Click Here To watch the video of Wes’ interview.
When you go to the link, you need to click “We The People: San Marcos”
On the drop down menu, you need to click on “We the People with Cameron Cutrone 2.9.12″ to view the interview.

Historians now openly talk about the way America has left her Constitution behind. Certainly there is a cumulative case to be drawn, probably starting with the War Between the States. Most accounts of government growth and the accretion of power in Washington, D.C., prominently involve the Progressive Era, and of course the New Deal. Damage was done and also accumulated, but it was not until sometime after World War II when lawmakers actually stopped consulting the Founding Document, when public debates waned concerning the Constitution’s relevant meaning to contemporary public policy. Since the 1950s the Government simply uses political mandate to do whatever the Government wants to do.

Regulations and taxes pile up on people in the name of the People, imposed however by Government through a kind of modern virtual representation, which the Colonists utterly rejected of Great Britain. Just as the Constitution no longer acts as a parameter on what the Government does, neither can it be said of George Washington that he still informs young people and adults of what constitutes the ideal masculine character or responsible republican citizenship. Washington was a preeminent role model for these things until the middle of the Twentieth Century, when the study of biography receded in education and pop celebrity displaced historic heroes.

Washington might have been King but he chose elective office instead, and then he chose to leave that office after just two terms. He had more than the good judgment to quit while he was ahead! He indeed knew what was most important in his own life: his home Mount Vernon; family and personal obligations; fellowship with friends; reflection, and the study of Scripture. He also knew the nature of power and the temptations attendant to power. He knew the crucial impact that leadership can have, but he valued civil liberties and freedom in society much more. Freedom had been the object of the Revolution, not dynasty or empire.

Washington was esteemed a very wise man, but he eschewed the power to impose his wisdom on everyone else. Washington esteemed the prerogative inherent to liberty, as something more important than either physical wellbeing or scientific certainty in a particular. People run their own lives, some successfully and some not—but it is after all the peoples’ lives and theirs to run. Various environments might be comparatively cruel or limited, chimerical or privileged. An asteroid might hit the earth someday, and the sky is always falling or liable to fall to the Chicken Littles amongst us. Still, families are natural institutions that govern even before the Government does. Government didn’t give a person life or sanction the marriage between the man and woman who had the baby. Indeed, the Church never asked nor asks permission to marry two people. The legal conventions are not always the same as religious ones, albeit for most of our history they have overlapped almost completely, mainly because of the approach to Government the Founders, George Washington included, took.

It bears repeating: It is the peoples’ lives—and so it should be their private choices that govern in nearly all particulars that pertain. This is true whether the individuals choose wisely or not, whether they are wrong or right; and whether they are brilliant or certifiably stupid, handicapped or studs. Individuals possess a prerogative to live according to their lights, regardless and irrespective of circumstances so long as they do not harm anyone else! Individuals possess natural rights according to natural law, and Government must have a compelling interest to intervene and mess with things. If Government does intervene, it does so by exception; further, it should be at the level of the State where a person lives and for some good reason, i.e., to protect others or to promote the general welfare, not necessarily the convenience of society. States are dual sovereign political entities alongside the Federal Government in the construct of Washington’s Constitution and ours.

Imagine: Washington’s Constitution, the Founding Document in light of his and the Founders’ worldview—a Restoration of the Republic. This is how I shall be remembering Washington, and how Government better start remembering if I read the Tea Party through to its logical potential conclusion. Remembering Washington means a dedication to the future and to a very similar project to that which he faced in his day. As freemen and freewomen we must choose to remember him and the Revolution, as well as the Constitution, which was its crowning achievement. Heroes did and do exist. Sometimes they are celebrities, but most of the time they are people proud to call themselves American, men and women of character and uncompromising determination to be free—free to dream and succeed, free to dream and fail on their own terms and God’s. Government is not God. The Constitution as amended, is not subject to the whim of the President or the Congress, not today anymore than it was in Washington’s day. It is not subject either to the Supreme Court, in terms of decisions it has made based upon unconstitutional precedents entered in, which break the moral compact and implicit structure of federalism upon which our Union is entirely based. Government has made carrion of the so-called “living” Constitution and given us a Dead Constitution Walking. Political Revolution is in the air, or should we say brewing?

During the third century A.D., Roman Emperor “Claudius the Cruel” ruled as a tyrant, waging incessant wars. The army needed men but there was a shortage, and married men did not want to leave their families, nor younger men their sweethearts. The Emperor believed such sentimentality was a weakness ruinous to empire, so he forbade marriage and annulled all existing engagements. He threatened any priest who performed the marriage ceremony with death.

But in the northern Italian town of Terni and then in Rome itself, the bishop St. Valentine continued to marry young couples in love at the temples in front of the altar and there he prayed for blessings upon their unions. The secret leaked out, however, and Valentine was seized and thrown into a dungeon. Some Romans appealed to the Emperor for clemency, and so Claudius met with Valentine to offer him a way out. If only Valentine would stop performing marriages and also renounce his Christian faith for pagan gods, the Emperor would show him mercy and spare his life.

St. Valentine professed his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and tried to convert the Emperor to Christianity instead! The infuriated Emperor left St. Valentine to languish in prison. The story goes that during the interval in prison, a young blind girl and daughter of the jailer would visit him. She sat and listened and talked to him through the bars, keeping him company. They ministered to each other, though she didn’t know it at first. She encouraged him when he felt down and alone and assured him he had been right to profess his faith, and also to marry the many grateful young couples who loved him still. Meanwhile, Valentine would pray for her without ceasing until one day miraculously, she recovered her sight and was healed. On the day he was put to death in February, c. 270 he left a note for his friend the jailer’s daughter. It was a tender note of Christian affection signed, “From Your Valentine.”

Pope Gelasius I eventually recast the pagan festival of Lupercalia as a Christian feast day (c. 496) and proclaimed February 14th to be St. Valentine’s Day. Notwithstanding the ancient pagan fertility rite associated with Lupercalia, the new holyday was focused on the martyrdom of St. Valentine for refusing to renounce Christ in order to save his own life. St. Valentine’s Day would not to be associated with romantic love again until the 14th century. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a poem in 1382 to commemorate the first anniversary of the engagement of England’s King Richard II and Anne of Bohemia. In that poem are lines, which draw explicit connection between St. Valentine’s Day and birds coming to mate. The mating season of birds in England starts later in May, but the rhyme scheme worked so well, it fired popular imagination and the connection stuck.

After his death Valentine became a Patron Saint, considered by many especially Romans, to be the spiritual overseer for notes and cards of affection. The earliest surviving Valentine’s card actually dates to 1415 from Charles, French Duke of Orleans captured at the Battle of Agincourt and imprisoned in the Tower of London. The card contains a love poem to his wife and is now on display at the British Museum. Gradually February 14th became the date for exchanging love messages and other tokens of affection; St. Valentine became the patron saint of all lovers. Americans began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s. In the 1840s Esther Howland began to sell the first mass-produced cards in America and became known as the Mother of the Valentine in the U.S. Today a billion Valentine’s Day cards are sent in America, second in number only to Christmas.

In 1836 relics belonging to St. Valentine were exhumed from the catacombs of Saint Hippolytus near Rome, placed in a gilded casket then transported to Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church in Dublin, Ireland, to which they were donated by Pope Gregory XVI. Each Valentine’s Day the casket is carried in solemn procession to the high altar for a special Mass dedicated to young people and to all those in love. Other relics of St. Valentine are found at various churches in Italy, France, Austria, England and Scotland. St. Valentine’s story reminds us the way in which love and sacrifice are inextricably linked, and that giving is what you do when you’re in love.

Court Moves Up Next Week’s Hearing to Tuesday

On Wednesday, the San Antonio three-judge panel held and concluded a one-day trial on the redistricting lawsuit filed by Democratic State Senator Wendy Davis against the State of Texas and pertaining to the State Senate maps. The Republican Party of Texas is named as a defendant in the lawsuit and was represented at the trial by RPT Assistant General Counsel Eric Opiela and attorney Donna Davidson.

From the RPT’s perspective, the trial went very well. Attorney General Greg Abbott’s team had an excellent day in court, and offered a strong defense for the State. The conclusion of this trial sets the stage for final action from the San Antonio three-judge panel in the upcoming days, and the rapidity in which the trial concluded also brought forth another positive development. At the end of the day, the Court announced that they would move up the next status hearing by one day to Tuesday, February 14th. The new court order is a change from the date that was previously announced in yesterday’s Chairman’s Update. This hearing will be critically important in determining the future of the unified April Primary and RPT will be strongly represented at the hearing by Chairman Steve Munisteri and our legal team. Also at yesterday’s hearing, the Court instructed both sides to have another round of negotiations and report back by Monday as to the results. Today, the Attorney General’s office made a filing with the court relative to their legal position on the specific legislative districts that are still under contention. We will keep you informed of any developments as they occur, but at this point – all of our attention is focused upon preparing for what we hope will be a quick action from the San Antonio three-judge panel at the end of Tuesday’s hearing.

“There is hope in every new generation. Our responsibility as adults is to give them a place and time in Freedom to do the best they can. God is always with little children, and this little girl must have swallowed an angel!”-Wes Riddle

Of course, you know what they say about wishing in one hand and picking up horse hockey with the other: one hand is likely to get fuller than the other. I reckon the wish must obtain a will and the necessary resources to in fact change things. God help us. Today the federal government literally employs extortion on the States with the money it taxes from us. To make you wear your seatbelt and do a hundred other things, the feds withhold funds from sovereign States, unless and until those States pass particular laws. They did the same thing after the War Between the States: permanent military occupation unless the States would approve certain constitutional amendments. The contexts are indeed different, and there were hard historical and practical realities to settle during the Reconstruction. But is another Robert E. Lee or Jeff Davis left anywhere in this unified, chained and tethered house of ours—locked down from the inside out? Is there a governor with backbone anywhere in the country to point out and even put an end to . . . (shall I name it? Are you willing to recognize it?). Tyranny.

Some of you will say, gosh he’s gone over the top (again). So you think, “I’m free, right?” Not if you think you ought to be in charge of the money you set aside for retirement, or the age you choose to retire. Not if you think you ought to be able to choose when your child goes to school, for how many weeks he or she should study, as well as what subjects. Walter E. Williams reviewed Sheldon Richman’s excellent new book, Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State (available at www.laissezfairebooks.org and www.amazon.com). In the review, he asks “What if you think your child is capable of having a job at age 12, as I was? No dice. The government determines the age at which one can work, and for how long and at what pay.” Andrew Jackson joined the American Revolution at the age of 14, and he was a natural soldier. I’m glad nobody told him No dice, Andy. (He probably would have killed somebody on our side). Of course, I’m not advocating enlistment of child soldiers—just pointing out the arbitrariness of well-meaning rules, forced and enforced down every throat in the country—where no one possesses the slightest degree of discretion and no State retains a sovereign prerogative.

Alexis de Tocqueville predicted Americans would face this kind of despotism, to which democracies are prone—more widespread and milder than other forms, degrading men rather than tormenting them. In his masterpiece Democracy in America, he writes that our leaders are likely to become as schoolmasters. Our government will try to keep us “in perpetual childhood” and will do this by providing security and necessities, assuming responsibility for our concerns, managing our work. He foresaw government, which “gladly works for [‘the people’s’] happiness but wants to be the sole agent and judge of it.” Williams sums up his review with a very insightful comment, that “Democracy gives an aura of legitimacy to acts that would otherwise be deemed tyranny.” Moreover, my fellow tethered citizens, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe observed, there is no one quite as hopelessly enslaved, as the person who thinks he is free but is not!

Regulation in general costs individuals and businesses a lot of money to comply. Costs are passed on to consumers, or else taken in the shorts. Of more concern, according to ABC News reporter John Stossel, is the sheer distraction of creative power. The proverbial bar is raised by regulations, i.e., the threshold for achievement goes harder if not exactly higher. Creative impulses can in fact be thwarted, because regulations distract focus, diffuse effort, discourage risk-taking, frustrate intent, and spend a lot of (life)-time. Thus, things that could be simply aren’t, because the regulatory environment keeps them from being realized—a new engine or energy source perhaps, new medicine, maybe just a better mousetrap. The reason is that an inducement one place is a disincentive someplace else. Regulatory roadblocks and obstacles, including scrutiny, result in a comparative incentive to do something else or to go somewhere else. The implied message is certainly not one for the budding hero. Rather, regulations choke the best and instruct men and women of initiative to take the easier road, the one most traveled. Regulations don’t only depress the economy, they also depress the spirit.

The difference between something regulated and unregulated is in the measure of freedom. Stossel shrewdly observes that,

Visitors to Moscow before the fall of communism noticed a dead-eyed
look in the people. What was that about? I don’t think it was about
fear of the KGB. Most Muscovites didn’t have intervention by the secret
police in their daily lives. I think it was the look that people get when
they live in an all-bureaucratic state. If you go to Washington, . . . you’ll
see the same thing [in government agencies].

In order to get a new drug approved today, it costs $500 million and takes ten years. Thousands die waiting on the approved release of drugs that could be available now. Millions die for want of medicines that won’t be invented soon enough. The simple alternative in the area of medicine, as elsewhere, would be for the government to serve as an information agency and not as a nanny placement service. Did any of you hire the fed to be your babysitter? Sometimes I wonder who/what the government thinks it is! (It ain’t us for sure). Even if we allowed for some (albeit inefficient) government research, information alone would do more to help free people protect themselves than twenty-one warning labels on a stepladder. Indeed, that’s where we as a people may have gone wrong: we value other things now more than freedom it seems. “Give me absolute safety or give me death!”

The Clinton years accelerated a trend from the sixties, when he added 500,000 new pages to the Federal Register—a spider web of new little rules for everyone to obey. Notwithstanding the information age growth during the nineties, the US grew into an economic powerhouse in years when the government didn’t account for as much of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). For most of American history, government’s share of GDP was five percent or less, but today it’s forty percent. Some regulations are necessary, and I don’t mean to categorically denounce them all—indeed, some environmental regulations even lack alternative market incentives. But let’s get off this regulation kick that stifles innovation. Today Los Angeles has the same economic output as all of Russia. Dallas, Texas outranks the whole country of Thailand, in terms of economic output. That should illustrate plain-as-day this important inverse relationship: between the healthier, wealthier societies of the world and those that are corrupt, bureaucratic, and politically controlled. Freedom should never take a back seat to “the good of the people” divined by government. Tell our babysitter she can go home now; we’ve suddenly grown up.

AUSTIN – Today, the United States Supreme Court issued an opinion which vacated the orders implementing Texas redistricting maps prepared by the Western District of Texas three-judge panel. The opinion also remanded the case back to the Western District of Texas three-judge panel for further proceedings consistent with the Supreme Court’s opinion.

This opinion means that currently there are no district lines for State House, State Senate and Congressional districts. By vacating the three-judge panel’s order, the Supreme Court did not reinstitute the legislative maps drawn by the Texas Legislature in 2011. Rather, the opinion states that the three-judge panel is to issue new Texas redistricting maps in a manner consistent with the guidance found in the Supreme Court opinion as to what factors should be considered in drawing these new maps.

The Republican Party of Texas interprets this opinion as meaning that the three-judge panel exceeded its authority by altering district lines where there had not been established a probable basis for constitutional or legal challenge. However, as a note of caution – today’s opinion by the Supreme Court did not order the enactment of maps and lines drawn by the Texas Legislature in 2011. The opinion still allows the three-judge panel to make some alterations to the legislatively drawn maps.

In addition, it should be noted that when the Western District three-judge panel issues new maps for the 2012 elections – these maps are “interim” only. Final maps for Texas redistricting still have to be cleared under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which will take place in front of a Washington D.C. federal panel. At this time, we do not know exactly when new lines will be published by the Western District federal panel, nor do we know where the district lines will actually be.

The RPT applauds the good news that the Supreme Court acted relatively quickly, and that the Justices acted in time to allow for an April unified primary. To keep the current election schedule, it is incumbent upon the Western District three-judge panel to also act expeditiously and redraw the maps in the next week or so. We are hoping that they will do so.

In commenting on the Supreme Court decision, RPT Chairman Steve Munisteri stated, “We are pleased that the Supreme Court recognized that the Western District three-judge panel exceeded its authority in drawing lines for our elected officials. The opinion stated very clearly that the Legislature’s intent and judgment is an important consideration and “starting point” in the process of judicially redrawing maps and that the Legislature’s intent should not be overlooked. I am especially pleased that the Supreme Court apparently took notice of the Republican Party of Texas’ advisory which we filed last week and our subsequently filed brief in support of that advisory. In those documents, we alerted the Court to the fact that an expeditious decision was needed in order to maintain our current April 3rd primary schedule, to prevent havoc with our elections, and to protect the parties’ State Conventions as well. Again, we would like to thank Chris Ward and the law firm of Yetter Coleman LLP who did a fabulous job in providing a brief pro bono on a quick turnaround.”

Munisteri continued, “I am hopeful that the Western District three-judge panel will issue new maps in time for us to maintain our current April 3rd primary. Until the panel issues new orders, we will not know how many legislative districts will likely be Republican and how many will be Democrat. Thus, any conclusion as to the overall result of today’s ruling by the Supreme Court will have to be withheld until that time. In the meantime, the RPT will continue to advocate for an election schedule that will allow an early April primary.”

The Republican Party of Texas also issues the following advisory to all of our county chairmen, precinct chairmen and party activists. At this time, it is not known with certainty whether the April 3rd primary schedule will hold. The timely decision by the Supreme Court today makes it possible for the April 3rd primary schedule to hold, but we will not know this for certain until we get further guidance from the three-judge panel in San Antonio. As soon as we receive additional information from that panel relative to this issue, the State Party will issue an advisory through our website, social media, and email database.

Statement from Wes: “ We bet on the State of Texas, and the State of Texas won the first round! The Supreme Court deliberated and concluded that the federal Western District of Texas three-judge panel overreached its authority, when it reversed our state legislature’s redistricting map. Any changes that are made now must give presumption to the legislature’s map and only address specific violations of the law.”

Thursday, February 2, 2012
11:30 – 1:00
Austin Country Club
4408 Longchamp Drive
(off Westlake Drive at 360)
$25 (cash preferred)

US Congressional District 25 Candidate Forum

Our CD 25 Candidate Forum is important to you whether or not you live in the District. Every vote cast in Congress impacts you as well as everyone else in the country. It is vital that each of us is familiar with all the candidates. As ARW women, we must be informed and ready to educate those who are not. Come, hear from each candidate and then pass on what you have learned to friends, family and neighbors. The participating candidates are:

Dianne Costa
Dave Garrison
Justin Hewlett
Brian Matthews
Wes Riddle
Michael Williams

RSVP by Monday, January 30 at noon to:
meetingrsvp@austinrepublicanwomen.org

You do not have a reservation unless you
have received a confirmation.