Here at gumballs this pundit blogger has put out a rather steady stream of  castigation at American citizens -- Republicans particularly  -- for their seeming devotion to the likes of American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, Entertainment Tonight, CSI Somewhere/Anywhere, Sudoku, People, steamy tabloids, and myriad other mindless diversions.  Okay, so it's their unalienable right to pursue happiness.  And it's certainly not my place to define what happiness is for them.

That said, I remind that freedom isn't free.  Liberty, if it is to be retained as an unalienable right, must be protected and defended.  There are always and evermore those who don't want you to have it.  Included right now in those who want you to not have liberty, not have a right to life, not have a right to pursue happiness (for you) are President Obama, his cabinet, his czars, his chief-of-staff, the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader, Senators Kennedy, Durbin and Dodd, Congressmen Frank, Waters, Conyers, and a long list of other  liberal fascists.  No, that's not my opinion or view; it is explicit in their speeches and writings.  Find and listen to an Obama commencement address from just weeks ago.

If you want "freedom" -- as in freedom from want, freedom from stress, freedom from working long hours, freedom from worry, freedom from decision-making, freedom from responsibilities, a guaranteed job, a guaranteed "living wage", guaranteed health and medical care, guaranteed leisure, guaranteed home with air and cable and two cars in the garage, etc. -- it's coming your way, sorta.  When President Obama and his liberal-fascist oligarchy say "freedom", it's followed by "from".  When I think "freedom", it's followed by "to".

To those who I see daily fixated on mindless diversions and who have been that way their whole "adult" lives, I want to point out that it's summer, the time when all of your favorite shows are on hiatus and you've seen the reruns that are filling in.  Take a rainy afternoon, when you're not sunning and splashing, and click on the U.S. Constitution.  It's really not such a bad read; not sexy, not lurid, not titillating; but with some brie and chardonnay, passable.  When today's Sudoku is a Level 5, this read will exercise your brain without the self-esteem risks.

Viscount Willie Whitelaw -- for years deputy to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher -- once accused Britain's Labour Party of traveling the countryside stirring up apathy.  I read -- and thus learned of -- this in a recent piece by the ever-insightful, -inciteful, and -entertaining Mark Steyn.  When President Obama's teleprompter-in-chief tells us that some matter is so difficult and so complex that only the federal government or one of his now-many czars can begin to comprehend it, much less deal with it; when a bill before congress is so important that it must be passed before breakfast, but is too lengthy to be read; that's "stirring up apathy."  When the country needs acknowledged tax cheat Tim Geithner to be Secretary of the Treasury, because no one else is up to that job, a task way beyond mere mortals, that's "stirring up apathy."  I mean, what's the point of trying to understand and challenge, when every bill is longer than Atlas Shrugged and every presidential speech is longer than Gone with the Wind.  If my senator can't read it before voting or stay awake for the whole speech, what am I supposed to do?

To those who succumb to my invitation to take rainy afternoon to read our founding document, and to those who have been dropping out, having had your apathy intentionally and sysematically stirred, I offer simplicity that even a Tim Geithner could understand.  The key is individual liberty, the right to do anything you want if, and only if, you don't in the process infringe on anyone else's right to same.

The authors and signatories, and the ratifiers of the U.S. Constitution provided a document which was all about liberty.  The federal government's sole responsibility was, and should now remain, to protect and defend individual liberty.  It is why national defense (against enemies foreign and domestic) is an enumerated power, and why the government has absolutely no enumerated power other than to protect and defend liberty.  The founders feared -- yes, feared -- a powerful and overreaching federal government.  The Constitution is written so as to constrain, limit and proscribe that government.  It may do only that which is explicitly enumerated in the document, nothing else, by design.  Every authority or power not so enumerated is reserved to the people or the states.

It is not the job of the federal government to take care of the people or to provide for them, any of them and in any way.  The federal government has no money, no assets, unless it takes it or them from individuals.  To do so, the federal government must violate individuals' unalienable right to liberty and property.  That's unconstitutional, and is what's called "slavery".  Slavery is when one is forced to work for someone else, against one's will.

My assessment is that as of 2006, when the Bush 43 Administration lost their majorities in the house and senate, two-thirds of what the federal government did and spent was unconstitutional.  As of today, the Obama Administration, with help from Democrat majorities in both house and senate, has us at 75% and plans on passing 80% during 2009.

Mandatory union membership?  Collective bargaining?  Minimum wage?  Social Security?  Medicare?  Medicaid?  War on Drugs?  War on Poverty?  U.S. Military Academy at West Point?  Federal Reserve Bank?  Fannie Mae?  Freddie Mac?  U.S. Courts of Appeal?  Affirmative Action?  Peace Corps? U.S. Department of Education?  U.S. Department of Agriculture?  U.S. Agency for International Development (AID)?  TARP?  Bailouts of GM and Chrysler?  Car czar?  Banking czar?  AmeriCorps?  Which two from this listing are constitutional?  Either read through the Constitution and check them off when you see that the power and authority to do is enumerated, or just ask yourself whether each protects and defends liberty or infringes on liberty.

If you're a "freedom from" person, you're a gimme, one riding in the wagon, not pulling it.  You are but a tiny fraction of your potential human being, should be ignored by the rest of us, and left to wallow in your own mess.

If you are a "freedom to" person, you need to leave your Sudoku pencil in its holster, skip the next mindless tv season (except for 24 for a sense of reality and one other for the pleasure of unreality),

• write to your congressman and two senators at least weekly threatening and praising,
  
• talk others into doing the same including the writing and the talking to others. 
  
• Create a group with a roster.  Begin writing with each member signing. 
  
• Begin pressuring the President directly with multi-signature correspondence. 
  
• When appropriate, find and recruit your congressman's or senators' replacement for the next election.
• Go to rallies to recruit members to your cause.
• Talk with people in other parts of your state to involve them with pressuring your senators and to ancourage them with respect to their congressman.
• Write letters to the editor, even send copies of your letters to government officials.
  
• Or do none of the above.  What do I know?  Do something better. 
  
• If you have both the talent and the nads, make up as an Obama caricature, stand on a soapbox in downtown or at the mall and speachify.  Explain how the individual isn't important; it's the collective, the whole.  Explain that's why you support card check.  Explain why the masses have to be led by someone smart like you.  Explain why those who have need to sacrifice so that those who "have not" -- say, people who don't work or who aren't married, but have eight kids -- have just as much.  Explain why you have a czar to run industries because the industry leaders thought they were to serve customers, employees, shareholders, lenders and the like instead of the common good, as defined by you. (By your third iteration, you'll probably get on the local tv news.)

It's time.  No, it's past time, way past.  Let's roll!