The Attitude of a Constitutionalist: Part 2, Keep it Simple

Right after I posted last week’s article “The Attitude of a Constitutionalist” I realized that there was something I had planned on mentioning but didn’t. I had just simply forgotten it. I decided not to just tack it on at the end of the last article because as the week passed I thought of more things I wanted to say on the subject.

The rules of life are very simple.

That’s a basic philosophic truth. Even when someone seems to be living a very complicated life, if they understand it well enough to easily manage it then to them it seems simple. To a person who is less competent at handling life, looking at someone who is more capable of handling things looks somewhat complicated but the rule remains.

This comes into effect mostly when you are trying to solve a problem. Problems by their very nature seem very complicated. That’s how they remain as problems. Did you ever have a problem that seemed very complicated? Well that’s the problem that hangs around for a while. It’s the simple problems that don’t last very long. You just look at it and say, “Oh, well, all I have to do is this and it’s fixed.”

Problems by their nature are beginning to be resolved when they begin to simplify.

In the world of politics there are a lot of people making a lot of problems. These are called issues. You can dive in to the world of issues, issues, issues and how they interrelate to each other. You can look at all of the different people these issues would or would not affect and how it would or wouldn’t affect them. You can look at those people and try to predict how they would vote according to those issues. Then you can form a political party to try to handle those issues by the use of the government.

Liberals have their groups of issues. Conservatives have theirs as well.

Liberals say, “We need the government to make the people do this, and this, and this, and this.” Conservatives say, “We need the government to make the people do that, and that, and that, and that.”

Political Science is the study of how to win over the other guy using “this, and this, and this, and this” or “that, and that, and that, and that.” It does not try to solve problems. It does not try to evaluate whether this or that is right or wrong.

When you look at the issues and try to sort through them in order to figure out who and what you are going to vote for, as well as who and what you are going to vote against, you are engaging in the subject of Political Science. From there you become either a Republican or Demoncrap. Political Science is very complicated. Take the number of politicians, multiply them by the number of issues, multiply that by the number of positions any given politician could have on the issue, multiply that by the number of positions any other politician considered to be the opposition could have on the same issue, multiply that by the number of groups of people they could be speaking to in order to gain their support and how they spin the rhetoric (this is called “lying”) in order to make it the most palatable for the audience to accept, then multiply that by the chance of the political party winning or losing based on those issues, and finally multiply that by the different understandings of the people with regards to what the government is and is not supposed to do for them. That’s how many combinations of just the major possibilities you have to sort through in order to find out if any given candidate is worthy of your support.

It’s no surprise that politics seems insane.

I used to be into all of that. I was a Republican. If you are a Republican do you ever get the sense that there are a number of them in the party who are not really working for you? I’ve gotten so tired of pulling the knives of Republicans out of my back, as well as them being able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on so many critical issues, that I can no longer support them. My major leaning is still towards the Republicans because some of them do tend to support what I want but, well, let’s just say that trust has been very certainly lost. Bush signing McCain/Feingold’s “Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act” saying that it had some constitutional issues but he thought it was a good bill was the straw that nearly broke the camel’s back. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ ruling on Obamacare was the thirty-two ton pile of bricks that turned the camel into a bloody smear on the pavement.

Such games can be fun for a while but at some point I got tired of trying to keep track of which lies from the lips of which politicians I was supposed to be supporting in order to maintain my lock step with the ever shifting sands of the Republican Party. One may ask why I don’t make the same criticism of the Demoncraps. The answer is that the Demoncrap Party has not risen to the level of criticism. They are too far beneath me to even comment on. One should try to place their efforts where there is some chance of success and ignore the rest.

So at the point in my life where my blood pressure started to become a concern, I decided that following the day to day political issues as they are in the United States was too much of a threat to my life. Too complicated. Complications are not the way to solve problems. Simplicity is.

These days I have only one issue. Is this given politician going to follow the Constitution? If so, I support him. If not, I don’t support him. It is their oath. It is the law. The government needs to follow the law.

I can tell in almost an instant what and who I’m going to support. Since I’ve made this change, when it comes to politics I’m an awful lot more relaxed about it. It’s just too easy. I never support someone because he is a Republican and Republicans are better than Demoncraps.

I don’t care if the party the politician is in is going to win or lose. Winning or losing is not the problem. Right or wrong is the problem.

That’s the difference between Political Science and Political Philosophy.

You might say to me that “If our side doesn’t win then the Constitution loses because the Demoncraps are so much worse! We have to win elections before we have any hope of restoring our country.”

This is a person who has lost his way.

If I have to compromise my principles; that the government should follow the law, that a person in political office has to be good for their oaths, that the Constitution has to be followed in order to restore our country to its rightful prosperity, in order to elect someone who is going to ignore the forgoing principles so that the other side doesn’t win, then I’ve already lost everything of value to me. Personal integrity means something.

Right and wrong come above win or lose. That’s the philosophic point that shreds politics. You cannot support “win” at the cost of “right” without losing. Or in other words, if you have to support “wrong” in order to “win” then sooner or later you will lose. This is what RINOs and other liberals are counting on.

They want you to compromise your values. They want you to compromise on the Constitution out of fear that supporting the constitutional candidate would cause you to lose.

If it is right to support the Constitution, if it is right for the government to follow the law, if it is right for politicians to follow their oaths to the Constitution with honor, then you will sooner or later lose by supporting anybody who isn’t fully behind the Constitution one hundred percent.

You cannot win in the long term by supporting “wrong” for any reason. Even the lesser of two wrongs.

Does it seem to you like the country keeps wandering further and further into the insanity that is liberalism? Here’s the difference. Liberals never, ever, for any reason, compromise their values. They make you compromise yours through the fear of losing. Or the fear of them being able to castigate you in the public arena of ideas as being too radical.

There is another aspect to this that is less obvious. If you vote for a candidate because he seems conservative, based on what he says about all of those other issues, and he’s certainly better than the other guy, but he isn’t a constitutionalist, how are you going to get him to do what you want him to do? In not following the Constitution he’s already violated his oath and the supreme law of the land. Why would he remain consistent with being conservative? His position is to say and do whatever he thinks he needs to do in order to get elected. He’s not going to be consistent except in compromising whatever he has to in order to stay in office. The simple fact is that most American People don’t know or understand the Constitution. They want what they want and they think their guy is the way to get the government to give it to them.

Political life is a lot easier to me. I want only one thing from the federal government. I only want any political candidate to say one thing while running for office. That one thing is for them to follow the Constitution. The guy who talks about following it often is the guy I think should win.

The guy who talks about every other thing under the sun but that, no matter how much he seems to love the country, is the guy who I think should lose. If he talks too much about how he’s the guy to handle all of the domestic issues he’s a flimflam artist and should be kept as far from public office as possible. He’s going to get in there and do whatever the hell he wants. From there it’s a crap shoot as to whether it will be conservative or not.

As issues I support the freedom of speech because it’s both right and part of the Constitution. I support firearms ownership because it’s both right and part of the Constitution. I support the People’s rights to protect and educate their children as they see fit because it is both right and part of the Constitution. I support the People’s rights to make their own health care decisions without government interference because it is both right and part of the Constitution. I support the People’s right to decide for themselves what to do with their own earnings because it is both right and part of the Constitution. I support the People’s rights to decide for themselves what they can do with their property because it is both right and part of the Constitution.

I support individual freedom because it is both right and part of the Constitution.

While the Constitution is not perfect—and we can talk about that some other time—the Constitution is almost entirely libertarian from the federal point of view. It’s a minimal impact on the freedom of the People while still having a country.

So why not just simplify it, sum it all up, and support the Constitution? All of the issues TRUE conservatives care about are included. Here’s a hint for you; when a politician tells you about how he’s going to fix everything and make things great but does not include the Constitution as part of it, he’s in it for the power.

It’s not up to the federal government to fix everything and make our lives great. It’s up to the federal government to only do what is necessary to handle international relations and national security, maintain a border and keep the government out of our way so that we can exercise the freedom to make our own lives great.

No single person can make America great or save the country from the insanity and evils of liberalism without the Constitution. This is not about leadership. It’s about getting the government out of the way so that no single person other than us as individuals can flourish and prosper. That’s how we restore our country. That’s how we make ourselves great.

And make no mistake about it, most of the problems this country is facing right now is because the  People don't know the Constitution well enough to force the politicians to follow it.