic reasons–there is a sense in people everywhere that America is home.

Prager picked this theme up in discussing the “American Trinity.” He wondered for years what made America so different from other countries. Why is it a place that people from around the world feel is their home?

He found the answer, of all places, on our coins:

E Pluribus Unum
Liberty
In God We Trust

There is was, the three things that set us apart. “From Many, One” explains the immigrants’ longings. It connects to the universal desire for freedom, and draws us together as one people, one nation. Different languages, cultures, and creeds united with a desire for something better and a chance to live life on your own terms.

And that is where Liberty picks up. We are a nation founded on a desire to be free from tyranny, from rulers dictating our position in life and our chance for success. As I’ve mentioned before, freedom is consistent with God’s desire for his people, in the Old and New Testaments. The longing to be free is innate in all men.

This link then gives us “In God We Trust” and “One Nation Under God.” We are, at our core, a nation that sees itself under a God, not a government. The government is of us, by us, and for us. But it is not over us. We trust in the Creator as the giver of our rights and liberties, not the government–it is simply to defend them.

This trinity marks the battle lines for contemporary political debate.

Read it all and then listen to this great speech by Dennis to YAF, which touches on these themes

1. Our aim should be to make kids Americans (which he said is a Fascist phrase to leftists)

2. We should teach in English. English is a unifying language. He added that bilingual language does not work. English should be the only language of our ballots. We have one language, English. If you don’t know it, don’t vote. He commented that “if I move to Turkey I wouldn’t expect to vote. The language of Turkey is Turkish.

3. Our textbooks should reflect truth. The left doesn’t want it. They admit it. “They want us to feel good.” He joked about receiving a thin book listing great Jews in sports citing Hank Greenberg. I don’t need it from a history book. Note: He forgot to mention Sandy Koufax, one of my Dodger hero’s, who refused to pitch in the 1965 World Series on Yom Kippur (which just happens to be celebrated tomorrow.)

4. Holidays are very important for civilizations yet we have now created Presidents Day where he recall celebrating Lincoln’s Birthday apart from George Washington’s birthday. Dennis jokingly said they were two wonderful Jewish men. In fact Lincoln’s first name is from the Bible. Abraham. He said by grouping the days together we lose the significance of why we celebrate them. We shouldn’t alter holiday dates just to get a long weekend.

5. We should not get rid of our rituals which keep civilization alive. It is exceedingly important to retain values based on our rituals.

6. His final point. Teach Americanism. A unique doctrine. We have a Trinity, Christian and American, on our coins. This is only found in the U.S.A. They are “In God We Trust, Liberty and e pluribus unum (which translated means “from many one”). We were founded as a Judeo-Christian nation by Judeo centered Christians. In God we trust was NEVER attached to theology. The connection dealt with our values.

We were endowed by our creator, not our Country. Dennis added that Liberty comes from God, not the government. He stated that the left prefers we were like Belgium where they promote equality over liberty. He added some trivia by telling us that the liberty bell has a verse from the Hebrew Bible.

Dennis said that “if we abandon Judeo-Christian values we abandon America.” And in his closing comments stated if we have “No God–No Wisdom.”

One attendee told me that what he took away from the speech was a heavy focus on Patriotism.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Aloha: Purpose driven Fitzmas and an Un-gay New Year

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report for submission at Examiner.com.

As Barack Obama dreams of a white-washed “Fitzmas” in Hawaii to replace White Christmas nightmares in Chicago, a mainstream Washington liberal echoes gay hate against traditional marriage Christians.

It seems Hope and Change is still best sought in the resurrected Christ that was born in a manger this date nearly two millennia ago. Merry Christmas!

Purpose Driven Unhappy New Year for Gay activists

With only 29 shopping days left until Christmas, this column documented the vicious hatred of many gay activists towards those against same-sex marriage in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8 in California restoring the exclusivity of traditional marriage in the Golden State. Christians, and especially Mormons, were physically harassed and their property destroyed in numerous incidents in the Golden State and around the country.

We found the story ironic given the drive-by media meme that it is Christians that are the haters for merely wanting to preserve the 5000-year old marriage definition as between one man and one woman; that black and Latino Obama voters were the ones that put Prop 8 over the top; and that the gay activists tactics made a mockery of their self-comparison with Martin Luther King, Jr. and his dignified, Holy Scripture driven, non-violent Civil Rights Movement.

We also went out of our way to recognize the fact that the over-whelming majority of gays do not support the extreme acts we reported, and we still acknowledge that fact.

So, it was with some discomfort that we read a gay-rights driven denunciation of the President-Elect’s choice of main-stream evangelical, Southern Baptist pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life (second in all-time book sales to The Holy Bible) to deliver the invocation prayer at his Inauguration, by a mainstream Washington liberal. Richard Cohen describes his gay sister’s cancellation of an Inaugural party due to the selection of Warren and then states:

I can understand Obama’s desire to embrace constituencies that have rejected him. Evangelicals are in that category and Warren is an important evangelical leader with whom, Obama said, “we’re not going to agree on every single issue.” He went on to say, “We can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans.” Sounds nice.

But what we do not “hold in common” is the dehumanization of homosexuals. What we do not hold in common is the belief that gays are perverts who have chosen their sexual orientation on some sort of whim. What we do not hold in common is the exaltation of ignorance that has led and will lead to discrimination and violence.

Finally, what we do not hold in common is the categorization of a civil rights issue — the rights of gays to be treated equally — as some sort of cranky cultural difference. For that we need moral leadership, which, on this occasion, Obama has failed to provide. For some people, that’s nothing to celebrate.

There you have it. Americans, simply by opposing same-sex marriage: “de-humanize” homosexuals; believe they are all perverts; “exalt” ignorance and thus, aid and abet violence against them; and deny gays and lesbian their “civil rights.”

Nothing can make the New Year be happy for those with such notions. The irony is that, clearly, despite Obama’s protestations, our next President favors same-sex marriage. He is for all sorts of hate crimes, domestic partnerships and other legislation based on sexual preference. And, he opposed Proposition 8 which was designed to overturn an activist court ruling that made same-sex marriage legal.

But, the Cohens of the world that foment hatred of Christians with the lie that it is we that are intolerant, can’t even abide a prayer from someone that merely wants to tolerate a 5000 year old institutional definition that made civilization possible.

Pastor Warren has made clear that he and his church loves gays and has acted upon that love. Cohen does make some good points about Obama’s religious history in the column, so I do recommend reading the whole thing.

Merry white-washed Fitzmas

Prior to Christmas, our only comment on U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitgerald’s charges of vacant Obama senate seat selling by the President-Elect’s fellow democrat and Governor, Rod Blagojevich, was to suggest that the silence of Obama’s designate for Chief of Staff (COS) was deafening and that he would likely not serve one day as COS.

The din of Rahm Emanuel’s muteness continues in public, but given impending subpoenas, it appears same will end in private, if only to plead the Fifth. Given that he was the main public face of the pretentious “Office of the President-Elect” complete with the Tar Heel blue transmogrification of the Presidential seal and given that public faces include lips that need to move, we look forward to the naming a new COS-designate before MLK Day.

But the larger issues of this matter, and especially Obama’s attempt to white-wash the whole thing with a Christmas Eve’s eve dump of “internal investigation” findings, convince us that this viscerally more understandable scandal will make Clinton’s Whitewater real estate scandal seem pale and shallow by comparison.

We note the lack of outrage from Mr. Cool in a circumstance that cries out for righteous indignation. His Governor, Blagojevich (who is constitutionally empowered to choose the next junior senator from the Land of Lincoln) is trying to sell the seat he held. He withdrew the name of his preferred pick for his appointed successor, right before Lawyer Fitz announced the charges, arguably before Blago had actually committed a crime. Coincidence?

We find that Obama didn’t tell us he had spoken to Blago about this matter, only to correct it after investigating himself? He changed pronouns from “I” to “we’ in an early vague news conference, famous for how few questions he would take, followed by one in which he instructed reporters not to “waste” questions.

Before Election Day, we suggested dangers citing the “Chicago Way” and how one would get “A Piece of the Action,” should that way come to The District.

Honolulu is as far as you can get from Chicago and still be in the USA, but when he says Aloha on his way back to the Lower Forty-Eight, Fitzmas may not yet be over.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

“You can’t legislate morality.”

“They want to impose their religious beliefs.”

So go the arguments meant to persuade courts to ban voluntary prayer and Bible study in schools, ban nativity scenes and displays of the Ten Commandments on public property, and legalize same-sex marriage and abortion.

Judges shaped by the moral vision underlying such decisions have imposed them on an America whose revolutionary Founders were intent upon government by We the People, not by one king or five justices. The Constitution they ratified guarantees freedom of all speech, not just non-religious speech. Earlier this week we documented the actions of the educators of such judges that embrace a warped moral vision that bans Christmas trees as offensive but needs commissions to study whether offensive racial epithets deserve prominent display on “free speech” graffiti walls.

Happily, advocates of speech-squelching judicial activism have yet to muster sufficient popular support to see their religion-devoid vision ratified in even one of the 50 states. Indeed, they can’t legislate their morality.

Not that they haven’t tried.

Not so long ago my former S.C. Democratic Party tried to silence the “God talk” of Christians to avoid offending non-believers, then, amazingly, invoked the words of Jesus to justify high taxes and a turn-the-other-cheek U.S. approach to the Soviet Union.

Christians fled to GOP

Large swaths of the offended Christian demographic responded by retaining their free religious speech and creating a new political juggernaut called “Reagan Democrats.”These former Democrats were aware that the Pilgrims came to the New World to flee persecution for religious speech and that the Founders were inspired by their Creator that their rights came from God and not man.

The abolitionists who opposed slavery, President Abraham “The Great Emancipator” Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. were all inspired by scripture. Franklin Roosevelt quoted the Bible to justify saving the world from fascism, as did John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan in opposing “godless” communism.

What kind of nation would we be, and what kind of world would we live in, absent those Americans inspired by religious free speech?

Yet too many do not want to hear religious speech in the public square and wish to relegate those who wish to speak within the confines of church walls and stained glass. Recently they even turned on one of their own, when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi dared utter the name of Christ in public.

Since the 1970s, Washington Democrats have confirmed federal judges primed for discovering illegal “establishments” of religion where predecessors had not: nativity scenes on government property, invocations at high school football games, the reading of a Bible at recess.

But the Constitution seemed content to ban only established churches like the one from which the Framers themselves had fled — state churches that fed off tax revenue and compelled worship attendance.

When President Reagan nominated the Constitution-fixated Robert Bork (pictured above), liberal U.S. senators crucified him upon a cross of political correctness and mischaracterizations of his record. Bork conservatives find no right to not be offended by the speech of others in the Constitution. Rather, they embrace its right to speak and vote against speech and laws they found offensive.

Look to the Bible

Last year Democrats in South Carolina opposed a bill that would require pregnant women seeking abortions to first view an ultrasound picture of the developing human being in their womb.

Would the words of Jeremiah that “before [God] formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee” be more persuasive than the Left’s “It’s my body”?

We need the wisdom and inspiration of religious speech. We don’t have the luxury of the “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” monkeys of cartoon fame.

In his classic book “Witness,” Whittaker Chambers describes the continuing choice of history to be as old as the Scriptures, where in Genesis the serpent invites Eve to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge so that “ye shall be as gods.”

Man’s choice to be his own god resulted not only in banishment from Paradise but in the slaughter of millions under the names of Nazism and communism in the 20th century.

The majority of Americans who believe in Judeo-Christian principles need to legislate some morality we believe in. America needs the wisdom of religious free speech. (portions originally published in The Charlotte Observer)

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns
[All links available at original Examiner.com edition.]

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by our Legal Editor, Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

This week marks the 217th anniversary of the ratification of the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, collectively known as the “Bill of Rights.” In fact, Monday was designated “Bill of Rights Day.”

I dare say that most Americans are much more familiar with their rights as enumerated in the ten Bill of Rights than they are with the seven articles of the main body of the Constitution proper. Many Americans may also know of the Federalist Papers that were published in newspapers at the time to persuade Americans to ratify the Constitution. Less known are the so-called “anti-federalists” who conditioned their support for ratification of the Constitution on the immediate passage of these bill of rights to ensure that there was no misunderstanding that they retained their Creator endowed inalienable rights confirmed in the Declaration of Independence and to limit the power of the Federal government.

Patrick “Give me liberty of give me death” Henry Pictured) was the leader of the anti-federalists.

What has this to do with the War on Christmas we have been documenting, especially as regards actions taken by federal courts? Everything.

What many Americans don’t realize is that all of the 13 states that formed the federal government via the U.S. Constitution already had state constitutions that protected their civil rights from state action and that the Bill of Rights was only meant to apply to the federal government. There is some disagreement on this, especially after the ratification of the 14th Amendment after the Civil War and the implementation of the “incorporation doctrine” by the U.S. Supreme Court, which we will address later.

But with respect to the First Amendment, which by its terms only applied to the federal government, there could be no such misunderstanding:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The amendment specifically prohibited Congress and only congress from “establishing a religion.” The framers were specifically and only prohibiting the federal government from establishing a National Church equivalent to the Church of England that had just fought a war to get out from under. As British subjects, they had been forced to pay taxes to support the Church.

Moreover, at the time of the ratification of the Bill of Rights and at least until the 1830s, individual states had established state churches, as they were allowed to do under their state constitutions, which were not affected by a First Amendment that only applied to Congress.

In fact, the famous letter from then President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists that contained the phrase “wall of separation” of church and state, which has been wholly mischaracterized by courts and supporters of War on Christmas type rulings. The letter was a response to a request from the Baptists that the federal government intervene on their behalf against the State established Congregationalists Church of Connecticut. Jefferson said he could not due to Wall between the State (Federal government) and the Church (of Connecticut).

All states had voluntarily dis-established all state churches by 1850, mainly as a way to try and attract more settlers in competition with other states.

But the right to establish a state church remained.

After the Civil War, in order to place freed slaves and all Americans of any ethnicity on the same legal footing as whites, and all individuals, the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. (Section One)

Nothing in the amendment required the application of any of the Bill of Rights to the states, much less the “establishment” clause of the First Amendment, and no one thought to do so, until 1947.

In the Everson case, Justice Hugo Black, citing Jefferson’s wall of separation letter, “incorporated” the First Amendment into the 14th and applied same to the states to prohibit the use of public funds with respect to Catholic school bus transportation.

Since that activist ruling, the federal courts have essentially taken over local schools in a way never envisioned by the Constitution. Even if one accepted that no state could establish a state church, the rulings prohibiting Bible Study, prayer, nativity displays, etc, all fall far short of that. In fact, recent precedent allows funding of non-religious activities (like buses) of private schools if such funding is equal to that of public schools.

This type of “nationalization” was the very thing that the mis-characterized anti-federalists sought to prohibit and which the father of the Constitution, James Madison sought to achieve with the Bill of Rights.

Thankfully, with the replacement of former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor with Samuel Alito, there is now a 5-4 majority that has been chipping away at case precedents that fueled the War on Christmas.

We will continue to follow the War on Christmas until Santa Clause comes.

Mike DeVine’s Examiner.com and Charlotte Observer columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by our Legal Editor, Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

In the wake of the discovery that students had painted racist messages on the campus “free speech” graffiti tunnel walls, UNC President Erskine Boyles is asking a commission to study whether the university has an adequate code of conduct. Apparently, some people were bothered by seeing the N-word emblazoned near Tar Heel blue.

Apparently, some people were also “bothered” by the sight of Christmas trees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus where President Boyles works, as well, as Christmas trees have been banned from its two main libraries for the first time in four centuries. What about those that are bothered by not seeing the trees? Must they await Arbor Day?

Democrat Boyles, former Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton, has asked no commission to study this matter. Rather, he sent the associate provost for university libraries out to report that Duke, N.C. State, nor colleagues “elsewhere” were displaying Christmas trees and that:

We strive in our collection to have a wide variety of ideas. It doesn’t seem right to celebrate one particular set of customs.(Especially not the one being celebrated in the photo at right in the particular nation within which UNC is located?)*

Apparently it does “seem right” to collect racist musing in pedestrian tunnels for students to gaze upon, but Christmas is not considered part of a “wide variety of ideas.”

These are the people in charge of “higher” learning?

Given academia’s now four decades long aversion to tolerance for the celebration of religious diversity unless extremist adherents of a particular religion threaten lynchings for cartoon depictions of its prophet; let’s teach dispensers of this higher learning a lesson:

Caleb Howe, Charlotte Political Examiner reminds that Christmas is more than just a religious holiday:

Christmas is a federal holiday. It’s also a secular holiday in addition to being religious. Christmas is a cultural tradition in the United States, yet these groups, who often lay claim to being sensitive to people’s cultures, dismiss the notion on its face. The one type of tradition or culture which Americans may feel free to attack or purge is American tradition and culture.

This is not the usual case of a federal judge scrutinizing nativity displays at a courthouse or purging the name of Christ from carols sung by grammar schoolers for his birthday. God’s name has long been treated the same as obscenity by court decisions addressing local public school curricula since the 1960’s supreme court decisions banning prayer and bible reading.

No, this is a case of voluntary action by the people that “educate” judges that make such decisions. At least in public schools they ban racist taunts.

At universities in the Tar Heel State, commissions still must weigh in before they would dare ban the n-word, but Christmas is banned, period.

Damn the commissions.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

* Charlotte Observer link to December 5 story was malfunctioning when this story went to press.

Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

“I don’t care about the people of Iraq.”

I was shocked when that statement was made to me two years ago by a Democrat friend.

I shouldn’t have been!

That quote pretty much sums up the moral bankruptcy of modern-day liberalism and many in the leadership of my former party today. The sentiment expressed in that quote is also consistent with the giggles I heard from fellow liberal Democrats in 1983 in reaction to President Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech.

I was also shocked then. I shouldn’t have been!

The best reason for why I should not be shocked occupied the receptionist chair in my South Park Charlotte office for years.

She is a descendant of the Hmong people of Laos who were allies of the United States until the government of South Vietnam fell in 1975. Massive slaughter of millions followed at the hands of the North Vietnamese communists and Cambodia’s Pol Pot. More than 300,000 Laotians, mostly Hmong, fled. But thousands of Hmong continued to fight against the evil of communism; hundreds of their guerilla fighters surrendered only last month.

In 1975 I was an idealistic teen animated by the “Bear any burden for the cause of liberty” rhetoric by President John F. Kennedy, complimented by the “Love they neighbor” rhetoric of Jesus Christ, but quite ignorant of the details of the Vietnam War. I was a self-identified liberal anxiously awaiting my 18th birthday so that I could actively participate in my grandfather’s party.

Sadly, almost from the beginning of my political activism, I had to reconcile the irreconcilable, i.e. the rhetoric of slain President John F Kennedy (pictured), with the reality of the words and actions of the flower children of the 1960s and the McGovernites who took over the party. Democrats cut off funds from our South Vietnamese allies, averted their eyes from the slaughter and celebrate their role in “ending the war” as one of their greatest accomplishments even to this day. I shamefully averted my ears from the liberal Democratic giggles at Reagan’s notion of good and evil until the summer of 2001.

The “conservative epiphany” came as a result of confronting what I knew in my heart was true as I read Reagan’s letters and speeches and books about his long war against communism. Reagan cared so much for the oppressed that he even deemed the policy of containment to have immorally sentenced half the globe to slavery. He told the so-called “realists” in 1981 that henceforth, American policy toward the Soviet Union would be “We win, they lose.”

This was the liberal I had been looking for.

Did liberals stop caring about the oppressed when their hero was assassinated in 1963 or when they faced the draft board in 1968? They seem to be more concerned with the civil rights of terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba than those of the purple-fingered patriots in Iraq.

When I was an idealistic teenager, it was a given that America was good, that totalitarianism was evil, and that what America should be most proud of was our liberation of the oppressed. I still consider this a given.

The post-Watergate liberal Democrat Congress was warned of the likelihood of falling dominoes of slaughter in 1975, but they chose to avert their eyes. Many warn that the same fate will await the Iraqis if we abandon them a second time.

Will we betray Iraqis? Will a President Barack Obama follow his campaign rhetoric, the sentiments of his pastor of twenty years and most national Democratic Party leaders with respect to Iraq and insist upon snatching defeat from a now obvious victory? Or will he follow the leader of the Democratic Party of JFK and his predecessor? His recent cabinet appointments give me hope he will not betray the civil rights of those we liberated.

My eyes, ears, heart, mind and soul tell me that the most powerful nation on earth must love its neighbors enough to bear any burden for liberty, especially when it is so inextricably tied to our own liberty and, especially, our honor.

I care about the people of Iraq and my country’s soul.

This conservative never lost his liberal heart.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Tobacco sales up. Tax revenues may trump second-hand smoke myth.

Property rights ought to trump second-hand smoke, but it may be politicians love for tax revenues that snuff out power plays by non-smokers to impose smoking bans in restaurants.

Originally published by our Legal Editor, Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

“It’s not about personal freedoms. It’s not about businesses’ property rights. This is a health issue bill.”

That was House Majority Leader Hugh Holliman’s final plea for a statewide smoking ban bill that was voted down 55-61 by the North Carolina House last year. The question is will Holliman and his fellow Democrats in Raleigh and Charlotte, emboldened by the recent election results, try again to limit private property rights.

Tobacco sales are up this year and history tells us that Americans seek more solace in smoke and drink during economic downturns. Revenues for other tax sources go down as revenues from Marlboros and martinis go up.

As for now, Georgia is still the Peach State, Tennesseans still volunteer, and Winstons and Salems may still be smoked in privately owned businesses in Charlotte.

That a majority of Tar Heel legislators rejected the Davidson County Democrat’s nanny-state proposal and upheld rights the framers of the Constitution deemed most indispensable to liberty should continue to win approval from smokers and non-smokers alike.

For James Madison, Father of the Constitution, the legitimacy of government depended on its active protection of private property rights. John Adams declared, “Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist.” The Bill of Rights’ demand that government pay just compensation when it “takes” one’s property fits these sentiments like a hand in a glove.

Air, liberty and workers

Supporters of Holliman’s bill waxed profuse defending “rights” and “entitlements” found nowhere in the Constitution, but they were poised to chuck the most fundamental rights the Constitution meant to protect. No one is compelled to patronize private businesses that allow smoking. And no one has a right to have other people build restaurants for their pleasure in the first place, much less maintain air quality therein to others’ liking. Holliman and other supporters of the smoking ban claimed the bill was about public health and “worker” rights.

Not so.

Concerned about health? How about mandatory masks for waiters where second-hand smoke wafts about? Not called for by Holliman. Coal miners wear masks. Waiters could, too.

The bill was not about health. It was about the rights of workers all right — restricting those rights, not protecting them, as do-gooders claim.

Want to protect workers’ most precious rights? Protect enjoyment of the fruit of their labor. Privately owned property is the fruit of much labor.

In large measure, our Constitution’s property rights produced the miracle known as America. Wealth generated by the miracle in the hands of the most benevolent, free nation in history works for the liberation of millions from tyranny around the world and longer life-spans here and abroad. Miracle-generated resources have made possible the defeat of enemies anxious to reduce the life-span of smokers quicker than the snuffing out of a couple of cigarettes.

In no small measure, the increased life expectancy of Americans results from benefits produced by property-right-incentivized work habits.

The fact is that first-hand smokers today live longer than non-smokers of yesteryear thanks to advances in medicine and technology unimaginable apart from the liberty secured by rights to property.

Smoke alarmists

Property rights created the wealth that buys our freedom and increase our life span much more than second-hand smoke could reduce it — if in fact second-hand smoke does reduce it.

Medical studies cited by ABC News reporter John Stossel refute claims of second-hand smoke alarmists. Common sense called them into question long before that. It takes first-hand smoke a long time to kill the smokers it kills. We are supposed to fear greatly reduced life expectancy when the smoke is diluted thousandsfold?

If workers’ health is not the target, what is?

Power.

This is a brazen power grab by the non-smoking majority. They prefer to eat in a smoke-free environment, so all restaurants must cater to their preference. Never mind that the free market continues to create smoke-free restaurants at an amazing clip without aid from legislators.

Do not misunderstand. Despite my skepticism of the dangers of second-hand smoke, my sympathies extend to Holliman, and all other who have lost loved ones to tobacco-induced cancer. I lost a grandfather (age 73) and my father (age 65), both life-long smokers, to lung cancer.

They chose to smoke, despite the warning labels, and died from it. That’s no reason to restrict the freedom that ensured they lived as long as they did.

Besides, since our own Sir Walter Raleigh (pictured above) made tobacco a cash crop over 400 years ago, it has provided politicians an east tax target. Maybe that fact will keep us free.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

The emergence of the flag-waving liberal

Originally published by our Legal Editor, Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

Black Americans are justifiably proud of their country in the wake of the election of Barack Obama as President. In fact, most Americans, including your truly and other conservatives and Republicans, are proud that the election of a Black man is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that America is not a racist country.

Of this, I am much thankful on this most American of holidays. I have known for decades that America isn’t racist, but do understand, as one African-American columnist put it, that only such an election could convince many blacks that “America loved them back.”

As I wrote on the day after Election Day, we have but one president at a time, and the President-Elect will be my President come Inauguration Day. But we have only one country for all time (if we can keep it), and my patriotic love for it is unrelated to the outcome of elections.

But, not all Americans share this kind of patriotism:

“I felt [Old Glory, pictured] was no longer a symbol of the country I love, but of Bush and support for his war,” said [Ronnie Chapman, a] 48-year-old pharmacist from Cary. “The first thing I did the morning after the election was take it from my den and fly it proudly in front of my house.”

You did the right thing, finally, as did all those that were flying their Star Spangled Banners the day before the election who didn’t take theirs down.

The Raleigh News & Observer considers Chapman’s response as reflecting “the emergence of an unusual – and some might say contradictory – new figure: the flag-waving liberal.”

“For years it’s felt like patriotism was a Republican thing,” said Raven Moeslinger, 21, a senior at UNC Chapel Hill. “Now I feel like we’ve reclaimed it.”

Why did you feel that way for years? Could it be because you have so often heard liberal Democrats complaining of having their patriotism challenged when only their judgment is challenged and remembered Shakespeare’s “Methinks thou dost protest too much” and reached the obvious conclusion?

“We’ve” reclaimed “it”? No, Raven, but hopefully you have joined “it” and that “it” will be a lifelong marriage in love for the extended family we call country. I pray we are not two irreconcilable Americas.

You can build that love by following this example:

“The night after the election, I got in bed and started reading the Declaration of Independence for the first time in a long time,” said Sherry Harmon, 55, of Cary. “I felt I needed to touch base with our roots because I think we need to refresh our ideas of who we are as Americans.”

Bravo. Read the reasons for loving this “Best hope of man on Earth” from the first Independence Day in 1776 thru Election Day 2008.

What you will discover is that, but for the “old” patriotism that led men and women to sacrifice their lives, fortunes and scared honor to found and preserve this Shining City on a Hill, no matter the party of the Commander-in-Chief, there would have been far less to be thankful for.

Here is hoping that the “new” patriots will remain so when the sunshine reflected off Barack’s visage has turned to night.

God Bless America and pass the turkey!

Mike DeVine’s Examiner.com and Charlotte Observer columns.

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Martin King that is.

Originally published by our Legal Editor, Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

After the most liberal state in the nation rejected same-sex marriage at the ballot box for the second time this decade, protests rallies were held across the nation, including here in Charlotte.

Some gay rights activists point to the defeat of same-sex marriage with the passage of Proposition 8 in California and similar bans approved in Arizona and Florida on this past Election Day as evidence of hate:

“We need a movement in this country,” said Joanie Beasley of Gastonia. “It is time we said no to all bigotry and hate. It is time we demanded our civil rights.”

Bigotry and hate?

Merely to favor maintaining the 5000 year old definition of the institution of marriage, is now considered “hate”?

Civil rights?

There is no civil right to marry a person of the same sex ratified in any State’s constitution (including North Carolina’s) or the U.S. Constitution, although, judges in Massachusetts and Connecticut essential re-wrote their respective Constitutions to find such a previously “hidden” right.

Beasley, 53, sang along with the crowd Saturday, closing her eyes at the chorus of “We Shall Overcome.” She attended the rally with her partner Nancy Leedy, also 53.

As a veteran trial lawyer that has represented gays in discrimination claims, I think many gay activists make a huge mistake trying to marry their cause to the Civil Rights Movement for blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities.

Gay ain’t the new black

First of all, it was not necessary for judges to twist the meanings of words in constitutions to support their claims. Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. (pictured) could point to the 14th Amendment, ratified by supermajorities of Congress and the States, soon after the Civil War, as the basis of their equal rights.

Secondly, many activists in the present movement are essentially demanding that Americans approve of their “lifestyle”, which, translated, means their sexual preferences and behavior. This is a political loser.

Lastly, a distinct, but vocal minority of those hurling bigot and hate epithets at supporters of traditional marriage, resort to the sine qua non of hate: violence.

The real haters have physically harassed churchgoers (especially Mormons), destroyed property and engaged in various other obnoxious physical and non-physical acts that in no way remind one of those that made the tune of “We Shall Overcome” famous.

Clearly, these miscreants in no way represent the overwhelming majority of gays and lesbians, many of whom don’t even favor changing marriage laws. But the leaders of those who do, need to take a page out of MLK’s book and denounce the violence done in their name much as King denounced Black Panthers and the pre-conversion Malcolm X.

Individual, not group, rights is the way

I once counseled an openly gay legislator to seek legal changes based on the American concept of “individual” rather than group rights. This is a proven political winner.

Many states have enacted laws that address concerns of inheritance, hospital visitation, and other issues. Moreover, many Americans have no problem with civil unions, especially if they are available to individuals without regard to inquiries of sexual preference.

These successes are being achieved the old fashioned way, free speech to persuade followed by votes by We the People in states and localities.

One day Americans may favor changing the definition of marriage. That day has not yet come. But some gay rights activists want to force the issue on the states thru the courts and point to President-Elect Barack Obama’s campaign statements of his desire to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

That act, signed by President Bill Clinton, provides that no state could be required to respect same-sex marriages in other states. (There are Constitutional issues under the Full Faith and Credit Clause that the U.S. Supreme Court has never addressed, I would note).

I think this would be a huge political mistake given the overwhelming opposition to same-sex marriage and given the damage court imposed social views anathema to those of most Americans can have on the body politic, such as Roe v. Wade’s instant legalization of abortion that arrested evolution on the issue in the states.

The best path for gays to one day achieve their civil rights goals is to insist on a civil debate worthy of Martin Luther King and which engages all of the body politic, rather than having judges cram their agenda down America’s throat.

Mike DeVine’s Examiner.com and Charlotte Observer columns.

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Part two of Gamecock’s election post-mortem shows GOP the way back to the majority

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

[Part one of our Election 2008 post-mortem, rejected the notion of a “secular American majority”. I agree with Dave Sage that culture drives politics; that America has been growing more secular; and that America desperately needs a new Great Awakening outside of politics. However, Republicans are not yet Daniel in a pagan Lions Den. Part two builds on that theme, as well as how we can win back republicans that bolted the party or sat out this election; as well as win over conservative democrats and many secular voters.]

I knew McCain was going to lose when I received an “Obama saves the GOP” e-mail on the Saturday before Election Day from my friend Don Scoggins, the leader of the Frederick Douglass (pictured below) Society, and one of my personal conservative heroes. Don, a conservative black Republican, helped shape my post-2000 conversion to the GOP and has been an inspiration to me, especially as regards my efforts to reach out to minorities with the conservative message.

In explaining his decision to vote for the Democrat, Don expressed an understandable pride in Obama’s skills and symbolic value in affirming a culmination of the Civil Rights Movement. But primarily, Scoggins was voting against a McCain and a GOP that had lost their way.

At first I was shocked, but a week after the election I started to understand how Obama could save us.

Ironically, the saving will not be had by following Frederick Douglass’s “leave us alone” admonition to President Lincoln. Rather, a conservative resurrection can be built upon, now “all in” on the America Project, minority communities more receptive to the conservative message given conclusive proof that they can rise to any height in America, just like whites, on merit. We must take this message into every congressional district as well as State and Local races. We must recruit Blacks and Hispanics in districts where none immediately come forward, just as we do in majority white districts, and we must choose candidates that can win.

Obama’s third world-like crowds are dispersing back to the real world.

All Americans, too many of whom are ignorant of what disaster liberal government wrought in the 70s and the Reagan conservative anecdote of the 80s, are about to get re-educated in the looming recession born of Fannie Mae government distortion of the free market and Obama and the Democrats’ anti-Free wealth creation Market in favor of spreading your hard earned wealth to others agenda.

Republicans have been held accountable for happenings on their watch over the past decade as they became Democrat-lite. Now, Democrats will be held accountable like they haven’t been since 1994 and 1980.

Americans will be repelled by toys and peanut butter sandwich sharing before Kindergarten sex-ed. They will not confuse compulsion by government with the message of Jesus, like Obama has. They will not share Obama’s aversion to digging into the ground and ocean floor for coal and oil, as well as refinery nuclear power plant foundations for good wages. They will not be amused by energy “price lessons” from the chauffer-driven President, no matter his pigmentation. No, Americans want wealth creating jobs and they want to decide to whom they will spread it. They will not be content with Obama’s minimalist view. They will want to return to American exceptionalism.

The re-education in the failures of liberal economic policies is underway. Minds will be concentrated, and it is vital that we have energetic new leadership in place to put it all in perspective and be the alternative.

We have leaders that fit the bill like Michael Steele, Mike Pence, Mark Sanford, Jim DeMint, Sarah Palin and many others that have for too long been drowned out by “compassionate conservative” condescension or losing Mavericks, mimicking failed Democrats.

As stated in part one, the faith and conservative social views give us a foot in the door with many minorities. We should listen to Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention and return to first principles and reach out to those minorities.

But we can also reach out to more secular voters with one of the most basic of conservative principles: federalism. This concept can be the key to disabusing many of the Big Lie that social conservatives want to impose our views.

Social conservatives came into the political arena because federal judges were stifling their free speech and imposing a world view on their children anathema to their views. Co-author of The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton (pictured below), Thomas Jefferson and the most of the rest of the Founders’ vision for happiness pursuit maximization was for federalist dispersion of power to the like-minded in their communities and the power to vote with one’s feet. Moreover, most conservatives don’t want to proselytize in public schools. It’s the liberals that do that with their amorphous tolerance and diversity and their moral and cultural relativism.

All are better off and with a much better chance that their views won’t be categorized with obscenity in speech codes in their children’s schools under a federalist system rather than a one-size fits all whim of a federal judge.

What Gamecock dubs “Faith-based Conservative Federalism” is GOP’s ticket back to the majority.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson