Respect for the President and Congress

Some people who have read my blog have no doubt thought that I do not have due respect for the President of the United States and for the Right Honorable Senators and Congressmen of the Congress of the United States. They are right in recognizing that I do not have any respect for the current occupier of the Office of the President and that I have respect for few members of Congress. Some of them will say that even when I disagree with them, I should have respect for the offices they hold.

I do respect the offices they hold. These offices in each case require that the man holding them swear to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States. Any, I repeat any, man or woman who does so has my very great respect. The Constitution is the bulwark of good government. It prescribes a government of limited and enumerated powers which is just strong enough to prevent the ills of anarchy and chaos, but not strong enough to be a menacing tyranny. The government we have today does not even make a reasonable attempt to live within its delimited powers in the Constitution. It hugely exceeds its granted powers and even when exercising a granted power, it all too rarely lives within the further constraint that that power be used for the General Welfare, rather than for special interest groups.

Of course, even well-intentioned office holders will make an occasional mistake. The mistakes of those who are truly attempting to follow the Constitution and live up to their responsibilities under it, are forgivable and do not generally remove the occasional offender beyond the protected edges of the umbrella of respect due to their office. But, when the office holder proclaims that he really does not believe in constitutional limits on his powers as Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Obama have, that office holder no longer stands beneath that umbrella of respect given to the Office of the President. When an office holder tells us that our rights are a grant of government, thereby implying that we serve government, that man deserves no respect simply because he occupies an office which would earn our respect if he were seriously attempting to fulfill its responsibilities in protecting the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The men and women of Congress and of the Office of the President whom I respect are those who are truly servants of the people, not those who believe they rule the people.

It is particularly clear that these office holders have no regard for the Constitution when they do not even read the bills in Congress that they vote for. If they have not read the bill they vote for, then they are not even willing to make the pretense that they are preserving the Constitution. They cannot claim that they have fulfilled their duty to exercise only constitutionally granted powers, since they do not know what the bill says and how that relates to the Constitution. They are making it very clear to us that they do not respect the Constitution. Those who have read the Constitution and read our history and the discussions of the Framers of the Constitution and those who discussed the Bill of Rights when it was considered by the People, already understood this. But, now no one, not even the most constitutionally and historically ignorant, can escape the understanding that Congress and the President have no respect for our Constitution. Frankly, they lust for power so much, they will not allow the Constitution to deter them.

Especially lately, we have seen the phenomena of many office holders believing that the People are incompetent in living their own lives and need a Nanny State to micromanage their lives. These office holders view themselves as the Elite who will run this apparatus to perform this miracle of managing everyone's life from prenatal care to our grave and our estate taxes beyond the grave. In fulfilling this highly presumptuous role, they continually reduce the size and scale of the free market and all voluntary associations and replace them with mammoth government, which will rule us with force. They replace a rich mix of options suitable to the needs of the vast majority of a highly individualistic and differentiable People with a one-size-fits-all government service. They replace a cornucopia of choice with mandates and limits. They treat the People as though they were mere children to be grounded or required home before 10 PM on those rare occasions they are allowed out.

Lately, some of the People have attempted to bring petition of their grievances to the federal government, as is their right, which is recognized in the Constitution. They have exercised their freedom of speech and of assembly. Many Congressmen and the President have claimed these same People are just angry mobs of lobbyists working for special interest groups in industries guided by a greed for money. This has made it clear to many, finally, that our present government holds the People in contempt.

Such office holders, though they may occupy offices which command the respect of a free and rational People, are despicable. They are an offense and a disgrace to the offices they hold. Our respect for those offices requires us to condemn them with our utmost contempt. These politicians are frauds, scalawags, megalomaniacs, and thieves. It is the duty of the People to throw them all out of office. We must begin anew and demand respect for our Constitution and for the People the Constitution serves. We must stand sure for the principle that good government is that government which allows the people to choose their own values and manage their own lives. This is what it means to say that we the People have an inalienable right to our lives, our liberty, our property, and our pursuit of happiness.