It's The Constitution, Stupid!

By Senator Bob Smith
U.S. Senator, New Hampshire, 1990-2003
1/21/2008


In the sweltering heat of Philadelphia from May 25th to September 17th, 1787 fifty-three delegates from twelve of the original thirteen colonies (Rhode Island refused to send any representatives) struggled mightily to come to an agreement to adopt a Constitution for the United States of America. When it was over, an exhausted Benjamin Franklin walked down the steps of the Pennsylvania State House and was asked, "What kind of government did you create Mr. Franklin?" To which he replied, "A republic, if we can keep it." Are our leaders of today respecting and protecting the Constitution that Franklin and his heroic and patriotic colleagues gave us in 1787?

Can we keep it?

If I hear any of our presidential candidates or elected officials call America a democracy one more time, I may be forced to use profanity! Something I do from time to time when I am really angry and frustrated!

New England town meetings are democracies. All the people who want to vote enter a room and vote. The majority determines the issue at hand. The government of the United States is a REPUBLIC. We ELECT representatives who vote in our absence and on our behalf. These representatives take only one oath when they are elected. That oath is to uphold the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution contains an oath of office only for the President, however, in 1789 the first congress added this requirement to include members of congress and other government officials because they knew that adherence to the spirit and intent of our Constitution was critical to the survival of our republic.

Elected officials do not take an oath to any political party. They do not swear allegiance to NAFTA or GATT or monolithic international organizations like the United Nations or the World Court! They do not solemnly swear allegiance to support and defend large international corporations and certainly not to large special interests, lobbyists and political donors!

The term "political party" cannot be found anywhere in the Constitution. Not in the body and not in the amendments. Yet, we allow this insane political party process to select the people who would become our next President! Candidates "win" delegates to party nominating conventions when states like Iowa and Nevada hold caucuses thus forcing people to publicly state who they vote for and excluding people such as our military men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan from even voting at all! States concentrate on "leapfrogging" one another to see who can be first, rather than working together to make the process more fair for the voters. The media and pollsters tell us who we are going to vote for before the election and candidates "put their fingers to the wind" to decide how to take a stand on an issue. Candidates who do not stand for something, stand for nothing. We suffer from electile dysfunction! This is hardly what our Founders envisioned in selecting our elected representatives.

So, if we do want to keep it, why do we continue to elect members of congress and presidents who place these entities above the document that they swore to uphold? When are we going to stop this madness? This precious document so carefully crafted is being trampled routinely every day! We cannot blame this on those we elect. We must accept the blame for continuing to elect them.

John Adams said that "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people." Ben Franklin added, "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need for masters."

We are getting close to losing it all my friends! Our Republic is in very grave danger!

Things have gone seriously wrong and they are getting worse by the day.

The sovereignty of the U.S. is constantly subjugated to trade agreements, international ventures, alliances and treaties not approved by congress. Our worshipping at the altar of the "world economy" has contributed to the loss of our manufacturing base and the collapse of the value of the dollar.

The "neo-cons" lead us into perpetual wars with other nations without a "declaration of war" by congress. Yes, it is a requirement of the Constitution that we let congress vote before we send our troops into war!

Part of the oath taken by our elected officials is defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic , yet they refuse to seal our borders from terrorists and those who come here illegally at a terrible cost to our taxpayers in crime and undeserved benefits. Our porous and uncontrolled borders threaten the very survival of America.

Unscrupulous defense contractors sell our weapons systems and secrets to our enemies forcing us to chase our own technology around the world to stay ahead and congress does nothing to stop it. Indeed at times supporting this treasonous action.

Even our own ports , where dirty bombs could easily be imported, have been "offered up" to the control of other nations!

Congress and the President continue to raise our national debt year after year with no attempt to control spending. There is no effort to rein in so called "entitlements" and other programs while mortgaging the future of our children. The growth and size of the federal government highlights programs, bureaus and departments that have no connection to the Constitution whatsoever.

Activist justices on the Supreme Court and judges on the lower courts have shredded much of the Bill of Rights and impose their personal views on the citizenry.

These judges impose gun control on honest citizens and routinely put violent criminals back on the streets to kill and rape again.

The justices appointed to the Supreme Court with the imposition of Roe vs. Wade have sanctioned and indeed promoted the slaughter of over 50 million of our unborn children since 1973. Is it possible that one or more of those children could have become a President or a researcher who found a cure for cancer? We will never know because those children never had a chance to live their dream. God bless these children for they had no voice. Those whom we elected took it away from them all. Their blood is on our hands. Where do we find "abortion rights" in the U.S. Constitution?

Judges take our property without fair compensation or respect for the rights of private property provided under our Constitution. As if this were not bad enough, they have taken God from our schools and public buildings and are determined to remove all mention of Him anywhere. Guess who placed these judges in their positions? When Ruth Bader Ginsburg came before the United States Senate for confirmation several years ago, "conservative" senators voted "aye" to please Bill Clinton leaving Jesse Helms, Don Nickles and me, alone, as the 3 votes against one of the most activist justices ever to be appointed to the bench.

Scandal and moral decay are rampant throughout our land. Larry Craig, Duke Cunningham, Mark Foley, Congressman Jefferson and the antics of Bill Clinton in the oval office betray the expectations of Adams, Franklin and the rest of our Founding Fathers. Is it possible to save this glorious constitutional republic that Franklin first informed us about in 1787?

George Washington already gave us the answer in 1796 when he said, "…It is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. In a republic, what species of knowledge…and what duty more pressing…than…communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of our country?"

Our elected officials have let us down. We must elect strong advocates for our constitutional republic at every level of government from school board to President of the United States. If an election is occurring in your community and no candidate meets that criteria , then we need to search and find one. If you cannot find one, write in your own name! We must change America from the bottom up.

Millions of Americans are beginning to figure this out. We have to harness them into a national political movement and we don’t have a lot of time! These folks can be found in the Constitution Party, in the Presidential campaigns of Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, Reagan Democrats and Republicans and on main street all over America. We cannot and must not limit our search for support from so-called "conservatives" or existing political parties. There are millions and millions of Americans who support the traditional values of the sanctity of life, religious freedom and family who are not affiliated with any party. They are rich and poor, young and old. They work in factories and offices, they live on farms and in suburbs, they attend churches by the millions and they are patriotic! They are sick of what is happening. They need to be informed of the mission to restore our Constitutional Republic by electing leaders who respect it. They can be harnessed! We need a revival. We must issue the clarion call to action to save our Republic. This is our last chance.

When the patriots needed to communicate with one another before and during the Revolutionary War they formed "Committees of Correspondence" to keep each other informed. They wrote the Federalist Papers to garner support for the Constitution. They were prepared to sacrifice their lives, fortunes and sacred honor. If they could do that for us, then we can do it now to save our Republic for our children .They communicated by horseback and newspapers, we have the internet. We can answer Franklin’s concern. Yes, we can keep the republic. We have the battle plan. It is the Constitution of the United States.

We all must be "teachers" of the Constitution and we must insist that it is thoroughly taught in our schools. We all need to be the authors of the "Constitution Papers." We must be uncompromising leaders and experts on this document and teach our friends, relatives, co-workers and neighbors that input equals output. Learn and teach what is constitutional and you will in turn get constitutionalists as leaders.

In the Presidential campaign of 2000 Pat Buchanan said, "Don’t wait for orders from headquarters, ride to the sound of the guns!" We are millions of Paul Reveres. We can take our republic back. Are you ready? I am! Let’s do it!