On this Constitution Day 2017

After 230 years, our founding document is beginning to show signs of wear and tear. No, I’m not talking about the actual document housed in its sealed case, but instead the wear and tear its principles are undergoing as people are taught less and less about its true meaning and purpose and those who would prefer the absolute power to be corrupted absolutely take advantage of the situation they lent a hand in creating.

In the last few days before I wrote this we have had people who aired their grievances by protesting in the streets and creating a violent disturbance about a trail verdict they disagreed with, others who object to the placement of statues, monuments, and other historical markers they deem to be racist or inappropriate to the point of tearing them down, and a gathering of “juggalos” that emulates two men who call themselves the Insane Clown Posse demonstrating in the nation’s capital because the government believes they are a gang. (I’m not a rap fan so don’t ask me what they sing.) Believe it or not, of the three, the juggalos and juggalettes seem to be petitioning for a redress of their grievances in the most proper way. Whooda thunk it? [And, before you ask, I have drank some share of Faygo – to me (and a few others) rock n’ rye was the best flavor, although I think many are partial to the redpop.]

Now it’s not just the Bill of Rights that people are taking advantage of. Consider what the government of today, particularly Congress, does to “promote the general welfare,” and compare it to a paraphrase attributed by the Annals of Congress to then-Rep. James Madison: “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” As economist and pundit Walter E. Williams correctly surmises, “Any politician who bore true faith and allegiance to the Constitution would commit political suicide.” And never mind the so-called “deep state” of bureaucrats that Congress has, over the years, ceded more and more of its oversight power to.

Thus, we have created a federal judiciary system with judges who often value the emotion of the so-called “victims” of a law more than what the Constitution says (or doesn’t say) about it, with the backing of the easily interpreted intent of those who wrote it to help guide them. We have created an educational system where Washington has an outsized role – even though the vast majority of the funding is raised locally – and it too often teaches children about their “rights” (whether real or created out of whole cloth) but not their responsibilities. And we have created an enforcement arm that can taint broad swaths of people with the accusation of being engaged in criminal activity based simply on music they listen to and symbols associated with it. (And before you say that’s well-deserved, ask yourself if you reacted like that when it was the TEA Party being scrutinized for criminal activity because they disagreed with policy decisions.)

I certainly wish the Constitution well on its birthday, but truly believe that too few understand its role in shaping our national history. Anymore it seems that if the Constitution conflicts with what they want then they call it outdated or irrelevant, but if it happens to be on their side suddenly they’re the stoutest defenders.

Many years ago I suggested some amendments to the document, and perhaps this is a good time to revisit these ideas with a little updating as needed. We have gone 25 years without a change to the Constitution, which is the longest drought in over a century. Aside from the 13th to 15th amendments in the few years after the War Between the States, the Constitution was largely untouched in the 19th century. But after the 16th Amendment was adopted in 1913, there was a flurry of activity in the following two decades that brought us up to the 21st Amendment, which repealed the earlier 18th Amendment that brought Prohibition. Another peak of activity in the 1960s and early 1970s was primarily to address civil rights, although the 26th Amendment established a national voting age of 18. But since 1992, when it was codified that Congress couldn’t vote itself a raise in its present term (an old idea originally intended as part of the Bill of Rights) we have left the body at 27 amendments.

So this is my updated version.

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If I were to ask for a Constitutional convention (allowed under Article V of the Constitution) I would ask for these amendments.

28th Amendment:

The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments are hereby repealed, and the original Constitutional language in Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 and Article I, Section 3, Clauses 1 and 2 affected by these amendments restored.

29th Amendment:

Congress shall make no law that codifies discrimination for or against any person based on their race, religion, gender or gender identity, or sexual orientation. This Amendment shall also be construed to include a prohibition on Congress enacting additional criminal code or punishment solely based on these factors.

30th Amendment:

Section 1. With the exception of the powers reserved for Congress in Article 1, Section 8 of this document, funds received by the federal government shall be disbursed as prescribed in the federal budget to the States in accordance with their proportion of population in the latest Census figures. No restriction shall be placed on how the several States use these funds.

Section 2. Congress shall not withhold funds from states based on existing state laws.

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The desired end result of these three amendments would be to restore state’s rights, make the government live within its means, and provide truly equal justice under the law. Naturally, I don’t foresee any of these passing in my lifetime (because, as I said, absolute power corrupts absolutely) but the idea still needs to be placed out there.

Can there be reconciliation between “Deplorables” and the pure of heart?

By Cathy Keim 

Congratulations to Michael for eleven years of monoblogue!  I am truly in awe of his ability to write on a variety of topics while working fulltime, writing for other venues, and squeezing in some time with his family.

I have been missing in action due to other responsibilities, but I hope to jump back in occasionally to comment on events now that my calendar has cleared a bit.

Today’s topic that got me fired up is the two-pronged attack on the “deplorables” of America.

First, Chip and Joanna Gaines of reality TV fame with their popular show Fixer Upper are under siege for attending a church where the pastor preaches the Bible!

My guess is that Chip and Joanna will do just fine, no matter what the totalitarian progressives throw at them.  I think that they will count the cost and then pay the price to continue serving Christ as they see fit even if it means losing their TV show.

On an individual level, we are all called to follow God first.  However, I do not believe that this means that persecuting the Gaines family for their religious beliefs should be ignored by the rest of us.  Indeed, the progressive bullies will only up their assault on Christians if they get away with this power play.

Since we live in a republic and as citizens have the right to help shape our public policies, then it is our duty to speak up for just and equitable treatment of all.  There is no evidence that the Chip and Joanna Gaines have been unjust to anybody.

The second attack on normal Americans is the insult that anybody that didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton must be a racist hater.  The Clinton campaign staff accused the Trump campaign staff of winning by appealing to racists while they participated in a “Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics discussion that was intended to record history by drawing out the internal deliberations of both campaigns.”

One example of the bitterness, as expressed by Clinton advisers Jennifer Palmieri and Karen Finney to Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and adviser David Bossie:

“Are you going look me in the face and say I provided a platform for white supremacists?” Kellyanne Conway asked incredulously. Both Palmieri and Finney nodded and said “yes.”

“I would rather lose than win the way you did,” Palmieri said.

“You guys are pathetic,” Trump adviser David Bossie replied, accusing them of a smear campaign against Bannon.

(Editor’s note: Bossie is also the National Committeeman for Maryland’s Republican Party.)

I understand that many of the progressives have so imbibed their own poison that they really do believe that most of America is inhabited by racist white people.  It was completely shocking to hear one of the Bernie Sanders’ campaign staffers, Symone Sanders, share that the Trump voters longed for the days of slavery to return when they say, “Make America Great Again!”

This is the hard part to comprehend.  About half of our nation really and truly believes that the other half is composed of horrible, morally corrupt people that long for white supremacy to rule the country. One can only hope that this continued outrageous shouting of racism will lose it power over the populace when no internment camps pop up.

The Left always wants to divide us.  They do not see individual people, but only cogs in a wheel to be manipulated by the government for the good of all (which actually means for the good of the elite.)  This is the direct opposite to how our Founding Fathers viewed the people of the United States: the people were to be in control of the government.

The rise of the TEA Party was a response to the out of control government.  People were motivated by the sheer volume of government excesses to work to stop them.

The spiraling federal debt, the collapse of the housing market, the takeover of health care, the overregulation of businesses, and a myriad of other governmental excesses led people to stand up and say no more!  While the eight-year reign of executive overreach by President Obama seemed to say that the TEA Party was impotent, it actually led to the collapse of the Democrat party.

President Obama set the tone for persecuting Americans that didn’t agree with his policies.  The IRS abused its power by going after opponents of Obama.  The IRS denied tax exempt status to conservative groups and audited opponents of the Obama administration.  The Justice Department refused to prosecute voter intimidation charges in Philadelphia because the accused were black.  The government picked winners and losers in the corporate world by giving huge loans to Solyndra only to see them go belly up.  The message was clear:  you will be rewarded if you do what the government wants and you will be punished if you don’t.

It is terrifying to have your government come after you for not supporting the desired policies. Take the case of Roger Pielke Jr., a professor whose research on climate change crossed the politically correct gospel of climate change.  Pielke has been harassed by an assortment of left wing groups funded by billionaires, by politicians, and finally by the president’s science advisor, John Holdren, after Pielke’s testimony before Congress didn’t support Mr. Holdren’s testimony.

Mr. Holdren followed up by posting a strange essay, of nearly 3,000 words, on the White House website under the heading, “An Analysis of Statements by Roger Pielke Jr.,” where it remains today.

This is stunning that a private citizen who engages in the public forum in his area of expertise should be pilloried by the White House.  Fortunately for Pielke – who notes that he indeed believes in anthropogenic climate change, but doesn’t think the evidence is there to support the theory that it has increased the amount or intensity of catastrophic weather events – he has tenure and the backing of his university.  Not all citizens are so lucky.

We should not be seeing Americans as black or Hispanic or white.  We should not be calling each other climate deniers, deplorables, and white supremacists without any evidence to back the claim.  We should be viewing all Americans as people created in the image of God with unalienable rights given by God, not by the government.

The progressives’ effort to delegitimize everyone who doesn’t believe exactly as they do will not end well for this country.  They are so sure that their hearts are pure, but at the same time they are absolutely convinced that the rest of us are black-hearted scum that do not deserve to live.  It is hard to see a path to reconciliation for the country when the opposition is that entrenched in their own reality.

I think that I feel pity for the people that are trapped in the world of their own making that is now imploding around them.  They didn’t see it coming.  All that they have been taught and have heard in their echo chambers of the media, academia, and popular culture has melted away on election night.  My pity is tempered by the realization that they are still quite dangerous and that they consider me and my Christian faith to be contemptible.

May God have mercy on our country and bring healing to us because I do not see any other way to mend the rifts between our citizens.

Scandal fatigue?

This William Warren cartoon seems to sum it up, doesn’t it? Between Benghazi, the IRS TEA Party targeting, the AP phones being tapped, the FOIA preferences at the EPA, questions on campaign finance in both 2008 and 2012, the Enroll America protection racket – the list can go on and on and on if you revert back to earlier activities like Operation Fast and Furious, Solyndra, or the handling of the Deepwater Horizon accident. And I’m not counting what goes on in Maryland, like the inmates taking over the prisons or having a governor who’s more concerned about presidential prospects than running the state. I suppose if power is the ultimate aphrodisiac then that must be why Democrats are pro-abortion; otherwise they would have a dozen or so children running around, by nearly as many mothers.

Now I’m certain the minuscule number of progressives and leftists who dare to read here would beg to differ and can probably point out all the scandals, conflicts of interest, and foibles of the Bush years, but really, guys, come on – what happened to the most transparent administration ever? I suppose in a perverse sort of way finding out about all these scandals is a type of transparency – too bad we were stonewalled every step of the way in finding out.

But are the American people and their notoriously short attention spans in danger of scandal fatigue in May of 2013, 18 months before the midterm elections? Sometimes the pre-emptive strike is the best thing in the long run, and there’s little chance of the rabidly partisan Democrats in the Senate turning on their leader and convicting him in the unlikely event we ever get to an impeachment trial. Moreover, Barack Obama doesn’t exactly strike me as a fall-on-the-sword kind of guy, so don’t bet on him resigning to save the country the agony of an impeachment trial like Richard Nixon did. Democrats know well what sort of electoral fate may await – the Republicans who placed country over party were “rewarded” by losing 48 House seats and 3 Senate seats in the 1974 elections, which were held just three months after Nixon left in disgrace.

Meanwhile, focusing on the scandals of the past will blind us to the issues of the present. Even if the GOP gains control of the Senate in 2014 – a likely possibility even without scandals as the sixth year of a presidency is traditionally unkind to the president’s party – the nation will simply revert back to the inverse of the situation we had back in 2007-2008, where a Republican president was crippled by a Democratic Congressional majority in both houses. Much of the damage was done in the two years the Democrats held absolute control of government, as the massive entitlement program dubbed Obamacare came into being and Barack Obama’s re-election means at least some of it will be in place by 2014. Once established, we haven’t killed an entitlement program yet. And there’s still the aspect of governing by executive order: “Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Kinda cool.”

Perhaps the one silver lining in all of this is the emergence of the new media as a force for uncovering these and other issues with the government in Washington. No longer do we have a small group of periodicals, newspapers, and television networks determining what is news and what remains on the cutting room floor. Certainly, there is a huge majority of the American public still in an celebrity gossip-induced slumber, but slowly people are beginning to see the light and it only takes an irate, tireless minority to effect real change.

In the meantime, though, there is plenty to write about for those obsessed with Obama scandals. That really is a shame because it makes it more difficult to argue with the other side on why their ideas are such a failure – I can hear it now: “Well, if you Republicans wouldn’t have made the Obama years such a partisan witch hunt he may have succeeded with his good ideas.”

But I suppose it comes back to the old saying about absolute power corrupting absolutely, doesn’t it? Do you see why the nation’s founders wanted a limited government yet?