By
M.
Richard Maxson
In
that hot summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, the framers set down their
vision of a self-governing Republic. A country where citizens would
no longer be ruled but to live life and find happiness in their own
way, not though a government or ruler but though their own states,
their own communities, their own families. Realizing
the reality of our human condition they knew that some form of
limited government was necessary.
James Madison played an
important role in the writing of our Constitution. "I
am not aware of a single example of any of the founders of America
believing that man was basically good. This is not cynical. It’s
just the reality and has led to the most prosperous forms of
government—and economics too." They took care to limit the powers of the government and
to keep them true with a series of checks and balances. Like the
other founders, Thomas Jefferson said that power should be divided
for everybody’s sake: “The way to have good and safe government
is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many…”
The notion of a democracy was dismissed a faux freedom form of
government. During the ratification debates, one critic prophesied
that if citizens ratified the constitution, the forms of republican
governments would soon exist "in appearance only" in America, as had
occurred in ancient Rome which started out as a republic, became a
democracy, then a de-facto dictatorship. They decided that a bi-camel representative
government was the purest form of freedom.
However
American republicanism would indeed eventually decline, but the
declined took a century to began and unfold with much less malice
than it did at the end of the Roman Republic. It was not due to some
defect in the Constitution, but rather to repeated to undermining by
the Supreme Court, the president, and the Congress. They have
abrogated their duties under the Constitution.
The
Congress, under the Constitution, is where all laws are made. Yet, in
the last eighty or so years, through legislation, laws are being made unconstitutionally by agencies of the federal government such as the
FTC, SEC, FDA, etc. Congress spends much of it’s time on
investigations which should be done from the Justice Department.
Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that Congress should do
possible criminal investigations.
The
Supreme Court, under the Constitution, is to interpret legislation
for it’s constitutionality in the way it was written with the
guarantee of liberty annexed expectation of self reliance. What has
happened is that some justices have taken it upon themselves to “fix”
the constitution without amendments as required by law. They make
their own law, a "living constitution," that they believe empowers the
Supreme Court to sit as a permanent constitutional convention,
issuing decrees that keep our government evolving with the modern
era’s ever changing conditions. This “living constitution” also
permits countless supposedly expert administrative agencies, like the
SEC and the EPA, to make rules like a legislature, administer them
like an executive, and educate and punish infractions of them like a
judiciary.
The
President, under the Constitution, should propose legislation, deal
with foreign governments, command the military as Commander-in-Chief,
among other duties. Making legislation by executive decree is NOT
what the Framers intended and NOT what the Constitution states.
Current presidents have done this because they feel that not enough
good legislation has been forthcoming from Congress and that is
because THEY are not doing their job.
The
result today is a crisis of legitimacy, with the accelerant of the
agenda driven corporate news media fueling the anger with which
Americans now glare at one another.
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