The battle of political ideas is indeed the battle for control over the United States Government. The debate over the role of government in America continues to shape our history to this day. What kind of government Americans should live under is a question best answered, however, not by today's ideologues, but by the framers of the United States Constitution.
The Constitutional Convention of 1787 had its share of debate. In fact, the battles between persons like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison against personalities like Alexander Hamilton during the early years of this nation (note that the debates between Jefferson and Hamilton did not occur during the Constitutional Convention, as Jefferson was in France during that time period) are quite similar to the debates we are experiencing today between the political establishment, and traditional conservatives. One could even classify Alexander Hamilton as one that clung to ideas very similar to those of today's liberal Democrats. He believed that the federal government should be centralized to better rule over the states, that the federal government should subsidize businesses in order to make them supportive of an ever-growing state, as treasury secretary he supported tax increases and strict government planning of the economy, and he championed the accumulation of public debt, protectionist tariffs, and politically controlled banks. Hamilton belittled Thomas Jefferson, and others like him that believed in a limited federal government, for speaking too much of liberty.
Hamilton, like today's liberal Democrat and Establishment Republicans, believed the people could not be trusted.
The Founding Fathers, with a few exceptions like Alexander Hamilton, believed the American government must be limited, and localized, if individual liberty was to be protected. The federal government is limited to only those authorities enumerated to it by the U.S. Constitution, while all other authorities are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people, as enunciated by the Tenth Amendment. Thomas Jefferson strongly opposed public debt and national banking, seeing both of them ultimately as a threat to an American's natural, God-given, rights.
When the government is allowed to do things that are not Constitutionally authorized, it is akin to letting the camel poke his nose into the tent. Eventually, whether you like it or not, the camel will be completely inside the tent, and you will have little room to do much for yourself, leaving you compelled to practice all of your activities around the will, and size, of the camel.
As a result of letting the camel poke its nose into the tent, the United States Government has pushed aside the Constitution, and has practiced little restraint when it comes to the powers of the federal bureaucracy in Washington, DC. The idea that the federal government is a servant to the people, and that the citizens of the states are the masters, is facing demise. Generations of activist judges in an unconstitutionally powerful judiciary have eviscerated the constitutional protections afforded the American People. National debt, harmful protectionist international trade policies, tax dollars being used to subsidize various politically connected businesses, central economic planning, and a political control over the money supply have instigated boom-and-bust cycles in the economy that has brought some Americans (in the name of hope and change) to a point of asking for the government to save us - when it was the statists in government that caused the mess in the first place with their liberal policies over the last century, or so.
The centralized state of the British Empire, headed by a despotic king, is what we fought against during the American Revolution. Behold, after more than two hundred years of freedom, this nation's leftwing of the political spectrum is working on enshrining that very system we fought against in America. The Democrats, and moderate Republicans, are trying to change the American Form of Government into something the Founding Fathers fought against, hoping to eliminate true federalism, and create a system built on protectionism, dominant executive powers, judicial activism, state guided mercantile economics, government franchise monopolies, a state run banking system, and interventionism that benefits the statists and their supporters at the expense of the general public's wallet, and freedoms.
Big government policies reside throughout the political system. Neo-conservatives, like Democrats, have also never opposed big government in the way traditional conservatives have, and often embrace liberal proposals, as did Scott Brown regarding the Jobs Bill. These people are the most dangerous of all, because while they claim to be champions of a limited constitutional government, and promise to slash the size of the federal government, once in office they align themselves with the political establishment, joining the big government politicians as they goose-step America into decay, and financial ruin.
The implementation of big government ideas is nothing short of socialism, and the injection of these policies into the American Form of Government will lead America to consequences the Founding Fathers did not wish us to suffer through. Big Government is dangerous in any form, be it Compassionate Conservatism, American Liberalism, or neo-socialism that takes the form of a Leviathan State that promises it is nothing of the sort. The combination of centralized power and economic mercantilism are the defining characteristics of the British Empire that the American revolutionaries waged war against, and those are the same characteristics of the proposals of the current administration, and the Congressional Democrats.
Socialists know that the American People have a distaste for a government that believes its role is to provide from the treasury for entitlement programs, and to in turn dictate the behaviors of the citizens for the "common good." This is why the strategy of these statists, as was Obama's and the Congressional Democrats during the election of 2008, is to promise the American People one thing, and then deliver something very different. They realize that in the beginning they can never appear to be supporting a socialistic system of government, or reveal that they are indeed big government statists, even though their platforms are indeed socialist in nature. They mustn't let you realize they are the reincarnation of the European economic mercantilists, pushing economic policies that call for government regulation of America's economy in order to increase its power at the expense of rival nations that may seem to provide a favourable climate for a season, but fails to recognize that all trade is beneficial, and strict government controls are counterproductive. They have also been careful not to deliver so much statism that the American People would discover the nature of their intentions, and instead have instilled big government statism incrementally, allowing the American People to become dependent upon the liberal entitlement programs, essentially softening the people up for the hard-core socialism they have planned in the future, and seem to be trying to implement during the term of the current administration.
As the American People begins to realize what is going on, and the Town Hall meetings and Tea Parties fill with people demanding we return to a form of government in line with the Constitutional Republic that this nation began as, the statists have declared that their control over the private sector is necessary to save the Free Market, their control over health insurance is necessary to save the health care industry, their Cap and Trade policies are necessary to save the planet from the mythical threat of man-made Climate Change, and their socialism is necessary to preserve democracy.
Leftists proclaim the role of government is to provide a series of new deals, to provide competition when the government is not a fair competitor, and to give hope through hopeless programs that kills choice and liberty. And it is fine, the leftists say, if you don't want their socialism, and don't wish to live under a socialist economy. Their deception and lies, and forced legislation if necessary, will bring about their big government system anyway. But don't worry, the leftists know what is best for you better than you do, and once you are enslaved by the growing federal government, you will like it, because the elitist intellectualists are going to take care of you, and make sure you are a productive member of the state, for the state, of the state, and by the state.
Such is the threat of an unhealthy love of an unconstitutional government, accompanied with the desire to put down any opposition, and elevate rulers of compassionate dictators to the highest levels of the American Form of Government.
When government grows, liberty wanes. When statism gains complete control over a nation, freedom dies - and tyranny rises once again to take claim of yet another victim as it has so many times in history.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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