Back to Basics
The United States of America. What is it? Who gets to say?
Our Founding Fathers say America is what our Constitution and its Amendments say it is. It seems obvious, doesn't it? After all, there it is, in black and white, in the Preamble of our Constitution: "do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Try to find any other document that creates and defines America ... go ahead ... good luck.
But, people being people, today's loud voices say our Founding Fathers are wrong. They say America is something else. What else is it? Why, of course, it's whatever they say it is. Why? Because they say so. And because they insist, with the force of arms. Force of arms? Definitely. Try to find just one law-abiding citizen who, when alone in the dark, doesn't whisper to himself "The FBI is chilling!"
What do today's loud voices say America is? They say it's a place where the President can ignore laws he doesn't like, and can impose trillions of dollars of taxes by executive order. Where cities can declare themselves sanctuaries from laws they do not like, and can cede their downtown areas to unidentified gun-toting political voices who declare themselves free from all laws. Where the Vice President financially supports mostly peaceful protests that inflict nationwide murder and mayhem in order to force the defunding of law enforcement. And all sorts of other stuff that nobody can find in our Constitution or its Amendments.
We shouldn't be naive. This chasm isn't novel. It's history repeating itself. Revolutions are nothing new. People being people is nothing new. In his September 19, 1796 Farewell Address, President George Washington explained the chasm that separates today's loud voices from our Founding Fathers:
"I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State ... The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty."
It's the same chasm that our Founding Fathers described in our Declaration of Independence:
"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, ... when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
Oh my goodness! Is that chasm where we are today? I hope not! I pray not!
I met Al, may he rest in peace, when he was in his 80s. He was educated, well-read, gentlemanly, and even-keeled. When Government went off the deep end, he relied on his belief that life is like a pendulum, swinging back and forth between extremes, spending most of its time in the equilibrium of the middle. We lost him long before today's loud voices took control. He likely is wondering whether life's pendulum ever will swing back to normal. Most of us wonder.
Most of us work all day every day to support our families, raise our children, remember when our Bill of Rights was our birthright, and delight in what united us: E pluribus unum, One Man One Vote, one nation under God, a nation of laws, America the Beautiful, Ask not what your nation can do for you, judge people by the content of their character not the color of their skin, and the nuclear family.
Today's loud voices work all day every day to undo all that, enrich the military-industrial complex by starting and losing wars, transfer our jobs and wealth to China, turn our inner-city children into barely-literate unemployables, empower the fentanyl industry, regulate speech, arm the FBI and IRS for you know what, and define half our nation to be: deplorables, irredeemables, bitter people who cling to religion, racists, fascists, Nazis, White supremacists, domestic terrorists, and dumber-than-dumb dummies who think they know what a woman is.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. Can we put Humpty together again? Can we put the State of the Union Address together again, after the Speaker of the House of Representatives shredded it behind the back of the President of the United States of America? We've got a long road to hoe. Let's get back to basics. Let's follow in the footsteps of our Founding Fathers. May we soon begin.