The Answer Is Clear

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Societies change over time. Human nature allows the tyrannical to gain power because tyrants make promises that sound reasonable. They offer gifts from the treasury, entitlement programs, and free government services. Unwittingly, the people become enslaved by the creeping incremental growth of their government. And once the growth of government begins, it is nearly impossible to stop.

Americans. We are a fascinating bunch. We are a young lion with the wings of eagles founded on the principle that our rights were given to us by God, and only God is authorized to take them away. Our government, however, is trying to assume the role of God, telling us what is a right, and what is not, and then taking the power upon themselves to offer those rights, while also taking upon themselves the power to take them away.

Young as this nation may be, its Constitution has stood the test of time. The Founding Fathers wrote the Law of the Land to do so. This nation was built on the rock of freedom and Judeo-Christian values. What we have forgotten, however, is that with freedom comes responsibility. And when the people become complacent, that is when government takes advantage and moves in.

Never would the Founding Fathers have accepted the socialist style government that the hard left Democrats are attempting to establish. The U.S. Constitution was written to guard against this kind of tyrannical rule over the people. The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution to limit the size of the federal government, and give the states independent sovereignty. This is most clear when one reads Article One, Section eight and ten of the U.S. Constitution, of which enumerates the authorities of the federal government, and dictates to the states what they cannot do, respectively.

Over time, however, the recognition of the promise of liberty fades, and the citizens begin to look to government as the solution to their problems. When this happens, it is important for the American People to look back to the Constitution. Unfortunately, the politicians disregard the U.S. Constitution as merely an old document filled with guidelines they don't have to follow, or interpretations that bend and sway to their whims. As Obama has stated, he believes the U.S. Constitution is filled with negative rights. He claims it is an incomplete document because it does not say what the government "should do."

The poison of statism teaches that government is supreme, rejecting the principles of the founding documents. For today's liberal, humanity is imperfect, and individuality impedes the evolutionary journey to a utopian state.

Once a strong centralized federal government begins to take over individual liberty, doing so with a promise of good intentions, and for the sake of the common good, a chain of progression is enacted. Government gains power over the people gradually, first through entitlements, until the government becomes a nanny-state that makes every decision for the people. The promotion of welfare through government gifts then leads to a slow increase of oppression over the people (and often the populace doesn't even notice), eventually leading to an authoritarian government that captures liberty, and mandates all actions of the citizens.

Socialism, Communism, Marxism, Statism, and totalitarianism are all intricately intertwined, and are effectively synonymous. They are images of each other, each one stating that their goal is the same as the others, which is an eventual creation of a utopian state that is, despite their fervor for such a system, not possible because of the basic human nature of individualism.

Originalists will tell you that the confinement of federal power was best achieved by dividing power as much as possible. This is one of the reasons for dispersing power among three federal branches of government. Beyond those divided powers, which are once again enumerated by the U.S. Constitution, the true power of America remains with the states, and ultimately the people.

Counterrevolution to radically and fundamentally change the nature of the American Form of Government is currently underway. But this is not the first time such a bloodless coup of freedom has been attempted. In fact, we still feel the effects of the other attempts to radically change America into a socialist state.

In the 1930s hard left thinking, directed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and his Congressional Democrat majority, breached the Constitution with an onslaught of socialism in the form of the New Deal. Roosevelt enacted entitlement programs that had gained the dependence of much of the population (and continues to enslave a large segment of the population to this day), an increasingly progressive tax system, and regulations that stifled the free market, and individualism.

After Roosevelt's destructive expansion of the federal government, FDR's plan wound up failing. He was unable to hijack the courts as he intended, and the Great Depression refused to come to an end despite his theory that heavy spending, taxation, and federal projects would bring the economic upheaval to an end.

Languishing through World War II, Roosevelt's socialism was replaced by industrial expansion. The enormous tax and regulatory burden placed on the American private sector by the New Deal actually prolonged economic recovery, but in the end, free market capitalism took hold of America again, and led us into a new period of prosperity.

In the left's insatiable appetite for control, however, the damage had been done. Government had gained some control over economic activity, and individual liberty. Heavy taxation on a progressive sliding scale redistributed wealth, financed entitlement programs, set prices and wages, limited production, created numerous public works programs, and expanded special interest political alliances.

Sadly, the government's promises were based on deception. They promised one thing, and delivered another. They demonized success, and redistributed the wealth to the "victims" of capitalism. By doing this, the Democrat Party made permanent voters of the poor. Generations later, the poor are still poor, and the population of the poverty-stricken has expanded, but these folks still blindly believes the left when they tell the poor that under hard left liberalism a pot is at the end of the rainbow. Despite the lies, the people believe them, because the Democrats said so.

More government is simply dangerous. This is not to say that as a Conservative I despise government. I understand the necessity for the federal government in a limited fashion. I recognize local governments as being more easily accountable to the people, which is why I believe the Founding Fathers gave the state's the sovereignty that they did. Effective government operates within its constitutional limitations, making it efficient, and a protector of freedom. Leftism accomplishes the opposite, eventually leading to tyranny, and the oppression of the people. The answer to today's problem, then, is quite simple, and can be simply said in bold letters from top to bottom.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary