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RESTORING THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY
Last week I presented a brief history which led to our Constitution, the greatest document ever written about securing the blessings of Liberty. I reminded you that our Founders believed the States should govern "all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people." Madison observed that the great challenge the Founders addressed was how to keep the federal government from, over time, usurping States Rights. Despite specifically limiting the powers of the federal government and creating an elaborate system of checks and balances, their fears have fully come to pass, and their genius turned on its head. Our Republic is in grave danger.
So what messages did the Founders leave us about dealing with this danger? Madison wrote in Federalist Paper 47, "ambitious encroachments of the federal government on the authority of the State governments would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole. The same combinations, in short, would result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced by the dread of a foreign yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made in the one case as was made in the other." Federal encroachment on State's Rights "would be opposed by a militia of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties...." He concluded, "Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession ...."
Hamilton in Federalist Paper 28 wrote: "It may safely be received as an axiom in our political system that the State governments will, in all possible contingencies, afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by the national authority .... They can discover the danger at a distance; and possessing all the organs of civil power and the confidence of the people, they can at once adopt a regular plan of opposition ... and unite their common forces for the protection of their common liberty .... If the federal army should be able to quell the resistance of one State, the distant States would be able to make head with fresh forces."
He made the point in Federalist Number 31 that there is no reasonable basis to fear usurpation of States rights by the federal government as the State governments by their original constitutions are invested with complete sovereignty. He predicted that should a power struggle arise, the States would likely prevail. "Everything beyond this must be left to the prudence and firmness of the people; who, as they will hold the scales in their own hands, it is to be hoped will always take care to preserve the constitutional equilibrium between the general and the State governments. " Finally, in Federalist Number 85, Hamilton said, "We may safely rely on the disposition of the State legislatures to call for an Article V constitutional convention to erect barriers against the encroachment of the national authority."
Well, there you have it. The People will not allow it, and the States will fight it. But the States have caved in, and people don't seem to care. Do you care? Because if you do, the time to act is upon us. James Beck in his classic treatise, The Constitution of the United States, wrote in 1924, "Society is a continuing and very sacred compact between the dead, the living, and the unborn. The living owe a solemn debt to the dead to transmit the heritage of the past to the unborn." So, how are we doing with that solemn debt?
Shall we call an Article V Convention? When I asked this question in A Conservative Voice several months ago, a majority responded no. My vote is still out, as I fear career politicians will never give up their power without being forced to by the People. Shall we establish a plan of resistance, field the militias, and submit this to a trial of force? That led to the disaster of what my great, great grandfather on my Mother's side called the Great Civil War, and my great, great grandfather on my Father's side called the War of Northern Aggression. Such a course strikes me as a last desperate measure with little-to-no chance of success for other than anarchy.
What we can and must do is recognize that "we have met the enemy, and he is us." We alone can change to course of events. We must educate ourselves, engage in, and win the battle of ideas, one person at a time if necessary. Take a liberal to lunch. We must, in every election cycle, identify and fire career politicians who put their next election ahead of the next generation. We must find candidates who will repeal the 17th Amendment, pass a Term Limits Amendment in both the House and Senate, and send the Amendments to us for ratification. We must stop allowing those we elect to make campaign promises and, once elected, ignore them. Colorado is one of eight States which allows its citizens to recall their federal representatives. It has never been tried. Maybe it is time.
Right now, Colorado lags well behind many sister States in reclaiming its rights. Thirty-eight States have introduced Sovereignty Statutes. Nine have passed them. Multiple States have sued the federal government over Obamacare. Arizona is asserting its sovereign right to protect its citizens. Utah is moving to reclaim federal land and mineral rights within its borders. And Colorado.....? Well, that's it from this Watchman for another week. I am off to spend Father's Day backpacking with my youngest son in the Sangres. Maybe our paths will cross in the mountains I love.
Keep the faith. |
