Blog Post: Constitutional Governance

As I sit here writing my first blog, wondering where to start, I will attempt to bring to light the principles of our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. 

I will start by sharing my story of how I came to understand our founding principles, only three plus years ago. Back in 2009 as the economy starting falling apart and my business began to crash, I struggled to keep providing for my family. I began looking around to see who was leading our country and who was making the decisions which affect our economy.

Prior to 2009, I was not politically active, as I was occupied by working to provide for my family, however I was politically aware. I would watch political pundits argue on TV, I would get frustrated yelling and complaining about the decisions the politicians were making. All my yelling and complaining was not changing anything. 

Realizing that I wasn’t making a difference in my country, I began by studying our founding documents. The first thing I started reading was the Federalist Papers. I begin to understand what the founders were thinking and what they believed their role to be, in the founding of this new nation.

One has to understand where the founders were coming from and the relationship they had with Great Britain, and the reasons they decided to declare their independence.

The year was 1776 as Great Britain had put the burdens of taxation upon the colonies; the people became weary of sending the fruits of their labor to a faraway land and receiving no representation. One of the most notorious places this weariness manifested itself was the Boston tea party. The story of the Boston tea party was about taxation, cronyism, political favors and preferential treatment by those in power. 

You see the British East India Company was exempt from paying taxes to import their tea, while the colonial importers were subject to taxation by Great Britain.  As you can see we have come full circle, 235 years later we find ourselves having the same argument, are we a free people governed by the rule of law or a people ruled by the whims and favors of man?

The goal of our founders was to find a way to set up a government that would limit the ability of one man to become a ruler or dictator of another. They believed the nature of man is corrupt and desires power and greed. Their Goal was to set up a government which had separate and limited federal powers necessary to keep one man or group of people from ruling over the masses. 

In their fight for liberty our founders would declare their independence from Great Britain.  In the declaration of independence was a list of grievances against King George III, which I will cover in a future post.

The first sentence in the declaration of independence reads “When in the Course
of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political
bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation” in other words, they have a natural God given right as free people to be independent and declare their cause of being a separate people or Country. 

Now in 2012, we the people of the United States of America must declare independence, and that independents is from being dependent upon the government whether it be state, local or Federal for the necessities of our lives. 

We can begin this journey of independence by coming to the aid of our friends,
families and neighbors when we find them in need.  We can begin this process by refusing to take from the state or Federal government simply because everyone else is doing it. 

Being an independent people is not a choice of those who govern us is a decision of those who are governed. 

Be Free

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the
fatigue of supporting it." ~Thomas Paine