On The Road: I Speak To The Ohio CP State Convention; Attend CP Meeting In Tampa, Florida
By John Lofton, Editor
for frontOn a recent Saturday I had the honor and privilege of traveling to the Akron/Cleveland area in Ohio to speak to that state’s Constitution Party Convention. There I got to meet, among others, such fine Christian gentlemen as: Chuck Michaelis; Barry Sheets; James Burkhamer; Joe Rogers; and Dr. Patrick Johnston. And to make things even more enjoyable Chuck, James and Barry are all book-lovers so we visited some used book stores. On the following Sunday I preached at the Providence Church in Mifflin, Ohio whose Teaching Elder there is Mark Hamilton, a professor at Ashland College.
The purpose of the Ohio C.P. – a solidly Christian Party — is, as they say: “To honor God and restore Constitutional government. We want to restore government to state and local control by shrinking the federal bureaucracy down to Constitutional size. We want to protect private property, privatize education, repeal all laws which infringe upon the right to keep and bear arms, cut state and federal spending drastically, restore state and national sovereignty, abolish the income tax, and safeguard American jobs by withdrawing from NAFTA and GATT!”
WHEN I STOPPED to speak with ‘Elvis,’ well – he seemed not to be really listening to me.A couple of weeks later, I attended the Constitution Party’s National Committee meeting in Tampa, Florida (Orlando is my hometown.) While there, I picked up a copy of the University of South Florida’s newspaper “The Oracle” and was encouraged to read a column about illegal immigration that actually made sense. Written by senior Ryan McGeeney who’s majoring in political science, the headline on his opinion piece read: “Low wages the real issue in immigration debate.” In it, he said, in part:
“This may be the first time in recent memory that a rhetorically incomplete sentence has become the fulcrum around which an entire debate swings. The sentence goes something like, ‘Immigrant workers are only taking jobs that Americans don’t want.’ The missing addenda, of course, are the words ‘at insufficient wages.’
MORE HARD video choices. Seems like every thrift store in America has tons of the-year-in-sports videos.“It’s not a mistake that these three words have been ‘forgotten’ in the evolution of this debate. The arguments regarding how to handle the massive, continual influx of illegal workers are completely artificial, designed to distract the greater populace from the real issue, that of equity. While the halls of Congress echo with amnesty versus visas and ‘guest-workers’ versus an impenetrable security zone along the U.S. southern border, the real question Americans should be asking themselves is, ‘Why do we need foreigners to do these jobs in the first place?’
“There are a couple of basic assumptions at work here, neither of which is exactly true. The first is that all wages are inherently ‘fair.’ This overlooks the fact that (a) given the combination of a globalized economy and endless immigration, there is a virtually unlimited labor pool, and (b) regardless of how steadfast a given worker is about wage expectation, he eventually has to eat. The combination of these factors means that the downward spiral of wages is essentially bottomless….”
LIKE MANY flea markets this one was in the 19th year of its ‘Grand Opening.’All articles in the edition of “The Oracle” I read were not however as encouraging as the McGeeney column. There was, for example, the favorable review of a new album by Tampa’s own “Cannibal Corpse” band. This review, by one Peter Baker, read, in part:
“And let me not forget the cover. The typical ‘Cannibal Corpse’ album cover has scenes of graphic violence and sexuality, sometimes bordering on necrophilia. As a result of this, as well as lyrical content, the band’s first three albums are banned in Germany. The cover of ‘Kill’ is simple: The band’s name is in blood red letters, and the word ‘Kill’ in bold black lettering….
“The album opens with ‘The Time to Kill is Now,’…The second track [is] ‘Make Them Suffer,’…[next is] “Murder Worship” [in which] George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fisher delivers intelligible and well-performed low death grunts as well as high pitched shrieking vocals to complement the low grunts throughout every track on ‘Kill.’ For the metal listener, this album has it all - violent lyrics that touch upon murder, fire and homemade surgery….”
Baker says, presumably with a straight face, that this is the “best album” yet from “Cannibal Corpse.” One can only imagine what their worst album would be like.
MY ANSWER when I saw this billboard after the Constitution Party meeting in Tampa was an emphatic ‘yes!’ But this is another story.I was also heartened to read in the “Tampa Tribune” that some office-seekers are not forgetting the murder of Terri Schiavo. In an article about how this murder is emerging as a factor in the race for governor, it was reported that Attorney General Charlie Crist told an audience in West Palm Beach that he would have stayed out of the fight between Schiavo’s husband and parents about whether to keep the brain-damaged woman alive with a feeding tube. Crist, a republican, is quoted as saying:
“I am pro-life, and I respect life. There are some decisions that ought to be left to God and family. Had I have been governor, I would have not done the same thing” (as Gov. Jeb Bush.) Right. Crist is “pro-life” except he thinks, evidently, that a “family” has the right to murder one of its members! What nonsense. To his credit, Crist’s Republican primary opponent, Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher, says he stands with Gov. Bush who tried to pass legislation to keep Schiavo’s feeding tube in after courts had ordered it removed.
Another truly, morally brain-dead individual, State Sen. Rod Smith, a Democrat, is reported as telling audiences about his efforts in the Senate to help assemble a coalition of Republicans and Democrats to defeat a bill to extend Schiavo’s life. He says: “I believe in the separation of powers. The backbone of democracy is to have an independent judiciary.”
More nonsense. First, we are not a “democracy” but rather a representative, Constitutional republic. And no earthly power, including courts, has the authority to order the murder of innocent people.
I mentioned earlier my love for books. So, when I travel to speak or for other reasons I always try to arrive a day early to look for good used books stores. And I look for thrift stores, flea markets and yard sales. I also like to just drive around wherever I am looking at the things that attract my attention and photographing them.
