Fundamental Transformation of the Republic

As some may recall, when Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, he promised to “fundamentally transform” our country. Many cheered, but few asked what that meant…exactly. Some were concerned because they understood that “fundamentally transforming” a country means changing its very foundations. Further, it assumes there’s something “fundamentally” wrong with the original foundations.

I contend that we are already fundamentally transformed, and have been for some time. 

I know... what am I doing talking about politics on a food blog? Well, this is the “other stuff” that I occasionally can’t resist…and I promise, the next post will be about food. Please check back next week.

Those of you who know a little bit about American History may recall that our Founders gave us a Republic with a federal system in which the States were sovereign and very limited powers were assigned to the federal government—the States retaining all the rest to themselves and the People (see the 10th Amendment). Those limited authorized powers can be found in Article 1, Section 8 of our Constitution, and I highly recommend that every American read it periodically.

You will notice in that fairly short list of powers there is no authority for such federal programs as the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, FEMA, HUD, the FCC, the FTC, the EEOC, the FDIC, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, or a host of other agencies that have evolved over the last 100 years to create the bloated system we know as the Federal Government. Check this site out for an itemized list of federal departments and agencies. And yet it continues to push the limits of its authority, congress after congress, year after year, law after law.

America is being crushed under the weight of our federal government. Our current president believes that the role of government is to manage the lives of its people. Unfortunately, most of our elected officials agree. Not only have we had presidents over the years issuing unconstitutional executive orders and empowering their administrative departments to impose upon the citizenry unconstitutional and burdensome regulation, but Congress, regardless of which Party is in power, continually passes unconstitutional laws…and to top it off, we have a Judiciary that doesn't even understand the Constitution it has sworn to uphold. So much for checks and balances. 

Our problem is not limited to Democrats or Republicans. It is systemic, and rooted in a general lack of understanding of the form of government under which the United States was formed. Americans, over the past fifty years or so, have grown to expect the government to take care of their needs. Many believe that the federal government has some kind of obligation to take care of them during a disaster, when they lose their job, when they get old, when they get sick. This thinking was foreign to our Founders, who believed that those things were the responsibility of individuals through self-reliance and acts of charity. Our Founders believed the role of government – federal or otherwise – was to ensure its individual citizens the liberty to pursue the life of their choosing, and laws should be designed only to prevent others from infringing upon ones right to do so. 

In the shadow of the oppression of Great Britain, the architects of our new government took pains to minimize the potential power of a centralized government. The United States was organized to give the States sovereign power limited only by its citizens, and the federal government very few specific limited powers over issues that affected all the states equally (the general welfare).

Somewhere along the way, that changed. The change was gradual, but it was fundamental. Today we have a federal government whose goal is to dictate every aspect of every American’s life—from education to health care to employment to housing. We can’t travel from one city to another without being searched and manhandled by a federal agent. The federal government has made it its business to provide health care to the masses and will fine you if you don’t comply...and call it a tax! States that stand up to the federal government are regularly sued by the Department of Justice.    

Not only have we lost many of our liberties, we’re also in grave economic danger. The nation is wallowing in debt. We have a $16 trillion deficit and a citizenry that believes it’s okay to continue to spend money on a host of federal programs and activities-- even if it means borrowing money from our adversary, China. The government says they have to raise our taxes so they can pay down the debt, but instead of paying down the debt, they find new ways to spend the new revenue. 

It’s time to wake up and remember our foundations. States must take back their sovereign reigns and force the federal government back into its cage—that cage is the Constitution. Believe it or not, the final arbiter of whether or not a law or federal activity is constitutional is not the Supreme Court—it is the State. Every state has the inherent right to determine the legitimacy of any federal law by virtue of the fact that it was the States that created the federal government and set its boundaries…not the other way around. A good resource to learn more about this is the book Nullification: How To Resist Federal Tyranny In The 21st Century, by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

As we approach another opportunity to elect those who will “rule” over us, I urge you to give careful consideration to the state of our Union. There are no perfect politicians, but we must choose among those available.

Choose carefully, because (as we've been told again and again) elections have consequences. America cannot survive long by taxing the wealthy to pay for social programs. We must, as a country, figure out how to wean ourselves off the social programs and go back to a People who believe in self-reliance. 

There is no government on the face of the earth that can take care of its people. That's God's domain.

Government's proper role is to provide an environment that promotes a stable, lawful society so that its citizens can care for their own needs, unencumbered. Government does not create wealth, it reduces wealth. It takes from those who produce by means of taxation. It does not "invest" money, it spends money--usually with little or no accountability on programs and services of its own making. The more money it takes from its citizens, the less prosperous the nation will be. The less prosperous the nation, the less tax revenue there is… Whether you’re the tax payer or the receiver of government services, it’s a vicious cycle doomed to ultimate failure (historic examples abound). A prosperous nation can only be had by limiting taxation to its smallest possible level. And that will never happen until the federal government returns to its constitutional boundaries.

So... go to the polls and vote. But first take off your blindfold and do your research. And then choose candidates who understand and support the fundamental foundations of our Constitutional Republic. 

God bless!  And may God bless America.