What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.
Adolf Hitler
Quite some time back there was a short squabble going on here in Idaho County over the Watchmen on the Wall, and some of their ideas of what’s legally right or wrong. I don’t remember exactly what the discussion was about, and it’s certainly not germane to this article, but I do remember that a county employee rather disparagingly commented that “they’re just a bunch of constitutionalists”, as if that were something to be ashamed of. I should have kept track of the newspaper article, because I take considerable exception to that comment. Pay attention now, I’m a Constitutionalist as well, and I’m quite comfortable with that fact.
Forty five years ago I took a solemn oath to “Protect and Defend” the Constitution of the United States from “all enemies, both foreign and domestic”. It’s been a few years since I’ve been a soldier, but I still take that oath very seriously, and I’ll consider it binding until the day I die. I’m getting a bit long in the tooth (what’s left of ‘em) to be getting into fights with anybody nowdays, but still, if you want to pick on my Country or my Constitution, ‘yer going to have to go through me first!
For some reason that I fail to understand, the ideals behind the United States Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, seem to be falling from favor with those on the political left, and I’m sorry to say, quite a few people who claim right wing politics as well.
A quick lesson in history here. The founders of this nation immigrated from all over Europe to the American colonies to escape tyranny and persecution. They’d had more than enough of self serving “leaders” telling them what they could or couldn’t do, how to think, what they could say, how they could worship, and taxing the daylights out of them to pay for the kings latest war. After the Revolutionary War, after the Articles of Confederation proved faulty, and with the likes of Thomas Jefferson leading the effort, it still took them thirteen years to develop a political system that all the states would accept. Even then our nations founders had to add a second document, the Bill of Rights, before our present Constitution was finally adopted by all the states. Our Constitution IS the law of the land, and it’s good enough to have been copied in part by several other nations since that time. In this country any law, regulation, ordinance, whatever, passed by the federal, state, county, or municipal government plays second fiddle to the Constitution of the United States of America. Certainly, if you violate one of those ordinances you can be tossed in jail, but our Constitution still takes legal precedence over everything else.
It’s rather strange I think, that so many Americans claim ancestors that fought in the Revolutionary War to win us the rights and freedoms promised us by our Constitution. Those same people, and others, myself included, claim ancestors that fought in the Civil War to make sure that those Constitutional rights extended to all Americans, irregardless of who they are, where they came from, or what their social status. Since that time we’ve fought two rather bloody World Wars and nearly fifty years of Cold War to ensure that foreign political systems didn’t take those rights away from us. We’ve also been embroiled in a number of messy little conflicts as we try to extend those rights that we so enjoy to other peoples around the world. Yet there are any number of those same Americans who would see us toss the entire constitutional system that has served us so long and well, into histories dustbin, and replace it with a never-ending barrage of bureaucratic rules and regulations emanating from Sodom-on-the-Potomac! But that’s OK I’m told, because the bureaucracy has my best interests at heart… Ahh… How’s that again?
At the height of the Vietnam War, college students were faced with the moral question of serving or not serving in the US armed forces. It was a question of values, patriotism, and moral courage, not of legalities. The “system” was laced with loopholes allowing an easy escape for those who declined to serve, as they were only asked to take their chance and do their duty if called. While so many accepted the call to duty despite their personal feelings about the war, many others not only chose to avoid service, but we saw some of them actively attacking our rule of law by inciting riots and civil disorder, destroying public property, or fleeing to foreign countries because of their self proclaimed “principles”. Young men whose heroes were avowed enemies of the United States, such as Che Guevarra, Fidel Castro, MaoTsu-tung, and Ho Chi Minh. And we find some of those “principled” men now seeking public office, setting themselves out as the “right choice” to lead America in the 21st century.
Many of these political hopefuls actively call for laws that further strengthen the federal bureaucracy and completely ignore the constitutional limitations of federal powers. Self-serving and deceitful men who seek political power with the same self righteous conviction with which they sought to tear down our country in their youth, they now hope to control the government because, in the name of “security” and “prosperity”, they “know what’s best for us”.
Perhaps the voters should take another look at the “domestic enemies” part of that oath.
Forty five years ago I took a solemn oath to “Protect and Defend” the Constitution of the United States from “all enemies, both foreign and domestic”. It’s been a few years since I’ve been a soldier, but I still take that oath very seriously, and I’ll consider it binding until the day I die. I’m getting a bit long in the tooth (what’s left of ‘em) to be getting into fights with anybody nowdays, but still, if you want to pick on my Country or my Constitution, ‘yer going to have to go through me first!
For some reason that I fail to understand, the ideals behind the United States Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, seem to be falling from favor with those on the political left, and I’m sorry to say, quite a few people who claim right wing politics as well.
A quick lesson in history here. The founders of this nation immigrated from all over Europe to the American colonies to escape tyranny and persecution. They’d had more than enough of self serving “leaders” telling them what they could or couldn’t do, how to think, what they could say, how they could worship, and taxing the daylights out of them to pay for the kings latest war. After the Revolutionary War, after the Articles of Confederation proved faulty, and with the likes of Thomas Jefferson leading the effort, it still took them thirteen years to develop a political system that all the states would accept. Even then our nations founders had to add a second document, the Bill of Rights, before our present Constitution was finally adopted by all the states. Our Constitution IS the law of the land, and it’s good enough to have been copied in part by several other nations since that time. In this country any law, regulation, ordinance, whatever, passed by the federal, state, county, or municipal government plays second fiddle to the Constitution of the United States of America. Certainly, if you violate one of those ordinances you can be tossed in jail, but our Constitution still takes legal precedence over everything else.
It’s rather strange I think, that so many Americans claim ancestors that fought in the Revolutionary War to win us the rights and freedoms promised us by our Constitution. Those same people, and others, myself included, claim ancestors that fought in the Civil War to make sure that those Constitutional rights extended to all Americans, irregardless of who they are, where they came from, or what their social status. Since that time we’ve fought two rather bloody World Wars and nearly fifty years of Cold War to ensure that foreign political systems didn’t take those rights away from us. We’ve also been embroiled in a number of messy little conflicts as we try to extend those rights that we so enjoy to other peoples around the world. Yet there are any number of those same Americans who would see us toss the entire constitutional system that has served us so long and well, into histories dustbin, and replace it with a never-ending barrage of bureaucratic rules and regulations emanating from Sodom-on-the-Potomac! But that’s OK I’m told, because the bureaucracy has my best interests at heart… Ahh… How’s that again?
At the height of the Vietnam War, college students were faced with the moral question of serving or not serving in the US armed forces. It was a question of values, patriotism, and moral courage, not of legalities. The “system” was laced with loopholes allowing an easy escape for those who declined to serve, as they were only asked to take their chance and do their duty if called. While so many accepted the call to duty despite their personal feelings about the war, many others not only chose to avoid service, but we saw some of them actively attacking our rule of law by inciting riots and civil disorder, destroying public property, or fleeing to foreign countries because of their self proclaimed “principles”. Young men whose heroes were avowed enemies of the United States, such as Che Guevarra, Fidel Castro, MaoTsu-tung, and Ho Chi Minh. And we find some of those “principled” men now seeking public office, setting themselves out as the “right choice” to lead America in the 21st century.
Many of these political hopefuls actively call for laws that further strengthen the federal bureaucracy and completely ignore the constitutional limitations of federal powers. Self-serving and deceitful men who seek political power with the same self righteous conviction with which they sought to tear down our country in their youth, they now hope to control the government because, in the name of “security” and “prosperity”, they “know what’s best for us”.
Perhaps the voters should take another look at the “domestic enemies” part of that oath.
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