- Outline for a Principled Voter’s Guide
As I said in the article published last Friday (Feb. 26) at WND.com, because there are three areas of principle vital to the survival of America’s constitutional republic, there are three headings under which the neglect or violation of principle on any given issue gives rise to fatal flaws in candidates and public officials: Constitutionalism, Sovereignty and Legitimacy (that which relates to the principle that establishes the lawfulness of government.)
Under these rubrics these we can identify and sort out the fatal flaws that disqualify an official or candidate for office from membership in the party that respects the vital prerequisites of liberty. Regardless of the formal party label candidates otherwise claim (Democrat, Republican, Constitution Party, Independent, etc.), if they clearly exhibit even one of these flaws it makes no sense for people who seek to preserve liberty to support them.
Rubric I. Constitutionalism:
Fatal Flaw #1. Practicing or else aiding and abetting judicial Usurpation of legislative power;
These days much of the legal profession wants people to believe that “the law is what the judge says it is.” When applied narrowly to the presiding judge during the trial of a particular case, the statement has some validity. When applied to the judiciary or the law in general, however, it contradicts the chief constitutional safeguard against tyrannical government, which is the separation of governmental power into three distinct and independent branches, so that no one may by itself claim to represent the whole power of government.
To be effectively maintained, the separation of powers requires that each branch actively assert its prerogatives, jealously guarding against any encroachments from the other branches. Chief Executives (State governors or the President of the United States) who supinely implement judicial decisions they conscientiously believe to violate the U.S. constitution or, in the case of the State governors the constitutions of their respective states, are guilty of dereliction. The same is true of legislators who negligently disregard the malfeasance of judges who “legislate from the bench”.
Examples: Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida (re the judicially sanctioned murder of Terry Schiavo) and Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska (re the implementation of the Alaska Supreme Court’s opinion in the case Alaska Civil Liberties Union, et al. v. State of Alaska and Municipality of Anchorage.; Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and members of the Massachusetts legislature who implemented or acquiesced in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s opinion In the case Goodridge v. Department of Public Health.
Fatal Flaw #2. Practicing or else aiding and abetting routine executive disregard for constitutionally enumerated individual rights;
The constitutional rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights are intended to constrain the use of U.S. Government power. Acting within those constraints, while safeguarding the domestic tranquility and national security of the United States, is perhaps the greatest practical challenge of American statesmanship. Survival without liberty is not enough. When the Chief Executive or subordinate executive officials take order and security as an excuse to authorize and practice routine disregard for these rights, they contradict the purpose for which governments are instituted, which is to secure them.
Examples: Executive and legislative officers of the U.S. govern who proposed or else supported and acquiesced in provisions of the so called Patriot Act that disregarded provisions of the 1st, 4th, 5th and 6th amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Fatal Flaw #3. Promoting or acquiescing in Federal usurpation of functions properly left to the State governments;
The Framers of the U.S. Constitution understood the difficulty of respecting liberty in the administration of government over a large territory. They made Federalism a key feature of the Constitution in order to address and mitigate this difficulty. Those who simply accept the mantra that national problems require national solutions abandon the Federalist solution to the problem of maintaining liberty in such a large country as the United States. The nation’s problems are best understood and addressed at a level consonant with true and effective representation of the people. This is one reason why such vital matters as education, criminal law enforcement, family law and health, welfare and safety issues are preferably addressed at the state and local levels of government (or by the people in their private capacities).
Officials and politicians who use the national prevalence of a problem or situation as an excuse to promote U.S. government control and to implement socialism on a national scale dangerously disregard Federalism’s contribution to maintaining liberty.
Examples: Leftists, liberals, progressives and moderates of every label and description who have pushed the expansion of U.S. government involvement and control in every aspect of life, and the establishment of U.S. Government Departments (e.g., Education, HHS) and who resist reform of programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) that usurp or subordinate action at more effectively representative levels of government.
Fatal Flaw #4. Promoting or acquiescing in Federal disregard for the residual sovereign rights and powers of the State governments;
In Europe and elsewhere sub-national states or provinces are most often simply administrative appendages of the national government. Under the United States Constitution (in particular the 10 Amendment) the States and the people who inhabit them are explicitly recognized as the repository of all the sovereign powers of government not explicitly granted to the Federal Government or prohibited to the States. When politicians or officers of government at any level promote or acquiesce in U.S. Government dictation that suppresses or routinely interferes with the exercise of these powers they subvert the Constitution they have a sworn duty to uphold.
Examples: Federal judges who interfere with the States or the people respecting the establishment of religion; officials and politicians at every level who implement or acquiesce in their opinions.
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Thanks the author for article. The main thing do not forget about users, and continue in the same spirit. http://odessacity.net/
It is no accident the American educational system has neglected to pass on the most basic facts concerning the founding of our nation. Not only that, but the information necessary to identify who our founders were. This would give us the context necessary to understand where they were coming from. “Those who do not learn from history…”. It is why the actions by Dr. Keyes at Notre Dame were so seminal in the discussions concerning respect for the constitution. Respect, or more precisely the lack thereof, for common sense, reason, the natural law, not to mention God’s law, is the foundation for our present state.
People will vote for a pathological liar, namely Barack Hussein Obama, because they have no discernment. And where does discernment come from? Or shall I say Who does descernment come from? Just two days ago a conversation took place at work where a couple of guys mentioned what a great orator The Usurper was. “Love him or hate him, boy can he talk.” I was asked if I felt the same way. My response? I don’t listen to him because he makes me want to puke. I listed his multiple lies, from ending the war, no more lobbyists, openness, etc. Then lamented how people focus more on “the talk” and almost nil on “the walk”.
I know that was off-track, but I believe it illustrates how our founders recognized the absolute need to honor God and make sure we always gave thanks to Him. Without obedience to Him we are doomed. Believing liars, re-electing liars, surrendering to potentates in black robes, not taking responibility for ourselves, this is the foundation of our crisis. Dr. Keyes is correct in pointing out the rubrics necessary for a return to constitutional self-government. And I think we know whence it came.
It won’t be easy to turn this thing around but I’m willing to die trying. If for no other reason than our posterity. The innocent don’t deserve enslavement and genocide because of our failures. We owe them that much.
Dr. Keyes,
For heath reason I’ve not visited your pages in a few months. I am very pleased with what you have done.
As always your thoughts and writings are enjoyable beyond compare.
Tex Dix-
Congressman Randy Forbes sent out emails to some of his constituents. I was one who decided to respond as he says he likes us to do. Thought I would share in the hopes that my fellow Americans will remember what this Congress and usurping administration has done to us when November rolls around. VOTE ‘EM OUT PEOPLE!!!
Dear Representative Forbes,
Thank you for your work on health care, or as many of us spell it, “health”"care.” Many people I speak with, as well as communicate with across this once great country of ours, know this constitutionally ILLEGAL bit of Obama DRAMA has nothing AT ALL to do with HEALTH OR CARE. It is another power and money grab by the federal government to make the states give up MORE of their rights and make its citizens slaves to a system of illegal government.
It is bad enough that there is a man in OUR White House who claims the position of president and yet provides no QUALIFYING documents to validate his claim to this PRIVILEGE. In fact, he has hidden, and paid well to do so, anything that gives him ANY legitimacy even in the eyes of those poor ignorant people that still support him. But to top it all off, even if he IS legitimate in the position that was GIVEN to him, he forgets he works for WE THE PEOPLE, as do you AND your fellow members in BOTH houses of Congress.
We out here in the REAL world are growing weary of this nonsense. Sometimes I wonder how much do the members of Congress get to see of the real world without some member of their staff manipulating every little foot step they take. WE ARE TIRED.
The best thing the members of Congress can do is make sure they have THEIR health care in line, because many are going to be losing their jobs come this fall. We will take care of ourselves, as those RESPONSIBLE members of the USA ALWAYS HAVE. And our neighbors.
Barack Obama and his fellow supporters in this tragic drama would do well to remember what JESUS told his followers concerning the expensive perfume he was anointed with: The poor will be with you always. We do not need the government to tell us how to take care of our bodies. We need them to do what the Constitution grants them the PRIVILEGE to do. Secure our borders. Pay your bills and stop borrowing money. Stop allowing corporations, FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS and unions to control our country. And do we have to really be taxed from conception until even after we are laid to rest back in the Earth? For EVERYTHING?
What we want is someone with a BACKBONE to stand up and say ENOUGH! Speak FOR us and not down to us. We are the ones who make the government and NOT the other way around. It is high time this Congress and so-called “president” got shook up and I pray to GOD above that it comes before any of these poor misguided “representatives” in OUR government try passing any more catastrophic legislation.
Again, thank you for the work that you do,
Sincerely,
Gilbert Brett
PS – I moved back from PA a little over a year ago and lost the right to vote because of a felony that I have more than paid for from 7+ years ago. Until the day I leave this planet, even if I do get to vote in VA again, I am going to make as much noise as possible and talk to as many people as I can about the way they vote and the qualifications they should demand from their representatives.
Your main points (rubrics) are well identified and seem to cover the issues. But the enumeration of fatal flaws under the heading of Constitutional issues seem poorly organized, and you give no consideration to arguing that Constitutionalism is inherently important.
I believe that it is, and you identify and articulate the flaws that undermine it in cogent and concise terms. But it lacks persuasive power to say that something is unconstitutional until you reacquaint people with both why the Constitution itself is important and what it actually says. A large part of this can be attributed to the popularity of appealing “unconstitutionality” as a means of arguing against doing things that are clearly necessary or moral. Some of this is self-reinforcing, since many such arguments rely on people’s ignorance of what the Constitution actually does and doesn’t say. Such arguments promote this ignorance as well as benefiting from what ignorance has already become general.
More destructive still, the constant cry that this or that manifestly evil behavior is protected by “the Constitution” has left many unclear on why exactly anyone should care what it says in the Constitution. One contemplates the state of Islam, a religion which suffers from a complete lack of reliable accounts of it’s early history. Most of the scripture and early history was probably invented out of nearly whole cloth by later warlords seeking to justify themselves rather than teach the truth about Muhammad, even assuming they knew it themselves. If there ever really were a “religion of peace” spoken by Muhammad, I’m hard pressed to explain why that has any practical relevance to Islam as it exists today.
We have a great advantage over the Muslim world, both in time and primary sources. Whatever some might say about the Constitution being a living document and the nebulous intent of the Framers, the truth is that the original text of the Constitution still exists and is readily available to us, and the most respected of the Founding Fathers left extensive commentary, written by their own hands. I think that your past comments have also illuminated an important perspective, Dr. Keyes, which is that the spirit of liberty which pervades the design of self-government is the will of God, who invites all men to partake willingly of His blessings.
I sometimes remember where I was before God enticed me. It isn’t a state to which I would be happy to return. But I digress.
Or, perhaps, I have simply already said what I intended. To wit, before we can speak of Constitutionality, we must understand the reasons for the Constitution itself. And, once we understand the reasons, the Constitution is plain enough in what it says.
P.S. Good stuff on the distinction between capital punishment and abortion. Your consistent history of clear and principled articulation of moral law is unmatched among those in the public arena. I do not say this without regret, for there must be others who have the natural talents to match you if they cared for such things, and it is sad that so few in power do. And yet, even were all men disposed to think on the weightier matters of the law, I think your thoughts would still be eminent.
The question which arises in relation to abortion vs. capital punishment is, perhaps, not unhelpful in understanding the Constitution. We call government a “necessary evil”, but too few people understand what this means, even though the term does not seem particularly difficult. Government is evil, because its fundamental purpose is to inflict injury and death, and it has no power to do anything else except by virtue of this fundamental power. How anyone can forget for a moment that government derives all its force, income, and status from the ordered application of irresistible harms to all those subject to its authority is beyond my understanding, but it seems characteristic of humans that they often have the capacity to ‘forget’ things that they obviously must know when contemplation of that knowledge is unpleasant. An enviable faculty, if I do say so. But not always prudently exercised.
Well, then, why have government at all, if it is so horrible? Ah, there’s the rub. In places where the rule of law has given way completely to anarchy, we see that living under a government (that is, an organization of persons who consider it their right and duty to injure or kill us should we transgress their law) is not the worst possible situation. Abolish government, and we replace one entity willing to destroy life, limb, and property with thousands eager to do so.
Abortion represents the highest evolution of the fundamental depravity of the human condition. That a mother would voluntarily subject herself to a brutality equal to the most violent rape, for the sole purpose of destroying the life of her own child…no stronger tie of natural affection exists on the one hand, and one is not willing to describe a worse ordeal on the other. One can say that men are worse, and I would agree. One only need imagine the horrors that would occur if men were given the legal right to murder unwanted children (though if you’re not content with imagination there are plenty of countries where you can go to see this sort of thing for yourself…though I wouldn’t advise going without the backing of a large military force).
And yet, the only tools government has to prevent this gross evil is the infliction of another evil. The search for ‘good’ government consists of trying to apply the minimum evil that can effectively prevent the gross evil which will result from not enforcing any laws at all (a key point, one can debate, enumerate and legislate all the day long, but until you enforce those laws, they don’t prevent anything). A bad government will routinely apply a great evil to obviate a small one, or allow a great harm which could be prevented by a lesser. It doesn’t take a moral genius to see that if you consistently trade lesser evils for greater, and never greater for lesser, you’re going to end up with a lot more evil than if you do the opposite.
Well, I should probably keep this from becoming any longer by pointing out that the Constitution is the solution to this problem. There have been many others, and only those involving direct, ongoing intervention by God can even compare. Given that nothing in the Constitution compels you to abandon seeking the other blessings of Providence, it is well worth some study.
Thanks as always for your insightful observations. I have it in mind to further develop the outline I am offering in this series as a pamphlet or short book. If and when I do I will add a preface in which I address the point you make regarding the importance of constitutionalism such. It is as you have suggested critical to the task of motivating people to give constitutional issues the priority they must have to reinvigorate the republic.
I presented the fatal flaws first as they affect the relations of the branches of government, and then as they affect the relations between the national government and the states. I believe the American founders intended to preserve the liberty of the people by arranging and distributing the power of government among the branches and levels of government in such a way as to prevent the united (and inherently tyrannical) power of government from settling permanently in the possession of any elite group or faction. The discussion of what is or isn’t constitutional must be informed by respect for this intention. Unfortunately, the meaning of “original intent” at this level of statesmanship has pretty much vanished from constitutional jurisprudence in our day.
Your critique will be a great help to me as I work on the development of these ideas. Again, my thanks.
Alan Keyes
It is always my pleasure to contemplate the remarkable design and inspired concepts of the United States Constitution. And likewise a pleasure to be able to correspond with those who share an appreciation for its many benefits.
Dr. Keyes, I certainly am not in disagreement with your accurate characterization of “fatal flaws”. My intention was simply to point out, as you already acknowledged in your response, that none in the most recent crop of would-be presidential contenders rose past the bar of what should absolutely be those minimal standards of being sans fatal flaws.
I further agree that within the American populace such people do exist and will indeed rise to the calling. Liberty in our nation is not beyond saving. We the people have been awakened to the worsening crisis of the restraining of liberty in this land. The people are begining to take back their responsibility to hold their elected officials to account for their actions, particularly when they vote contrary to their sworn oath to serve the people of the nation by ignoring the dictates of the United States Constitution. We are not accepting what various political parties give us as choices in candidates as readily as we once did.
We are not in disagreement, sir. On the contrary, I am heartened to read your sincere commentary to the contrary in your blog and elsewhere far more often nowadays. God bless!
Your detractors, and evidently even some of those that would otherwise support what you have espoused, will say that your fatal flaws guide for voters is too rigid and not practical in modern day society. Indeed, it is difficult to think of any one person on the presidential level in 2008 that would not be excluded for my vote under these guidelines.
That is not to say that I don’t agree with you, sir. On the contrary, this is more of an indictement of how far we have degraded as a nation when our viable presidential candidates are thus. It shows that we have become a people that does not know its own history, nor do we understand via civics lessons what the point and purpose of our United States Constitution is.
I applaud you, Dr. Keyes, for always standing up for the sake of liberty. I wish there had been a majority of Americans that would have similarly voted for you for President back in 2000 when George W. Bush won. If so, I strongly suspect that this rapid slide towards our destruction as a nation would have been curtailed and reversed. Unfortunately, we now seem to be careening out of control towards the precipice under the administration of our current federal governance.
Unless one argues that I am wrongly identifying the fatal flaws, the conclusion that these guidelines are somehow unrealistically rigid means that American liberty is beyond saving. It is true that none of the candidates served up in 2008 by the present party system satisfied the requirements. That means the present party system doesn’t serve liberty, not that the requirements of liberty are unrealistic or rigid.
It is difficult to develop the skills required to perform heart surgery. The medical schools aren’t being unrealistic or rigid when they refuse to grant degrees to anyone who doesn’t meet the standards of performance necessary to adequately demonstrate those skills. They’re just doing what the survival of heart patients requires.
Today our people are supposedly better educated; they have access to supposedly more advanced science and technology; and they live with conveniences that make the everyday tasks of life far less onerous than they were in the past; yet in the past when real statesmanship was needed, it emerged from amongst the supposedly ordinary ranks of the American people. Is that impossible today? If so, I am morally certain it’s not because the people America needs don’t exist, just as they did in the past. It’s because the political arrangements we’re still tolerating are intended to prevent, discredit, discourage, or suppress the leaders we need. We can still do something about that, but not if we keep bad-mouthing our own potential. Instead we need to stop letting ourselves be talked out of doing what the common sense rooted in our faith in God tells us is right.
The leaders we are offered aren’t adequate for the survival of liberty. So reject them and turn to people who are. It’s that simple. The Principled Voter’s Guide is intended to help people who want better leaders recognize who really fits the bill. It can’t provide people with the courage of their own convictions that will then be needed to turn away from the inadequate choices they are being herded to accept.
Our[ CONSTITUTION ]Past tense OUR FATHERS DIED TO KEEP IT,AND HAND IT DOWN TO US! We gave it up in the name of [TOLERANCE,POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND SECURITY!!] Once again you are right on target Dr.Keyes thankyou R.Rebeck
Although I am tempted to agree with these points regarding fatal flaws it’s clear that a massive re-education campaign will be needed in order for voters to RECOGNIZE these flaws and to then locate candidates actually proscribing to these tenets. Until that day arrives we will be forced to vote for candidates who most closely align with these objectives yet are human … and therefore … imperfect. Alan himself aligned with radical MSNBC at one point.
It’s nonsense to suggest that I “aligned with MSNBC”. I parted company with them precisely because I would not allow myself to be maneuvered into accepting such alignment in any way.
Also, a fatal flaw is one fatal to the republic. Voting for a candidate with such a flaw is like agreeing to be operated on by a surgeon who habitually makes just one mistake that kills his patient. It’s no consolation to say “well, he’s only human,” or “close but no cigar.” No one is asking for perfection. Just the kind of competence that avoids a fatal result. We understand the need for such competence when it comes to building bridges or flying airplanes. Why do we abandon that common sense perspective when choosing the representatives whose action or inaction can destroy our liberty, ruin our economy, deprave our morals and sour the hopes of generations to come.
The above is at all times art, science and reason.