People need to stop using the R-word. Just remember that we are right and they are wrong. If we truly believe in the exceptionalism of our system we have to believe that we can win this historic struggle within that system.
But let’s ask an honest question. Who are the real revolutionaries here?
Several months ago I was listening to a Mark Levin show podcast and was reminded that because of our nation’s birth in a revolution, all Americans are in effect revolutionaries. History is certainly full of examples of groups of people rebelling against a colonial power, but our birth was not just a revolt against the nation-state of England. The birth of the United States of America and the evolution of what became our Constitution in the years that followed represented a revolution against an otherwise accepted notion of the appropriate role of government in the lives of free people. Unlike so many other revolutions in history, which end up enslaving the populace in the false freedom of central control and collectivism, our revolution freed up individuals to excel and succeed in ways unprecedented in world history. America is not great because of government but because of the things that free people can do if government will stay out of their way, acting as an umpire instead of a parent.
Those on the left who are now briefly in power are in effect counter-revolutionaries revolting against the principles of the Constitution. Nothing in either the specific words of the Constitution, nor in the well documented debates or the arguments in the Federalist Papers, could even come close to supporting the notion that the legitimate enumerated powers of the federal government include instituting a national health care system. It requires a ridiculously expansive interpretation of the Commerce Clause – one that accepts that the Congress can regulate anything anywhere as long as it gets bought or sold – to support most of the mechanisms of the modern liberal welfare state. Interestingly, American Thinker published an article today comparing some quotes from The Federalist Papers to Obama Care.
Concerning Article 1, Section 8(3) of the Constitution that “Congress shall have the power to regulate Commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes,” Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 17:
“The administration of private justice between the citizens of the same state; the supervision of agriculture, and of other concerns of a similar nature; all those things, in short, which are proper to be provided for by local legislation, can never be desirable cares of a general jurisdiction.”
(Note: if a transaction between a doctor and patient is not local and therefore subject to local and not general jurisdiction, like buying produce from a farmer, then I don’t know what is. Article I, Section 8 was clearly focused on regulating commerce with foreign nations, eliminating multiple currencies within the states and removing inter-state tariffs in place during the Articles of Confederation. The Founding Fathers are turning in the graves at this massive intrusion into individual liberty.)
The counter revolutionaries have certainly achieved a huge victory. There is no denying it. Somehow, even though we have all been making our voices heard in this debate, they remain on the offensive and we are still playing defense. But remember who is defending what. We are defending the Constitutional principles that made this country the freest and most successful country in the history of human kind. They are leading a counter-revolution against the principles of the American Revolution. They are the revolutionaries.
November is Trenton. Yorktown is a long way away.
We all know that we are going to enjoy significant wins at the polls in November. What we need to remember is that our gains in November will only be analogous to Washington’s victory at Trenton on the day after Christmas in 1776. It will be the first victory in what should be planned as a long, multi-front counterattack on the gains already made by the Constitution-hustling American statists. We have a tough row to hoe.
Though I found the American Thinker article quoted above after writing this post because I was looking for Federalist Papers references, Jakeway’s article ends with the same basic (though more stirring) call for patriots to come to the aid of their country that I attempted last night in American Up.
From that American Thinker article:
The Founding Fathers defined the citizens as the natural guardians of the Constitution. Ultimately, it comes down to us. Remember the immortal motto of Gen. Nathaniel Greene who led his rag-tag militia across the Carolina in 1779-1780, “lost” every battle until providing the Continentals their first major victory at Kings Mountain and cut down Cornwallis’ troops from 30,000 to 15,000 before he quit Charleston and headed to Yorktown:
“I fight, I am defeated, I rise and fight again.”
It is precisely now that one must not despair. Now is the time for lovers of liberty to throw themselves into the national scale. You are the natural guardians of the Constitution. Now is not the time for Summer Soldiers and Sunshine Patriots; now is the time for the heirs of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Hancock, Ben Franklin, James Monroe, John Adams, John Paul Jones, Patrick Henry, Nathaniel Greene and Ethan Allen.
You have a choice. What will it be? Acquiescence? Submission? Defeat? Where would we be if all the aforementioned had quit when they faced a little headwind (and, comparatively speaking, this is light breeze next to Valley Forge). Be ashamed; be very ashamed if you choose to go gently into that dark neo-Soviet night. Be assured; a new dawn of American liberty will rise as American Patriots resolve to protect their Constitution and use all of its provisions to protect their liberties.
Yep.
