WELCOME TO THE CROW'S NEST

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This blog is dedicated to the revival of the 18th century constitutional revolutionary spirit. It stands with neither Republicans or Democrats but with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and perhaps most of all, Patrick Henry.

From time to time I will be sharing my thoughts on the superior form of government we were given over the form of government to which many would move us. It's my intention to always be rational, and share the light as God gives me to see the light (thank you Mr. Lincoln).

**************

IVAN SIRKO FOR PRESIDENT

So... John McCain thinks the North Carolina Republican party is "out of touch" with him because it ran a truthful ad about Barack Abomination and his association with Jeremiah "I hate Whitey" Wright.

Well, Senator, you are out of touch with me and millions of other patriots who are sick of mealy-mouthed politicians like yourself who treat the enemy leftists as friends and Conservative friends as enemies.

We long for a leader who will go for the throat of the leftists in this country (and the rightists who don't understand the fight we are in) and tell them exactly what he thinks of them.

We are sick (well, maybe it's just me) of eight years of the President never fighting back-- of allowing the enemies of the Constitution to constantly be on the offensive while we put up little resistance and mount only a listless and half-hearted defense of our principles.

I know the Bible says we should bend over backwards to understand our enemies--but I can't find anyplace that says we should bend over forward.

We don't need angry shouting (since the American people seem unable to stomach that approach) but dear G-d, isn't there anyone with slashing wit and nads bigger than sweetpeas who can forcefully take on these these enemies of the Republic? That includes you, Senator McSweettalk.

We need a man like Ivan Sirko to say it like it is. Ivan who? you ask. Well, let me tell you about him. (Hat tip -- Dr. Jack Wheeler)

In 1676 Islam was moving north, well into southern Europe, where the Zaporozhian Cossacks from southern Ukraine demolished in battle an army of Ottoman Empire Sultan Mehmet IV's (1642-1693).

Yet the Sultan had the gall to demand in a letter that the victorious Cossacks, as Christian infidels, submit to his Moslem rule and be his subjects. They decided to write him a letter, and call Him what he deserved to be called.

As you read, think about our present White House and the man who presumes to be worthy of it. You may feel the temptation to yell out loud about the Cossack leader who wrote the letter, "Yes, this is this guy (or someone like him) I want in the Oval Office!"

The Cossack leader's name was Ivan Sirko.

His response was to this letter from Mehmet IV. Now remember these are historical documents. We have copies of them.

As the Sultan; son of Mohammed; brother of the Sun and Moon; grandson and viceroy of God; ruler of the kingdoms of Macedonia, Babylon, Jerusalem, Upper and Lower Egypt; emperor of emperors; sovereign of sovereigns; extraordinary knight, never defeated; steadfast guardian of the tomb of Jesus Christ; trustee chosen by God himself; the hope and comfort of Moslems; confounder and great defender of Christians-I command you, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, to submit to me voluntarily and without any resistance, and to desist from troubling me with your attacks.

(signed) Sultan Mehmet IV

Now here is a guy who does NOT have self-esteem issues.

And here is Ivan Sirko's reply. (I've done my best to clean it up)

Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan!

O sultan, turkish devil and damned devil's kith and kin, secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight are you, that can't slay a hedgehog with his naked arse? You will not, you son of a bitch, make subjects of Christian sons; we've no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, you mother-f***er.

You Babylonian scullion, Macedonian wheelwright, goat-f***er of Alexandria, Armenian pig, Podolian thief, catamite of Tartary, hangman of Kamyanets (guess you had to be there to understand some of these references), and fool of all the world and underworld, an idiot before God, grandson of the Serpent, and the crick in our d*ck. Pig's snout, mare's arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow, go f*** your own mother!

So the Zaporozhians declare, you lowlife. You won't even be herding Christian pigs. Now we'll conclude, for we don't know the date and don't own a calendar; the moon's in the sky, the year with the Lord, the day's the same over here as it is over there; for this kiss our arse!

(signed) Koshovyi Otaman Ivan Sirko, with the whole Zaporozhian Host.

This painting depicts the letter writing

Ivan Sirko for President!!

*************

LIFE ON THE RIVER

It was the splashing that woke me.

Loud and repeated splashing, coming from all around the boat.

That's not a sound you expect to hear when lying quietly at anchor in the Indian River. I glanced at the clock on the shelf above the bunk: 2:15 a.m.

The splashing continued, crowding its way into my curiosity until I had to get up to see what was causing it. I cleared the companionway and stood in the cockpit. The nearly full moon cast a silver glow on the water's surface.

When I realized what was causing the commotion, a sense of awe overcame me.What I saw that night could not be purchased for the dearest price. If the most powerful man on the planet had wanted to see it, he could not have ordered it to happen. What I saw had me as its only witness.

A family of dolphins (or porpoises if you prefer) were playing in the water right around the boat. They leaped and chattered and splashed, oblivious to my presence. For easily a quarter hour I watched, dazzled by their agility and sense of fun. An adult swam close to the cockpit, stopped and, I thought, looked right at me.

From that moment, I chose tothink the whole show had been just for my benefit. I still believe it.

Life on the river sometimes reminds you that you don't have the control over events that you might think. The wind, the water and the fates WILL assert their absolute authority over you. Good seamanship and regular maintenance can usually bring you through, but once in a while the elements conspire to remind you that they, not you, are in charge. Rarely, very rarely, do these elements threaten any harm. Mostly, they just shake their finger at you, to re-teach a little lesson you should know, but somehow forgot.

Early one night, it must have been August or early September, I heard my name being called from the water near the starboard side."Are you dragging?" the voice yelled, " you look like you're too close to the piling". Since immovable objects like rocks, pilings or other boats are on the short list of things that threaten a boat at anchor, the question was enough to make me bolt out on deck, scraping my shin in the process. My friend Nick had called it right. I had been sailing earlier in the day and the wind was light when I got back to the anchorage, so I had been a little "casual" about making sure the anchor had found good ground.

That finger was shaking in my direction.

A late summer thunder-boomer had passed through and the anchor had dragged at least ten feet. That made the stern a little too close to the concrete piling for comfort. Another storm was firing up, lighting the dark sky over Cocoa and moving our way, so Nick tied off his dinghy to the stern and climbed aboard to help me get her moved into safer water.

Now Nick was a wild-eyed French-Canadian, a mechanic savant who could de-construct and re-construct a dinghy engine between cans of beer, a beverage for which he had an Olympian capacity. The only thing bigger than Nick's heart was the enormous shock of reddish hair that erupted in all directions above and below his ears. He settled into the cockpit, warmed up the engine and gently eased her into gear.

Up on the bow, I hauled away at the anchor line, pulling it aboard as we moved closer to the hook. The twenty-eight pounder broke the surface of the water at the same moment the sky broke open and the rain fell with a Niagara-like roar. I turned to point a course for Nick but the stern had disappeared. I could see only as far back as the mast. The drenching curtain of rain hid the rest. I yelled back at Nick, "Slow and steady! Hold the course!" If he heard, he didn't answer.

We motored on through the darkness. We were blind, deaf and soaked to the skin. While I strained to see if anything was in front of us, I thought of a tee shirt one of my sailing pals frequently wore. In boldletters it read "EXPERIENCE SAILING. Stand in a cold shower and rip up hundred dollar bills."

For all the yin that sailing gives you, the price tag is a little yang.

The fates were just presenting a little bill for all the good times. The rain continued to pound down. After five minutes or so, I figured we should be clear of any possible danger, so I worked my way back to Nick and told him to count to thirty, then head up into the wind and stop. That gave me time to go forward again and let the anchor slide gently back into the lagoon. No sooner had the anchor touched the water -- I mean at the same moment it touched -- the rain quit -- it didn't ease up or slow down. It just quit!

If I had just made sure that the anchor was secure, if we had just waited below and had a cup of coffee, we could have been warm, safe -- and dry, instead of tired, cold and miserable.

Dolphin and downpours. Drama and delights. And the ever present finger of fate. That's life on the Indian River.

*************

A HINT OF THINGS TO COME...

Fauré - Après un rêve - After a Dream...

performed by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa

This is Fauré's most popular song, and one of his earliest (Op. 7, No. 1). Romain Bussine's text is a French adaptation of an anonymous Italian poem.

Après un rêve
Fauré (1865)
Dans un sommeil que charmait ton image
Je rêvais le bonheur, ardent mirage;
Tes yeux était plus doux, ta voix pure et sonore,
Tu rayonnais comme un ciel éclairé par l'aurore.
Tu m'appelais et je quittais la terre
Pour m'enfuir avec toi vers la lumière;
Les cieux pour nous, entr'ouvraient leurs nues,
Splendeurs inconnues, lueurs divines entrevues...

Hélas! Hélas, triste réveil des songes!
Je t'appelle, ô nuit, rends-moi tes mensonges;
Reviens, reviens radieuse,
Reviens, ô nuit mystérieuse!

After a dream

In a sleep which your image charmed
I dreamed of happiness, ardent mirage;
your eyes were sweeter, your voice pure and ringing,
you shone like a sky lit up by the dawn.
You were calling me and I was leaving the earth
to flee with you towards the light;
the skies parted their clouds for us,
unknown splendours, divine half-seen gleams...

Alas! Alas! Sad awakening from dreams!
I call on you, o night, give me back your deceits;
come back, come back resplendent,

come back, o mysterious night!

*************

I HAVE MET THE ENEMY

"We have met the enemy, and he is us."

So said the greatest philosopher of the 20th century.The fact that he was a little possum from the Okeefenokee named Pogo doesn't change the truth in these words.

In what I'm about to tell you, I include myself in each accusation, slap myself for every action not taken, and hang my head in shame for long believing the rhetoric of many of the so-called "Conservative Republicans".

If I were truly cynical, I would say the only thing those Republicans want to conserve is their own power and their cockamamie jobs. Alright, I am that cynical.

The Constitution? Expendable.

The rugged individualism that raised this great experiment to heights unparalleled in history? Expendable.

The principle that representatives are elected to do right by the Constitution as God or their conscience gives them, and not to enact the will of the people? Expendable.

As tempting as it is to blame the Republicans (and their share of the blame is undeniable), the truth is that in a free society we do get the government we deserve. And what our government has become doesn't say much for us patriots, does it?

Is there a solution? What will move the country back toward a concept of government and society worthy of our founding principles? What will it take to eliminate the great political scam called "Marxism"?

I don't know. I doubt anyone has a foolproof plan. But one thing is very clear: What we've done since the "conservative" takeover in the nineties has had modest or barely measurable success in reversing our course.

Until recently we were at least slowing the leftward drift. Now it has again picked up speed, propelled farther leftward by the very people who made a Contract with America to stop it.

Conservative talk radio hasn't really helped. Rush Limbaugh has been toiling for 20 years and still we lose ground. Other conservative talkers seem unlikely to do better. Patriots who call in to vent over the latest government outrage or media "crisis of the day" have availed us nothing. I doubt it even makes us feel much better.

What we need is a new course of action, a new battle plan. Options might include:

1) Increased political activism. When you're losing, it can't hurt to see what the winning team is doing. We should get off our "high ideals" and mount massive protest marches. After all, Louis Farrakhan can lead 200,000 in a "Million Man" march, and the Socialist Workers Party can lead tens of thousands against America defending herself. So why can't the tens of millions who love the Constitution and our founding principles inspire two million ex-military people, bikers, athletes, conservative Christians, and like-minded "average Americans" to march and shout in a grand circle around the Capitol in D.C. , banging pots and yelling, "Hey hey, ho ho, socialism's gotta go!"

All it would take is organization, determination and total commitment to the cause, and I will admit the thought of cowering hired hands (sometimes called Senators and Representatives) , worried that the inflamed crowd might charge into their "Sanctus Sanctimonitorium" and teach them a lesson in respect for the people who hired them, does give me a really warm fuzzy.

For this effort, sunshine patriots need not apply.

2) Use the Internet to find and coordinate conservative groups and political parties into one body politic. Use both local and national grassroots action to elect Constitutionalists to local office. After all, today's county commissioner is tomorrow's U.S. senator. We have to drop our tendency to splinter and instead, organize around one immutable principle: the limited government embodied in the original vision of the Constitution.

3) We can continue to vote Republican on the national level as the "lesser of two evils", while giving money and support to a combined conservative party on the local level. (Although this was originally written three years ago, Newt has recently suggested the same thing, welcome aboard, Mr. Gingrich.)

By doing so, we would "prepare the ground" to replace either the Democrats or the Republicans when they collapse.

4)Vote, vote, always vote!

5) And finally, armed insurrection. A very scary thought and a last possible resort. But it can't be taken off the table as an option because as Lincoln said, "The nation cannot exist half-slave and half-free"; it is also true that we cannot survive long with the two ideas that divide us today. Half Marx and half Jefferson. The idea that we have a Constitutional government with static limited powers and the dangerous notion that government powers are fluid and limitless are mutually exclusive and cannot be reconciled. History shows us that one or the other will triumph. Too much blood has been shed defending the first idea to allow victory to the second.

If, God forbid, it should ever come to this, we have this consolation: while the Left has the biggest mouths and fewest ideas, the Right has the biggest guns and the most ammunition.

**************

A REPUBLIC, IF WE CAN KEEP IT

(Author's note: This post had its origin in a speech I gave several years ago, all my notes are lost and some of what comes after the Joseph Sobran quote may be more Sobran than me, but give credit for it all to Sobran if you must, it is truth that matters here, not the credit.)

ALL THROUGH THE SUMMER OF 1787, in Philadelphia, in the Pennsylvania colony, the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention had suffered, not only with the difficulties of debating and writing the Constitution, but from the weather. The flies and mosquitoes that inhabit Philadelphia during the summer season had been particularly bad. The heat made it impossible to keep the Hall, now known as Constitution Hall, closed, and the insects had taken full advantage of the open windows. They feasted on the legs of the gathered delegates, biting right through their silk stockings and making everyone miserable.


More than anyone, the organizer and prime mover of the Convention was the man who would eventually become the fourth president of the United States, James Madison.

He was a small man, some say no more than 5'4" tall with a voice so soft you had to lean forward or cup you ear just to hear him debate. He was described by one of his admirers as "no bigger than half a piece of soap".


But whatever issue was debated through that summer, it was Madison, who possessed one of the finest minds on the continent, who was the best informed man on any point of debate. He earned his title that summer, "the father of the Constitution". We'll hear from him later.


The Convention began May 13, when all 40,000 Philadelphians had turned out to cheer the arrival of George Washington and by September 18, it was done.


The people of Philadelphia had heard the rumors that the great work had been completed and a large crowd of anxious citizens had gathered, milling around outside and waiting to hear what had been accomplished.

The first delegate to emerge was 81 year old Ben Franklin. When the crowd saw him, the buzz of anticipation grew louder. Above the din, a Mrs. Powel, wife of the mayor of Philadelphia, shouted out, "Well Dr. Franklin, what have we got, a monarchy or a republic? Franklin looked at her over his spectacles and responded, "A Republic, madam, IF you can keep it." (emphasis added)

A representative Republic. Something that had not been seen on Earth for almost 2000 years. Not since the Athenians and then the Romans had attempted it. Though the Roman republic had lasted several hundred years, the Athenian democracy survived only 50.

We Americans were given one of the greatest gifts in history that summer in 1787. A government that was limited, severely limited, by the Constitution.


They gave us a Republic because to them one of the most dangerous words in the political affairs of men was one we hear used a lot these days--democracy. A form of government in which the passions of the majority can easily be turned to oppression of the minority. Our founders understood that and wanted to make sure we had a way to subdue those passions and make them subservient to the law. (Yes, I'm aware that the slave compromise was an exception to the idea, but there isn't room to debate that here, although they did write the beginning of the end of slavery into the document.)


As Thomas Jefferson said,

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution".


Does the Constitution still bind down the power of men? Do our elected representatives still have the same reverence for the Constitution that they should? Are we still a republic where power is held in check by the Constitution. The questions are rhetorical, of course. The answer to all of them is, unfortunately, not even close.


Our representatives in the Congress today, most of them anyway , with the exception of a few like Ron Paul from Texas , treat the Constitution as an impediment to their servicing of the wants and desires of their constituents. They do not so much deliberately violate it as ignore it and we now look to our representatives, not as guardians of our liberties but as dispensers of political pork and bacon.


So why are we going wrong ? Why does our Congress ignore the limited powers assigned to it ? Why do the Supreme Court and the Congress violate the very principles they swear an oath to uphold?


It might help if we understand that the life span of all great civilizations have an arc to them. An ascent and a descent. For example, who said this?

"The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced. The arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."



Was it George Bush, John McCain, or Newt Gingrich?

No, that was said by Marcus Tullius Cicero in 55 BC. Just before the Roman republic fell to Julius Caesar and the long decline of Rome began.


About the same time the delegates were debating the limited powers of our Republic in Philadelphia, a scholar of the ancient world, Alexander Tyler, warned of the dangers of democracy and the arc of civilizations, when he said this: (the origin of the quote is disputed, but the logic has a razor sharpness.)

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can exist only until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment the majority always votes for the candidate who promises to give them the most, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship".


The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence:



From BONDAGE to SPIRITUAL FAITH, from SPIRITUAL FAITH to GREAT COURAGE, from COURAGE to LIBERTY, from LIBERTY to ABUNDANCE, from ABUNDANCE to SELFISHNESS, from SELFISHNESS to COMPLACENCY, from COMPLACENCY to APATHY,from APATHY to DEPENDENCY and from DEPENDENCY back into BONDAGE."

Where does America stand along this arc today? I wish I could tell you with any degree of certainty. My guess would be somewhere between apathy and dependency.


Why does the American public feel such apathy toward the Constitution, except for maybe the first and second amendment?


Joseph Sobran in his essay "How tyranny came to America" puts the blame on education--or the lack of it, regarding the wonders of the Constitution. He includes both young and old alike as being unschooled in the document. He says that:

"One of the great goals of education is to initiate the young into the conversation of their ancestors; to enable them to understand the language of that conversation, in all its subtlety, and maybe even, in theirmaturity, to add to it some wisdom of their own.


The modern American educational system no longer teaches us the political language of our ancestors. In fact our schooling helps widen the gulf of time between our ancestors and ourselves, because much of what we are taught in the name of civics, political science, or American history is really modern liberal propaganda.

Sometimes this is deliberate. Worse yet, sometimes it isn’t.

Our ancestral voices have come to sound alien to us, and therefore our own moral and political language is impoverished. It’s as if the people of England could no longer understand Shakespeare, or Germans couldn’t comprehend Mozart and Beethoven.


So to most Americans, even those who feel oppressed by what they call big government, it must sound strange to hear it said, in the past tense, that tyranny has come to America. After all, we have a constitution, don’t we? We’ve abolished slavery and segregation. We won two world wars and the Cold War. We still congratulate ourselves before every ballgame on being the Land of the Free. And we aren’t ruled by some fanatic with a funny mustache who likes big parades with thousands of soldiers goose-stepping past huge pictures of himself.


For all that, we no longer fully have what our ancestors, who framed and ratified our Constitution, thought of as freedom — a careful division of power that prevents power from becoming concentrated and unlimited. The word they usually used for concentrated power was consolidated — a rough synonym for fascist.


And the words they used for any excessive powers claimed or exercised by the state were usurped and tyrannical. They would consider the modern "liberal" state tyrannical in principle; they would see in it not the opposite of the fascist, communist, and socialist states, but their sister."

If Washington and Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton could come back, the first thing they’d notice would be that the federal government now routinely assumes thousands of powers never assigned to it — powers never granted, never delegated, never enumerated. These were the words they used, and it’s a good idea for us to learn their language.

They would say that we no longer live under the Constitution they wrote. And the Americans of a much later era would say we no longer live even under the Constitution they inherited and amended.


What’s worse is that our constitutional illiteracy cuts us off from our own national heritage. And so our politics degenerates into increasingly bitter and unprincipled quarrels about who is going to bear the burdens of war and welfare.


The Constitution does two things. First, it delegates certain enumerated powers to the federal government. Second, it separates those powers among the three branches. Most people understand the secondary principle of the separation of powers. But they don’t grasp the primary idea of delegated and enumerated powers.

Consider this.

Not long ago we had a big national debate over national health care. Advocates and opponents argued long and loud over whether it could work, what was fair, how to pay for it, and so forth. But almost nobody raised the basic issue: Where does the federal government get the power to legislate in this area?

The answer is: nowhere.

The Constitution lists 18 specific legislative powers of Congress, and not one of them covers national health care. Liberals and conservatives alike don't seem to understand what the father of the Constitution, James Madison said in Federalist 45:


"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects such as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all objects which… concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the state."



If one of the authors of the Constitution isn't an authority on what it means, then who is... Nancy Pelosi?

As a matter of fact, none of the delegated powers of Congress — and delegated is always the key word — cover Social Security, or Medicare, or federal aid to education, or countless public works projects, or equally countless regulations of business, large and small, or the space program, or farm subsidies, or research grants, or subsidies to the arts and humanities, or... well, you name it, chances are it’s unconstitutional.



We are less free, more heavily taxed, and worse governed than our ancestors were under British rule.


Ponder this:

In the 19th century and for most of history, a slave owed his master half of what he produced. The rest was considered necessary for his own maintenance, so he could continue to produce for the master. Today we pay income tax, property taxes , excise taxes, sales taxes and when we die, an inheritance tax.


If we add up the total of what we create that goes to pay these taxes, you'll find they add up to ----right at 50%. I will leave you to draw your own conclusion as to what the founders would have thought of all that taxation. Much of it is "necessary" because the Congress has to pay for all those unconstitutional programs they say the people want. Now here's the sad thing. They may be right about us "People". Many of us do want those programs and the rest of don't fight hard enough to see that they aren't passed.

Wouldn't it be ironic if Pogo was right and the worst enemies of the Constitution were those of us who don't know enough about it and don't fight hard enough to preserve it.

And it has to be preserved.

The Constitution and the ideals embodied in it are the only wall of separation between us and the tyranny of democracy. It's ideal is liberty and it's greatest asset is the free people who defend it. And we should never forget that freedom is one of the rarest of human conditions and that others before us have let their apathy doom them.


In "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" Edward Gibbon wrote:

"In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all; security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was the freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again."

But---all isn't lost. There is a small but mighty group of idealistic patriots and as long as we have any freedom to act and the spiritual faith to persevere we have the opportunity to win.


I can think of two things that we all can do. One, we can make sure that our schools teach the Constitution with the reverence due it or find school board members who will insist on it.

And two, we can refuse to vote for any candidate we have reason to believe doesn't stand on the following statement:

"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents "interest", I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and in that cause I am doing the very best I can."

That was said by one of the fathers of the modern conservative movement --- Sen. Barry Goldwater. (I've included a photo with President Reagan just because it makes me feel good. And I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the late great William F. Buckley.)


We could use 535 people in the Congress, one in the White House and five on the Supreme Court who believe in and act on Goldwater's philosophy.


Oh, and 300 million citizens who know what the hell he's talking about.

*************

IS JOHN McCAIN FIT TO BE PRESIDENT?

Before we begin, let's get one thing straight. I have no admissible evidence that John McCain is guilty of anything that would bar him from the White House. Not from his actions when he was in Vietnam or since he came back, and he is entitled to the same, though not greater, presumption of innocence as any citizen.

But when a man offers himself to be the President of the United States, the people should have a right to be certain that that man is who and what he says he is. To know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth before they're asked to vote for him. Before they're asked to give an ordinary man the keys to the most extraordinary power on Earth. That's what the Presidency represents and ideally, only a man of unimpeachable character, courage and wisdom should ever sit behind the Oval Office desk.

The aim here is to talk to those of you who put the future of the Republic above the success, failure or even the reputation of any individual. It is not to trash John McCain.

I'm guided by the principle that in these monumentally changing and dangerous times, the need of our people to know the truth is more important than the need of any organization or individual to keep it hidden.

Or as a famous Vulcan philosopher once said as he gave his life for his friends, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few... or the one." At least when it comes to the Presidency.

That's why the reaction of some bloggers to a recent article by Dr. Jack Wheeler was puzzling.

Wheeler made the argument that an anti-communist contact he has in Russia has knowledge that casts suspicion on the Senator's claim (in his campaign ads) that his war record is the preeminent reason that he should be President.

The stories are not new, many vets over the years have said that things are not as they seem. They include the late Col. David Hackworth, who said in 2000 many (though not all) of the medals McCain received violated the Navy's procedures for awarding them.

More importantly, Wheeler claimed that the records are in the possession of the CIA (where they came to us from Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union and among other things, proved after fifty years that Alger Hiss was a Soviet agent) and that they will be used by the minions of the Democrats to destroy McCain if it even looks like he might win.

Wheeler said the records, and those of his debriefing should be released ASAP so that if the charges are true we have time to recover and stall the ascent of Hillary or Barack with a better candidate.

For this Dr. Wheeler was savaged by a number of blogs, including the usually reliable Captain's Quarters, who called Wheeler disgusting, pathetic, gutless and a revolting piece of work. The one question no one bothered to ask is: what is the possibility that there might be some truth to the information?

Another blogger called Wheeler an "asshat". What the hell does that mean anyway? As an aside, I move that the word "asshat" be thrown into the same toilet we used to flush "gravitas". Do I hear a second?

Wheeler's credibility is the heart of the question. So who is this man?

Dr. Jack Wheeler is a larger than life character, no doubt about it, with flaws and pimples. But Wheeler is also the youngest Eagle scout ever (age 12), a fierce anti-communist and patriot, a "geopolitical expert" and according to the Wall Street Journal and NSA people who were there, the man who had the insight and gave the initial presentation that eventually led to the Reagan doctrine and the fall of the Soviet Union.

That would make the contribution of Dr. Jack Wheeler to his country at least as great as any politician, including John McCain. Frankly, I don't think Mr. Morrissey and his fellow attackers of Wheeler's character know their "asshat" from a hole in the ground.

Like all of us, McCain's character is flawed. A "maverick" defies his leadership to fight for what he believes, but does he cross to the other side to assault free speech? Open the borders to who knows whom, and break his word to his fellow Senators, a common charge according to Wheeler. I don't think so.

All that has not stopped his ascendancy. That is why he must release his de-brief records and the GRU-Soviet translations of McCain's interrogation, if they exist. To do any less would leave the American people without the information they need to make an informed decision.

To those who argue they should remain secret because they are classified, what could possibly harm America today by the release of 35 year old prison records, especially if they do back McCain's status as a war hero?

The way I see it, far greater harm could come from NOT releasing them if Wheeler is right.

We, as Conservatives, had no problem in'04 calling for John Kerry to release his records, not because of his politics, but his character and the fact that he traded on his service as a reason to vote for him. "Reporting for duty" anyone?

McCain, in his campaign ads, has used footage of his captivity to bolster his candidacy. That should, just like Kerry, open him up to reasonable questions about that service. Even heroic status does not earn a man a lifetime exemption from criticism or examination. Shall we shy away from that examination because he says he's one of us or does being consistent still matter?

One other thing gives me "cold chills up my spine" about a McCain Presidency. And unlike Senator Cochran, it will not go away in two weeks. Even if we assume that John McCain served with honor, was tortured, and is not guilty of any of the charges Wheeler says the record contains, Thomas Eagleton was removed from consideration because he had once had a "nervous breakdown" or some other mental "difficulty". How damaging to a man's mind is five and a half years of torture and deprivation? For an average citizen the question is irrelevant, but for a man seeking the highest office in these times, it may be more important than any other.

Release the records. If all is as it should be which, by the way, Jack Wheeler told me personally he hopes is the case, I would humbly say to John McCain, "Johnny, I'm sorry I doubted you".

Is John McCain fit to be the President? I don't know. But it is of vital concern to the American people that we have all the relevant information before we elect him to office.

Senator McCain, release your records.

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