Coming Soon! The Sovereignty Scorecard!

Who has fought for American Sovereignty--here on the homefront? Who has fought against American Sovereignty--once again, here on the homefront? The Sovereignty Caucus takes small "d" democracy seriously.

We need honest elections and an informed electorate to guide our ship of state.

And the Sovereignty Caucus aims to be part of that process--a big part. The SC will be rating the politicians, from the presidential candidates, to all the others. It will take us some time to get the methodology right. But we will do it.

"Very Well, Alone"

The new movie "Atonement," starring Keira Knightley and James MacAvoy, features a Dunkirk scene, reminding us of the horror of war. And even more horrible than war, of course, is defeat. The only thing worse than what happened to the British who evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940 is what happened to the French who stayed behind to be brutalized by the Nazis.

Which in turn reminded me of this famous political cartoon from the great David Low, the lone Tommy shaking his defiant fist at the unseen enemy.

Sometimes that's how I feel. That's probably how most Americans feel a lot of the time. America is not alone, of course. We have many friends and allies; peoples and countries that realize that we are the last, best hope of mankind. And it's great that we can sign treaties and make deals and forge alliances. Sometimes it's even a good idea to negotiate with enemies, if there's truly the basis of a possible agreement.

However, the whole point of American Sovereignty is that if all the diplomacy fails, if the world is plunged into darkness, made by worse by the lights of perverted science, we will still defend ourselves, by ourselves. Alone, if need be.

Max Boot of Commentary Magazine Boils Down His View on Immigration To Its Globalist Essence

Get used to it America: your new servants--and your new masters--will be immigrants. So says Max Boot,, who is a Fellow at The Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. To such Manhattanites, zooming over the rest of us, lofted ever upward by a jet stream of tax-deductible foundation money, such humdrum issues as legality, and opportunity for home-grown Americans--well, such issues are too small to worry about, or even take seriously. Legal, schmegal--what’s the big whoop-dee-doo diff?

Actually, Max, the twinned issues of legality and security make all the difference, all the difference in the world. That was the lesson of the immigration battle last spring. And a headline in The Politico newspaper today reads as follows: "Immigration reshapes politics everywhere." That's not Tom Tancredo talking, that's the voice of a Beltway newspaper, dedicated to campaigns and elections, with no discernible political ideology.

A Sovereign America should make the decisions for itself as to who comes here. Through an open, transparent, small "d" democratic process, in which the people make informed decisions as to what's best for their homeland security. Is that so unreasonable? Other countries enforce their border laws and build walls to defend themselves when they need to--America should do the same.

But here's Boot, blogging for Commentary magazine, dripping with contempt for the Republican Party and the people in it:

To be sure, Republicans claim to be all in favor legal immigration; it is only illegal immigration they claim to oppose. But the reality is that a lot of undocumented immigrants are also making a positive contribution to this country. In any case, the distinction between legal and illegal quickly gets lost in the debate, when a lot of the leading Republicans sound like they’re simply aggravated by too many foreigners coming here.

Keep it up, guys, if you want to lose the votes of Latinos—and those of our newest CEO’s.

Some might wonder: Isn't Commentary supposed to be a conservative magazine? Maybe, but it's got it share of globalist neoconservatives, who are anything but conservative.

"The Last Best Hope Of Man On Earth"

This was Ronald Reagan's speech to the first-ever Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington DC, January 25, 1974; this speech is remembered for having launched his presidential primary campaign against Gerald Ford for the 1976 GOP nomination. Note the reference to John McCain herein. McCain was a hero of Vietnam; too bad he wasn't listening more closely to the Gipper as he explained why America is so unique and graced by God. That's why most Americans want to keep it that way! Sorry, John.

Excerpts of "We Will Be A City Upon A Hill" below:

There are three men here tonight I am very proud to introduce. It was a year ago this coming February when this country had its spirits lifted as they have never been lifted in many years. This happened when planes began landing on American soil and in the Philippines, bringing back men who had lived with honor for many miserable years in North Vietnam prisons. Three of those men are here tonight, John McCain, Bill Lawrence and Ed Martin. It is an honor to be here tonight. I am proud that you asked me and I feel more than a little humble in the presence of this distinguished company.

There are men here tonight who, through their wisdom, their foresight and their courage, have earned the right to be regarded as prophets of our philosophy. Indeed they are prophets of our times. In years past when others were silent or too blind to the facts, they spoke up forcefully and fearlessly for what they believed to be right. A decade has passed since Barry Goldwater walked a lonely path across this land reminding us that even a land as rich as ours can't go on forever borrowing against the future, leaving a legacy of debt for another generation and causing a runaway inflation to erode the savings and reduce the standard of living. Voices have been raised trying to rekindle in our country all of the great ideas and principles which set this nation apart from all the others that preceded it, but louder and more strident voices utter easily sold cliches.

Cartoonists with acid-tipped pens portray some of the reminders of our heritage and our destiny as old-fashioned. They say that we are trying to retreat into a past that actually never existed. Looking to the past in an effort to keep our country from repeating the errors of history is termed by them as "taking the country back to McKinley." Of course, I never found that was so bad -- under McKinley we freed Cuba. On the span of history, we are still thought of as a young upstart country celebrating soon only our second century as a nation, and yet we are the oldest continuing republic in the world.

I thought that tonight, rather than talking on the subjects you are discussing, or trying to find something new to say, it might be appropriate to reflect a bit on our heritage.

You can call it mysticism if you want to, but I have always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage.

This was true of those who pioneered the great wilderness in the beginning of this country, as it is also true of those later immigrants who were willing to leave the land of their birth and come to a land where even the language was unknown to them. Call it chauvinistic, but our heritage does set us apart. Some years ago a writer, who happened to be an avid student of history, told me a story about that day in the little hall in Philadelphia where honorable men, hard-pressed by a King who was flouting the very law they were willing to obey, debated whether they should take the fateful step of declaring their independence from that king. I was told by this man that the story could be found in the writings of Jefferson. I confess, I never researched or made an effort to verify it. Perhaps it is only legend. But story, or legend, he described the atmosphere, the strain, the debate, and that as men for the first time faced the consequences of such an irretrievable act, the walls resounded with the dread word of treason and its price -- the gallows and the headman's axe. As the day wore on the issue hung in the balance, and then, according to the story, a man rose in the small gallery. He was not a young man and was obviously calling on all the energy he could muster. Citing the grievances that had brought them to this moment, he said, "Sign that parchment. They may turn every tree into a gallows, every home into a grave and yet the words of that parchment can never die. For the mechanic in his workshop, they will be words of hope, to the slave in the mines -- freedom." And he added, "If my hands were freezing in death, I would sign that parchment with my last ounce of strength. Sign, sign if the next moment the noose is around your neck, sign even if the hall is ringing with the sound of headman’s axe, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the bible of the rights of man forever." And then it is said he fell back exhausted. But 56 delegates, swept by his eloquence, signed the Declaration of Independence, a document destined to be as immortal as any work of man can be. And according to the story, when they turned to thank him for his timely oratory, he could not be found nor were there any who knew who he was or how he had come in or gone out through the locked and guarded doors.

Well, as I say, whether story or legend, the signing of the document that day in Independence Hall was miracle enough. Fifty-six men, a little band so unique -- we have never seen their like since -- pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Sixteen gave their lives, most gave their fortunes and all of them preserved their sacred honor. What manner of men were they? Certainly they were not an unwashed, revolutionary rabble, nor were they adventurers in a heroic mood. Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, 11 were merchants and tradesmen, nine were farmers. They were men who would achieve security but valued freedom more.

And what price did they pay? John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. After more than a year of living almost as an animal in the forest and in caves, he returned to find his wife had died and his children had vanished. He never saw them again, his property was destroyed and he died of a broken heart -- but with no regret, only pride in the part he had played that day in Independence Hall. Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships -- they were sold to pay his debts. He died in rags. So it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston, and Middleton. Nelson, learning that Cornwallis was using his home for a headquarters, personally begged Washington to fire on him and destroy his home--he died bankrupt. It has never been reported that any of these men ever expressed bitterness or renounced their action as not worth the price. Fifty-six rank-and-file, ordinary citizens had founded a nation that grew from sea to shining sea, five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep -- all done without an area re-development plan, urban renewal or a rural legal assistance program.

Now we are a nation of 211 million people with a pedigree that includes blood lines from every corner of the world. We have shed that American-melting-pot blood in every corner of the world, usually in defense of someone's freedom. Those who remained of that remarkable band we call our Founding Fathers tied up some of the loose ends about a dozen years after the Revolution. It had been the first revolution in all man’s history that did not just exchange one set of rulers for another. This had been a philosophical revolution. The culmination of men's dreams for 6,000 years were formalized with the Constitution, probably the most unique document ever drawn in the long history of man's relation to man. I know there have been other constitutions, new ones are being drawn today by newly emerging nations. Most of them, even the one of the Soviet Union, contain many of the same guarantees as our own Constitution, and still there is a difference. The difference is so subtle that we often overlook it, but it is so great that it tells the whole story. Those other constitutions say, "Government grants you these rights," and ours says, "You are born with these rights, they are yours by the grace of God, and no government on earth can take them from you."

Lord Acton of England, who once said, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," would say of that document, "They had solved with astonishing ease and unduplicated success two problems which had heretofore baffled the capacity of the most enlightened nations. They had contrived a system of federal government which prodigiously increased national power and yet respected local liberties and authorities, and they had founded it on a principle of equality without surrendering the securities of property or freedom." Never in any society has the preeminence of the individual been so firmly established and given such a priority.

In less than twenty years we would go to war because the God-given rights of the American sailors, as defined in the Constitution, were being violated by a foreign power. We served notice then on the world that all of us together would act collectively to safeguard the rights of even the least among us. But still, in an older, cynical world, they were not convinced. The great powers of Europe still had the idea that one day this great continent would be open again to colonizing and they would come over and divide us up.

In the meantime, men who yearned to breathe free were making their way to our shores. Among them was a young refugee from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He had been a leader in an attempt to free Hungary from Austrian rule. The attempt had failed and he fled to escape execution. In America, this young Hungarian, Koscha by name, became an importer by trade and took out his first citizenship papers. One day, business took him to a Mediterranean port. There was a large Austrian warship under the command of an admiral in the harbor. He had a manservant with him. He had described to this manservant what the flag of his new country looked like. Word was passed to the Austrian warship that this revolutionary was there and in the night he was kidnapped and taken aboard that large ship. This man's servant, desperate, walking up and down the harbor, suddenly spied a flag that resembled the description he had heard. It was a small American war sloop. He went aboard and told Captain Ingraham, of that war sloop, his story. Captain Ingraham went to the American Consul. When the American Consul learned that Koscha had only taken out his first citizenship papers, the consul washed his hands of the incident. Captain Ingraham said, "I am the senior officer in this port and I believe, under my oath of my office, that I owe this man the protection of our flag."

He went aboard the Austrian warship and demanded to see their prisoner, our citizen. The Admiral was amused, but they brought the man on deck. He was in chains and had been badly beaten. Captain Ingraham said, "I can hear him better without those chains," and the chains were removed. He walked over and said to Koscha, "I will ask you one question; consider your answer carefully. Do you ask the protection of the American flag?" Koscha nodded dumbly, "Yes," and the Captain said, "You shall have it." He went back and told the frightened consul what he had done. Later in the day three more Austrian ships sailed into harbor. It looked as though the four were getting ready to leave. Captain Ingraham sent a junior officer over to the Austrian flag ship to tell the Admiral that any attempt to leave that harbor with our citizen aboard would be resisted with appropriate force. He said that he would expect a satisfactory answer by four o'clock that afternoon. As the hour neared they looked at each other through the glasses. As it struck four he had them roll the cannons into the ports and had them light the tapers with which they would set off the cannons -- one little sloop. Suddenly the lookout tower called out and said, "They are lowering a boat," and they rowed Koscha over to the little American ship.

Captain Ingraham then went below and wrote his letter of resignation to the United States Navy. In it he said, "I did what I thought my oath of office required, but if I have embarrassed my country in any way, I resign." His resignation was refused in the United States Senate with these words: "This battle that was never fought may turn out to be the most important battle in our Nation's history." Incidentally, there is to this day, and I hope there always will be, a USS Ingraham in the United States Navy.

I did not tell that story out of any desire to be narrowly chauvinistic or to glorify aggressive militarism, but it is an example of government meeting its highest responsibility. ...

Somehow America has bred a kindliness into our people unmatched anywhere, as has been pointed out in that best-selling record by a Canadian journalist. We are not a sick society. A sick society could not produce the men that set foot on the moon, or who are now circling the earth above us in the Skylab. A sick society bereft of morality and courage did not produce the men who went through those years of torture and captivity in Vietnam. Where did we find such men? They are typical of this land as the Founding Fathers were typical. We found them in our streets, in the offices, the shops and the working places of our country and on the farms.

We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to do so. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall of Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and the return to the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said, "The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind."

We are indeed, and we are today, the last best hope of man on earth.

"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge...

...to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

That was the Declaration of Independence, of course. The Founding Fathers did their part. Now it's our turn to do ours:

We the citizens of the United States of America do hereby pledge to preserve and protect the Sovereignty of our flag and the republic for which it stands.

We believe that Sovereignty is the essence of American independence and greatness. It is not possible to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, or secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity—unless we protect our Sovereignty against all enemies and threats, foreign and domestic.
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So whereas the Sovereignty of our nation is immediately threatened by under-defended borders, we must strengthen our border defenses, so that all Americans can once again be secure in their own country.

And whereas the Sovereignty of our Nation is threatened by amnesty for those who have violated our immigration laws, we must prevent such amnesty, which would undermine the rule of law and encourage further Sovereignty-eroding law-breaking in the future. While America must remain a friend to all the peace- and liberty-loving nations of the world, we must enshrine the principle, now and forever, that everyone who lives in America, or visits America, abides here as the result of a transparent and fully legal process.

Therefore, I, ___, pledge to defend the Sovereignty of the United States of America.

Always faithful to our history, our Constitution, and our fellow citizens, I join with others to make a solemn declaration in regard to America’s Sovereignty: This we’ll defend.

Copyright (C) 2007, Sovereignty Caucus. Permission freely granted for non-profit use.

Take Your Cue, Get a Clue--The New Yorker Hates You!

"RETURN OF THE NATIVIST/Behind the Republicans’ anti-immigration frenzy." -- That's the loaded headline in the December 17 issue of The New Yorker.

Whenever elite magazines, such as The New Yorker, start throwing around phrases such as "nativism" and "frenzy," it's a safe bet that the trendy left is getting nervous about what the dolts and proles are up to, out in what they like to call "dumb-bleep-istan." That is, TNY will always find room in its lefty heart for Republicans that it figures are sure to lose, such as Sen. John McCain. Such useful folk are typically showered with praise for their "independence" from the GOP herd.

But if Republicans show some real spine--or a real instinct at sniffing out a winning issue--well, then, they are denounced and ridiculed. See the cartoon above, from the 12/17 issue. That's Cong. Tom Tancredo whirlwinding his GOP rivals; needless to say Tancredo is portrayed as some sort of McCarthyite-Troglodyte.

But interestingly, even TNY refers to NY Gov. Eliot Spitzer's ill-fated drivers-licenses-for-illegals plan as "misbegotten"--but then writer Ryan Lizza assures his readers that it won't affect any elections. Well, gee, how does he know that? And of course, with the exception of a rare few, such as Sen. Chris Dodd--still channeling some of his working-class roots--how does Spitzer's original position differ from the basic position of the national Democratic Party?

I think that Democrats think that they will win next year anyway, based on Bush's unpopularity. And they might be right. But then they will face the challenge of actually enacting their party's agenda, and that means placating the base--which includes, of course, The New Yorker.

But of course, the more that ordinary Americans come to realize that the D Party has chosen to throw in with the likes of TNY--at the expense of its historic base among blue collars and ethnics and the working class--the less likely it is that the Democrats will win the next election.

There's no law that says that the Dems have to run bicoastal liberal globalists as their presidential nominee--it's just that they want to do so, to keep their Soros-Kos constituency happy. And then they face the challenge of electing the likes of John Kerry among Americans overall. And he's a tough sell, isn't he?

And it will be especially tough for the Dems if the GOP absorbs the Tancredo message and runs on a get-tough platform. Remember "law and order"? That worked for Richard Nixon in 1968, much to the annoyance of the liberal elites.

Sure, sure, the GOP should modify Tancredoism appropriately. But the Party should keep his essential message, the part about defending America's borders, and preserving American Sovereignty--that's a political winner.

Everyone remembers the story attributed to Pauline Kael, the late film critic for The New Yorker. After the 1972 election, in which Nixon, of course, was victorious, she is said to have said, "How could Nixon have won? I don't know anyone who voted for him." Well, of course she didn't. And there weren't many Nixon voters among the mag's subscribers. But somehow, Nixon despite the contempt of Kael & Co. managed to win--carry 49 of 50 states, in fact.

Hence the TNY serves as a handy guide to the next election--whoever the magazine is for, it's a safe bet that that candidate is the candidate of the urban bet against that candidate.

The American Sovereignty Caucus believes that globalism, which has a "conservative" side--including such open-border-ers as McCain, George W. Bush and Jack Kemp --as well as a liberal ide, is inevitably going to be pushed aside by a renewed American nationalism.

What will win is not nativism, but nationalism. American Sovereignty.

America making its own decisions, without taking orders from the rest of the world.

Deal with it.

"US Faces New Demands at Bali Talks"

That's the headline atop a revealing article on the politics of global warming by the AP's Charles J. Hanley. The United Nations wants us to back down, to do it their way.

So what say you, Americans? Will you bow down to pressure from Al Gore and the Global Greens?

We should say no, of course. Hell no, even. Let Americans make these decisions. But don't feel sorry for Gore & Co. I hear that life is pretty good, with a fat expense account, paid for by the UN or some fatcat foundation, out there in Bali.

And oh, a dumb question for all those who attended this Very Important Conference: How much CO2 was emitted flying everyone to that island in the South Pacific?