Last week I listed a few things about this past election that “make me sad”. By far the saddest thing in my estimation is the lack of knowledge Americans have about the proper role of the Federal government. Very briefly stated, the chief purpose of the Constitution was to allow the governing of the states without sacrificing liberty, as noted in the preamble by these words “and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity“. According to the Constitution, most power rests in the states, while the powers of the federal government are clearly defined and restricted to a few powers that would benefit all of the states and people equally. This principle of governing, called Federalism, protects liberty by having the state governments act as a check, or counter balance, to the centralized federal government. This principle, Federalism, was used because of the fear that those who control the military (a Federal government power) also have the power to destroy liberty. The remaining federal powers are to control issues between the states like commerce and legal matters, to produce and protect the money supply, establish a system of weights and measures, to provide a post office and interstate roads, provide copyright and bankruptcy protections, to establish courts of law, and finally, raise the taxes and borrow the money necessary to perform its assigned functions. All other powers (according to the 10th amendment) rest with the states or the people.
The Constitution established a government that when put into use would protect the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence. During the past century our Constitution has been progressively ignored and violated by the people elected to Federal offices – each of whom has taken an oath to protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Since the 1930s, the citizens of the United States, out of ignorance or apathy, have repeatedly elected politicians who violate their oath, disregard the Constitution, usurp the powers of both the states and the people, and infringe upon the individual’s rights. Is there any wonder that this makes me sad? My entire life I have been watching the greatest nation on earth, the only nation on earth devoted to the individual’s rights, be eroded and corrupted.
Much of the ignorance is, I believe, the result of the public education system – a system that has been run by liberals for many decades. When my father went to school there was a large emphasis on civics and American history. By the time my daughter was going to school, she was actually being taught about a “wonderful” new government system called Communism, where everybody has everything they need and nobody does without. A brief conversation about how kids she knew would react to these principles being enacted was enough to let her see for herself that this system would not work. While not all teachers openly support communism like hers did, many support and discuss principles of socialism in the classroom. Students have little practical experience in life and therefore don’t see the faults in these systems. They grow up actually believing in the pipe dream socialism and communism represent. They don’t think enough about it to realize that, as Margaret Thatcher once said, socialism only works until you run out of other people’s money. You only need to look at the pathetic failures of communism this past century or the current failure of “democratic socialism” in Europe to know that she was correct. These failures are not well taught in our schools, so why would the students or young adults know any of this? The answer: most of them don’t.
Thomas Jefferson said that the government they gave us was only fit for governing an educated, civil and moral society. Ours is no longer a well-educated society. This needs to be corrected and can be corrected. I am not so sure about being able to have our society become more civil or moral….
Another problem that makes me sad is that we have become a nation of sound-bites. Many people get their news and form their opinions from 30 second sound-bites. This election really pointed that out.
An example of this is the fictitious “war on women”. I actually heard young women say things like “they are going to take away abortion” and “they want to stop birth control”. WOW! Talk about buying into spin and a sound bite! Did they bother looking into or finding out about what started this? Or what the truth was? No. So, what started from the congressional attempt to defend our freedom of religion from the assault of Secretary Sebelius’ directive that church organizations must pay for abortions and birth control, even if they go against church beliefs, morphed into the completely different and unrecognizable “war on women”. The Democrat Party orchestrated this morph and masterfully used social media and mainstream media to repeatedly push its spin and the sound bite. Result? A large young woman voter turnout that voted heavily for Democrats.
Another example of a group buying into spin would be the college students. They were basically told that the Republicans would stop the government college loans and they would not be able to afford school. Well, we should stop the federal government making student loans. (That is the sound-bite.) But, this doesn’t mean they can’t afford to go to school. Do any of these students realize that less than 4 years ago the Federal government didn’t do school loans? No. They don’t know that the private sector banks made the loans. They didn’t get told that and the sound-bite about stopping Federal college loans was repeated and repeated. Result? A large college student turn-out that voted heavily for the Democrats.
So, what makes me sad about this past election is that it highlighted: the decades of inferior education, the technique of divide and conquer, the art of political spin and lies, the lack of analytical thought and awareness of the past.