The founders of our nation were in favor of putting individuals in charge of their lives, and their limits on government have allowed capitalism to be America’s prevailing system. As a result, the general welfare has flourished. In recent years, however, there has been a movement toward much greater government involvement not only in business and industry but also in public education, energy development, health care, and many other things, including personal aspects of one’s life, such as sexuality, the discipline of children, and public displays of faith. Although the founders did not intend to establish a country that was government-centric, they created a constitution that would allow the people either to accept such a fundamental change in their governance or to fortify the government against these encroachments on liberty.
The bottom line is that the people get to decide what kind of government they wish to have, but we must be forceful and brave if we are to maintain our freedoms. Two luminaries in American history were quite eloquent on this topic. Patrick Henry said, “The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the valiant, the active, the brave.”1 President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.”2 Both men seem to be saying that the American people have no one but themselves to blame if they relinquish the free and open environment that has improved the well-being of so many.
The impulse to care for others is central to the well-being of our nation. We should by no means squelch the desire to help others, and we should encourage our government to serve the general public. However, let us be wise as we move forward. We must ensure that we don’t let well-meaning but misguided people increase class warfare and dependency by giving in a misguided or politically motivated way. Instead we should embrace common sense and kindness, trusting Americans to help themselves, help one another, and know the best way to improve the welfare of every citizen.
CHAPTER 8
SECURE THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY TO OURSELVES AND OUR POSTERITY
“Good people leave an inheritance to their grandchildren, but the sinner’s wealth passes to the godly.”
Proverbs 13:22
By the time the Constitution was penned, the colonists had already gained their independence from England. Our founders were determined never to relinquish that freedom to another outside power, and they took steps to make sure their children would also defend liberty. They feared that in the future some group would decide that it had a better idea of how the country should be run and would try to impose its ideas on everyone else by inappropriate legislation or force. The Constitution was written in such a way as to make this power grab almost impossible. As long as we follow its guidelines, it will be difficult for any force, external or internal, to successfully remove American liberties.
Today the forces threatening our children are much sneakier than direct attempts to usurp power. We may not be facing a king threatening to take our liberty, but the danger is still real. Our children’s freedom today is threatened by debt, ignorance, and abortion. To maintain the spirit of the Constitution, we must address these dangers before it is too late.
DEBT—A DANGER TO OUR CHILDREN
Proverbs 22:7 says, “The borrower is servant to the lender.” Thomas Jefferson recognized this truth when he said that it is immoral to pass debt to the next generation.1 Today our mounting debt is essentially guaranteeing that our children will be servants to the powers that our nation owes. Through no fault of their own, future generations will be forced to pay for our mistakes. This was not the intention of the founders. They envisioned a government that would be fiscally responsible and would empower its citizens by keeping them free of debt.
The Constitution gives Congress the right to tax the people in order to pay government debts, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare of the American people. The founders gave Congress a great deal of latitude when it came to what taxes would be and how they would work. Unfortunately, though this vagueness helped unite the delegates, it has been abused by our government in a way that would horrify the founders.
When the Constitution was written, there was no expectation that American citizens would one day be paying large portions of their earnings to the government. Back then the government was relatively small and relatively efficient. As its size has increased, its efficiency has decreased. The diffusion of responsibility has made it difficult to hold anyone accountable for the ballooning of a gigantic and unresponsive bureaucracy, so the government has continued to grow, forcing the American people to pay taxes to fund its expansion.
The government is now so bloated that taxation can’t raise enough funds to maintain it. To obtain the money it wants, the government borrows from outside powers. The Constitution gives our government the power to borrow money without placing specific restrictions on such borrowing, precisely because our founders could never have imagined the place we are today. When the Constitution was written, our leaders presumed we would feel a sense of responsibility to repay our debts and not pass them along to the next generation. They didn’t realize that we would disregard constitutional limits, expand our government, and be willing to do anything to keep the government going.
Perhaps the founders should have foreseen our irresponsibility. Examination of the histories of other pinnacle nations such as ancient Rome, Spain, France, and Great Britain demonstrates that we are not the first dominant power to experience runaway fiscal irresponsibility. We, however, have not yet been destroyed or greatly diminished by debt. There is still time to turn things around, but we must act immediately.
As I write this book, our national debt is over $18.1 trillion.2 A mere six years ago, it was only about half that amount.3 If we were to stop accumulating debt as a nation and instead pay down the debt at a rate of $1 billion a day, it would take fifty years to neutralize the debt. Sadly, we are not merely failing to pay down the debt but are actually increasing it at a rate of approximately $2 billion per day.4 We know that this will adversely affect future generations, but the number is becoming so large that we could experience catastrophic results within our own lifetimes.
Because we have a representative government, the people actually bear some responsibility for our rapidly increasing national debt. The government is supposed to conform to the will of the people, so the people must make it clear to the government that they oppose the continued borrowing and spending that is ruining the future of the next generations of Americans.
This is not a Democratic or Republican issue, because if our nation becomes bankrupt, no one will be spared. Everyone has to pay the price of these enormous debts, regardless of whose fault they are. Both Democrats and Republicans have implemented reckless fiscal policies, and both parties are at fault for this risk to our children’s future. It’s time for voters to reject politicians of both parties who continue to jeopardize the financial future of our nation. These people must be replaced with individuals who understand how to balance a budget and reduce our debt by stimulating growth and implementing financial restraint.
Financial restraint will require sacrifices on our part, but if we care about our children, we will gladly make those sacrifices. After all, many Americans have made much bigger sacrifices for us. When Nathan Hale, who became an American spy when only twenty years old during the revolution, had been captured by the British and was preparing for execution, he famously said, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”5 Hale was clearly thinking about those who would inhabit this great country in the future. His sacrifices were made to ensure a high quality of life for future Americans. Over the years, many of our brave soldiers have fought on foreign soil, with the full knowledge that they were unlikely to ever see their homeland or their loved ones again. Like Nathan Hale, they gave their lives to ensure freedom and a high quality of life for those of us living today.
When I was a child, we were very poor, but my mother did everything within
her power to minimize the impact of poverty on our lives. She would leave our home before the crack of dawn and frequently not get back until after midnight. She would go from one job to the next, scrubbing floors, changing diapers, cleaning toilets, and doing what other people didn’t want to do in order to provide for us. My mother was an attractive woman, and there was no end to the line of potential suitors promising to take care of her. She rebuffed their advances and basically sacrificed her own life in order to increase the chances that my brother and I would be successful in life. One of the greatest joys of my life was to be able to provide a comfortable retirement for her. She was able to travel the world and to pursue her hobbies without constraint. But what made her much happier than the material things my brother and I were able to provide for her later in life was the fact that her sacrifices made success possible for her sons, who were able to become contributors to society.
The adults in our society today can act selflessly, as did my mother, or they can continue to live selfishly, squandering the resources that would improve the quality of life of future generations. We must ask ourselves whether we are willing to deprive ourselves of anything in order to improve the lives of those coming after us.
EDUCATION—THE GUARDIAN OF LIBERTY
Just as it is our responsibility not to pass debt on to our children, it is our responsibility to pass knowledge on to them. Freedom cannot last long without education, because an uneducated populace is likely to be duped by tyrants. An educated populace cannot be easily manipulated and is the foundation of a strong society. Providing for the education of our children is a key part of ensuring that the blessings of liberty will still exist when our grandchildren are adults.
Many in our society have worked hard to try to provide a good education for the masses, but sometimes they are reluctant to actually examine the data when formulating educational policies. For example, studies show that homeschoolers often reach extremely high achievement levels, followed by those educated in private schools, charter schools, and, last, public schools. Yet education officials still tend to push public school as if it were the only right option. To me the logical position seems to be to advocate for school choice. Parents know what is best for their children, and we see hundreds of parents lining up to try to get their children into charter schools. They have seen the results and want their children to benefit. Our entire society should share this goal, because each well-educated pupil benefits our society. If parents believe and studies show that charter schools are helping our children, we should drop the politicking and increase the number of charter schools.
We also should make sure that public education provides balanced information to our children. The Department of Education was originally created to ensure that we had an educated and informed populace capable of selecting appropriate representatives to manage the country. The Department of Education would serve a useful purpose if it actually attempted to ensure the best possible education for everyone, paying special attention to those mired in poverty, because education provides the best ladder of escape. Instead, in recent decades this department has been invaded by bureaucrats who have seen fit to vastly expand its mission. This expansion has resulted in a change in the subject matter being taught, to the point of indoctrination against our own founding fathers’ principles. It is important that our leaders take seriously the necessity to improve the Department of Education—if it hinders the education of our children for many more years, it will destroy the foundations of our freedom.
ABORTION—THE LITERAL ENEMY OF OUR CHILDREN
Financial stability and education will do our children no good if they are not alive to experience them. Our founders were committed to a belief in the importance of life and liberty, and we must fight to see those rights extended to our children still in the womb.
Why was life so important to the founders of our nation? Perhaps it was because they came from countries where human life was not cherished by those in power. Historically, monarchs in many cases could simply order someone executed, and the victim would have no recourse. People could be forced into servitude and the fruits of their labor confiscated, again with no recourse. On the other hand, we in the United States have typically placed a high premium on human life and gone to extraordinary lengths to save and preserve it.
There was a time in America when great celebrations surrounded the news of a pregnancy, because it was assumed that this was the beginning of a new life. Pregnancy represented continuity of a family legacy and continuation of the species, not to mention a new citizen for our young nation. In our more recent history, we have fallen away from standing up for life.
Now many in our society want to redefine the beginning of life and allow the termination of fetal human beings who have no recourse. The head of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) once told me that it was his belief that a woman had a right to kill a baby until the second it was born. As you know, the ACLU claims to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. I would think that that would include fully formed babies that have not yet been born but are hours away from a normal live birth.
Since life was such an important issue for the founders of our nation, it might be worthwhile to invest more thought in the subject of when it begins. Many of the same people who gladly sanction abortion on demand go to great lengths to preserve the habitats of endangered creatures that are considerably less sophisticated than a nineteen-week-old human fetus. And a fetus even younger than that can react to environmental stimuli and has a brain that is developing at a rate of 400 million neurons per day. Within a couple of months of conception, a fetus already has well-developed fingers and toes, as well as facial features and a body that is distinctly human. Although some will continue to insist that this represents nothing more than a meaningless clump of cells, few can stand to look at a video of an abortion where the head is ripped off and the body dismembered.
Abortion always has been and probably always will be an emotional issue. The Supreme Court of the United States tried to put it to rest with its 1973 ruling on the case of Roe v. Wade, using section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which says, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” This so-called due process clause of the amendment was interpreted by the Supreme Court to mean that a woman’s right to have an abortion and to privacy was protected. From another perspective it could have been argued that the right of the fetus to live was protected by the same clause.
Currently the Supreme Court has ruled that the fetus is a living human being if it is capable of survival outside of the womb, even with medical support. The age at which this viability test precludes abortion is a moving target as advances in neonatal medicine take place.
Judicial rulings are highly subjective and depend largely on the political makeup of the court. This may seem unfair to those who do not like or agree with the rulings, but over the course of time the thrust of the various rulings seems to even out because the makeup of the court tends to change. There is hope that the Supreme Court may one day rule differently on abortion, but it would make more sense for the Court to allow states to decide the matter for themselves.
One of the real beauties of having fifty different state governments is that almost everyone can find a place of happiness where the people believe as they do. Ultimately, it would make a great deal of sense to allow the people of each state to vote on the issue after they have been objectively educated. Obviously, for this to work, it would have to be difficult or almost impossible for judges to overrule the will of the people.
In the meantime we must recognize that the lives of real children are at stake. No ruling that allows the killing of children can be in line with the Constitution’s stated purpose of “secur[
ing] the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
TAKING ACTION
Do the people have any recourse, or must we simply sit idly by and watch the financial future, education, and very lives of our children be destroyed? Millions of Americans are so disgusted that they have simply tuned out and reconciled themselves to the idea that there is no difference between the political parties, that everyone is in it for themselves, and that no one really cares about the people or the future. In the past they might have been right, but in recent years groups of citizen activists have become more vocal and less intimidated by name-calling and bad press. More and more people representing these courageous Americans have been elected to Congress or are finding other ways of influencing the country.
We have just touched on a few of the problems that face American society today. They all have one thing in common: They can be solved when “we the People” manifest the courage, knowledge, and fortitude to impose our will upon the government and change it according to our vision for American society. We cannot let self-important bureaucrats ruin our children’s future. We the people are at the pinnacle of the power structure for a very good reason, and we should be grateful to God, who inspired the framers of our Constitution to provide a mechanism for determining our own destiny. We have benefited from the ideas presented in the preamble, and it is our God-given responsibility to see that those ideas benefit future generations too.
A More Perfect Union: What We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties Page 8
