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« on: August 25, 2011, 04:56:41 PM » |
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The Patriot Post - Ballots or Bullets?
From The Federalist Patriot
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Ballots or Bullets?
By Mark Alexander · Thursday, August 25, 2011
Ballots or Bullets?
Ballot Box Barriers to Restoring Constitutional Integrity
"We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our Liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good." --John Adams, Inaugural Address, 1797
All around us, there are imminent and ominous threats to the future of American Liberty. None, however, is more grave than the demolition of free enterprise1 by those who would replace it with the authoritarian rule of Democratic Socialism2 envisioned by Barack Hussein Obama and his leftist comrades3.
Rancorous political debate is currently focused on competing solutions for our failing domestic economy4 and the collapse of our esteemed standing5 among the nations of the world.
Conservatives, particularly those resolute constitutional constructionists who identify with the much-maligned Tea Party Movement6, rightly understand, as did Ronald Reagan7, that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." That is why we are advocating for the restoration of constitutional limits8 on the central government.
Conversely, the growing ranks of leftists in Congress9, some 80 of whom are openly members of the Socialist Party of America's Congressional Progressive Caucus, led by Reps. Raśl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Keith Ellison (D-MN), subscribe to the notion that government is both the engine and the drive train of our nation's economy.
But if Essential Liberty10 and Rule of Law as enshrined in our Constitution are to survive, then free enterprise must be their economic engine. At present, however, that engine is attempting to pull an ever more bloated government trailer -- a trailer so overloaded as to bring the economy to a dead stop.
How bloated?
Obama's government programs will amass a $1.3 trillion deficit in fiscal year 2011 alone, some $400 billion more than the paltry $917 billion in savings to which Congress agreed over the next decade under the recent budget deal11 and corresponding debt-ceiling increase.
This oppressive bloat -- and our elected leaders' utterly inadequate response to it -- will serve as fodder for much of the political debate ahead of the 2012 election. Indeed, the future of Liberty depends on the successful defeat of enough congressional leftists to provide strong conservative majorities in both the House and Senate. Moreover, Liberty hangs in the balance of the upcoming presidential election. While conservatives recaptured the House of Representatives in 2010, the first effective step to restrain Obama's agenda, only a conservative president can begin to undo the damage done to our nation by the Obama regime.
However, do we still have the luxury of political solutions, via elections, to salvage what is left of our Republic? Is the ballot box still a viable method to restore constitutional integrity12?
As John Adams once warned, we must be vigilantly on guard against all contagions that would "infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections."
These contagions, these obstacles, are as follows, roughly in order of threat magnitude: an ignorant electorate; candidates who are unable to articulate the difference between Rule of Law10 and rule of men; institutionalized dependency on the state, including the fact that 40 percent of Americans pay no federal income tax; forced redistribution of wealth; comfort, complacency and indifference; Leftmedia dezinformatsia; opposition by the leftist elite; and, finally, the conferring of legal status upon illegal immigrants in order to fortify Democrat voter constituencies illegitimately.
The most significant obstacle to restoring liberty by way of the electoral process is the fact that so many Americans know so little about civics or civic responsibility. When it comes to getting government right, ignorance is not bliss13.
It follows, then, that there is a dearth of qualified candidates who are able to articulate the difference between Rule of Law10 and rule of men, who instead get lost in the high weeds of lesser political issues.
A majority of Americans are beneficiaries of some combination of thousands of government schemes to redistribute wealth. The resulting institutionalized dependency on the state is insidious, as it results in reliable votes for whichever party (read: the Democrat Party) can take the most from one group and redistribute it to another. It's no wonder that the most recent Index of Dependence on Government14 (2010) reports the greatest single-year percentage rise in dependence since 1976. |
