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You Should Ask Whose Property Is It February 27, 2014

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics, Politiocal Philosophy.
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Even for someone who learned at their grandmother’s knee that what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable the knowledge that some things are mine and some things aren’t came early.  The whole idea of freedom rests upon the idea that within the wider world which is society there is a smaller circle that outlines what is personal and what is communal.  Even in monasteries where monks have taken vows of poverty they refer to my cell, my candle and my prayers.

Private property is an essential ingredient of a free society.

Two of the greatest rewards derived from the study of History are the ability to build upon the achievements of others and the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others.  One of the greatest calamities caused by the failure to study History is a lack of context.

Most people live their lives as if History began the day they were born and they forever live in a constantly flowing and ever changing now.  George Orwell said in his epic dystopian novel 1984 that, “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

The Progressives captured the majority of American education long ago and have taught generations of Americans that capitalism is bad and socialism is good.  They have also taught children since at least the 1950s that America has been a grasping imperialistic power that has prospered by taking from others.  We are seeing the fruits of this propaganda today.

Instead of memorizing the Declaration of Independence, our children have memorized the outlandish theories of Al Gore.  Instead of learning the truth they have been indoctrinated with an inconvenient truth that is inconvenient because it isn’t true. They have been taught from History books that have more about Nelson Mandela than they do about George Washington.  And this is not a new thing.  I am in my 60s and I was thrown out of public schools for standing up for capitalism by people who were pushing socialism.

If we want to recapture the future we have to recapture the present so we can recapture the past.  Today those of us who believe in limited government, individual freedom and economic opportunity live as subjects in a land dominated and occupied by people who act as if America should pay a penalty or do penance for being the greatest country to have ever existed.  We must regain and preserve our heritage of knowledge by regaining knowledge of our History or it will be erased from the consciousness of our children and replaced with the inconvenient lies of a shabby Progressive future.  A future where the sun is setting for the West rising in the East, and a paternal government seeks to take the place of god.

If we want to save America we must begin at the beginning.  Most people think the Constitution is the beginning.  Even though our Progressive masters seek to reinterpret it to bring about our end it wasn’t our beginning.  Before the Constitution came The Declaration of Independence.  This is the seminal document proclaiming to the world a new nation not ruled by kings had appeared upon the stage.  This Declaration did not spring freshly from the imagination of Thomas Jefferson.  It was not born in a vacuum.   Jefferson was a student of Philosophy and History.

When Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence he built many of the ideas on the works of John Locke one of the greatest influences on the Framers.  Locke had written in The Second Treatise of Civil Government, “The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions…”

This in turn inspired George Mason to write in The Virginia Declaration of Rights which was published just before the Declaration of Independence in 1776, “That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

Today the concept of private property is out of fashion as our collectivist rulers try to build a classless society on such misunderstood and elastic phrases as the Pursuit of Happiness and the Necessary and Proper Clause.

Looking at the works and words of our founders and of those who framed the Constitution it is plain to see that the phrase Pursuit of Happiness was everywhere used as meaning the right to own, control and use private property which brings us to economics.

In a capitalistic system people own, control and use their own private property for their own devices.   The opposite of that is Communism which advocates the state ownership of all property.  Portraying itself as half way in between is Socialism which seeks to extract a portion of the rewards of private property for the benefit of those who do not own it.  A malignant form of socialism with a capitalist veneer, Fascism advocates private ownership and total state control of its use.

Looking at capitalism we see the miracle that was the United States.  In just a little over 150 years we rose from being 13 impoverished, war ravaged states loosely bound together into a colossus that strode upon the world stage saving freedom first from fascism and then from communism.

One of the founders of the Soviet nightmare Leon Trotsky said of the communistic system he helped create, “In a country where the sole employer is the state. Opposition means death by slow starvation.  The old principle, he who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.”

And although Socialists try to play the part of sentimental reformers who are only out to help the children their ultimate agenda shows that they are in reality merely a stalking horse for their communist big brother.  One socialist site puts it this way, “In Socialism, the laborer is the direct manager of their means of production, and receives the whole of their production. In Capitalism, the laborer is dominated by a Capitalist, who directs production and sets wages.”

As for the Fascists their program may sound familiar, “We ask that government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living. The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within the confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand: … an end to the power of financial interest. We demand profit sharing in big business. We demand a broad extension of care for the aged. We demand … the greatest possible consideration of small business in the purchases of the national, state, and municipal governments. In order to make possible to every capable and industrious [citizen] the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our system of public education…. We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents…. The government must undertake the improvement of public health — by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor — by the greatest possible support for all groups concerned with the physical education of youth. [W]e combat the … materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of The Common Good Before the Individual Good.”

Ask yourself where are we today?  The government issues regulations at the mind numbing rate of 68 per day.  According to a study by the American Action Forum, regulations that went into effect in 2013 cost Americans $112 billion – or $447 million for each of the 251 days the federal government was open.  This study also predicts that the regulatory burden will increase to $143 billion in 2014.  Who controls the property you own?  Who reaps the benefit of your labor?  Tax Freedom Day, the day after which you have worked enough to pay your taxes and can now start working for yourself gets later each year.  In 2013 it was April 18th, five days later than it was in 2012.

F. A. Hayek tells us in The Constitution of Liberty, “True coercion occurs when armed bands of conquerors make the subject people toil for them, when organized gangsters extort a levy for ‘protection,’ when the knower of an evil secret blackmails his victim, and, of course, when the state threatens to inflict punishment and to employ physical force to make us obey its commands.”

John Locke told us, “Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.”  He also said, “All wealth is the product of labor,” and “Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.”  These are the bedrocks upon which our system was originally built.  The next time you receive your pay look at the deductions.  Ask yourself for whose benefit do you toil?  Then look around you and think of the taxes you pay, the regulations you must follow, and the rules you must obey; then ask yourself, whose property is it?

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2014 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens

 

Why We Need Capitalists February 20, 2014

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics, Politiocal Philosophy.
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At one time in America most people were financially independent.  I don’t mean by this that most people were wealthy.  What I mean is that they worked for themselves as opposed to working for someone else as a hired laborer.  People were farmers, or craftsmen, trappers, or frontiersmen.  Thomas Jefferson pictured America as a republic based upon the yeoman farmer.

That day has passed.  Today most people who work are employed by someone and draw a wage. As a matter of fact in America today it is not overstating the matter to say that of those who earn their own living the vast majority are exclusively wage earners.

Combine this with the reality of our modern infatuation with democracy and it is no wonder that the majority of voters continue to elect people who are pro-worker and anti-free enterprise.  This is aptly reflected in our labor laws and the radicalized National Labor Relations Board.  It is also reflected in the progressive income tax, the fact that corporate income is taxed twice, once as income to the corporation and secondly as income when the same money is distributed to shareholders.  It is further manifested in the bewildering array of regulations that spew forth from Washington strangling business in red tape.

The masses of wage earners have fallen prey to the siren songs of demagogues.  These pied pipers point to the visible difference between the rewards earned by those who risk their capital and their personal efforts to start and build an enterprise and those who earn wages to work for those enterprises.  These differences in reward are labeled as unfair.  It is either intimated or stated directly that those who start enterprises and build their bigger reward have done so by taking from those who earn a smaller reward by working for the enterprises they build.

We hear endlessly about a fair deal, a level playing field and building ladders to the middle class.  Government control is offered as a gateway to utopia where those who earn too much give to those who earn too little; from each according to their ability to each according to their need.  The Svengalis of redistribution seek to mesmerize people removed from anything except doing a proscribed task for an agreed upon amount.  They teach that free enterprise is the cause of the unfairness portrayed as America’s legacy.  Our state controlled schools drum the same message into our children until it become to them common sense.  The subservient media sing the same song in movies, on TV and in the news.

Building upon this multipronged barrage of propaganda the worship of democracy kicks in to warp our Republic.  When we combine those who succumb to the collectivist delusion among the wage earners with government workers and those who are living off the dole and we have a solid majority dedicated to restricting freedom to gain security.  A bargain our Founders warned us leads to having neither.

This is where we stand today.  The entrepreneur is looked down upon as a parasite on the economic life of the wage earners.  Entrepreneurs are portrayed in movies, on TV, and by our leaders as grasping schemers who care nothing for the environment or their fellow man, and the only reason they aren’t throwing grandma off the cliff is because someone is watching.  Try to remember the last time Outside of an Ayn Rand novel or movie that you saw capitalists portrayed as anything positive in America.  It is generally believed by the low information voters that the only way people get rich is to steal from the poor.

This is a trap; a trap that swallowed Russia and held it captive for generations, and a trap that impoverished Eastern Europe and turned China into one big internment camp.  Those who spent most of the 20th century sitting in the dirt eating leaves as a result of their campaign against free enterprise have broken their chains and are today the Tigers of East Asia and the power houses made of BRIC.

Entrepreneurs are necessary.  They are the engine that makes the wheels of innovation turn.  They are the ones willing to take a risk.  They will turn away from the guaranteed wage and the benefits all our parents taught us were necessary for a good life.  They are the ones willing to take the chance and hazard their all for something others can’t see.  They are the ones who build the organizations for others to work within. Without them economies stagnate, suffocate, and die.

If the government were to take over every business in America and ensure that every wage earner could continue to earn their daily bread does anyone think this would be the America that we have known?  Does anyone believe it would be the America that grew from thirteen impoverished war weary states on the edge of civilization into the greatest power the world has ever known?  This has been tried before and everywhere it has ever been tried it has failed.  Don’t believe the political savants who tell us this time it will work.  The ones who say they will do it differently and whose every program proves they are doing it the same.

In Russia the government actually took ownership of everything, and then ran it all into the ground.  In Italy and Germany they tried it another way.  They allowed for private ownership but with strict government control.  Here in our American version we are following the Italian and German path with crony capitalism building fortunes on political access.  Our stock market does not move in response to innovation and enterprise it moves in tandem with government policies. The Too-Big-to-Fails make the cronies at the top wealthy as they plunder the assets, buy back the stock, and enrich their friends with options.  All while making sizable campaign donations along the way to those who make it all legal.  Then when the bubbles burst they get bailed out and the tax payers foot the bill.

If we are to survive let alone thrive we have got to open the way for the innovator.  We have got to once again encourage the risk taker, quit punishing success, and stop subsidizing failure.

To give a good day’s work for a day’s wage is an honorable thing. To be a faithful and responsible employee is something we can teach our children.  However without the new energy and markets created by innovative entrepreneurs the system will eventually stop growing.  When the pie stops growing everyone ends up fighting over the size of their piece.  When the pie stops growing and the population keeps growing everyone’s piece must get smaller, except of course for those who do the dividing.

Why do we need capitalists?  So that everyone else can have a job.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2014 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens

 

Why Should the House Impeach President Obama? February 13, 2014

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
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Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution requires that before presidents can assume their duties they must take the oath of office.   Every president from George Washington to Barak Obama has placed their hand on a Bible and sworn,” I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

In America today just like in Lake Woebegone every child is above average and every child gets a trophy.  We may score low in international grade comparisons but we rank number one in self-esteem.  In other words American students may not be doing well but they think they are.  Those of us old enough to remember how Dad could control the situation with a look and when you got in trouble in school your parents didn’t sue or contact the School Board you got in trouble at home too are also old enough to remember Watergate.

This scandal that the general public still does not understand brought down a president and led to the Watergate Congress which threw away the victory in Vietnam and solidified the Progressive control of Congress until 1994.  Today we are confronted with contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law that makes the Watergate Scandal look like the tempest in a teapot that it actually was.  How many people died as a result of the Watergate Scandal = 0.  How many have died as a result of the Fast and Furious debacle = at least 200 and still counting including an American law enforcement officer.  How did Richard Nixon disrespect, disregard or violate the Constitution in the Watergate Scandal = 0 (although his use of Executive privilege did spark a constitutional crisis).  How many times has Barack Obama disrespected, disregarded or violated the Constitution during his time in office = at least three times as documented below by making recess appointments while Congress was still in session, by changing laws through executive orders without recourse to Congress and by refusing to enforce laws.

There is an old saying, “That’s good enough for government work.”  This saying comes out of the big government make-work programs of the 1930s and has been used ever since as short hand for “Approximate is close enough,” which might as well be the new national motto.  In societies that rob Peter to pay Paul the stage before all the Peters change their names to Paul is typified by government bean counters picking winners and losers.  This process discourages producers and encourages non-producers assuring you get less of the former and more of the latter.  As an educator I have a belief that if you don’t teach someone to do something right you teach them to do it wrong.

If Congress does not assert its place as a co-equal branch of government, the Imperial Presidency of Barack Obama will continue to usurp power.  From recess appointments while Congress is in session to unilaterally changing laws to refusing to enforce the laws of the land this President is fundamentally transforming our system of government.  Not through the amendment process, but through a campaign of unconstitutional and therefore illegal actions designed to advance the Progressive agenda and to influence the next election.  Whether it is through the money laundering schemes that are government negotiations with public service unions, pork barrel payoffs to political donors, or back-door amnesty this is nothing more than a time-honored Chicago tradition buying votes.  Combine this with a campaign to resist any attempt to verify who is voting and the stage is set for an emerging social re-make and elections that would make any managed society proud.

His supporters may call it the Audacity of Hope Campaign, but if it is successful it will be the audacity which crushes any hope of limited government, personal liberty, and economic freedom.  The dreams from his father will become the nightmares of our children and grandchildren.  With no authority Mr. Obama is attempting to rule by decree.  Executive orders have previously been used to direct the Executive Departments how to implement laws.  Mr. Obama is using them to legislate, and that is in direct contravention to the separation of powers clearly outlined in the Constitution and are meant  by his own admission to circumvent Congress.

President Obama has built a shadow government that parallels and is standing ready to supplant our constitutional government.  Barely tipping his hat to the official Cabinet he has appointed more Czars than most of his predecessors and these Czars are not just advisers they are actually tasked with duties that under our traditional American governmental structure have been the responsibility of Cabinet Secretaries.  These Czars are not confirmed; they are appointed, and none of them are accountable to anyone except the President.  Even though Congress voted to defund his Czars, President Obama has said he will ignore that part of the Budget and keep them anyway.  A cult of personality surrounds him typified by a compliant media which fawns over his every action and defends his every transgression.

As if to add icing to the cake the Obama Administration has invoked Executive Privilege to support Attorney General Holder in his refusal to surrender all requested documents in the Fast and Furious Scandal.  What national security issues could there be in this matter?  If the documents proved that the operation really did start under the Bush administration as Mr. Holder contends does anyone doubt they would have been on the table yesterday?  Either the President is attempting to protect his Attorney General, some member of the White House staff or himself.  Either way this may eventually provide a real similarity to the Watergate Scandal.  Though in this case the cover-up could not be worse than the crime it could lead to enough fallout to make his own supporters leave a sinking ship to avoid the stigma of a failed presidency and a looming constitutional crisis.

In the Benghazi Scandal the memories of 4 dead Americans including our Ambassador the Obama administration first attempted to blame a video.  This video wasn’t translated into Arabic until after the attacks that it supposedly inspired.  There was mounting violence against Western Diplomats and Western interests in Benghazi before this that was ignored.   Then during his recent re-election campaign President Obama re-invented the truth when he said that he labeled it a terrorist action from day one. Yet in Congressional investigations the stonewalling continues to protect the White House and the State department from accepting the blame for what was clearly a massive security collapse.  To this day the only one jailed for this deadly failure has been the producer of the erroneously blamed video.  Then again as Secretary of State Clinton quipped, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

In perhaps the most telling evidence for impeachment so far the Speaker of the House has declared that it is meaningless to pass legislation when based upon President Obama’s past practices there is no guarantee that the President will enforce the law.  This is a stunning admission.  The President is sworn to uphold the Constitution.  In the Constitution as the chief executive the President is supposed to enforce and execute the laws.  Having reached the point where the Speaker of the House can no longer trust that the President will enforce laws we have reached the place where this is no longer a nation of laws it is a nation of men.  This is the opposite of what our Founders said that America should be.

Then there is the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare as it is popularly known.  The President seems to believe he can rewrite this law in any way and at any time he chooses without regard to the fact that it was passed by Congress and signed into law.  One conservative pundit compares President Obama’s serial re-writes of this law without the benefit of legislation as the actions of a banana republic.  While a progressive pundit says that even though he was a supporter of the law these many changes and the blatant polarization of the law by delaying so many of its negative impacts until after the next election make it nearly impossible to defend.

The assaults upon the rule of law come on a daily basis.  As if he is almost trying to add fuel to the flames or to rub his actions in everyone’s face President Obama said to French President Hollande as they strolled through the grounds of Jefferson’s Monticello “That’s the good thing as a President, I can do whatever I want”

If this slide into tyranny is not stopped it will continue. If it is not protested it will be accepted.  I know there are not enough Senators to convict.  As shown in the Clinton impeachment trial the Democrats vote as a block and the Progressive Republicans join with them ensuring there would be no conviction no matter what the charge.  If these blatant attacks upon the checks and balances are not punished, at least by the shame and reproach of an Impeachment Resolution, they are being silently condoned.  Speaker Boehner stand up and lead the House!  Don’t just make a speech; present a case.  Don’t just give us a photo op; give us a fighting chance to save this great experiment in human freedom.

If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.  America it is time to stand up to this Southside Chicago bully.  We need to let him know he can’t have our lunch money anymore, and he can’t subvert our Republic either at least not without us protesting and using every legal means available to stop him and preserve limited government.

We, the lovers of freedom and the supporters of limited government cannot merely wait the clock out on the Obama presidency.  After winning a second term on a campaign based upon class warfare and the redistribution of wealth he and his statist backers act as if they have won a mandate for more of these unconstitutional power-grabs.  An oligarchy of the perpetually re-elected veneered over a permanent nomenclature of federal bureaucrats easily falls in line behind a complacent and complicit media to cheer the new order as the soft tyranny of the central planners tell us what is best for us and then forces us to say thank you.

Protest the lawless Progressive counter-revolution!  Contact you Representative and demand an impeachment hearing to investigate President Obama for the High Crimes of subverting the Constitution.  He should be investigated for:

Act today!  Contact your Representative and let them know patriotic Americans want this tyranny ended and limited government restored.

Keep the faith.  Keep the peace.  We shall overcome.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2014 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens

Why Can’t We Change? February 7, 2014

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics, Politiocal Philosophy.
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Paths with no obstacles usually lead nowhere.

Among those who hallow the Constitution you will find no more loyal devotee to this document that helped continue the limited government established under the Article of Confederation.  There is no one who believes more passionately than the author of this article that the Constitution provided the space for the individual freedom, personal liberty, and economic opportunity needed to foster the growth of the greatest nation this world has ever seen

However, it is only necessary to read The Gilded Age by Mark Twain to see how corruption and greed, crony capitalism and lobbyists have been building their own kingdoms since before any of us were born.  And just as it doesn’t take a weather man to know which way the wind blows it doesn’t take a constitutional scholar to know at this time and in this place the Constitution has failed.

Look at the path America is on.  Do you think our current leaders or our current policies will lead to a renewing of America or to its slide into the second tier of nations?  Think about the directions laid out for us.

We are told by the Progressives who lead us that perpetual continuation of unemployment payments for the long-term unemployed is good for the economy and good for jobs.

If unemployment creates jobs and is good for the economy why don’t we just give it to everyone who doesn’t have a job in perpetuity, and make it a thousand dollars a week for good measure?

Increase the minimum wage to $10.10.  This will create jobs and help the economy.  Our leaders say there are just too many people laboring for the current starvation wage of $7.25. While according to CNN Money, “An estimated 3.6 million people were paid hourly rates at or below the federal minimum in 2012, down from 3.8 million a year earlier.  Just under 60% of all U.S. workers are paid hourly, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. An estimated 4.7% of those hourly workers make minimum wage or less, down from 5.2%, a year earlier. That share is the lowest since 2008.”  That’s quite a few people: 3.6 million, and obviously worthy of notice.

However when 16 million people had their healthcare plans cancelled due to Obamacare we were told this was an insignificant number.  As with everything connected to Obamacare the numbers of those who have lost insurance coverage as a result are sketchy.  Some sources say more than 4.2 million Americans have now seen their health insurance policies canceled due to the new regulations. And the President’s spokesman said that 14 million losing their healthcare is just a “small sliver” of the population.

We must increase food stamps.  This is the only humane thing to do since so many go to sleep hungry at night, and besides it will create jobs and it’s good for the economy.

If food stamps spur economic growth why not just give them to everyone and on a handy plastic card that works at marijuana stores and casinos.

We must have comprehensive immigration reform, the code words for amnesty because it will create jobs and it’s good for the economy besides the illegals have earned the right to be citizens. This comes not from some general in La Raza it comes from our own Secretary of Homeland Security.  If illegal immigrants have earned the right to be citizens why don’t we just dispense with borders and give citizenship to every undocumented democrat who can walk across the line.

Look at these continuing soap operas we find as our national policy.  These are transparent wealth transfers, give aways, and oxymoronic programs building bridges to nowhere.  All passed by the gerrymandered representatives of K Street that make up the perpetually re-elected representatives of our nation and lame excuses for leadership proposed by empty suits who have occupied the White House since Reagan went home to California.

What’s a patriot to do?  There is a remedy in the Constitution for the failure of the Constitution.  It is found in Article V which describes the amendment process. This provides two ways to amend the Constitution: either Congress initiates an amendment or the States can call for a Constitutional Convention to consider amendments.  The first method has resulted in 27 amendments.  The second method has never been used.

Many people fear a Constitutional Convention.  Many believe that it would open a can of worms and lead to the destruction of our limited government.  Our limited government has already been co-opted by the Progressives and turned into a Leviathan which is quickly devouring every limit and every freedom in its path.

What we have is not working, and it hasn’t worked for quite some time.  I believe Article V at least provides a method to attempt to return to limited government peacefully.  Let’s give peace a chance.  I believe that the principles of liberty can win in the marketplace of ideas.  Let us engage in a debate to save our present and the future of our children.  To continue the way we are going leads to a democratic totalitarianism of the majority.

If we could find the faith and the courage to call a Constitutional Convention for what should we advocate?

I propose we do as our ancestors the Framers of our Constitution did when they were called upon to propose amendments to the Articles of Confederation.  I propose we write a completely new document.  Where do I get the chutzpa, the hubris to call for such an outcome?

By remembering why governments exist at all, “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”  And never forgetting “That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect (sic) their safety and happiness.”

Our system is broken and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put it back together again.  If we stay within the bounds of what has been done in the past what are we to do?  Propose a Balanced Budget Amendment or a Spending Restriction Amendment?  Or perhaps an amendment that says, “The Constitution means what it says not what judges interpret it to say” and then stand back while the Supreme Court interprets that to mean as one Chief Justice said, “The Constitution means what the Supreme Court says it means.”

If we continue to play the same game by the same rules we will lose the same hand because the deck is stacked.  This is when we need to remember: paths with no obstacles usually lead nowhere.

Let us be as bold and brave as our forefathers.  Let us propose fundamental change and roll the dice.  If you don’t swing the bat you don’t have a chance to hit the ball.  If we continue on the road we are traveling the only thing left to say is an attempt to explain how and why we let freedom slip from our grasp.

I believe that no one is as smart as everyone, so the ideas I am proposing I do not see as the beginning and end of debate.  I see them instead as a starting point.  Let’s join together, demand a hearing, and move forward in an attempt to reinstate limited government and preserve this last best hope of mankind.

First of all I stand for retaining the amendments with the exception of the 16th and 17th and enshrining them within the original document.

I propose eliminating the office of President and changing to a parliamentary style government based upon the majority in the House electing a Prime Minister who is head of government and head of State.  Elections for the House should continue on a two year basis.

I propose that we keep the Senate but that it reverts to its original intent as the representatives of the States and those Senators are once again elected by the legislatures of the States and serve at their pleasure.

I propose stronger guarantees for the States in a renewed Federalism: a true confederation similar to that of Switzerland.

I propose that since the scope of Federal jurisdiction will be severely restricted, the Federal Court System along with its power of judicial review be abolished.  The State court systems are well able to handle the civil and criminal cases brought within their boundaries.

I propose that the Supreme Court be abolished and replaced by a Constitutional Court similar to Germany’s.  This court would be physically removed from the capital, and it shall have no jurisdiction beyond Judicial Review having the power to declare laws and actions of the Federal Government unconstitutional.  The Congress shall have the power to override these rulings by a three quarter majority in both houses.  Judges shall serve four year terms with only two terms allowed.

I know that these proposals will make some people very upset.  I know these proposals will make some quit reading this History of the Future.  I also know that is we do not do something to break the log jam the river will not flow free.

Yes, there are what seem to be insurmountable obstacles to change.  I know these obstacles are daunting, and they will not be overcome by the timid.  However, paths with no obstacles usually lead nowhere, and if what we have is no longer working, why can’t we change.

Keep the Faith.  Keep the peace.  We shall overcome.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2014 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens

 

 

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