Before my days as the Chairman of the Republican Party of Massachusetts (during the Nixon era); and even long before the nominating committee of the Men's Club of my church asked me to assume the role of president of the organization (during the Eisenhower years) I was consciously aware that I lived in a nation with a strong moral compass. I was proud to be an American. Every citizen of this great nation—native or naturalized—was, too. We proudly wore our patriotism like a badge of honor. We may have been Baptists, Congregationalists, Catholics or Pentecostals, and we our families may have come from Ireland, England, Poland, Italy, China—or Mexico or Russia, but first and foremost, we were Americans. Not hyphenated Americans, or "universal" Americans from one of the American continents. We were distinctly US Americans—and we were proud of that distinction.

What set us apart from the rest of the world was not just America's affluence. Affluence comes from investing sweat equity in nation-building. What set us apart from the rest of the world was our moral compass—our belief in a Supreme God, and the lifestyle associated with right living. The needle in the moral compass of America pointed reverently towards God and to pious consideration of our fellow man—regardless of his station in life. We gauged our fellow man not by his financial net worth, but rather, by his moral compass: his integrity and honesty, his trustworthiness and moral cleanliness, and finally, his bravery and loyalty.

This is the yardstick by which most of us measure our friends. But, for some unknown reason we don't apply that same yardstick to those we elect to public office. Does it not make sense to "hire" mayors, Assemblymen, Congressmen, Senators, federal judges, governors and Presidents who possess the same qualities we expect in our friends? Why are we content with politicians who lack integrity, and who sell us out for 30 pieces of silver whenever they accept legal bribes that, with tongue-in-cheek, are referred to by the mainstream media as campaign contributions? Million dollar campaign war chests are merely favors waiting to be repaid—at the expense of the taxpayer.

Integrity and honesty. When we think about moral compasses, we instinctively measure family and friends with the same yardstick we use to gauge ourselves. We instinctively expect those we entrust with our friendship to be trustworthy because we, who were instilled with the attributes of Christian values and morality from our youth, are trustworthy. Do we not have the right to expect those same "good citizen" qualities in our elected officials? Not only do we have a right to expect it, we have a patriotic obligation to demand it.

About ever two years or so we can usually, in complete candor, say something like: "We've just experienced the uncovering of several cases of misconduct on the part of our appointed and elected officials. As citizens and good Christians we should have risen as one in righteous wrath and threw them out of office. But, we didn't. What did we do? Our apathy took over, and we decided it was someone else's responsibility." In point of fact, addressing the congregation at my local church on one such occasion, that is pretty much what I did say. It's like dé-já-vue. Whenever you open a newspaper or turn on the TV, its the same story replayed over and over again—only with a different name, a different face and a different political party. The only thing that remains the same is the small cadre of lobbyists and/or industrialists, businessmen and bankers doling out the bribes.

Political cronyism. Lack of integrity. Graft. Bribery. Deceit. Lack of trustworthiness. And most of all, greed and the lust for power. These men (and women) have no moral compass because the nation itself no longer has a moral compass. Let me cite a couple of examples.

On July 30, 2005 Congressman William Jefferson [D-LA] met with Lori Mody at the trendy Ritz-Carlton in northern Virginia just across the Potomac from Washington, DC. At the conclusion of their meeting, they walked to Mody's car in the hotel parking lot. She popped the trunk and handed Jefferson a leather briefcase containing $100 thousand in $100 bills. The money was to be used to grease the palms of some Nigerian officials in a deal supposedly concocted by Mody. The money was marked. Mody was an undercover operative for the FBI. Video camcorders in the room recorded the deal and four strategically-placed camcorders in the parking lot recorded the transfer of the bribe. Four days later FBI agents raided Jefferson's Capitol Hill home and found $90 in marked bills, wrapped in aluminum foil and stuffed into plastic frozen-food containers, in his freezer.

What makes the Jefferson incident most interesting is not that one more corrupt politician accepted a bribe. What makes it newsworthy is that, after being caught—and videotaped taking a $100 thousand bribe—the voters of the 2nd Congressional District of Louisiana elected Jefferson to his 9th term in Congress. Not only does Jefferson not have a moral compass, nor apparently do the voters of the 2nd District. Even more appalling, because Jefferson had to stand in a special run-off election against State Rep. Karen Carter on Dec. 9, he was applauded by the the Democrats when he showed up at the 110th Congress was sworn in. Democrats as a whole, it appears, have no moral compass.

On May 18, 2006 the GOP-controlled Congress launched an investigation into reports that lobbyist Jack Abramoff had given Congressman Bob Ney [R-OH] $50 thousand to play with at one of the Indian casinos in exchange for favorable treatment for the Coushatta Indian casinos. On Aug. 7, 2006 Ney withdrew from the GOP House race. On Sept. 15, 2006 he pleaded guilty to charges of accepting a bribe. On Nov. 3, 2006, four days before the election, he resigned his congressional seat. Ney was sentenced to 30-month and the slim GOP majority in Ohio rejected what they viewed as the Republican's moral lapse.

Zachary Space, the Democratic candidate for Ney's seat beat Ohio State Senator Joy Padgett by a margin of 62% to 38%. Most Ohio Republicans in the 18th District stayed home. They couldn't vote for Space and wouldn't vote for Padgett. Where Democrats don't believe accepting a bribe is grounds for removal from office, the GOP leadership removed Ney from his leadership role in the House and forced him to drop out of the 2006 House race. That was the difference in the moral compasses of the two parties.

On the surface it looked like the voters' rejection of Padgett was a rejection of the GOP's lack of moral character. However, locals had reason to believe that Padgett's moral compass was, itself, in question. Many of the protest GOP "non-votes" in the 18th Congressional District knew that Padgett and her husband got a business loan for $737 thousand through JP Morgan Chase Bank and renegotiated a 3-year $100 thousand loan and then, 14 months later, filed for bankruptcy on their business followed, 8 months later in their filing personal bankruptcy. In the interim, the Padgetts transferred ownership of family property to Joy Padgett's brothers to keep the property out of the bankruptcy. In addition, the Padgett's sold their client list to a North Canton, Ohio company for $129 thousand—and kept the proceeds out of bankruptcy. Padgett's moral compass was also broken.

The largest majority of the American people, and most certainly the mainstream media, believe the moral compass of the nation was broken on June 17, 1972 when covert operatives paid by the Committee to Reelect President Nixon broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. The reality is that the moral compass of the nation began to disintegrate with the assassination of John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.

On the morning of the day that Kennedy was assassinated, the US Senate Rules Committee chaired by Senator B. Everett Jordan [D-NC] was investigating the Vice President of the United States. The investigation was taking place in a secret session brought about by Attorney General Robert Kennedy's investigation of Bobby Baker after Kennedy discovered firm ties between Baker and several Mafia bosses who were doing business with Johnson.

As they were listening to testimony from insurance executive Don B. Reynolds, the Senators were unaware that the nation had just been stunned by the loss of John F. Kennedy who had just been shot in Dallas, Texas. Because Jordon sealed the hearing, no one on the Senate Rules Committee was allowed to leave the room. Nor was anyone allowed to enter. There were no phones in the room, so no one knew that JFK had been killed.

Nor did they know that man they were investigating had just become the President of the United States. Reynolds told the committee that he personally saw Bobby Baker give Johnson a suitcase containing what he was told was $100 thousand. The kickback, he said, was for LBJ helping Baker with a lucrative deal in Fort Worth. Reynolds also revealed that in 1950 Johnson and Baker purported helped Intercontinental Hotels Corporation get some casino licenses in the Dominican Republic for Mafia bosses Meyer Lansky and Sam Giancana. When the casinos opened their doors in 1955, Johnson and Baker were invited as official guests of the syndicate.

In 1962, Baker 'serving as Vice President Johnson's chief-of-staff' formed Serv-U Corporation. Serv-U provided vending machines to companies who had received substantial federal grants. The vending machines were manufactured by a company owned by Giancana. The companies receiving "free money" from Uncle Sam were pressured to use vending machines recommended by the Vice President of the United States.

Had Kennedy not been assassinated that day, Johnson would have followed Ulysses S. Grant's vice president, Schulyer Colfax into the halls of political infamy. Johnson should have been the second veep to resign from office under a cloud. Instead, Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew, became that person. Had the information the Senate Rules Committee was sitting on leaked out, Lyndon Johnson would have been the first president removed from office by impeachment. To help his new boss—and guarantee that LBJ couldn't fire him—FBI Director Hoover convinced Senator Jordan that the Johnson files were safer with him. Hoover then gave the files to LBJ—but not before he copied it.

The moral compass of the nation has rapidly decayed from that point—but not as fast as the character of the men the American people allowed into the White House without first requiring them to pass a litmus test for integrity. As the size of the campaign war chests grew from 1976 to 2006 so did the indebtedness of our political candidates to the transnational industrialists, bankers and merchant princes who filled them. Their benefactors are men without moral compasses who are fighting to dissolve America's borders in order to create a world economy solely to increase their personal fortunes at the expense of the American taxpayers.

Of our last seven presidents, only two—Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan—could successfully pass the moral compass litmus test. Reagan and Ford had the moral character that Americans expect but seldom see in their leaders. Two presidents—Nixon and Clinton—were morally bankrupt. Articles of impeachment were drawn up on both. Both should have been removed from office. Four—Carter, Clinton, Bush-41 and Bush-43—sold out the American people to the barons of business and banking who filled their campaign coffers. Of the four, Carter was inept—and the most dangerous since he sold out his own Christian principles for power. He was not a leader but a bumbling puppet who, on the orders of the puppetmasters of Utopia, helped depose the Shah of Iran and hand that country over to radical Islam. Carter's CIA helped overthrow the pro-American Nicaraguan government of Anastasio Somosa in favor of Marxist Daniel Ortega. But his coupe de grâce was the giveaway of the Panama Canal that is now under the control of the People's Republic of China. Carter remains a willing puppet of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Clinton was a dandy whose appetite for power was second only to his appetite for women. It would not be much of a stretch to say that Clinton traded his moral compass for a box of condoms early on, and never missed his own lack of moral character. Clinton committed two crimes against the people. First, he committed a felony by accepted millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions from the People's Republic of China. Second, he betrayed the people of America by surrendering America's consumer markets to a country desperate for enough money to build an arsenal of nuclear weapons sufficient to destroy America.

Clinton was sandwiched between the two Bush presidencies. Bush-41 attempted to legitimize the term "the New World Order," and Bush-43 has been doing his best to bring it into existence. Bush-41 came in under the radar as the vice president of the nation's most popular president. Conservative America viewed George Herbert Walker Bush as Reagan-Lite, and gave his moral compass only a cursory glance. If George Herbert Walker Bush was okay for Ronnie, he was okay for himself. America failed to realize that Bush was not a running mate Reagan would have picked himself. He was forced on Reagan by to the puppetmasters at the pinnacle of power—the New World Order-in-waiting. And Reagan made them wait—a quarter century. Reagan's brand of democracy set the globalists back 25 years. During the Reagan years the moral compass of America reflected a newfound patriotism, and the gradual rebirth of a semblance of moral character during the 80s almost made us forget the sexual decadence of the 70s.

Christian conservatives saw the Election of 2000 as an opportunity to bring Reaganism back to the mainstream of American politics. Texas governor George W. Bush seemed to epitomize the integrity of Reagan. Conservative America elected him in the closest presidential race since 1876. It was a historic race that was settled by the US Supreme Court.

During his first term, George W. Bush remained an icon of Reaganesque patriotism. Memories of Bush, standing on the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center warning the Islamic terrorists that we were coming to get them were still fresh in the minds of the American people when they went to the polls in 2004. As the 1993 NAFTA jobs drain to Mexico continued unabated throughout his first term, Bush-43 promised to protect the small business owners of America since job growth and prosperity in the United States had to come from them.

Those memories were also fresh in the minds of Americans expecting the prosperity that began during the Reagan years to continue forever. But Bush-43 was not Reagan-Lite—he was Clinton-Lite. Concealed behind the Reagan facade was a Rockefeller Republican whose elections were financed by the Rockefellers. His goals in 2005 were no longer the Reaganesque goals of 2001, they had evolved into the utopian, one-world goals of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations. A world without borders. A nationless hegemony of global communities welded into a new world order.

The climate of America changed radically in 2005 as the American wage earner faced a new threat. Illegal aliens. As the American taxpayer demanded the government obey its own laws and round up and deport the illegals, Bush-43 promised to get tough. Then he proposed an amnesty that would legalize upwards of 15 million illegals. The American people demanded the president seal and protect the borders to keep illegals out of the United States. Bush promised the voters he would. But, just as quickly he broke his word. Congress funded a 700-mile wall to keep illegals out of the country. But Democrats, expecting to win the White House in 2008, insisted on giving the President (whomever he is) the option to defund the wall and spend the money on other border-related projects—like funding water stations along the most common routes taken by the illegals through the deserts of the American Southwest.

Stuck in Congress now is a new amnesty bill—and one that will grant Social Security benefits to illegals. The American people saw this as a betrayal by President George W. Bush. Those jobs that had not been exported to Mexico through NAFTA were now in jeopardy of being handed to illegals as the average wage of the American worker plummeted. Adding insult to injury, as Congress voted to dilute the paychecks of America's working middle class by granting special status to the illegals that will drive down the incomes of those jobs, it also voted to raise the minimum wage. Bush lost his moral compass. Sadly the moral compass of the nation is determined by the man who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Election of 2006 was more than just a repudiation of a president who tarnished the mantle of the Reagan legacy. It was a repudiation of globalism. It was a repudiation of unsecured borders. It was a repudiation of amnesty for illegal aliens. But most of all, it was a repudiation of an Administration that sold it's soul for 30 pieces of silver. That is the reason the voters could not overlook the corruption by Republicans when they ignored even worse corruption by Democrats. Conservatives are supposed to be the good guys. They are required to have integrity—and all of the other Christian qualities that are needed to make good citizens.

No man—not even the President of the United States—can serve two masters. A president who accepts the gratuities of those who are tearing down the walls of sovereignty to build a new world order run by them cannot be loyal to his own moral compass or his citizen constituents. Presidents—like Clinton, Carter and Bush-Lite—who are unfettered by conscience and have no moral compass to guide them, find the grey areas that allow compromises born out of necessity without qualms or twinges of conscience. As he sacrificed his moral compass, Bush changed a nation. Sadly, he changed it for the worse. As it's leader goes, so goes the nation.

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"In their zeal to merge America into a borderless utopian world, politicians on both sides of the aisle—their pockets bulging with K Street money—sold out the American people as the princes of banking and industry attempt to recast the nature of "democracy." Bittersweet as it is, that is the reality of the world in which we live. The working class has once again been relegated to the status of human chattel or, as the World Bank classifies us, as human capital—the most important asset to the overlords of industry and the merchant princes." - Bill Barnstead

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THE MORAL COMPASS OF THE NATION 2007  Bill Barnstead
© 1999-2009   Michael A. Baker.
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