Powered By Blogger
A power to advance the public happiness involves a discretion which may be misapplied and abused.



James Madison, Federalist 41



Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Rebirth of Republicanism



After the signing of the United States Constitution, September, 1787, a Philadelphian approached Ben Franklin, delegate from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and asked the elderly patriot what he and the other delegates created during their lengthy service on that grand council. Franklin’s well-known response to the lady was, quite simply, “a republic, if you can keep it.”

This was not a temporary proposition existing for, and during, that marvelous generation of human history; it’s a permanent proposition strenuously carried forward by every generation since that founding forum of public servants put into place the governing structure we still reside in today. The notion of a republic is fundamental to this American system and our national character. In case you did not realize it, our Republic is not broken; honestly, for the moment, it’s not being used correctly by American citizens. We need to properly utilize and persistently pursue the constitutional mechanisms already in place to obtain national prosperity and personal advancement, according to the lawful dictates of the proprietors of this government, American citizens.


When the American Republic came into existence, and this unique federal arrangement was placed in motion, its primary purpose was to protect citizen liberties by attending to specific, and limited, national duties and functions. The rights and privileges the founding generation fought and died for have, thankfully, increased over the last two centuries, mostly for our mutual benefit and common national advantage, possessing greater suffrage now then ever before. Americans inherited perpetual immunities from their ancestors, as laid forth in the founding charters of freedom, to keep them safe from arbitrary power. The first American citizens sanctified this system with legislative precedents and the noble deeds of many participants. The American Republic requires a moderating administration. It must be administered by a vigilant and wise citizenry, drawn from our diverse state systems, to prevent the corrupting tendencies democratic, tyrannical, regional, and anarchical innovations have on the precarious flame of Liberty.

At a moment’s notice, amidst popular discontent, radical intrusions descend upon Liberty’s light of justice, inhibiting the flame’s substance, keeping the rest of us in darkness, where we can’t see our similarities, wearily groping for meaning and truth, until the light is suddenly turned on once again. The American experiment in self-government is a genuinely conservative endeavor to control the corrosive, but natural, excesses a free society exhibits. Too much government is as dangerous to a free people’s Liberty as not enough government. These extremes require adequate responses from tempered citizens who hold true to the sound, steady, and moderate principles of American republicanism.

Liberty is a liberal concept. There are devastating, but very natural, elements that come with freedom. Determined extremes prosper in an unregulated and unchecked atmosphere, where law and morality are disregarded with impunity. Fear and distrust create an environment for pain and suspicion to thrive in, producing timid dispositions in the people’s spirit that cowers in front of perplexing adversities, always willing to gravitate toward the blissful allurement of demagogues and rogues playing on paralyzing apprehensions. Liberty’s naturally occurring extremes ravage reason and logic. They formulate premises based on ignorant prejudices, lazy inquiries, arriving at false assumptions, and arrogantly determining who gets Liberty, and who does not.

These unregulated instances of social folly and personal depravity are as ancient as the flame of Liberty itself. True American conservatism is not housed in, or currently attached to, any one particular individual, party, or entity. The American people are the superintending vehicle for securing our Liberty. We have not surrendered our sovereignty as a people or a nation to any constituency other than our national interest. Liberty is our only constituent. Our sacred benefits must be conserved by an enlightened band of virtuous citizens peacefully participating in humanity’s greatest civic project, conducted on a daily basis, right here in America. In order for this cherished adventure to be successful there needs to be a clear and principled political philosophy, articulated and enacted by serious and credible citizens fervently adhering to the best tenets of republicanism, aligned with national interests, not with parochial hindrances.

The idea of Republicanism, having nothing to do with any political party, per se, is a unifying concept. It crosses state and party lines, and follows in the light of freedom, justice, and mercy. Every citizen has the same solemn obligation, and a profound duty, to protect, preserve, and extend Liberty’s flame so it shines for posterity, not turned into an enraged inferno, or a smoldering ember, yielding nothing but instability. This is civic virtue, citizens acting selflessly for the betterment of the nation and the liberties of all people. Any citizen that diminishes liberties, and weakens the bond of Union, should be shunned. Each and every citizen possesses equal rights under the law. We do not possess a right to equal physical and mental faculties derived from nature, nor an equal possession or distribution of property. Republicanism contains a great, yet difficult, end to obtain: to keep and preserve every citizen’s life, liberty, and property, while remaining an independent people and country of the globe. Until there are just and proper voices in America, there will cease to be a legitimate vehicle to conserve Liberty’s precious resources that we have graciously cultivated for two centuries, holding them very dear in our hearts and minds.

It seems, at least to this independent and free mind, that our social dialogue is fatigued. The campaign mentality is never ending. It is mired down in a maniacal maze of caricatures, cynically constructed by a self-interested and highly influential element, administering an elaborately well-arranged popular structure that distorts the American narrative, filling it up with specious assumptions, partisan dissimulation, contorted history, demonic denunciations, and profuse fiscal and moral profligacy by public servants, elected and not elected. All of these disturbing public and private spectacles are blatantly occurring out in the open for all eyes to witness. This noble nation and the sacred liberties it stands to protect, blows in the brutal winds of political profit, as we contend with increased fiscal disorder and dangerous foreign dispositions. These troublesome symptoms emanate from the dismal, yet fleeting, source of discontent and confusion that follows a leaderless people, dwells in a vacuous public discourse, and invites civic inactivity.

For the last fifty years, the Democrat Party has virtually controlled both Houses of Congress. This ruinous reign is the cause of our current duress. Since 1960, Democrat majorities controlled twenty congressional House sessions, forty years, and roughly sixteen Senate sessions. Democrat experiments with our governing institutions have brought us too close to national disgrace and insolvency. The Democrat Party deserves blame for increasing federal power and jurisdiction, our shameful propensity to borrow, tax, and spend, and all the inequities built into the tax code, along with all the other unnecessary and wasteful incidentals embedded in every federal department and agency. Democrats deserve praise for increasing liberties, but, for the most part, they, and the American people in general, needed severe prodding. Democrat majorities, and all their active and passive participants, were the grand facilitator of this pernicious incremental federal expansion of discretionary power. They enacted bureaucratic entanglements that inhibit efficiencies, dispensed public disbursements that nourish an unjust system, which has risen to great heights, and reaches into the depths of our most personal activities. This expansive and expensive system can no longer be sustained under current policy, and no longer conducive for prosperity.

The fifty year reign of Democrat majorities over the federal lawmaking branches, particularly the purse strings, sprinkled in with a few sympathetic presidencies, was set in place during a severe economic disturbance that was, at that time, the worst any citizen had ever witnessed or even heard about. Sure there were booms, panics, surpluses, and recessions along the way, but they were more cyclical and seasonal in nature, temporary instances of supply and demand imbalances, and all of those volatile times worsened public perceptions and confidence at some level. However, the Great Depression that settled in - most severely three years after the Crash of 1929, which was preceded by a decade long rapid growth phase after Word War I – created a national economic dislocation, more global in nature, with more lasting and devastating effects, in which American citizens and their governing and economic institutions did not have adequate capabilities and responses to contend with the scope, magnitude, and ferocity of events.

Reactionary measures to this massive societal disruption swiftly altered the relationship between citizens, states, and the federal government. A major shift in the balance of power occurred, in some areas welcomed and warranted, and, in other areas, intrusive and misguided.  This was all done with the consent of the governed, and majorities of Congress. Of course, there were not as many people back then that were allowed to participate in governing decisions as there are today. This is a great enhancement of Liberty that is well appreciated. This generation should consent to the peaceful and tempered diminution of federal authority and public discretion, especially in those areas it was not intended to have jurisdiction.

Enter the new and improved Democrat Party. Raised from the ashes of the Confederacy, Democrats gained more national prominence during the depression era, and the new leader of the party, Franklin Roosevelt, assumed and held office during one of the most harrowing episodes in American history. There were no easy, clean, and simple ways out of the national turmoil of the 1930’s. Academic disputes still rage over the many reasons for getting into, and out of, the Great Depression. It wasn’t until the 1950’s that the stock market returned to 1929 levels, which came with enormous capital destruction, and the devastation of so many lives during World War II and the Korean War.

What did occur during the most chaotic social atmosphere since the American Civil War was that Democrat majorities grew, nationally and in states, and those majorities were able to enact very expansive and extensive instances of federal power, and a structure to further its aims, at, possibly, the greatest rate than at any other time since the American Civil War. By 1960, the wave of Democrat power and arrogance took over the federal reins.  Many of the expansionist mentalities and programs from the depression era were in place by 1960.  Since 1960, Democrat control over Capitol Hill, and our individual lives, dramatically increased, and is now being challenged.  American citizens need a Rooseveltian leader espousing the great principles of republicanism to every citizen, so we can have fifty years of conservative mobilization to undue the most heinous alterations enacted by Democrat hegemony, and advance our common Liberty further along.

The challenge for Americans today is to dismantle the most ruinous innovations erected by a number of Democrat majorities, and their willing associates, in and out of government. This is not to say all and every policy emanating from the Democrat stranglehold over the national legislature was ill judged and extra constitutional. It will not take one or two congressional sessions to reduce the awful private and public obstacles and dependencies extended over the last half century. It will take at least a generational effort, with difficult and tempered curtailments of congressional power and discretion, to refine, restructure, and remove the frigid fetters and special favorites that our varying governing systems perpetuate and protect.

Today, the Democrat Party is controlled by a radically inclined political philosophy, inculcated most zealously throughout the last three decades. The philosophy is enamored with, and devout to, an excessively liberalized notion of federal power, and an agenda that seeks to perversely redefine the relationship between the federal government, its citizens, the states, and foreign entities, dangerously altering the balance of power, once again, in this republic. The old guard and entrenched Democrat elite - who are slowly, yet loudly, passing into the pages of history to teach the future what self-aggrandizement and arbitrary power looks like, when left unchecked - combined with current political careerists and salaried bureaucrats, have nurtured a social alliance between government, education, labor, and the media.

We are in the unfortunate position of living in an era where a new generation has taken over the Democrat party, and it is one that was cultivated by a curious social realignment initiative that was put in place, and up and running, over the last forty years. That once proud party of Jefferson and Jackson, who actually increased federal jurisdiction, has become the fertile nesting ground for an even more radicalized stream of consciousness. More recently, within the last half century, it is the Democrat operation that has controlled congressional power for decades before the Republican Party even sniffed a meaningful majority inCongress.

We are now witnessing the horrible realities of Democrat Captivity, which is slowly, but surely, coming to an end. What kind of an end is to be determined by the wise and virtuous citizens, on one hand, who cherish Liberty and savor Independence, and on the other hand, the ignorant dupes, flattering minions, and powerful partisans that will gladly lead the rest of us into abject Slavery and degrading federal Dependence. Don’t look to Europe, or any other country, for that matter, because they don’t have the answers, nor the level of freedom we have in America.

There are a few holdovers from the age of Democrat zealotry and control. Even some Republicans tried to lose the ineffectual practices of a minority stained by an inept ability to grow into a respected and sustainable governing majority. However, coming from such powerlessness for so many decades, Republicans learned how to get along by going along, so did the American people.  By the time the Republican Party found itself in control of Congress for the first time in decades, they showed too much deference to a burgeoning governing bureaucratic structure, a mentality of largess and entitlement, created by their predecessors, possessing no effective leadership to spread a cohesive conservative governing platform that actually rectifies the perverse projects conducted by Democrat majorities.

Republicans have often worked within the ever growing federal system, instead of dismantling the multi-layered intrusions instituted over time. Democrats have drastically increased and expanded federal power. Republicans, for the most part, went along with the intricately designed system they inherited. Certain discouraging Democrat sentiments have rubbed off on the Republican Party and the American people in general. The Republican Party must not be turned into a bastion for radical ideologies like the Democrat Party, imposing a rigid social order just as paternalistic and parochial as the one we find ourselves dealing with at this juncture in time.

This American system of government was intended to protect all of our liberties and privileges, not decide who gets special protection and benefits, as if Liberty is some switch that is flipped between constituencies every time power exchanges from one party to another. Never in American history - in all of human history at that - have more people been enfranchised with the gracious benefits of Liberty and Independence as the people living in America. Once a free citizenry enacts laws that only operate on certain citizens, for any reason, at any time, we cease to be equal under the law. The awful result is that justice, the rule of law, and due process, will ultimately suffer, bringing disgrace to the whole population of America, infecting our popular sentiments and mentalities with a poisonous virulent that deteriorates the precious bond of Liberty that binds every American to this Union of Republics.

Americans arrived at this social predicament, and the fiscal stressors that accompany it, with the help of our ancestors and contemporaries. Some day, we, too, will be ancestors. Now we are contemporaries. In order to provide for posterity, we must provide for ourselves, at this very moment in time. We must not be damned by a future generation for inactivity and indecisiveness. We must preserve and secure our own rights today, so posterity will be rewarded tomorrow. There will be a future generation of American citizens fifty years from now, let us try, today, and everyday hereafter, to leave future generations a workable republic, unified by the fabric of Liberty and the bond of Union that Americans love, and have cherished, for so long. Let the bright light of Liberty warm the hearts of patriots, and scorch the venal practices of all tyrants and brutes that assail human freedom, dignity, and independence.

During this point of fiscal distress and diminishing confidence in our governing apparatus, we do not need to start relinquishing more liberties and privileges to an increasingly centralizing force that has crept in over the last few decades. Our collective energies derive their life source from the level of Liberty we possess as a people and a nation. This republican system ceases to be a republican system if power becomes skewed to such an extent, and at such a rate, that it recognizes no boundaries, or is unjustly assumed, and kept, in one or a few segments of this vast federative Union. Power acquired by any particular entity does not automatically undermine law and justice. Menacing mentalities of majorities and minorities exerting more influence and power than they deserve are actual threats to a republican form of government when they make unusual approaches on our rights and privileges.

Liberty is the overarching objective, the prime mover, a keystone for the people of America. Republicanism is the political philosophy that explains it, and the motivating impulse that drives it. Liberty is not a special blessing dispensed by, and for, a few prodigious participating agents that determine the eligibility of the group of adherents. Liberty is a blessing for all human beings that roam this Earthly paradise of free will; not a privilege handed out to some; but, certainly, an objective embraced by all. American citizens are the lords of a vast realm of republican governments, not servants to a special caste of masters.

American citizens have more gracious treasures, avenues of expression, and an abundance of fabulous rewards and resources than any other people, of any other nation, at any other moment in human history. Americans are the largest free population in the world. We have the full capabilities, legitimate authority, and exacting fortitude, required of a free people, to handle any inconveniency hurled at us by the unforeseen consequences of our own actions, and the actions of malicious adversaries. Societal perplexities will always spring up along our common journey to live in political peace and enjoy personal happiness, among ourselves and with our neighbors, which is only possible when Liberty’s interest reigns.

All the ancient rights handed down to us over the centuries, we equally posses as citizens, and all of our rights and privileges can be considered collective. Do not be confused, we are merely a collection of independent citizens that retain the fundamental rights of speech; of religious worship; to be armed; to vote; to be secure from unwarranted invasions of our persons, places, and papers; to have a trial by jury; to confront witnesses and have the assistance of council; to have due compensation for property taken for a public purpose; the right not to be punished in cruel and unusual manners, without due process, and not to be held on excessive bail, or have habeas corpus revoked. American citizens enjoy these awesome rights - and the many more not mentioned here - equally. No single right is more important than any other. All of these rights exist so we can live in freedom.

We The People are a collection of individual citizens, from our respective states, who, on their own, or in any group, a majority or a minority, whenever constituted, can’t infringe upon any of these collective privileges and immunities, or act upon any law abiding individual who cherishes and protects these consecrated tokens Liberty has to offer each of us. It’s unconstitutional on its face for a people to even consent to the abolishment of any of the liberties that protect us from arbitrary power. American citizens need a rebirth of republicanism and civic virtue in order to conserve the flame of Liberty.