Our founding documents are a clear and forceful answer to the many problems that plague our nation. Far too many of the ruling powers that be, especially Obama, find our documents cumbersome and unnecessary impediments to their agenda and to the power they want to amass unto themselves. While many still play lip service to the rule of law, their actions betray their lies.
Actions do speak louder than words! When Obama claims the right to kill American citizens, the right to detain American citizens without due process, the right to start a military conflict in the Middle East without Congressional approval, the right to use executive orders to by-pass Congress to implement a leftist agenda, or the right to ignore laws he doesn’t agree with, he is simply ignoring the U.S. Constitution. And he’s done that at least thirty times already. Believing only in the rule of man, Obama says he has “a pen and a phone,” which in essence says ‘to hell with Congress, to hell with the American voters and to hell with the U.S. Constitution.
The essence of our Constitution is found in the Enumerated Powers Doctrine, the idea that the powers of the federal government are specifically enumerated and limited. And, those powers not granted to the federal government are reserved to the states or to the people. One of the most disturbing challenges to constitutionalism in recent years has been the bipartisan effort to distort the balance of power between the three branches in favor of the executive branch. The distain shown toward Congress by the president, and the apparent willingness of congress to abdicate its constitutional responsibilities, is both disturbing and dangerous.
Consider some of the major issues our nation faces today:
ObamaCare, socialized medicine by any other name, involves a huge bureaucracy, higher costs, and fewer competent physicians. One of the bureaucracies will be in the business of rationing your health care. Whether you call it a“Death Panel” or not, it will determine if the medical treatment you need is too expensive for someone of your age and medical condition.
The federal budget, or lack thereof is of grave concern. While the drive-by media makes much of the supposed partisan struggle between alleged ideologues of the left and right, the truth is those battles are more like professional wrestling – phony. All the hand wringing over the so-called sequester amounted to a cut of just 2.3% of a $3.7 trillion budget. And even with that, real spending continues to rise, as staggering waste in every federal department grows. Republican leaders repeat the mantra “We don’t have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem,” and “everything is on the table.” But in truth, nothing is on the table, lest we offend someone.
The housing bubble, blamed entirely onbanks and mortgage lenders should be laid at the feet of Congress, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the FHA where it belongs. It was Congress that passed the Community Reinvestment Act demanding that banks essentially ignore creditworthiness to expand home ownership to families that couldn’t afford to repay their mortgage. Fannie and Freddie used implied federal guarantees to dominate the national mortgage market with the majority of their portfolios in so-called subprime loans which they sold as AAA securities instead of the junk bonds they actually were, creating a massive malin-vestment in the economy from which we have not recovered. One of the biggest culprits in the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve, is still doing massive damage with its expansive monetary policy, laying the groundwork for major inflation down the road.
Since the federal Department of Education was created under Jimmy Carter [and that should tell you something] in the late 1970s, its budget has risen to about $100 billion, while test scores in math, English and science over that same period has either been flat or fallen. The idea that throwing more money into a monopolistic government controlled educational system will solve the problem is nonsense. Private and parochial schools actually do a better job of educating our children with significantly less cost. In D.C. per student spending is close to $20,000, about the same that Obama spends to send his daughters to Sidwell Friends Academy, one of the most expensive private schools in the nation. And yet he can, with a straight face, oppose a voucher program for lower income families so that their children can have a decent education.
The many scandals that have been exposed over the past year or so do not reflect a society in which the protection of civil liberties is primary to the ruling elite. Obama refuses to let reporters talk to witnesses in the Benghazi debacle or explain why there was no effort to protect the Americans who were murdered. Obama provided protection for the Justice Department in the ATF gun running debacle. He has used the IRS to marginalize conservative tax-exempt organizations. NSA is monitoring our emails, phone calls, web visits, and is now collecting pictures of American citizens off social media to create a facial recognition system. They also has the ability to remotely turn our phones on and off, as well as take photos of the area we are in, and can invade the privacy of our homes through hacking our web cams or Smart TVs.
America stands at a cross-roads. Too many of us take our freedoms for granted. We are in danger of losing the idea of American Exceptionalism found in the iconic words of the Declaration of Independence that proclaim legitimate government exists for the sole purpose of protecting our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. While that might sound like a cliché to the left, it was a profoundly radical statement when it was written that flew in the face of most of human history, a history in which human beings were not much more than cannon fodder for the state, the monarchy, the church, or whatever institution presumed to rule society.
To say our lives have meaning only in terms of what we supply the state is hardly consistent with the role of government described in the Declaration. American Exceptionalism is predicated on a respect for the dignity of the individual and the Declaration proclaimed that such dignity required liberty, the liberty to pursue your own dreams and reap the benefits of your own efforts, the right to choose your own retirement system, your own health insurance police and schools for your children.
Source: John Allison, Cato Institute
