Still the Last Best Hope

America remains, in spite of the left, the Last Best Hope of Man. As the New Year starts and the 2016 presidential race begins in earnest, that is a vital truth to grasp. Happy optimism, not grouchy despair, ought to inspire conservatism today.

Yes, the national debt is huge and growing; entitlements and debt service will soon swallow each tax dollar. Yes, Obama has tried as hard as he can to undo the American Dream and will try in 2015 to fight us with unconstitutional rule by executive fiat. Yes, the educational and informational establishment is firmly in the hand of leftist cadres, and the ignorance of Americans is appalling and growing.

Sadly, the incessant whiners don't have one iota of an idea of what real misery is. Yet. The takers think they have a hard row to hoe, maybe they sould move someplace better. Oh say, some refugee camp in the Sudan. Or maybe the slums of Rio de Janero. The shanty towns of some "thriving" post apartheid city in South Africa. They should be kissing the ground they walk on for having life so freakin' easy. Even with the "improving" relations with Cuba, there's still folks wanting to make the 90 mile trek across the shark infested straits to get here.

A line from a Kurt Kaiser hymn begins, "It only takes a spark to get a fire going, and soon all those around can warm up in its glowing."

Perhaps the same might be said for exposing the uniquely American beacon of liberty whose beams summoned oppressed people from all over the world to America for over 200 years.

Our Constitution embodied a UNIQUE IDEA. Nothing like it had ever been done before. The power of the idea was in the recognition that people's rights are granted directly by the Creator - not by the state - and that the people, then, and only then, grant rights to government. The concept is so simple, yet so very fundamental and far-reaching.

America's founders embraced a previously unheard-of political philosophy which held that people are "...endowed BY THEIR CREATOR with certain unalienable rights.." This was the statement of guiding principle for the new nation, and, as such, had to be translated into a concrete charter for government. The Constitution of The United States of America became that charter.

Other forms of government, past and present, rely on the state as the grantor of human rights. America's founders, however, believed that a government made up of imperfect people exercising power over other people should possess limited powers. Through their Constitution, they wished to "secure the blessings of liberty" for themselves and for posterity by limiting the powers of government. Through it, they delegated to government only those rights they wanted it to have, holding to themselves all powers not delegated by the Constitution. They even provided the means for controlling those powers they had granted to government.

This was the unique American idea. Many problems we face today result from a departure from this basic concept. Gradually, other "ideas" have influenced legislation which has reversed the roles and given government greater and greater power over individuals. Early generations of Americans pledged their lives to the cause of individual freedom and limited government and warned, over and over again, that eternal vigilance would be required to preserve that freedom for posterity.

Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III: ISBN 0-937047-01-5

Essay reprints available here.

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