The hateful harangue raging across America is tearing our country apart. It’s described in the major media as Democrat vs. Republican, Left vs. Right, liberal vs. conservative, progressive vs. neoconservative. Each side in the divisive diatribe wraps itself in the flag, claiming the moral high ground and the ultimate justification for its stances, patriotism.
But all that is a smokescreen for the real division. Read on.
American patriotism is very simple and easy to define. It is preserving, protecting and defending the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
By that standard—which is embodied in the presidential oath of office—both the liberal/progressive/Democrat/Secular Left and the conservative/neoconservative Republican/Religious Right are unpatriotic. The actions of both camps undermine the American republic set up through the Constitution. They support the unconstitutional expansion of the federal government and the unconstitutional intrusion of federal government into every aspect of personal, local and state affairs. They also support the ever-increasing confiscation of taxpayer wealth to pay for their big-government plans and projects. For example, the U.S. Department of Education was signed into law by Democrat President Jimmy Carter (the 1980 Department of Education Organization Act), but it had its biggest expansion under Republican President George W. (“No Child Left Behind”) Bush. For another example, Democrat President Barack Obama’s business bailouts have run up the federal deficit more than any other President, but his precedent for that was the bank bailouts begun by, again, Republican President George W. Bush. Neither education nor bailouts by the federal government are authorized by the Constitution, nor are most of the other Cabinet-level department functions.
National healthcare is only the latest example. The Democrats propose one thing, the Republicans propose another, but almost none of the 535 members of Congress recognize that the entire federal healthcare system, from Medicare to Obamacare, is none of their business. There is no basis for it authorized in the Constitution. It’s an example of the old joke about the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. If the Democrats said, “Let’s burn down Washington next month,” the Republicans would say, “That’s too radical. Let’s do it a dozen buildings at a time and stretch it out over three years.”
Both of them are acting unconstitutionally. Both of them are destroying America.
They call it bipartisanship. They call it “reaching across the aisle.” They call it compromise. But the only thing compromised is the Constitution and our freedom. From that point of view, “bipartisanship,” “reaching across the aisle” and “compromise” are synonyms for treason.
They also call it “seeking common ground.” However, they don’t recognize they already have common ground. It is called the Constitution of the United States of America. Any legislation or policy which doesn’t conform to that document should be undone and thrown in the trash bin of history.
America is founded on the highest, most universal value: freedom. Government is always the greatest threat to freedom. Government, George Washington stated, is organized force. Our Founders understood that well. They wanted freedom from government, not dependence on it, so they created a Constitution which restricted the role of the federal government to a few narrowly defined and strictly limited functions which the states and the people themselves could not perform well, such as national defense, a monetary system, a census, a postal system, adjudication between the states, and international relations. All else was left to the states and to the people (see the Tenth Amendment). States were free to compete with each other on the basis of freedom to structure conditions most satisfying to their citizens. The states were to be the laboratory of democracy. If you didn’t like one state, you could move to another which better suited your sense of well-being and provided greater opportunity to satisfy your desires and dreams. That was freedom to pursue happiness, one of the three fundamental natural rights noted in the Declaration of Independence. The framework for the Constitution, of course, are the principles enunciated in the Declaration.
(To be continued)