Obama vs. Our Founders

“Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. — James Madison, Federalist Paper 51

A political regime has three dimensions: the ruling institutions, the rulers, and the way of life of the people. In America, the rulers—the people themselves—and their ruling institutions—staffed by the people’s representatives aim at securing the Creator-endowed natural rights of all citizens. The Framers did this in two ways — Vertical and Horizontal.

In the American regime, the Constitution is the “supreme law of the land.” No one branch is superior to it; all three branches have a duty to abide by it. While each of the three branches plays a unique role in the passage, execution, and interpretation of laws, all of the branches must work together in the governing process.

The Vertical form of our ruling offices or institutions is called Federalism — it includes the states, counties and municipalities. This structure prevents the United States government from becoming overbearing — every citizen can participate in self-government. It prevents American from becoming utopian.

The Horizontal framework is how our Founders separated the powers of the elected and appointed representatives.

Madison wanted a “Compound Republic” where passion of action would be impaired. A weak government would be too weak to secure our rights from an overbearing legislature. Jefferson said ”one hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one, a few or many”. Compound Republicanism makes government more moderate and just by forcing it to act slowly and deliberately.

Madison stated in Federalist No. 47: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

In 1690 John Locke published his Second Treatise of Civil Government in which he stated:

“And hence it is, that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power, does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life: for I have reason to conclude, that he who would get me into his power without my consent, would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for nobody can desire to have me in his absolute power, unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom, i.e. make me a slave.”

With Locke’s thoughts in mind James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper No. 47:

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Madison stated in Federalist 57:

“If it be asked, what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and, above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America—a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.

If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but liberty.”

Continuing this line of thinking Madison stated in Federalist No. 55:

“As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.”

If the people are the sovereigns, if we want to govern ourselves, we must make our own laws This sensible self-government was to be and for years was our way of life.

All the above was debated in 1787 and was the thinking that went into the formation of our Constitution.

Throughout modern history, those who sought to control and expand the reach of government often resorted to exploiting mankind's most dominant trait: an innate desire to survive and prosper. To that end, the people would be promised a utopia on earth — a promise that could never be fulfilled. This is not only the most cynical of all political tactics, but also one whose proponents are interested only in self-aggrandizement and the accumulation of power, in other words they would be the “masterminds” of our lives and fate.

This strategy has three component parts: 1) promise the populace "fairness" and lifelong personal security; 2) create out of whole cloth villains who must be dispatched, as they are determined to make certain that there is no "fairness"; and 3) never fail to reassure the people that everything is under control. Unfortunately, these tactics have often succeeded in their initial stages, as there is a willingness among the people to accept the guarantees of the political class, but in the long term, a catastrophe has resulted for those societies who wholeheartedly embraced these transparent and fallacious precepts. Such recent examples would be Germany under the Nazi regime, Italy under Mussolini’s Fascist government, and the Soviet Union under the communism of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. This is also the Eurocentric socialism that has existed in Western Europe and Great Britain for the past 40 years. It is the utopian socialism once described by the post-war German economist Ludwig Erhard as “Socialismus mit Herz” (Socialism with a Heart).

Nonetheless, this game plan was the foundation of the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama. Now facing failure and defeat in 2012, Barack Obama and his minions are accelerating the demonization of their political opponents, often in the most vile and false ways possible, and pulling out all the stops in pitting various segments of society against one another regardless of the potential damage inflicted upon the American culture.

This desperation by the left and Barack Obama is indicative of the reality that both do not have a clue as to why their socialist/Marxist approach and theory are not and will never be successful, as the primary focus of this ideology has been to manipulate the base nature of mankind to the advantage of its proponents.

While some may willingly choose to pursue subsistence on their own terms, to the vast majority of the human race, the path of least resistance for survival and prosperity is the most desired. Thus, mankind is susceptible to financial scams, gambling, crime, and resentment, or to violence towards those who may have more. But above all, the preponderance of humanity is very open to the concept of a central authority providing people with the means of livelihood, and said people are thus willing to be swayed by the siren song of cradle-to-grave security.

A fatal characteristic of human race is the need, by some within the group, to conquer or maintain total control over their fellow man. Those who considered themselves masterminds superior to the masses — and who, in the distant past, may have achieved ruling status through the power of intimidation over the illiterate — now have to look to other means to achieve control of the levers of government.

The easiest course to assume this power is to promise that the state, in return for the support of the people, will provide the citizenry cradle-to-grave economic security. Thus, a Faustian bargain encompassing the desire by the majority for ease of survival and others for the need to rule is entered into. The populace, having committed itself to this compact, will expect never-ending freedom from adversity.

However, within this arrangement is the seed of its own destruction. For socialism to succeed, it must have an economic underpinning that can provide the foundation for massive social spending. The Soviet Union, as early as the 1920s and '30s, proved that complete state control of the means of production was a colossal failure, as the USSR could not produce sufficient wealth to support the population. Today, many nations in Europe are facing insolvency and social chaos as they had pursued a version of socialism wherein the state has de facto control over wealth-creation through regulations, taxes, and mandates necessitated by the unrestrained spending on guaranteed social programs coupled with unachievable promises.

Only an unfettered capitalist economic system, which is anathema to a powerful central government and its attendant oligarchy, can produce sufficient wealth necessary to underwrite a basic social safety net for the general public, finance the national security of a country, and provide an ever-increasing standard of living for the people.

Capitalism, reflective of that portion of mankind choosing to seek subsistence on their own terms, does by its nature celebrate the success of the individual, not the collective. Individuals, separately or together, driven by the motive of self-enrichment, produce goods or services desired by others. In the process, jobs and wealth are created, thus benefiting society as a whole.

A massive tension exists between those who adhere to central government control and fealty to socialist or Marxist philosophy and those who produce the wealth of a nation. As the state inherently has more power than the individual, and once the left-wing element of the ruling class assumes power, government begins an inexorable process of injecting itself into the affairs of the individual and producer class (which is always a minority in any society).

Those who believe they have a manifest destiny to rule and are faithful to socialist tenets have a predisposition to control the populace and economic activity through laws, regulations, taxes, and intimidation. Despite the lesson of the Soviet Union and its state control of the economy and the failure of modern day Euro-Socialist democracies, every new generation of adherents to socialist ideology believes that he can make this fallacious philosophy work and maintain socialists' arrangement with the citizenry.

Madison warned of this in Federalist No. 62:

“The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uninformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any manner affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few, not for the many.”

But the reality is no one can do this, as the economic engine of capitalism will not continue to produce wealth if it is increasingly put under the thumb of bureaucrats and central planners inevitably attempting not only to institute state control of the economy, but also to regulate the day-to-day activities of all citizens. The motivation of the producer class will be stifled, and that class's members will then drop out, join the dependent class, or simply move on to other, more hospitable countries — leaving behind a stagnant and ultimately declining economy and diminished national wealth.

As history has shown, (most recently in Europe and now in the United States), left-leaning governments will inevitably turn to excessive and unsustainable borrowings as well as inflation to finance their societal obligations. The unwritten contract between the statists masterminds and the citizens who were promised cradle-to-grave security cannot be maintained; the economic underpinning of this arrangement will be quickly eroded.

Social and economic chaos resulting in a dramatically lower standard of living will inexorably ensue and, in some cases, lead to violence or revolution. No amount of promises; demonization of capitalism; or seizure of the means of production, confiscatory taxes, or the printing of money will reinstitute prosperity or security for the people.

This is the path on which President Obama and his fellow travelers have placed the United States. After just three years, the nation faces an unsustainable growth trajectory in national debt, a deteriorating economy, and a society in decline. The American people have been repeatedly told that Barack Obama is the most intelligent and empathetic person to ever occupy the Oval Office. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as he is incapable of understanding — or else unwilling to understand — why his unshakable belief in Marxist socialist ideology, as well as his actions as president, has placed the nation in such jeopardy.

The Obama re-election strategy of not defending or acknowledging these failures, but instead doubling down on the dishonest demonization of the opposition and further polarizing the populace by creating and exploiting race, class, and gender fissures in society, is beneath contempt. It is reflective of the tactics used by many of the despots during the past century, whose only interest was to accumulate and retain power. Barack Obama and the Democratic Party cannot be allowed to succeed with this line of attack; they must be rejected by the American people in November.