(Above: James Madison, co-author of The Federalist Papers, "Father of the Constitution," and fourth President of the United States, 1809-1817)
On my Facebook, I receive updates from several conservative and Libertarian politicians, journals, and organizations. Such groups as The Federalist Papers, United Liberty, Sarah Palin, Ron and Rand Paul, and Tea Party Patriots line my feed multiple times per day, and I always get a real charge from reading what they present to their intended audience so long as I am not using my "dumb" cell phone to peruse the site. The common theme for the majority of these apparatus' is our elected leaders in Washington's adherence to the Constitution, or lack thereof. As a conservative with Libertarian leanings, I feel it is the Republican party in part and the Libertarian party or movement as a whole who best lean on every word of the fabled document. The Democrats, unfortunately, wish to disavow the directives of the Constitution and create more of a British Common Law system whereby they pass legislation without any prohibition by a set list of instructions exercising the rights of men and women. These Democrats, or liberals as I prefer to generalize them as because there are a few of those in the Republican party who pose as conservatives like John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and Mitt Romney who, in their political careers have taken steps toward increasing spending in government through the usurpation of the American people's constitutional rights, have bastardized the very spirit upon which this nation was founded. Rather than deviate from our British forefathers' legal system that is broad and far reaching, our federalized government systems -- federal, state, and local -- have sought to deny the American people their natural rights of man. All the political parties during our 225 years under the present Constitution have been guilty of infringing upon these liberties, but none more so than our leftist friends, the Democrats. Yet strangely, the public continues to elect politicians from this political party to public offices.
Bill O'Reilly said it best during Fox News Networks' coverage of the 2012 Presidential Election: the American people want things from the government and are willing to sacrifice their tax dollars and rights to get those things, and that is why they vote for Democrats. It was none other than Thomas Jefferson who spoke some years before the first socialist and communist economic and political philosophers began to publish their pamphlets when he said:
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting their labors under the pretense of taking care of them."
It is such logic as this that today's conservatives and Libertarians operate under. While Jefferson would have no doubt been a Libertarian had he lived today, essences of Jeffersonian political thought trickled down through the ages with the births of the Democratic party under Andrew Jackson, the Whig party, and later the Republican party under Abraham Lincoln. Even at that, those parties in the early years did not resemble their present-day incarnation, for it is true the Whigs no long even exist. America would not begin to see more of what would become known today as the liberal and conservative political movements until well into the 20th Century.
In terms of political movements, modern day liberalism was born following Reconstruction, when immigration reached its greatest numbers and many of the migrants who settled the big cities of the North were of rather radical political affiliations that were based on the political atmosphere in their mother countries. Such movements as the Populists and Progressives gave rise to eventual legislation by such presidents as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson that would reform the working conditions of Americans factory workers as well as invent the modern-day income tax code with the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment. All of this was loosely based on little snippets from Karl Marx's and Fredrick Engels' The Communist Manifesto. The fear among more conservative lawmakers and political followers of the day was that the raging tide of European political extremists who were also migrants would push for a revolution between the poor working class, or the proletariat, and the middle and upper classes, or the bourgeoisie. It was during the period from the late 1870's through the end of the Wilson administration that one saw the beginnings of class warfare in America, and it was brought to this continent by none other than European radicals.
With Wilson no longer occupying the White House, Republican presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover presided over a period of time in America known as the "Roarin' '20's." America experienced its golden age during the 1920's, and such novels as F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby permeated American culture in defining the life of the wealthy during this period. However, all of this came to a halt in 1929 when the Stock Market crashed and the Great Depression began. Four years later, Hoover was voted out of office in a landslide loss to Democratic presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt, who would drastically alter the way government would operate by once and for all transforming the nation into a socialist-welfare state by creating such social programs as Social Security, the Works Progress Association, the FDIC, etc, that were intended to get as many Americans back to work as possible and to bolster the confidence of the population. Suddenly, government was bigger than it ever was before, but for all the attempts at returning the economy to good times again, Roosevelt was unable to do so until the start of World War II. It was then that a war economy imbued with the essences of heavy industry re-invigorated society.
Roosevelt passed away in Warm Springs, Georgia in 1945 just before the conclusion of the war. In his place was Harry Truman, who ushered America and the world into the "Atomic Age" by signing off on an executive order to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. The result was total victory in both the European and Pacific theaters of the war. The unintended consequence, however, was the Soviet Union, who liberated Eastern Europe from the Nazis, worked to build nuclear weapons of their own. The standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union in Berlin was the beginning of the Cold War. During this time, the United States taxed its citizens more heavily than it had ever done so previously in order to keep up with the demand for more and better military arms. Many of Truman's policies proved to be unpopular, and when he left office in 1953, his approval rating was only around 33 %. In his place came the hero of the European Theater of World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was the most conservative political figure to have entered the White House since Hoover in the 1920's and early 1930's. He also presided over the last combination of Republican party members who controlled both the White House and Congress for over 40 years. It was while Eisenhower was in office that the Civil Rights Movement began in earnest with the Rosa Parks incident. After Eisenhower's terms as president expired, the nation became much more liberal like it had been during the FDR days, with the addition of social issues such as civil rights, gay rights, legalizing abortions, and the legal prohibition of the practice of prayer and biblical recitations within public schools.
John F. Kennedy, who succeeded Eisenhower, actually cut taxes and went against the Democratic party's platform to a great extent. But it was under Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy's Vice President who succeeded him upon JFK's assassination in 1963, that the socialist policies were pushed the furthest they had gone in over 20 years. In a speech, Johnson spoke of creating what he foresaw would be the "Great Society," a term that terrified Republicans. It was also during this time when Johnson rammed through Congress the Civil Rights Act of 1964, thus endearing the Democrats to the African-American demographic permanently, and he created Medicare. Lyndon Johnson's 1964 Republican challenger was Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona. It was Goldwater who gave birth to the concept of modern conservatism in America, but in 1964, the nation was not ready to be led by someone so revolutionary, and he was soundly defeated by Johnson by what was at that time the largest landslide victory in the history of presidential elections. Though Richard Nixon would be elected President in 1968, he was no conservative, and his successor as a result of his forced resignation due to the Watergate scandal, Gerald Ford, proved to be a truly incompetent leader in the White House. In 1976, the American people elected Georgia governor Jimmy Carter president, and with both the White House and Congress being controlled by Democrats, more liberal policies would be enacted in Washington.
The Carter administration's high watermark was the signing of the Camp David Peace Accords between Egypt and Israel. However, it was marred by high unemployment, inflation, and lastly the Iran Hostage Crisis. He was viewed as an inept leader, and a conservative from the Goldwater school of thought by the name of Ronald Reagan throttled Carter in the 1980 election. Reagan was the first of the true modern conservative Republican to occupy the White House, and he revolutionized politics domestically and around the world with his brand of conservatism in much the same way FDR had for the Democrats. The eight years of Reagan's presidency are often referred to as the "Reagan Revolution" because he employed a more open- market approach to capitalism, cut taxes across all income brackets by 30%, and ended the Cold War with the Soviet Union through increased expenditures on the military to such an extent that the Soviets could not keep up due to its failing economy. It should also be noted that Reagan was one of the first notable conservative Republican to take a stand against legalized abortions, which he emphatically addressed with his Mexico City Policy in 1984, and he managed to reduce the rates of inflation and unemployment dramatically while not employing socialist measures that trampled upon the American people's constitutional rights. Other than his tendency to allow powerful religious figures to influence his policies, Reagan was the greatest president of the past 100 years by many accounts.
With the Cold War over in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, there still was a Republican in the White House in the form of George H.W. Bush. However, he broke away from the Reagan formula for success when he was pressured into raising taxes, and it resulted in another recession and over 6% unemployment. The result was the election of the first Democratic Party member to the White House in 12 years in Bill Clinton. Clinton would occupy the White House at the same as the Democrats controlled Congress, and the laws passed increasing became more liberal, such as the Brady Crime Bill, the largest income tax hike in history during peacetime, and the infamous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law. "Slick Willie" would increase taxes, too, despite his victory over Bush being predicated upon the economic costs of the tax hike in 1990, which ironically was prompted by members of his own party. Americans had enough of Clinton's liberal shenanigans, and in 1994, the Republicans won control of Congress for the first since 1956. This essentially ruined the Clinton administration's agenda of liberalizing America to the point where eventually a national health service would have come into existence. In 2000, George W. Bush won the presidency, albeit controversially, over Vice President Al Gore. Bush would serve two terms in office, cut taxes in 2002, and preside over the nation as it began the war on terrorism stemming from the attacks on September 11, 2001. Bush's decision to go to invade and overtake Iraq in 2003 proved to be fatal to him politically when it became known that there were no weapons of mass destruction in the country. Also proving even more damaging to his legacy was the financial disasters of 2008, which led to the election of Barack Obama in 2009 over Arizona Sen. John McCain. For the first two years of Obama's presidency, Democrats controlled all of Congress, and with the passage of the Affordable Health Care Act (aka. "Obama Care") soon after being elected, Obama's popularity took a steep dip with the drastic rising in unemployment and the federal deficit. Obama's liberalism, the most extreme since the Johnson administration, cost the nation dearly, and America is still paying for it. Yet, he was reelected in 2012 when he defeated former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Once again, like in 2008, the Republican party ran a presidential candidate on a platform that was too similar to that of the Democrats, for Romney actually passed a health care act in Massachusetts during his governorship not unlike what Obama pushed through Congress. The Republicans have strayed away from their conservative roots that brought them great success during the Reagan administration. The conservative voters of this country have come to feel disenchanted, and the moderates and undecided voters who are looking for that difference in policy do not find it with the Republican party today, as the party aims to placate to more moderate and centrist voters rather than engaging to please the bread and butter of its following.
So, now you have the brief history of our nation since about 1877. Most of the trampling on the people's rights have come at the hands of the Democratic party. Democrats, since 1933, have sworn to take care of the American people so long as they get to tax the public as much as they want. They do, as Jefferson said and I will paraphrase, waste the labors of the people under the pretense that they will take care of them. With the mass murders of teachers and school children in Newtown, CT, the people's Second Amendment rights are under attack more now than they have been in nearly 20 years despite President Obama having originally promised in his campaigns that he would not attack the amendment. Furthermore, small business owners face the threat of losing their businesses over the issue of Obama Care because they can not afford to provide the insurance for their employees. Many businesses have already cut back on labor and their employees hours in order to try to satisfy the requirements as prescribed by the new health care law. And what of the general public? The least expensive package of Obama Care will run upwards of $1,000 a month! The average American cannot afford that! To make matters worse, none other than Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) openly admitted that the implementation of Obama Care will be a "train wreck," and then Reid had the audacity to say that he could fix the problem if they could raise taxes still more! Then, there's the issue of our currency, which has drastically seen a rise in inflation since Obama took office in 2009. The President ordered the mass printing of dollars to foot the bill for his social programs, and as a result, we have massive inflation. The price of gasoline is at record highs, yet Obama and the Democrats in Congress refuse to open up federal lands to pump oil in order to make the United States more self-sufficient and to create thousands of jobs. There is the immigration issue also, where President Obama is proposing to declare amnesty for all illegal immigrants who cross over into the U.S. from Mexico and other places. These aliens, who should be illegal but will not be under Obama, will take away jobs that natural born American citizens, and cause greater unemployment when there are too many American citizens looking for jobs and too few to go around; those who do not work but rather remain idol will receive welfare benefits whereas other citizens, naturalized Americans, who truly need government assistance will not be able to get it. This abhorrent plan to cater to illegal immigrants by granting them amnesty is being done for no other reason than to gain the Democrats more registered voters who will vote them into office. The unemployment rate still sits at 7.5%, the lowest rate in four years, yet jobs are still hard to come by, and the President, in his infinite wisdom, is attempting to raise taxes, having done so with the Fiscal Cliff Agreement with Republican lawmakers back at the beginning of this year, and he proposed to do so again with his budget he submitted before Congress just last month; it should be noted that while he has proposed all along to raise taxes on the wealthiest 2% of American taxpayers, both times he has either raised or proposed to raise taxes, the middle class and even the poorest Americans were also targets for the hikes. Lastly, President Obama has more than doubled the federal deficit from where it was under President George W. Bush; it currently sits at $16,803,321,438,273.70! At what point do the American people grow weary of electing these liberal officials to high office who expand government exponentially, limit civil liberties, and seek to turn this country into a socialist state and instead vote for statesmen who will work to cut federal spending and eliminate Obama Care? The federal government has not expanded at this rate since the 1960's, yet the American people allow an event such as the financial crisis of 2008 ruin our good judgment on not allowing crooked politicians in high office who will seek to deny them their natural rights as protected by the Constitution by telling such lies as they will care of them monetarily or they will redistribute the wealth more evenly if they vote for them so they can tax the rich more when, unfortunately, it is the middle class who wind up taking it up the rear-end and yet rarely know what hit them.
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was fond of saying that there is no such thing as public money. She is correct. All government programs are funded by we, the taxpayers, under the auspices that the federal government will manipulate the money in such a way as to make it appear that they are helping the poor when, in fact, they keeping the poor poorer in their attempt to make the wealthiest Americans as well as the middle class poor as well. The real champion of the poor and underprivileged is the Republican party, for it is they who will work to create rewarding jobs out in the workforce rather than rendering them to the government soup ladle. The Republican party focuses on the individual and not the collective -- it seeks to set the conditions to be right whereby the American worker can thrive, own property, and as a result grow in wealth and prosperity, whereas the Democrats will simply resort to class warfare, raise taxes, and make everyone poorer rather than allowing them to prosper while trying to grow government bureaucracy. It is the Democratic party who will take your firearms away; who will use drones to spy on segments of the American population just as was done in Louisiana early last month, yet was denied by the Obama administration; it is the Democrats who will deny the people their First Amendment rights; who will, as part of those First Amendment rights; seek to deny the people the liberty of worshiping their religion as they so choose; and lastly, will attempt to manipulate the media into reporting the news as they see fit and crack down on those media outlets choosing to break away from the government line. The American people have to know the imminent danger they are in when they continue to elect evil men and women like the Democrats, yet they continue to do so blithely. It is as if the people do not care to have rights, and this is completely against the founding principles of this nation.
Thomas Paine spoke of "common sense" when it comes to matters of a democratic-republican government and living in a just society because of that unique characteristic we have that so many other nations on Earth are not fortunate enough to have ever experienced. Paine wrote a line that echoes this sentiment very clearly: "From the errors of other nations, let us learn wisdom." The Founding Fathers, in creating our first system of laws called the Articles of Confederation, took bits and pieces from other Westernized nations throughout history and melded them together to create it. Unfortunately, it was a total and complete failure, and so it was back to the drawing board. Today, we have more examples of copious democracies across the world for whom we can look at to pattern ourselves after, most notably nations in Europe, Canada, and Australia. The one thing all of those nations have in common is they are socialist states. Their people are not blessed with the same rights we here in the United States have been over the course of more than 200 years. Those governments are imbued with essences where, as columnist Noelle Campbell wrote in her article titled "What Happened to Common Sense?" on the website called The Federalist Papers, we have become so reliant on rules, laws, regulations, minimum standards, etc., that they are now conditioned to not think at all, but rather to follow a series of rules. Sadly, this phenomena has been occurring in the United States now since the FDR administration, which was when America became a socialist-welfare state, and the laws have only grown more numerous and cumbersome since then. The Constitution has within it a prescribed set of checks and balances; it also provides the government ammunition to amend the document should a disagreement arise to the severity that it would otherwise bring cause to dissolve it and start all over. Yet, the liberals in this nation have set out to transform this political system into something resembling the British one, whereby the government has no real constitutional doctrine but rather it passes legislation based on a "common law" system of traditions that go back hundreds of years. The liberals want the United States to become like Europe, where taxation is high, the government controls the majority of the means of production, and the government can regulate the populations collective salary by income redistribution. Most of all, the liberals wish to not only trample on the American people's natural rights as guarantee by the Constitution, they wish to dissolve the document once and for all. Frankly, I am fearful this may, indeed, happen.
As a registered voter, I will never vote for a politician who will sacrifice the principles the Constitution was founded upon. That means I will never vote for a Democrat. Sadly, other people will, and it is these people who are leading this nation down the path to perdition.
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