We Are All Founding Fathers Now

By: Michael S. Yashko

The cover of Newsweek Magazine recently proclaimed, “We Are All Socialists Now”. Maybe we are. Maybe it’s time to stop kidding ourselves. Let’s quit pretending that we’re a country of rugged individualists, like in the movies. John Wayne doesn’t live here anymore. Perhaps we should stop the charade and just get it over with, admit that we just don’t have it in us. Americans like the federal nanny-state. They need the federal nanny-state.

To resolve all doubt, we could gather in Philadelphia, draft a Declaration of Dependence and submit these facts to a candid World: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident in our Society: that without Federal Government intervention, we cannot take care of ourselves, our families or our neighbors; that we are endowed by the benevolent good graces of a ubiquitous Federal Government with certain unalienable Rights and that chief among these are taxpayer-funded programs to ensure our happiness and well-being. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on our own inadequacy, we pledge to the Federal Government our blind loyalty, our incomes and our sacred liberty.”

But maybe Newsweek was wrong - a modern-day “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment. I sense a growing awareness on the part of average citizens. Previously too busy bettering themselves and doing right by their neighbors to be “activist” about anything, they are awakening to the realization that their country is being changed. America is not changing in the sense of a benign, political drift, but it is being relentlessly, purposefully changed in a real, fundamental and irreversible way. People now sense that we’ve reached a tipping point, a moment in the history of our Nation when the core philosophy of our country is being re-set for good. And, the gravity of this realization is spurring them to “get into the game.”

Let’s face facts. We are presently engaged in the “Third Founding” of the United States. Only the Revolution and the Civil War rival the coming four years in philosophical importance. If we are intellectually honest and aware, we should recognize that we are being forced to choose: become full-blown socialists or turn back to our historical roots as a constitutional republic. Time is short. This “re-founding” is going to be complete within the next four years, not some time in the obscure future. In these next four years, we will decide if we’re capable of taking back the power we’ve ceded to Washington or if we really are all socialists now. Did Newsweek get it wrong? We’ll know soon enough. We’ll have an idea of what road we’re on after the 2010 midterm elections. The morning after the next Presidential Election, we’ll know for sure.

It’s late in the game, but the battle of ideas has finally been joined in earnest. I say “in earnest” because we finally realize that both political parties are speeding us down F.A. Hayek’s Road To Serfdom. People finally grasp that the choice is not between Republicans or Democrats, but between an intrusive federal nanny-state run by both parties or a movement by the people to take back the power originally reserved for them by the Constitution’s Framers.

The Founders gave us a constitutional republic and made individual liberty paramount. They designed a decentralized government to ensure that the people could govern themselves – those most directly affected had the most say. We now have a centralized, mass democracy where the concept of federalism is but a footnote in history. Professor Claes Ryn calls the social and political philosophy which enabled the Federal Government to invade every nook and cranny of our lives a “moral hoax” because it allows the proponents of big-government to “ooze benevolence for people in the abstract.” Because they don’t have to do something concrete for specific people it is checkbook morality - “moralism made easy”.

The Supreme Court aided and abetted this transformation of the Constitution by ignoring or re-writing clause after clause limiting government power. In his book, Restoring the Lost Constitution, Professor Randy Barnett vividly describes the result, “The Constitution that was actually enacted and formally adopted creates islands of government powers in a sea of liberty. The judicially redacted constitution creates islands of liberty rights in a sea of governmental power.”

So, what to do? Professor Barnett has a concrete answer is in his Forbes.com article, A Bill of Federalism (May, 20, 2009). We must demand that the Federal Government return the power it has usurped. We must restore the original balance of power between the Federal Government and people and the States. But legally and politically, we cannot simply erase the Supreme Court cases that brought us to this point. We must amend the Constitution to formally reinstate the clauses eliminated from the Founders’ Constitution. In this way, we can assume control over our own lives again, just as the Framers intended.

We are but months away from the culmination of Socialism’s one hundred year assault on the Founders’ core philosophies and their Constitution. We must face squarely the question, “What is the proper role of Government in our lives?” Either we will re-affirm the philosophy and virtues of our Founders and re-invigorate the Constitutional Republic they created, or we will take the final step to European-style Socialism. I see ahead the last off-ramp on Hayek’sRoad To Serfdom. Let’s take that exit marked “Individual Liberty, Limited Government and Free Enterprise.” Fight for what you believe in. Join the debate. We Are All Founding Fathers Now.

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