Times to Try Our Souls

Coolidge and Reagan defended and defined constitutional conservatism: the results are obvious, and speak volumes

Times to Try Our Souls

 2014, it may be prudent to face what is before us with solemnity; a year of sacrifice, of faithful and courageous—if not dangerous—living, as extraordinary times often require extraordinary bravery and endurance. 2014 is the initial year of a time to try our souls: King Barry-care has arrived.


Thomas Sowell defined this unfolding nightmare in “A New Year and Old Problems” (Dec. 31, 2013):

What ObamaCare has done, thanks to Chief Justice Roberts’ Supreme Court decision, is reduce us all from free citizens to cowed subjects, whom the federal government can order around in our own personal lives, in defiance of the 10th Amendment and all the other protections of our freedom in the Constitution of the United States.

The 2013 birthday of Jesus the Christ brought forth prayers to “...free us from the evil charlatan who squats in our national house befouling our nation” as one succinct plea espouses. Full of apprehension and confusion, heart-felt prayers beseech divine intervention for a return to constitutional governance: wistfully nostalgic imaginings of an existential condition the U.S. hasn’t enjoyed for multiple decades.

Our ship of state—tugged mercilessly by human nature—has pulled against the worn restraining lines securing government to its’ constitutional piers since the 1880’s, if not before the Civil War. Today our federal Leviathan is unmoored from the Constitution, churning to a fate of doom as passengers, crew and captain remain oblivious to impending breach of hull, torrent of water, and Davy Jones locker.


While I passionately agree the Lord works in mysterious ways, it remains entirely up to us—using our faith as a source of strength—to elect Constitutional Conservatives at the local, state, and federal level in 2014; we can do more, as we certainly must. Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz will blaze our political trail; it will behoove the survival of our republic to follow their leads. “We the People” can make the 2010 landslides appear as a warm-up for a 2014 main event; a reasonable expectation, if we give it our best.

Our Framers expounded upon a necessity for virtue, the most redeeming of qualities for an involved electorate and a prerequisite for sustaining the American Republic: one they courageously set forth—sailing into history—through divinely inspired effort. We’re overdue for a conservative majority to make the case and prove decisively we contain at least a modicum of the Framers wisdom and resolve.

With his letter to Edward Carrington (Jan. 16, 1787), Thomas Jefferson phrased it thus:

“Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature.”


Third Party Reality
Often read or heard lately is the hue and cry for a new political party; a third, meaningful entrant into the political arena, as alternative political parties prove moot against what may be described today as a one-party system with two parallel branches: both sharing equal contempt for the American electorate.
Angelo M. Codevilla, author of “The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It,” phrased it quite eloquently in his article “Breaking the UniParty” (Dec. 15, 2013):

The Republican Party’s leaders have functioned as junior members of America’s single ruling party, the UniParty. Acting as the proverbial cockboat in the wake of the Democrats’ man-of-war, they have made Democratic priorities their own when the White House and the Congress were in the hands of Republicans as well as in those of Democrats, and when control has been mixed. The UniParty, the party of government, the party of Ins, continues to consist of the same people. The Outs are always the same people too: American conservatives. They don’t have a party.

Perhaps instead of a new party, a more effective plan is to re-capture the party of Lincoln, Coolidge, and Reagan from the Progressive RINO Establishment; that’s what Reagan did, by hammering home his message of constitutional conservatism. After two electoral landslides, most would agree Reagan connected with the American people; history readily proves the remarkable successes of his policies.

If we can’t muster enough actual support from conservatives to do the heavy lifting (door-knocking, precinct work, phone calls, donations, organization meetings, TEA Party networking, etc., all after a long day’s work) necessary to re-claim the Republican brand by educating voters and drawing clear distinctions between conservative candidates and those backed by establishmentarian, how would we make a go of it with a new party? Applied discipline is key; without it, we’re only fooling ourselves.




Reagan/Palin Message to America

By reiterating constitutional conservatism, Reagan merely undertook the task of saying what he meant and meaning what he said; a forth-rightness that resonated powerfully with Americans. His positions were built on foundations of reason, principal, logic, experience, virtue and integrity of facts. Reagan knew the Declaration, the Constitution, and understood the societal importance of the Rule of Law. Reagan was light years removed from the complicit media clich√© of a shallow Hollywood “B” actor.

His conservative message was further enhanced by his genuineness and down-to-earth bonhomie. Voters instinctively understood and accepted Reagan’s unapologetic and deeply ingrained love for America, as well as his faith in the American People. The same is true today of Gov. Sarah Palin; an experienced, thoroughly vetted, charismatically articulate constitutional conservative, with the record to prove it. Americans love her for the same reasons they loved Ronald Reagan: Palin loves America, and is not afraid one whit to fight with unrelenting determination and skill to defend the Constitution by engaging those whom would attack it. As governor of Alaska she fought corrupt Republicans and Democrats alike along with “Big Oil” and other political opportunists, defeating the crony capitalists.

Ronald Reagan touched on constitutional conservatism and its conservative philosophical proponents in his speech “The New Republican Party” at the 4th Annual CPAC Convention on February 6, 1977:

If there is any political viewpoint in this world which is free from slavish adherence to abstraction, it is American conservatism.

When a conservative states that the free market is the best mechanism ever devised by the mind of man to meet material needs, he is merely stating what a careful examination of the real world has told him is the truth.

When a conservative says that totalitarian Communism is an absolute enemy of human freedom he is not theorizing—he is reporting the ugly reality captured so unforgettably in the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

When a conservative says it is bad for the government to spend more than it takes in, he is simply showing the same common sense that tells him to come in out of the rain.

Conservatism is the antithesis of the kind of ideological fanaticism that has brought so much horror and destruction to the world. The common sense and common decency of ordinary men and women, working out their own lives in their own way—this is the heart of American conservatism today.

Conservative wisdom and principles are derived from willingness to learn, not just from what is going on now, but from what has happened before.

The last portion of this excerpt helps clarify how it is that most of America is conservative, despite curiously weighted polls eager to have us conclude we are a deeply divided nation: “The common sense and common decency of ordinary men and women, working out their own lives in their own way—this is the heart of American conservatism today.” Isn’t that what most Americans seek to pursue?



An Instrument of Measure

A valuable instrument of measure through which to assess the knowledge, character, seriousness, and the sincerity of various candidates running for elected public office in 2014 is Mark Levin’s new book “The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic.”

The premises of Levin’s book are reasonable and beneficial; solutions written into the Constitution—specifically Article V, sanctioning a bypass of the Congress—precisely for times such as today. Yet it remains unequivocally important to elect Constitutional Conservatives as we pursue the Article V goal of halting a geometric expansion of federal government by amending the U.S. Constitution to include Term Limits for Congress, Limitations on the Federal Bureaucracy, Term Limits for Supreme Court Justices and a Super-Majority Legislative Override of Supreme Court Decisions, among others.

The so-called Amendment Convention or Convention of States is off and running, but will take time to achieve fruition; none the less, it would serve conservatives well to use The Liberty Amendments as a litmus test.  Not to belabor a point, but again: no provision exists within the Constitution for anything remotely similar to a “Constitutional Convention” often cited as a possibility by uninformed naysayers.

If a candidate remains unwilling to enthusiastically support the Article V movement—If they can not intelligently speak the language of constitutional conservatism clearly enumerated within our founding documents—we must remain highly skeptical of their commitment to the daunting task before us of “Restoring the American Republic.” Precious few politicians currently holding office will qualify, and why everyday Americans must argue for a return to constitutional governance with factual authority.



America’s Most Underrated President

Another penetrating book on the subject of Constitutional Conservatism is a revealing work by Charles C. Johnson: “Why Coolidge Matters: Leadership Lessons from America’s Most Underrated President.”

It’s one of the best recently published on Constitutional Conservatism, and one of the most informative books regarding one of the most important presidents in American history; there’s no surprise at all after reading Why Coolidge Matters that Coolidge was Reagan’s favorite president of the 20th century.

As with Reagan, Coolidge was a constitutional scholar; his grasp of our founding principles and the forces at work against them is inspirational and enlightening. The battles Coolidge fought against corruption, moral decay, and subversive forces are not so different from what we face today, and the juxtapositions of his presidency with those following in his conservative wake are most instructive.

Coolidge would appreciate the efforts to win our 2014 fight by electing Constitutional Conservatives; he won his landslide election in 1924—during a time when Republicans behaved as Progressives—by writing, speaking, and living as a constitutional conservative. Though Coolidge earned the nickname “Silent Cal,” he was a serious thinker and writer, capable of expression. Most of us need to do a better job of articulating specific language and principles of the Framers and of the Constitution. It takes both time and work; for Coolidge—as with Reagan—work was a traditional value learned early in his life.



Conservatives: It’s About the Constitution

Reagan showed us the way; Americans are smarter than often given credit for but must be inspired by an honest fighter for and defender of the Constitution: it is the glue that holds together our amazingly unique social compact for a civil society. The Constitution is bedrock to American Republicanism. At the Tenth Amendment Center website, a small-font maxim is emblazoned across the uppermost border: “The Constitution. Every Issue, Every time. No Exceptions, No Excuses.” It’s hard to argue with that.

If conservatives are too intimidated or in some way remain too unmotivated after the advent of King Barry-care to band together around the Constitution and soundly beat back the Progressive RINO Establishment—the ruling class and their political class operatives—in 2014, America will endure another Romney/McCain/Bush Dynasty/Dole/Ford/Nixon elitist insider crammed down our throats by big money crony capitalists, and the establishment “Republican” nominee will lose to Hillary in 2016. Scream if you must, it won’t make a predictable outcome any less true. Or you can begin to fight.

The Progressive RINO Establishment simply can not out-pander, out-lie, out-cheat, nor strategically out-think the Chicago Democrat machine; sorry, it just isn’t going to happen. When Constitutional Conservatism is factually and coherently articulated, media mouthpieces loose sway; Republicans with a well-defined choice between liberty and tyranny will invariably turn out in record numbers—as will blue collar voters tied to the Democrat Party—to vote for liberty over tyranny out of self-interests.

Why did 3-plus million Republicans and millions more Democrats stay home rather than vote for Mitt? To be perfectly blunt, it is because Mitt is a Progressive, not a Constitutional Conservative; precisely why King Barry worked with utmost diligence to ensure Mitt would address the GOP in Tampa as the nominee.

It was no accident the bulk of media was heaping unabashed praise upon Mitt until he was officially nominated; after that, it was Katy bar the door. Mitt appears a decent enough guy, probably convinced he knows how to best regulate our lives; yet he was uninspiring and lacked distinction in many respects for far too many Americans: a concern among conservatives during the 2012 election.

King Barry desperately needed Mitt: an affluent, culturally privileged candidate with big government proclivities similar to his own; a perfect foil for his Progressive Marxist class warfare rhetoric, more of which we may expect from the Democrats during 2014 under the guise of “income inequality.” His wrecking-ball presidency could have been itemized and exposed if only it had been contrasted with substantiated fact and aggressively compared with what is constitutionally permissible versus Mitt’s timid, generic, inconsistent, apologetic, unremarkable and dispassionately elitist boilerplate Pablum.

The sad and painful truth must be understood to keep from repeating another catastrophic Progressive RINO elitist disaster: Mitt ushered in King Barry’s second term by practicing the same progressive big government arrogance of thought with which Bush 43 ushered in King Barry’s first term. Mitt could neither defend nor define constitutional conservatism anymore than could Bush 43 or 41. Coolidge and Reagan defended and defined constitutional conservatism: the results are obvious, and speak volumes.



This is Our Time

This is it, Ladies and Gentlemen; this is our time, this is our battle: we must seize the moment. Are you up for the fight in 2014? Is it worth it to you personally; for your family, friends and loved ones?

Learn the Constitution; know the Constitution; speak about the Constitution; frequently ask questions of others about the Constitution when relating to or having political discussions; bring the conversation back around to the role of the Constitution: Define it, research it; explain it and defend it. Why?

Because it’s the Constitution that’s under attack; 2014 is about the Constitution. If that historical fact isn’t glaring enough; if you still find the Constitution incidental—a corollary issue—to greater political strategies, then we’re spinning our wheels: the Republican Party will continue a moribund existence, led by establishment political hacks whose objectives are the accrual of personal wealth and power, instead of American patriots with servant’s hearts, dedicated to protecting and defend the Constitution.

Time is short, the pressure is on; we can do better than wearing out the tires. We just need traction, and that traction is applied knowledge; knowledge directed from the Constitution. Use it to remain free.

2014 must be our year, and it is up to us to make it so. God helps those willing to help themselves.