Rambling on about the Constitution

“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ``needed'' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents "interests,'' I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.”

----- Barry Goldwater

That is, in all probability, the pithiest quote the good Senator has uttered in a long career of quotable observations. I've always found myself particularly attracted to it - at least since I first read the Constitution, some decades back. Now, I've never laid claim to being 'the world's smartest person' - I leave that to someone who entertains the sheeple in the Sunday rotogravure - but it seemed painfully obvious to me that even then, before the 'war on poverty' (and I tried to surrender when it came along, but they wouldn't let me), before the People Control Act of 1968, , before the absurdity of 'government funded universal health care', before 'No Child Left Behind', the government was exceeding its mandate.

The Constitution, to borrow from the vernacular, 'isn't about' what you or I may or may not do, it is not an instrument for social experimentation nor a 'living' document, it is a set of strict guidelines detailing what the government is required to do, and what it clearly and expressly is forbidden. The first ten Amendments to that Constitution do not 'grant' any rights - a government which governs by the will and at the pleasure of its constituency cannot grant or revoke rights - 'merely' recognizes those natural rights of man which far preceded the establishment of the nation. Any government - especially and specifically any government which claims legitimacy under that Constitution - that attempts to infringe on and curtail those rights has lost any claim to such legitimacy when it does.

There are provisions in that Constitution which need to be brought to the attention of our elected 'representatives', who also serve at our pleasure, as our 'hired help', and who take an oath to support and abide by the specifications of that Constitution. If your gardener, or your maid, or your driver, or your cook stole from you and lied about it when you confronted them with documented proof, just how long would they continue to work for you? If the sales force in your business, or your accountants, or your lawyers signed a contract and violated it daily, clause by clause, enriching themselves at your expense, stealing from you and distributing their ill-gotten gains among their cronies, would you let them continue drawing a paycheck, or would you see that they drew prison sentences?

A government can only hold sway with the just consent of the governed, can only maintain its legitimacy by maintaining its legitimacy. Income redistribution by extortion is illegitimate. Nanny-stateism is a pernicious abrogation of liberty. Refusal to defend the borders that define the physical limits of the nation is treason. Infringements on the right to speak freely, peaceably assemble, observe religious customs and traditions, maintain the means of personal and national defense is tyranny, pure and simple...and those who stand idly by while it happens, while the Constitution they pay lip service to without reading or comprehending it not only forfeit their right to it, they undermine ours.