Daily Broadside | It’s Not Liberty if You Fear Your Rulers

Daily Verse | Genesis 29:18
Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, “I’ll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel.”

Thursday’s Reading: Genesis 30-31

Happy Thursday, Broadsiders. Thanks for sharing your time with me.

There’s something very wrong with our government. As I wrote yesterday, the conflict we’re seeing in our country is ultimately between those who support the Judeo-Christian values upon which our government was founded (whether or not they are truly Christ followers) and those who deny God and want to supplant him with themselves as ruler. It’s the age-old dilemma of Man v. God and I can tell you right now that, in that engagement, it will not end well for man.

That’s at the core of the dilemma we face, but when I say something’s wrong with our government, I mean that it’s been inverted. Our Constitution starts with the words, “We the People” for a very good reason: we determined to govern ourselves. It was we, the people, who set up our system of government by writing and ratifying a law—the U.S. Constitution—to which all other governance in the U.S. must submit. It is the highest law of the land.

The people passed that law establishing a stronger central government over these United States. It’s the only law passed by we the people. Because it was written by us, that means that, technically and legally, all other forms of governance and governors under that Constitution are subject to our oversight. We did not pass that law to establish such government and then say to it, “Feel free to do what you want, we’re your subjects.”

But that’s not how it feels in today’s society, does it? Do you get the sense that the federal government is concerned at all about whether they’re following the will of the people as expressed in the Constitution? Do you get the sense that all of our state legislatures and governors are following the will of the people as expressed in the Constitution? Do you think that the judicial system we established has carefully ensured that they have faithfully applied the Constitution to their decisions free from their political biases?

If we’re honest, we have to admit that in today’s United States the inverse is true: we the people have become subject to the political agendas of those elected to high office. Our “representatives” aren’t concerned about whether they’re governance is Constitutional. One only has to look at all the federal “alphabet” agencies and the rules and regulations they create to know that Congress outsourced the legislative responsibilities the Constitution gave only to them.

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. — Article I, Section I: Congress

Congresscritter A: Hey, I’ve got an idea! What if we make a law that gives someone else the job of making laws?

Congresscritter B: Wait, why would you do that if the Constitution only gives us that role?

Congresscritter A: If we delegate our law-making role to a bunch of unelected bureaucrats then the people can’t blame us for bad laws. If they can’t blame us for bad laws, we get re-elected!

Congresscritter B: Oh, I see. Then we can sit on committees to “oversee” the bureaucrats and call them in to testify when things go wrong and pretend that we’re representing the people! What a country!

No, to the extent that they are concerned at all about the Constitution, it’s about being elected “by the people” then taking that as a vote of confidence to shove their political agenda through the system and finding ways to either evade the Constitution or weaponize it—such as twice impeaching a president to tarnish his standing and legacy.

The government that we the people authorized to “insure domestic tranquility” has intentionally dissolved our southern border and allowed hundreds of thousands of foreigners to flood our nation unchecked, essentially becoming wards of the state because they’re dependent on government handouts funded by the money they take from us.

The government that we the people formed is now calling parents “domestic terrorists” for objecting to the sexual perversion and Marxist indoctrination being foisted upon their children by government-run (public) schools.

The government that we the people created serially undermined, hampered, harassed and lied about an elected president’s relationship with Russia and spent millions of our hard-earned dollars “investigating” what they knew was a bogus case—and those responsible have not been punished according to law.

The government that we the people established to “promote the general welfare” has instead taken to promoting the welfare of only certain groups identified by the color of their skin, their sexual preferences, their political bias and any other category by which they can divide us.

The government that we the people oversee now passes trillion-dollar “budgets” that are thousands of pages long without giving legislators time to read and understand what is in them, robbing us of our wealth in the present and our children in the future to pay for it all.

You get the idea.

I’m not saying that there aren’t, can’t or won’t be differences of opinion or that our leaders can achieve complete neutrality or that they will get every decision right. But it’s clear that the government we forged has become an elitist cabal of grifters detached from the law they are supposed to preserve, protect and defend, who have in mind only their own interests—money, power, notoriety—or those of “special interest groups,” which means they are more concerned with pleasing their base than the whole of we the people.

Often misattributed to Thomas Jefferson, it was John Basil Barnhill who said, “Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.”

What is very wrong with our government is that it does not respect or fear the people, who are its rightful masters.

Daily Broadside | The Government is Not “We the People”

Daily Verse | Nehemiah 9:35
“Even while they were in their kingdom, enjoying your great goodness to them in the spacious and fertile land you gave them, they did not serve you or turn from their evil ways.”

It’s Wednesday my Daily Broadside friends. The last accurate forecast was when God told Noah it was going to rain for forty days and forty nights.

It’s not what I know that Resident Biden and his illegal junta are doing to America that bothers me (although it does). It’s what I don’t know that they’re doing to America—out of sight, behind the scenes and on the weekends in the alphabet agencies and the war rooms and in their offices in the White House—that bothers me. And if what we do know is any indication about their intentions, what they aren’t showing us is probably 100 times worse.

Take, for instance, what many consider to be the most dangerous portion of Biden’s so-called “State of the Union” address on April 28. Watch:

Our Constitution opens with the words, as trite as it sounds, “We the People.” It’s time to remember that We the People are the government. You and I. Not some force in a distant capital. Not some powerful force we have no control over. It’s us! It’s “We the people.”

This is, without hyperbole, one of the most shocking statements any leader of our country has ever said. It’s possible that, in his foggy brain, he meant, “those of us in government are made up of the people” and, in that way, the government is “the people.” But he didn’t say that and the words he did use are unqualified: “We the People are the government.”

It is true that “We the People” are supposed to be the ultimate authority. We live in a nation that has a government “of the people, by the people and for the people,” as Abraham Lincoln said. But when Biden went on to say, “You and I” and “It’s us!” he inexcusably fused the two — the “government” and We the People — as one.

No.

Joe Biden and those who write his speeches clearly don’t understand the U.S. Constitution or the intentions of our Founding Fathers. Or, if they do, they’re intentionally conflating the boundaries of government and “the people” as the tip of the wedge to start prying the original meaning out of the preamble to the Constitution. (I addressed this tactic in an earlier post, here.)

Our constitutional republic (not democracy) is a model of self-government, meaning the people are sovereign and the government is the servant of the people. The Declaration of Independence says,

“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…”

The only task of government is to secure our rights with the consent of the governed. There are two entities, not one. The governed or We the People, and the government, who operates only with our consent and with only one purpose.

“Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, prosperity and happiness of the people; and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.”

U.S. President John Adams (1797–1801)

Our government under Dementia Joe is not one of “the common good.” The government should never be in a position of telling us what we should do or imposing unnecessary restrictions on our freedom to pursue happiness. It has become what Adams said it shouldn’t be: for the profit, honor and private interest of a class of men.

If you don’t believe that, just look at how rich politicians become. See how Hunter Biden and the Big Guy have made millions off of their power and political cronyism. Note that we do not have domestic tranquility under this administration. We have asymmetrical justice and this administration is desperately trying to restrict our inalienable rights as Resident Biden divides the nation by race, sex and political beliefs.

Most of all, listen to how Joe Biden talks to you and me.

Is this not the statement of a dictator? He doesn’t have the “just power” to rule by fiat in our Constitutional republic — ever. That’s not how this works. But Resident Biden clearly isn’t bothered by the constraints that the U.S. Constitution puts on the government.

This is a prime example of the things we can see of the current administration.

It makes me wonder what we can’t see.