Sovereignty.
What a great week I’m having, my good friends. I know you all heard that the United States Supreme Court recently ruled that the US’s “ObamaCare” is constitutional. Right? Did you celebrate? So did I, my friends, so did I. This was one time that I really thought my Supreme Reliables would let me down. After a long history of finalegalitification of my kingdom goals, I knew (as did most others) this law to be so blatantly unconstitutional as to cause a losing setback. But, by moi, if those trisksterific tricksters didn’t come through after all!
All is progressing well in my earthly kingdom, my servants.
I thought I would use the afterglow of this great victory to briefly let you in on how I got the Americans to a place where they let “limited government” become just “government.” It is an exciting story, not only because it stars moi, but also because it was so easily preventable. And this is not primarily about the wisdom, prudence, or tragedy (take your pick) of ObamaCare. It is ultimately a story about sovereignty squandered.
Squandered.
Do you know what it means to be “sovereign” my friends? Yes, you probably have a good idea. It means the ultimate “who sez” in any sphere of human involvement and interaction. Everyone obeys an ultimate “who sez;” humans will always be subject to (and subjected to) a “who” whether they like it or not. Families, for example, were created with a definite “who” as the ultimate “sezer.” The sphere of employment, the military, the church, and every other social structure functions properly only when there is a definite and proper “who” behind any “sezes.”
And what about government, my friends? Well, let me key you in on some kingdom truths that have worked for me, my servants.
Listen up.
Remember, my friends, I started out that very first social structure by putting into that little pretty’s head one simple question: “who sez?”
And ever since my initial success under that fruit tree I have tried to ensure that every family, every church, every government, indeed, even every individual becomes divided over the issue of “who sez?”
Somebody will always rule over man’s life.
The question of government presents a particularly tricky problem for God and me (mostly God), because, of course, God and I both want to rule over man.
Yes, government (meaning the “state” or other municipal or national leaders to order society) has a proper place in the affairs of men. But I know that the “proper place” is extremely difficult in a world of passionate human beings who love to lord over other human beings. And I manipulate this difficulty to my advantage.
In fact, as you know from history, I actually experience little difficulty in eventually devolving every form of human government into some form of tyranny.
Kings, princes, rulers. All eventually succumb to a sinful world’s demands to enforce tyranny, even if for supposedly noble purposes.
But tyranny nonetheless.
It’s a beautiful thing.
That’s why, my servants, I must confess that the American Experiment scared the . . . , well, the heck out of moi.
Yes, the living heck.
Do you know why?
If you are an American, you should. But I bet you don’t.
I’ll tell you, even though even now it makes me shiver.
Those Americans served up a double whammy. First, their Experiment was founded on a Biblical worldview. That is to say, America was founded by and among a people that largely believed in a true, transcendent, living God. In time this foundation upheld what could be fairly described as a Christian nation.
Blechhhhh!
Now, that first whammyfier is an undeniable truth that is often denied today. But there can be no question that America was, at one time, a “Christian nation” in the sense that its traditions and culture, including its laws and government, were informed by a Biblical worldview.
Let the deniers deny. I’ll soon set them down.
But it’s the second whammyfier that sent my kingdom into spasms of anguish. You see, the American Founding Fathers knew that sovereignty must rest in someone. Someone must be the ultimate “who sez?”
And do you know who America’s Founding Fathers made the ultimate “who sez?”
Think.
No, it was not God.
But in the case of the Americans it was the next most destructive thing, though.
Here it is. This is key to understanding both the early success of America, and its now-sure demise: the Founding Fathers structured their new government such that sovereignty rested with the people.
A free people!
Yes, the American Constitution set the governing law for a nation of free men living under a very limited federal government. The American Constitution sets forth specific things the federal government was permitted to do. Outside of these few enumerated powers, the federal government was to let a free people live free.
Government officials were to be servants of the people.
Even today, government officials are still called civil servants.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Oh, that one always makes me chuckle.
Now, pay attention. I see some of you only half paying attention. Listen up.
American liberals today fail to understand a fundamental truth that their Founding Fathers knew: a government where sovereignty rests in the people only works where the people can govern themselves under an inner morality and virtue.
Yes, my liberals predictably deny that religion and virtue (the two only go together for Biblical-based religions, which is the case in early America) are a necessary ingredient for freedom and liberty. But both experience and the Founding Fathers (many of whom were not flaming fundamentalist Christians) weigh in (as usual) against present-day liberals:
Consider George Washington: “Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.”
Consider Benjamin Franklin: “[O]nly a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
Consider Thomas Jefferson: “No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and . . . . their minds are to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice . . . . These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government.”
Religion? Virtue? Right and wrong?
Blechhhhh!
Now to the fun part, my servants.
I knew that to destroy America I had to undermine both of the whammyfications: the moral base of a Christian nation, and the sovereignty of a free people.
It was not easy, but we are almost there.
And, as you probably know, I used the one check and balance of limited government that was best suited to manipulation: the judiciary.
Over time I ensured that the very Constitution that was originally formed to order a free, moral people, was used to shackle and demoralize (in the truest sense of the word).
Prayer in schools, gone. Teaching the scientific evidence of true creation in public schools, gone. Dignity of life, liberty and happiness itself at the most vulnerable point of all three, gone–snipped as easily as the snip, snip, snip of a doctor-like person’s legally protected immoral, un-virtuous, corrupted practice permitted not by the people, but by the Court.
Oh, how I love the US court system.
Demoralizing people to render them largely without transcendent, meaningful moral compasses was the first step in destroying America.
But I did it; I nullified the first whammification and in less than two generations transformed America into a “post-Christian” nation.
Thank you.
Now for the second whammification.
Remember, everyone will be ruled by someone. Either a man will be ruled by the mandates of a conscience informed by God, or he will be ruled by the mandates of another man.
Mandates? Did I day mandates?
How convenient!
Yes, my servants, every living man (which includes those on earth and elsewhere) lives by mandates. The mandates are either internally imposed from a free man’s heart to live in peace and tranquilly according to God’s law, or they will be externally imposed from another man on earth.
To get free Americans to bow under the mandates of other men outside the constitutionally enumerated powers of government was a little more difficult and time-consuming. But I did it by slowly changing society’s notions of “fairness” and “justice.” You see, the American constitution was originally based on a notion of fairness that sees outcomes based on individual achievement of individuals playing on a level playing field of laws designed to provide the justice of equal opportunity.
Some individuals succeed. Some fail. Equal application of laws protect them all. That is, the laws of the land protect the life, liberty and property (the actual meaning of happiness; look it up) of the individual against all those who would seek to take it/them.
Of course, liberals cannot have this kind of equality. For liberals, who imagine themselves compassionate, it is equality of outcome that matters.
And equality of outcomes requires that the life, liberty or property be taken one for the good of another.
I had to transform America into a nation of makers and takers. I had to realign the thinking of sovereign people to believe it is just that government originally formed to protect property instead confiscate property so that envious others can shamelessly mooch in the name of fairness.
Just and fair, right?
Yes, if you have my sense of justice and fairness (as well as envy, jealousy, laziness, etc.), i.e., theft from one for blissful dependence of another!
So I had to slowly transform the Constitution’s foundational premise of equal opportunity to all into a premise of guaranteeing equal results to all.
And I’ve been almost completely successful.
Don’t believe me?
ObamaCare.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
But I’m ahead of myself.
ObamaCare did not happen overnight. ObamaCare is the result of years of my effort to remove sovereignty from the people and put it into the hands of an ideologically driven ruling elite.
And I did this within the American system by slowly over time transforming an electorate that has become ignorant of the Constitution’s noble ideals of free men under God, to an electorate, a large part of which has succumbed to the post-constitutional ignoble ideas of dependent men under a ruling elite.
The siren call of a ruling elite fashioning “fairness” in the name of “justice” is too much for some to resist.
And when the moochers vote for more and more moochies, my job is done: America has become post-constitutional because sovereignty gets de-facto transferred to a ruling elite in spite of the people.
Don’t believe me?
ObamaCare.
I’m not the first to use the term “post-constitutional” but I’m the one responsible for it. Mark Levin, for example, explains “post-constitutional”: It means that much of what the federal government does is not authorized by the Constitution.
Another writer uses the term to enlighten his proposition that “the U.S. Constitution poses no serious threat to our form of government.”
Get it?
I’ve successfully brought the American people to a place where the Constitution has little to do with America’s current form of governance.
As Michael Gerson put it, over time I’ve arranged that “conservatives” who usually do not like to lurch about as liberals do, tend to let liberal lurching go unchecked:
If the conservative response following every period of liberal activism is humility and continuity, then the ideological ratchet only turns leftward.
I am the racheter, my friends.
Paradoxically, because a large voting bloc votes their sovereignty to a ruling elite, this leftward racheting ensures that political power no longer resides in the hands of the American-by-idealogy electorate.
Welcome, my friends, to post-constitutional America, where a small band of un-American idealogues, lead by me and my chief beelzebud Obama, lead a large population of American idealogues who no longer have the votes for constitutional governance of free people by a limited government.
ObamaCare.
Proof of my success. Again, as Mr. Gerson put it with respect to Chief Justice Robert’s ObamaCare opinion:
What initially seemed wise now smacks of mere cleverness — less a judge’s prudence than a lawyer’s trick. To find the health care law constitutional, Roberts reimagined it.
Judicial cleverness. Re-imagining the ruling elite’s oppression as liberty and freedom for all.
It’s what I do.
And I’m good.
I’m very good.
I’m ObamaCare good.
Welcome to post-constitutional America, my friends. Where nothing is beyond the reach of the federal government’s mandate. And where the federal government’s mandate can and will crush the mandates of conscience every time.
Where what theirs is theirs and what’s yours is theirs.
Where life, liberty, and property are no longer inalienable rights.
They have been alienated.
And I’ve succeeded in once again dividing into the Divided States of America. This time the division is between those who believe the fundamental role of government is to apply just laws to protect life, liberty and property in the name of fairness, and those who believe the fundamental role of government is to redistribute life, liberty and property, also in the name of fairness.
In short, my Divided States of America are divided over the fundamental role of government: is government’s proper role to enforce a level playing field? Or is it to tilt the playing field?
The tilters are winning because now the ruling elite believes in redistributive fairness, and the “who sez” is “government sez” on everything whether or not the people like it, want it, or asked for it.
Sovereignty.
Squandered.