A petition drive at Whitehouse.gov to allow a number of states to secede from the Union has drawn quite a bit of attention in the media. It has also drawn quite a bit of attention from progressives who have doffed their white cloaks to reveal the brown shirts beneath, as Rick Moran chronicled here recently; there is a petition posted to strip any American who signs one of these petitions of their citizenship and deport them (to where?) This is typical leftist strong-arm coercive behavior, in the proud tradition of National Socialism at its finest.

Nobody who signs one of these really believes for an instant that their state will secede from the Union; these petitions are purely symbolic, a way to express displeasure at both the current administration and Congress -- including the GOP establishment running the loyal opposition. It is a way of asserting the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, making it plain that we still have states and that those states are not going to simply roll over. It is in the finest traditions of the Sons of Liberty who sought secession from the Union -- the Union Jack -- and who at first tried quite hard to simply access the rights of Englishmen. America did not want to break with the British Empire in the early days, but had the matter thrust upon them. I have little doubt Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, John Adams, John Hancock would have eagerly signed one of these petitions.

And the Left has won, has attained victory in an election that all logic suggested would lead to a GOP landslide. Ever ungracious in character, they cannot even allow their opposition a small, inconsequential protest.

I noticed something very interesting when looking at these petitions; the petition at the top asking for permission for Missouri to secede had a scant 48 signatures, yet local newscasts said that 1,600 people had signed it in one day. Puzzled, I scrolled down to earlier open petitions and found two more -- identical to the first.

One petition had 12,922 signatures and the other 18,082 giving a combined total high enough to trigger the threshold that required a White House response.

There were duplicates for most of the other states as well.

Now, there is a box at the top of the petitions page warning people not to duplicate petitions as the signatures will not be combined. What is happening is that liberals are reposting the petition to split the vote.

Liberals are compulsive liars, incapable of doing anything honestly. They were in full theft mode during the last election, and may well have stolen several critical swing states. Consider that El Presidente Barack Obama received more than 99% of the vote in over 100 precincts in Ohio, pushing a critical swing state solidly into Blue territory. Ditto in the Philadelphia area, in another battleground state. and voter suppression was an integral part of the campaign strategy for Obama.

And even now, with victory in their hands, they cannot play straight, but simply must continue to attempt to cheat.

It's in their DNA. The Harvard plagiarism scandal illustrated the "rules only apply to suckers" viewpoint that infests the Left, and the idea of not cheating when confronted with the option to do so never occurs to them. Obtaining their goal is the only thing that matters; ends justify means.

Saul Alinsky wrote in Rules for Radicals (P. 28):

"The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means..."

The young ideologues of the modern day Democratic Party and the new Left, secure in the anonymity of the internet and other electronic buffers, have adopted the outlook of Machiavelli; whatever works, no matter how dishonest or destructive. Having largely dismissed God as a fairy tale and disdained American virtues as corrupt, these liberals will do anything to advance their cause. They are the ultimate sore winners.

America's problem is ultimately not political or economic but moral and spiritual. America has lost Faith, faith in the God of our fathers, faith in our institutions, faith in morality, faith in reason. Many Americans have descended to a state of nature, where the animal rules the rational, where wants and desires trump the greater good, where anger and resentment rule over forgiveness and love. We can and should fight on the political and economic fronts, but we must understand that we are digging a hole in quicksand if we do nothing to restore the traditional morality and spiritual beliefs of this nation. "As a man thinketh so shall he be" the Bible says, and Americans used to try to think as the angels (not always successfully, for certain.) Now they think like brutes, like rough beasts. Beasts with brains, but beasts nonetheless.

There is a price to be paid for being an animal. We will learn that in the next four years.

Timothy Birdnow is a St. Louis based writer. Read more from Tim and friends at www.tbirdnow.mee.nu