The New Hampshire Republican Volunteer Coalition (NHRVC) is looking to establish itself as a 'boots on the ground' civilian army, recruiting and training activists and campaign volunteers to support what they call 'Real Republican party candidates.' What exactly are 'Real Republican candidates?"

Their Mission statement defines them in just a few words.

“We are a grassroots coalition of highly motivated volunteers, working to elect articulate and principled Republicans who stand for low taxes, fiscal responsibility, free enterprise, individual liberty, and most importantly, the U.S. Constitution.

Our organization is dedicated to recruiting, supporting, and training Republican Party activists and campaign volunteers in New Hampshire.

NHRVC welcomes the membership of any citizen who supports these principles and is willing to get involved”

Given the extensive web presence of Republican, libertarian, and right leaning liberty-minded groups already in place, it will be interesting to see if the NHRVC can attract fresh volunteers from outside the existing right of center political web-culture. If they can create enough new interest, and co-ordinate that with the information and tactical experience already in place, it could go a long way togetting more 'Real Republicans' elected to office.

And without knowing it they may be setting themselves up for something even bigger.

Even modest success at recruiting, supporting, and deploying activists and volunteers willing to walk and talk New Hampshire for 'Real Republican' candidates could blossom into something larger than the sum of its parts. This is becasue anyone running for office who believes they fit the mission profile may feel compelled to seek out their assistance. This creates a kind of interaction that could make the NHRVC into a centralized grass-roots web presence in the state; a clearing house for the kind of campaign information, co-ordination, and physical resource sharing that has made the Left the popular blond at the party in 2006 and 2008.

No matter what happens, the goals NHRVC and the Republican party,would be well served by such an evolution wherever it happens.

The NHRVC is still in its infancy, but it has a simple mission based on simple principles and that's bound to attractsome interest. Anyone who shares or supports these principles is invited to check them out.

(Disclosure: I recentlysubscribed tothe NHRVC and participate in their discussions)

Columbia is preparing to sign a free trade agreement with Europe which will add billions in exports to Columbia, and do a little shoring up of the struggling European economy.  The EU was already doing about three billion in business with Columbia but stands to add significantly more from the agreement at our expense.

Nancy Pelosi has been balking at allowing a vote on a free trade deal with Columbia since last summer, one that would have only increased our exports to the nation by removing tariffs on American goods sold there.  But becaue Europe and the US sell the same goods the EU stands to take a significant chunk of the current 9 billion in US buisness to the South American nation.

Columbia, when offered the same goods for a cheaper price,  is going to skip the tariffs and take their business elsewhere.  So Pelosi's protectionism--and kow-towing to the unions--has not only denied us the opportunity to increase exports and create jobs, but will now reduce exports and cost jobs. 

Nancy Pelosi announced yesterday a new plan to bail out the vinyl record industry. In her speech Mrs. Pelosi was quoted as saying, “Vinyl records provide vital jobs that Americans need in this tough economy, and we would be negligent if we failed to provide support for a vital national industry with a long history of supporting the American way of life.”

The plan was to provide 25 billion in aid to prop up the industry, despite cries from some detractors claiming it was a giveaway for a special interest in a corner of the industry that had proven it could no longer complete. Burdened by an oppressive payroll and benefits structure it could not support-given a decades long decline in sales due to an increasing lack of interest in its product from the general public--it seemed doomed to vanish from the landscape to be replaced by more efficient competitors. But Pelosi and the democrats seem primed to make this latest bail out a reality.

“There is a very real concern,” she continued, “that the failure of the vinyl record industry could have far reaching consequences for other sectors of the economy.”

President Bush announced shortly after the speech that while he likes records just fine, he would veto the legislation if it came to his desk loaded with pork-barrel spending.

Whenever the state wants to trample all over your rights without appearing to do so, it typically must find a States interest in whatever it is it wants to do.  This, in the simplest of terms, means that if the state as an advocate for the people, can demonstrate that they are acting in the people’s best interests (because the people somehow share a stake in some presumed common outcome) the State can offer to ‘manage’ that something for that purpose.  This is not to suggest that that is how the government has ever done anything in the past, only that technically, this piece of the puzzle makes it easier for them to assume control over things we might otherwise want them to stay out of if we spent more than a few minutes actually considering the consequences of letting them do just that.

Now consider what happens if the state takes over the dispensing or management of health care insurance, or health care employees, or the facilities themselves, and so on.  Exactly what activity in the scope of human existence will not (or could not) somehow be tied to “Health Care?”

Everything can (and would) eventually be drilled down to a cause and effect relationship where an impact on federal funding, or funding assistance for health insurance or health care, created a State interest in acting upon those relationships.  This by extension could eventually make everything that happens everywhere, an object of State interest becasue of its relationshp to the cost or act of administering health care.   And once everything becomes an object of State interest freedom is summarily reduced to whatever the state defines it as.

While this outcome may not be the stated objective of the democrats and others who favor partial or total socialization of health insurance or health care, how can we reasonably expect the government--and the hundreds of legislators looking for some small act to justify their existence--from regulating everything and anything they can imagine, without trampling our rights in the process?

The answer is that we can’t and shouldn’t expect it.  But if we give the government this kind of power over our lives, thinking that we are only betting a little freedom to get something better in return, we’ll eventually find ourselves with nothing left to bet, and nothing back in return except the bill to pay for it.

Dave Jarvis has made a case that the State should make marriage available for the gay community. I commend his feelings and instincts, but could not disagree more and here's why.

Mr. Jarvis makes a compelling series of statements along the "What would Jesus do" line of thinking--when it comes to just accepting Gay marriage.  But he completely ignores the profoundly unconstitutional nature of what he proposes.  He would condone the states use of its power to establish the conditions under which the religious act of marriage may be performed by a church--which would require that church to operate outside its belief system to advance a state defined interest.

This is a dangerous path.

The divine religious union of a man and a woman is so thoroughly documented--in hundreds of faiths across thousands of years--that is would be ridiculous to review it here.  But we cannot escape the fact that the idea of Marriage (not just the service itself) is derived from a strictly religious foundation.  It really has no civic context at all except where local governments have established that the union--not so much how it was arrived at--may present some other interest to the state.  And no one really disputes that aspect of the State's relationship to marriage.

We should also agree that there is nothing remotely religious about a state ceremony,(for a good reason) and that the church does not go out of its way to try to define the states version for people who chose it as a form of union. Any church is free to accept it as it is or ignore it as one not consecrated before God, and no one begrudges them that privilege in a free and open society.  They just choose differently. 

People of heterosexual inclination have been known to form a similar contractual bond by civil union, and that having been so-joined, have been known to call themselves married without much fuss about the particulars, and without the need for judicial decisions handed down by State supreme courts.

We can also say without much argument that the government cannot make anyone get married, they cannot tell them where or how to get married, or demand that they do so before the eyes of any God, and we can actually point to a short sentence in an old obscure text, that protects them fromthe abuse ofgovernment power in this regard.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

So while Dave makes compelling emotional pleas, they are irrelevant on the simple point of order, that the inverse of the state 'not being able to tell people that they have to get married before god,' is that the state also cannot tell people who believe in God whom they are required to marry. Congress shall make no law ...'prohibiting the free exercise of religion.'  And since we know the prohibition applies to the States, New Hampshire should not legally make such a demand out of respect for our unalienable rights to practice our faiths free from government intrusion.

The alternative is to condone the Veruca Salt version of the living constitution--where what I want is what I'll get and if I don't get it now, I'm going to scream. (ACLU lawyers in tow). Hardly an adult defense for an adult topic.

If we insist on letting the state decide such things we will have left the wolf to guard the hen-house; where the state is still required by law to protect "the free exercise" portion of Am1 from itself, while knowing full well that it can probably rely on the State Supreme court back it up after it eats whichever hens have gotten in the way of what it wants.  

This is a frightening abuse of power, that establishes a precedent for abrogating liberty for the sake of the state inventing a states interest, either on its own, or based on whomever happens to be making the most noise.  This cannot be allowed to happen.

We of course have not even begun to examine more complex issues with organizations and their members that insist on retaining a traditional position on marriage despite any  state interest in mandating gay marriage by law. Private citizens could be cut out of public funding programs or grants, denied employment, and come under other legal scrutiny becasue of any discrimination laws that reach from their faith into their private or public lives on this matter. They could be victims of censorship, disciplinary action, public abuse, or lawsuits, simply for trying to practice their true faith.  Does this sound creepy to you? It should.

Your church could be subject to similar lawsuits by gay groups or gay couples, or anyone at all with an agenda against that or any religion, who would then use state power to redefine your faith to their liking until you have no church at all, or are simply incapable of finding one that meets your moral requirements.  Is this a power you want duly granted to the state? Would anyone propose to grant such a power to anyone at all?  Would you grant such a power to one church and one religion?  And what exaclty is the difference when you give that power to the State?

The state will reach as far as it can; the 800 pound gorilla knocking over every tray and table in the name of fairness--never fairness to freedom, nor choice, nor liberty, nor free will, only to mandates and requirements handed down by the state.

There is a better way.  Keep the State out of it.

Let the good Christian's come together in their own communities, and pray to and for each other for guidance so they can decide each for themselves what is the Christian thing to do, in each of their own congregations. Let each Jew and Muslim ask first of themselves, what their laws mean to them, and what is best for their religious community. Those that feel so inclined can choose to welcome whomever they like. The rest are free to choose differently, and no one is required by law to follow one, or the other, or any at all.  And in the end, if they truly beleive, God will jusdge them accordingly.

For those of any sexual inclination, who would scorn religions these choices, or the people who would make them, or for those who are simply indifferent, you are not required to participate.  The state has a back-up plan for you. It's called a civil marriage ceremony or civil union.  Its everything that a marriage is, without any of the matching primordial luggage. 

This debate isn't about gay rights.  It's not even about marriage.  It's about protecting religious freedom, and more importantly about preventing the state from gaining a power--even accidentaly or under the best of intentions--it was never meant to have, and would most certanly abuse.  Don't let it happen.