Posted on 09/15/2016 1:25:03 AM PDT by Jacquerie
America 2016 is in a bad place. Our once republic of laws, in which carefully designed institutions served the noble ends enumerated in the Preamble to the Constitution, has been rendered into something resembling a criminal enterprise in which rulers serve their ambition and avarice while the nation suffers.
What to do? While over the course of this blog I have rarely approached extra-constitutional means to restore free government, recent events demand a look at all options. What prompts my reevaluation are Hillary’s get-out-jail-free card from the FBI, and the administration’s ongoing efforts to silence, if not criminalize, political opposition. Institutions designed to secure freedom have been turned into instruments of oppression. Toss in the DHS trial balloon to nationalize presidential elections, and it is clear to even the most dullard that the democrat party does not intend to relinquish power.
Five hundred years ago, Niccolo’ Machiavelli also looked about his beloved republic, Florence, and viewed high corruption. His subsequent study of past republics that found themselves mired in wickedness may offer a clue or two to restoring free American government.
Illegal actions, if not outright felonies, are sometimes necessary to establish republics. Romulus murdered his brother, created a senate, and with it, the Roman Republic. Closer to home, George Washington occasionally resorted to the confiscation of private property in order to feed and keep his soldiers. Machiavelli wrote, “It is truly appropriate that while the act accuses him, the result excuses him, and when the result is good, like that of Romulus, it will always excuse him, because one should reproach a man who is violent in order to ruin things, not one who is so in order to set them aright.”
Such men, Machiavellian Men, who use power to establish free institutions that outlive them, are rare.
To the contrary, consider the last eight years of Obama. Among the few promises he kept were those to transform the nation. He did so almost entirely through executive decrees and regulations. These are backed up by the will of one man, and not the enormous heft of republican, statutory law from congress. Along the way, he violated his oath of office too many times to count, and should have been impeached and removed within months of taking office in 2009. An emasculated congress, too timid to even submit appropriation bills to the President, is far too weak to oppose, let alone remove, an almost despotic ruler. Obama’s accomplishments are horribly destructive, yet they are built on flimsy foundations and can be reversed by the next president.
When another man takes office in 2017, should he likewise use illegal and unconstitutional means to transform the nation, this time toward the good, rather than for evil? Our nation expects a President Donald Trump to excise the rot, to reverse the decay in government. He is a lifelong seasoned executive who knows how to set priorities, develop plans, give orders and get things done. He doesn’t prevaricate or blame others. Rest assured, in Donald Trump, America will have a president comfortable with selling his ideas to an eager and waiting nation.
Like Obama, President Trump will likely have to go around congress to achieve his ends. Yes, I can hardly believe I’m writing this, that our situation demands extraordinary, extra-constitutional efforts to restore Constitutional, free government. Trump must let the nation know through his actions that the powers unconstitutionally seized by Obama are also his, that he will use them to wipe the executive branch clean of progressives and islamists. When challenged in court, he must do as Obama has done; delay, obfuscate and let the years pass as his political enemies beat their heads against a slow moving justice system.
But unlike Obama, and like Romulus and George Washington, President Trump MUST work to reestablish free government institutions. Along the way, President Trump must encourage the states to apply for an Article V convention to limit the power and jurisdiction of the national government. As a robust leader, he is uniquely qualified to lead an uneasy and restive nation toward renewal of founding principles. Educate the nation how a popularly derived Senate renders the noble ends of our beloved Constitution impossible. Free government can only be restored when congress once again assumes its proper place in our Framers’ wonderful design.
I’m convinced that Donald Trump is the Machiavellian Man of public virtue that America so desperately needs.
We are the many; our oppressors are the few. Be proactive. Be a Re-Founder. Join Convention of States.
Reference:
Machiavelli, N. (2008). Discourses on Livy, Translated by Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Book I Chapter 9.
Every criminal in DC HAS to be punished or it is for nothing. The cockroaches will just hide for a brief period otherwise.
If you are watching Trumps speeches, they have turned from a laser focus on the Democrat corruption and is now broadening that focus on the establishment in DC as a whole.
It is going to be a rough and tumble 2 years to the mid-terms, but I will predict his main aim personally will be to out them with the aid of the bully pulpit. Also, by focusing on the DC establishment, he opens up the voter base even more.
WOW! HOORAY Jacquerie
This is what I have been preaching since Trump got seriously into the race. The author here says it rather better than I have done. Some of the things he must do are to abolish the EPA and most of the other Agencies and unilaterally write off most of their regulations. That Article 5 Convention is a requirement, and it is no guarantee, just a chance that the country can get it right.
Agreed. Americans who don’t understand that they are being oppressed by the bureaucrats and elitists in Washington don’t deserve America. And it is not worth living in this country as a middle-class working schmuck with these people in charge. They are laughing at Americans while they steal from us to give our money to Iranians and progressive causes that go against middle-class values. I don’t know who that stupid Pepe the frog is, but he is NOT the problem. The elites are.
May a million subpoenas bloom!
I’m hoping it will be a scene out of Grant’s administration when he opened up his safe boxes and discovered all the bonds and treasury notes missing and the town emptying out of carpetbaggers, copperheads and assorted criminal freaks.
...and we agree on every point but the need for Article 5 to be exercised. If Hillary wins, perish the thought, or perish the Republic, there won’t be an Article 5 and if Trump wins there won’t be any reason to have one, as the country will be so elated at having someone in charge who loves America, that there will be no interest in stirring that pot.
One question for Article V proponents: What leads you to believe that any new amendments to the Constitution will be rigorously obeyed and enforced when the current ones are largely ignored?
Thanks, PG.
Thank Y O U !!! HOORAY Jacquerie. BTTT! WOW!
You may have me confused with a proponent. I am not, for the same reason you stated.
Sorry...not directed specifically at you. While I see potential benefits to an Article V convention, one of my concerns is the question I posited and I would like to hear from the hardcore supporters on it, so in that sense, my question was thrown out there for anybody who cared to answer it. Our founders were pretty clear that the Constitution was workable only for a moral society and would not work for any other. We can amend all we want, but those amendments are only as good as the people who are willing to obey and enforce them. They could be ignored just as the powers that be already selectively ignore the clauses and amendments they choose to now.
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