Wise humans generally have tried to select their leaders from among those who think logically relative to the traditions and cultural mores of the society. Those who would be leaders, but who tend to propose completely opposite ideas and beliefs at proximate times, are generally rejected for positions of leadership, and denied power over the “people” who have sought leaders who will protect their families and partner in achieving greater safety, comfort and wealth. Along the way, their leaders are expected to protect and strengthen the children so that society will grow, be strong and continue.
In earlier times, especially when education was not widespread – mainly reserved to self-selected religious leaders and somewhat self-selected royal families – populations accepted their statuses as serfs and peasants for whom reverence of their “leaders” was how safety for themselves and their families was increased, including food security. Things changed as education became “public.” Wisdom and philosophies from the “ancient” past spread among millions of thoughtful humans, some of whom refined and expanded on the “pure” ideas of the Greeks, Hebrews, Romans, Persians and many others, interpreting human interactions amidst the “new” realities of economics, civic participation and independence.
Great minds eventually proscribed the foundational ideas of the United States, and they are quite simple!
Underlying the simplicity of the Constitution are principles of preventing or avoiding the proven tendencies of the worst of human nature to gain power and wealth at the expense of others: tyranny of one form or another. Let’s consider the simple ideas and the assumptions on which they are dependent. Our founders designed “self-government” against the backdrop of tyrannies they had seen and fought, both religious and monarchical, as well as militaristic. They could not include tools designed to thwart the new tyrannies defined and refined by Marxism in the middle of the 19th century. That is our job, today.
The first simple idea, upon which our survival depended then and does, now: religious freedom. Education in the late 18th century was based largely upon religious philosophies and structures of good and evil as spread by and through churches and prelates of all kinds, mostly Christian, and by locally hired teachers. The vast majority of Americans shared basic beliefs in right and wrong as they ratified the Constitution; they never imagined that within a few generations the vast majority of Americans – AND THEIR CHURCHES – would no longer agree upon the principles of right and wrong and self-discipline. The functioning of Constitutional republicanism depends upon “the people” being a moral, self-disciplined body politic. To participate in and manage a republic, requires that its members – citizens – be educated in its principles and practices. Sadly, this is no longer the case.
The second simple idea is representation. A people who have learned to choose their representatives such that those so chosen will guard the people from the worst excesses of executive rulers, will, if properly educated, keep a civic eye on those representatives, in our case, on members of the House of Representatives. Our Founders believed, based on a social compact within which nearly everyone shared common rights and wrongs, that representing people in the many states, would remain a mission of honor and fealty to their constituents. They never imagined that election to Congress would become such a lucrative opportunity for personal gain, that re-election, and the many corruptions that facilitate re-election, would replace the proper role of service and honor. “The People’s House” is no longer a place of honor but for a few. Americans must educate themselves about the original purpose and model for representation, and MAKE THE CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES required to restore representation to the primary purpose – and effect – of election to “The House.”
The third simple idea is states’ rights. That is, that the Federal government is limited to those functions that states cannot do for themselves, and that the powers not granted to the Federal Government, or prohibited to it, are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people. Senators are supposed to represent the interests of the States; they are not supposed to be longer-serving, at-large representatives of the people. They are supposed to be selected by the state legislatures to represent the STATES, guarding their rights and powers in a federal, not NATIONAL system of governance. Because of the failures of some state legislatures during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, leaving Senate seats unfilled, Congress proposed the 17th Amendment and it was ratified with little delay. Since then, 6-year-term Senators have been elected similarly to 2-year-term Representatives. Thus were the constituencies of Senators changed from their state governments to the general populations of states, which changed the responsibilities of Senators. Being elected “at large” means that Senate candidates have, ever since, been able to lie at varying levels of effectiveness, twisting truth and news, particularly for incumbents, to gain popular vote victories.
If the Senator in question had to answer to members of his or her state’s legislature, men and women who, to some greater degree, know what is going on and what they instructed their Senator to do, then the re-election/appointment landscape would be far, far different than the amorphous, dishonest campaigning that works with popular-vote elections. Prior to the 17th Amendment, states’ senators had to answer for what they did in Washington. It would be very good to repeal the 17th and make Senators responsible to SOMEBODY. The chance of senators being re-elected for 24, 30 or 36 years, would be much reduced: a good thing.
The fourth simple idea is equal application of the laws. The fundament of individual sovereignty and freedom is equal STATUS under the laws. Our Bill of Rights, without which the Constitution would have never been ratified, or even considered for ratification by some states, codifies the assumptions that underlay the debates that developed the Constitution. Madison and others believed that having won independence from a powerful monarchy, under which laws and persecutions were applied differently to citizens deemed by the monarch to be favored or unfavored, had cemented the concepts of equal application of law into the American people. In fact, the ability of governments of any type: elected or hereditary, to become tyrannical, was bound to color the debates. The likelihood that executive authority will garner power not specifically granted to it, is historically likely. Government can NEVER be trusted to control itself on behalf of even the highest principles. The rules limiting the power of government and protecting the unalienable rights of every person, had to be part of the proposed Constitution. Ratification was effected by legislative agreement of three-fourths of the states; the formation of a FEDERAL government was a function of the STATES and not even of popular vote.
Let’s repeat that concept: the Federal Government is a creation of the states. The power and rights of, now, 50 STATES, are SUPERIOR to the powers of the Federal Government. How foreign this truth sounds. It means that criminal laws as well as civil laws, are primarily the business of states, and that federal laws should be few in number and limited in scope to matters of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and other amendments, and matters of military justice and treason. It also means that federal police powers and the so-called “F.B.I.” should be severely limited in terms of interactions with individual citizens. Things have changed, to say the least.
The fifth simple idea is the ELECTORAL COLLEGE, which provides a mechanism of election of the Chief Executive Officer / Commander-in-Chief, free of undue influence from Congress or from direct democracy. Our Founders understood the inherent dangers of pure democracy and that democracy, alone, would quickly yield tyranny of shifting majorities. This is why so many mechanisms dividing power between states and the federal system, between states and pure democracy, and between citizens and their representatives, are built into the Constitution. Lately, many on the Left have complained about the Electoral College, always touting the “popular vote” as having favored a losing Presidential ticket. Needless to say, the popular vote is meaningless in presidential politics. The Electoral college makes sure that presidents are elected by the States, not by popular vote. The U. S. holds 50 state elections for 50 slates of electors who are committed to a presidential ticket. While electors are related to representative numbers: 2 senators per state plus the number of representatives per state, presidential tickets must win the majority of presidential electors, state by state. Both large and small states are important to the final total. Presidents are elected by the states, not through direct democracy.
Those who want to get rid of the Electoral College are those who want government to be empowered through pure democracy, and they are not to be trusted with real power.
Another simple idea, relative to the Executive authority, is that Congress must declare war, not the President. Under monarchies, the monarch can dictate foreign policy and declare war when he or she doesn’t get what he or she desires. Again, to limit the concentration of power in the executive branch, our founders anticipated that Congress’ interests would be closer to the people and rarely in complete agreement with the Chief Executive. What was never anticipated was that both the House and Senate would be so willing to avoid responsibility for much of anything, and so willing to relinquish powers to the executive bureaucracies of unelected rule-makers, as is attractive to communists. Like all contracts and covenants, they are only as good as the quality and integrity of the parties to them.
Our founders, likewise, never anticipated that Congress would devise a means of creating perpetually growing public debt (in the form of the extra-constitutional “Federal Reserve” Check out: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2020/09/27/knife-edge-election/). In 1789 people – and governments – had to pay their debts before more loans would be offered; today we raise the “debt ceiling” so that we might borrow enough to pay only the interest on previous debts, let alone pay down the principals. This results in our “representatives” failing utterly to represent the interests of the people each is paid handsomely to represent… adding annually to the peoples’ debt burden and being re-elected despite having done so.
The SUPREME COURT is a simple idea, although modern beliefs complicate it beyond reason. The Constitution provides federal judges, including Supreme Court Justices, with lifetime appointments. The purpose is to insulate justices from political whims and winds of change, and, presumably, allow them to hold firmly to the meaning of the Constitution’s words as ever newer, unanticipated legal problems emerge. Politics has caused never anticipated complications to the balancing work of the Supreme Court. Elected men and women have added to the responsibilities of the Federal government beyond anything the Founders could have imagined. The lines between Constitutional powers and protections of individual rights, have become broader and diffuse as politicians have found political power in the invention of new “rights,” many based on falsehoods. The Left’s penchant for changing the definitions of words has made “equal protection under the law” nearly impossible; foolish politicians have passed laws to accommodate false definitions and whimsical “realities.” The supreme court is tested to find narrow truths amidst broadened political fantasies.
Yet, the concept of a final arbiter of our Constitutional protections is both wise and essential. That the U. S. was founded in the presence of printing and publications, forms of mail service and book-binding, kept our founders mindful of the spread of new ideas and opinions. Launching the new nation on a “ship” of ideals required that some mechanism of preserving and reinforcing those ideas and ideals was essential. The Supreme Court, almost inadvertently, became that mechanism, thanks to the innovative application of its limited powers by Chief Justice John Marshall.
Finally, the NINTH and TENTH amendments are a combined, simple idea. Hardly any of our student youth are taught about the Constitution, and few of them, or even of their parents, have knowledge or opinions about the last two amendments of the Bill of Rights.
Amendment 9 admonishes the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT that the rights named and listed in the Constitution – rights of individuals – cannot be construed to “deny or disparage” others (rights) retained by the people. This is worth contemplating every day and upon every election: The rights that are inherent in every citizen (unalienable rights), ARE NOT LIMITED to only those “enumerated” in the text of the Constitution, NOR can the constitution be employed to limit any of them! These few words are quite possibly the most important and far-reaching in our Constitutional system. EVERY piece of legislation and every surreptitious new regulation that spews forth from the tens of thousands of unelected bureaucrats, should be evaluated BY OUR (ostensible) REPRESENTATIVES as to its neutrality toward or protection of our inherent rights as individual citizens. What a different “official” status we are each entitled to, than what we are now saddled with.
The 10th Amendment, in effect, reserves to the STATES, much as the 9th reserves to the people, all powers not specifically delegated to the federal government by the Constitution. It then goes beyond the power of states and reserves the rest to the people, again. This remarkable Constitution is unique in world history, and exceptional. The rights secured to the citizens of the United States are exceptional among all the nations. How is it that we have elected so many to Congress and even to the White House, who do not agree with what the Constitution says and promises to us as citizens?
Dear readers and fellow citizens, the simplest, most Prudent idea of all is to learn, teach, discuss, and study the Constitution and the thinking that supported its ultimate design. Our students are deprived of the ONLY knowledge that will keep us and them, free. If you have the ability to communicate to whomever is educating your children, insist that they, and all other teachers, produce high-school graduates who understand our rights and powers as U. S. citizens.