PrintNovember 3, 2010
A Post-Election Resolution
For those of us who believe in American exceptionalism and individual liberty and freedom, the results of the midterm election have validated our belief in our fellow citizens.
This has been, up until November 2, 2010, a dismal twenty months.
The people of the United States have seen their president go around the world denigrating the sacrifices that have freed untold millions and belittle the American inventiveness and can-do spirit that have made lives better for virtually all peoples of the world.
The administration and the 111th Congress have unleashed a torrent of spending threatening to inundate present and future generations with unsustainable debt -- resulting in a dramatically reduced standard of living and subservience to those who hold our bonds and do not have the nation's or its citizens' best interest at heart.
The passage of the health care reform act galvanized the still-unconvinced that president Obama, his fellow travelers in Congress, and the media were interested only in controlling the day-to-day activity of each of us, not in truly reforming the health care system.
As Election Day approached, many of us refused to despair about the future. Instead, we chose to take matters into our own hands and turn to the mechanism bequeathed to us by the founding fathers to begin the long journey to repair the damage wrought by those entrusted to serve the people.
Some months ago during an interview on a radio talk show, a caller asked if I knew of any nation in the history of mankind that had ever successfully emerged from the financial and societal abyss into which we were entering. I replied that I did not; however, if any country in the history of mankind could, it was the United States.
We could, as we have a written Constitution with a mechanism to allow us to do so and a unique and fiercely independent American character.
On March 4, 1789, the Constitution of the United States of America was declared ratified and in effect. The citizens of this nation, 220 years ago, were given perhaps the greatest political document in history and the means not only to create a great country, but to sustain it against those who would choose to use a powerful central government to impose tyranny and oppression.
The founders of the United States knew of the basic flaw in human nature: the desire to achieve power and control over others. Thus a political and governmental system was set up that deliberately limited the authority of a central government and made the rights of the individual paramount, as well as put into place a mechanism, the tripartite structure of the federal government and the terms of those in Congress and the White House, to allow the citizen to maintain these rights.
Unfortunately, with the unprecedented prosperity we have enjoyed as a nation over the past century, many simply chose to ignore the first responsibility of citizenship: stay engaged and vigilant against those who would use the power to tax and spend to in order to amass authority over the citizenry.
Over this same period, and parallel to the apathy of the populace, a concerted effort has been underway to undermine the basic tenets of the Constitution. The Courts, Congress, and the Executive have succeeded in empowering the central government beyond anything the founders could have anticipated.
However, the empowerment of the individual to be active, organize, and vote is the one area in which these forces cannot overturn the Constitution, nor can they change the basic character of the American people and their desire to be free and able to determine their own destiny.
It has always been a source of pride in American families to trace their ancestry and celebrate the courage and determination of their forefathers, whether they came on the Mayflower, by steerage into Ellis Island or by suffering and persevering through forced servitude.
These pioneers injected into our uniquely American character a fierce desire to be independent, free, and the final arbiters of their own success or failure. There resides deep within the soul of this country a deep mistrust of a powerful central government which stems from the firsthand experience of these immigrants, from whom virtually all Americans today descend.
While many are now more dependent on government largess than ever before, this basic character of the American people has not changed. Every poll taken over the past thirty years shows this to be a right-of-center country, a plurality conservative and fearful of those in Washington, D.C.
The vast majority of the people of the United States are not amenable to a massive government controlling all aspects of their lives while jeopardizing the future of their children and grandchildren.
For those of us who immigrated to this country from the devastation and destruction of war and tyranny, we who have seen the worst side of human nature, we who are now blessed to live in a nation that alone in the world has a written constitution empowering the individual and a history of defending those rights, there is an enormous sense of pride in our fellow citizens and a renewed hope for the future.
Let us all resolve to be certain that the United States will become the first nation to successfully step back from the abyss of the fall of great nations and continue as the foremost country in the history of mankind.
I know now that we will.
