Our Founding Fathers were amazing men that did amazing things and then
created amazing documents. Documents that were appropriate for the times and
yet had the forethought to apply them to the future. The Declaration of
Independence, the first ever of it’s kind. It not only outlined the intent of
the present in 1776 but it also gave a roadmap to the future in the event the
new government ever began to run amok with its admonition of tyranny.
The Constitution with its bill of rights. For instance, the second
amendment with the right to bear arms. The right to bear arms wasn’t for
hunters or sport. It was put in place to give the people the right to rise up
against despotism. They also took into consideration that they may not have
covered everything that could conceivably arise and put in place a way to amend
the Constitution in case of forgotten freedoms for the people and restrictions
on the government in the future. They understood that the Word of God is the only
infallible writing. The Constitution provided avenues to amend what they may
not have considered.
Those same founding fathers also warned and even predicted the fall of the
United States of America. Here’s some examples:
On the occasion of the last day of
the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin said, “I agree to this Constitution … and I
believe, further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of
years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when
the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being
incapable of any other.”
In less than two months, our nation will be 240 years old. We are falling
into exactly what Franklin was talking about, as you’ll see from other quotes
and compare to today’s events.
Our government is corrupt. Just look at recent history. An impeached
President, albeit not convicted in the Senate. Numerous leaders involved in
scandals from not paying their taxes while running the financial system, being
convicted for sex crimes against children but not until long after they are out
of government, collecting money illegally from donors and hiding it, etc. The
list of convicted former leaders and even some current ones is getting longer
by the minute.
The people are also allowing the corruption when they elect convicted
felons such as those convicted of taking a life and installing them into
government.
George Washington gave a concern as well that we see in recent years when
he said in his farewell address in 1796, “If,
in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the
constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an
amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no
change by usurpations; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument
of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”
How many times have we heard that the Constitution is a living document?
This is a way of saying that we can interpret the Constitution to what we want
rather than what it actually says,. We even see that in people’s speech to each
other on a personal level these days when it’s said there is your truth and
there is my truth instead of calling them opinions. As said earlier, only God’s
Word is always true. We are men and women and make mistakes.
We are now seeing the Constitution being manipulated. Health care payments
to insurance companies to subsidize those that can’t afford the cost of the
insurance is now being paid for by the government, but the Congress, who hold
the purse strings for the nation, is the only body that can determine where
monies are to be applied. Other aspects of the Constitution are being ignored
such as enforcing the laws to protect our borders for the sake of getting more
votes.
Thomas Jefferson warned of the Judicial Branch taking more power than is
intended under the Constitution in 1821. “The
great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever
acting with noiseless foot and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step
and holding what it gains, is engulfing insidiously the governments into the
jaws of that which feeds them.”
The courts have taken to writing laws rather than interpreting them in
recent years. We have three branches of government. Executive, Legislative and
Judicial. The legislative writes the laws, the executive signs them into law
and the judicial interprets the law and whether or not it is legal. When the
judicial re-writes a law, they have overstepped their bounds and when they
create a law, they have overstepped. That in effect exerts more power over the
people which they don’t have constitutionally.
In 1792, James Madison said, “If
Congress can employ money indefinitely, for the general welfare, and are the
sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of
religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state,
county, and parish, and pay them out of the public treasury; they may take into
their own hands the education of children, the establishing in like manner
schools throughout the union; they may assume the provision of the poor…. Were
the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would
subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited
government established by the people of America.”
He was talking about a bill to subsidize the cod fishing industry. Welfare.
Giving money from the government prop up
those that refuse to do for themselves and then warning that the government
could take over education, away from the parents and in the hands of the
government. Even just today, the government sent out a letter to all school
districts telling them to allow bathrooms to be used by anyone that identifies
themselves as another gender even though biologically they are not of that
gender. If the schools refuse, they will lose federal funding. The government,
withholding the peoples money from the people if they don’t comply with
something that has not been written into law but rather mandated by the
government. Even if you agree with their position, they are abusing their power
by dictating this policy.
Madison was right. This is not limiting government, this is limiting the
people from their own decisions regarding their own lives. Government
intrusion.
In 1838 Abraham Lincoln said in a speech, “There is even now something of ill omen among us. I mean that
increasing disregard for law which pervades the country — the growing
disposition to substitute the wild and furious passion in lieu of the sober
judgment of courts, and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers
of justice. The disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it
now exists in ours … it would be a violation of truth to deny.”
A court of law said that Michael Brown was responsible for his own death
due to his actions and that the deputy involved that did the shooting was
acting in self defense. The court decision, was not respected. The evidence was
not respected. Instead, a segment of the population took to the streets and
burned their neighborhood for several days.
In 1780, John Adams wrote, “There is
nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great
parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition
to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the
greatest political evil under our Constitution. Nothing which I dread so much.”
What do we have today? Two parties that talk about loyalty to the party
first and the nation second. The primaries are not about the people’s vote in
some states, and the delegations are not all decided by the vote, but rather by
the party leaders. The party has replaced the nation as a priority.
George Washington also said the same sorts of things about the two party
system in 1790, “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.”
Abraham Lincoln seemed to give a prediction on how America will come to it’s
demise. “Shall we expect some transatlantic
military giant, to step over the ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! — All
the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the
earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a
commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on
the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a Thousand years. At what point, then, is the
approach of danger to be expected?”
We are being ripped apart from within but, and this may be
splitting hairs, we are also being ripped apart not from within. This
government has opened the borders with virtually no safety controls at all. So
they are allowing the outside in where we can be destroyed.
But is this the time that America comes to an end or even an end
to the ways as we know it but the essentials still there just being used
inappropriately? I choose to believe that there is still hope.
In 2009, the people rose up when President Obama went overboard
with his stimulus package and they created the Tea Party. It wasn’t perfect,
but it was the people at first that started it. Some of it became corrupted
when some opportunistic politicians jumped in and tried to steer it, but it’s
had some success despite that.
When one party forced Obamacare on the people, the people began to
fight back, unfortunately, they could only go to the existing government leaders
and they have been feckless. Slowly but surely those leaders are losing power
as we see in this election process. The “outsiders” have pretty much led the
story in this election while the establishment has tried to claim they are
outsiders.
I have no idea what sort of a President Donald Trump will make. I
don’t know if he’s conservative, moderate, or even if he’s pulling a fast one
over the people, but one thing we do know is what we’ll get from a President
Hillary. With her, we’ll continue to glide down the path of destruction for
this country.
We have learned that some that wanted to be the “outsider” and
claimed to be “conservative” cannot honor their word. In the first debate, a
question was posed mainly for Donald Trump about backing the eventual nominee
and not running a third party. They all agreed to back the nominee. So far,
several have not honored their word. Jeb Bush, Lindsay Graham, and even those
that didn’t run this time, like Mitt Romney have said they will not back the
Republican. It’s most disappointing to me that the entire Bush family is not
backing the Republican nominee. That makes it about their power and not about
their nation. They seem to prefer Hillary and the destructive path she’ll have
us on in months than to honor the wishes of the people and their own word.
The best way to save this nation is to trust the people and not
the politicians. The people need to hold the politicians feet to the fire, and
if they don’t act as their constituents require, that they be told, “you’re
fired”, and put someone in that will represent the people.
You’re welcome to comment.
Brett
