The Threat From Within

The greatest threat to the United States today is from within. It is Liberal Elitism — Liberalism and its first cousin Socialism, and its second cousin Marxism.

America has been captured by a liberal disease that holds hostage our country and our people. We call this disease Liberal Elitism — the most virulent form of Liberalism. Conservatives may be motivated by values, principals, ideals and devotion to God; Liberal Elitism has only one motivation: the amassing and wielding of power. (Unless it is even worse: Treason.)

Ronald Reagan saved America from the Evil Empire. Now America cries out for deliverance from the grasp of Liberal Elitism and the huge, monster government it has built and now manipulates for its own ends. Americans want their country back.

For Americans to reclaim their country, they must first regain a Citizen Congress, as the Framers intended. Congress could bring Liberal Elitism under control tomorrow morning if it had the will to do so, but it lacks the will, because in today's Congress so many members are motivated by selfish careerism rather than by service to their country.

In the half-century since World War II, Liberal Elitism has stolen our country by taking control of our government, an inch at a time, to the point where that government has become a massive, intrusive force with control over the very lives of its citizens:

• In the work place with bureaucratic OSHA regulation, the minimum wage and other Big Labor-inspired regulations;
• In the health care field, where Medicare and Medicaid mandates are administered by medically ignorant bureaucrats, while statist elites work to socialize all health care;
• In the matter of education, where history is being rewritten and children given moral instruction and religious prohibitions contrary to the beliefs and intentions of their parents, and college students are subjected to frivolous politically correct curricula promoted by the liberal elite, all at the dictates of the imperialist education bureaucracy;
• In the matter of the First amendment, which was placed in the U. S. Constitution among other reasons, to protect citizens who wanted to practice their own religion safe from the heavy hand of government, but has now been perverted to the situation we have today, where government uses that same First Amendment to persecute Jews and Christians and prohibit displays of age-old symbols of their faith.
• In the matter of property rights, where Congress stands by and judges assent, while government takes property from citizens by force, trampling their rights and making a mockery of the due process clause of the Constitution;
• In the matter of the fruit of our labors — personal income — plundered by a voracious government and its tool, the IRS, which has the power to terrorize citizens by the presumption of guilt, laying the burden of proof of innocence upon the taxpayer ("He has… sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass [sic] our People and eat out their Substance" — Declaration of Independence);
• In the matter of national defense, the very first obligation of any government, where Congress refuses to build a missile defense to protect its citizens against attack by rogue nations who wish us harm, because it is "too expensive," yet spends money endlessly for multifarious schemes to perpetuate members in office;
• In the matter of the judiciary, where Congress has sat passively while judges usurp legislative functions, including taxation ("FOR imposing taxes on us without our consent." — Declaration of Independence), thus violating the Constitution and blurring the separation of powers, perhaps the most fundamental concept of that precious document — an insidious way of denying citizens constitutional protection.
  

The government which inflicts these pains on the citizenry continues to proliferate, amassing ever-increasing power, wielded by ever-increasing hordes of bureaucrats, spending ever-increasing resources picked from the pockets of the people. Cato Institute tells us that government at all levels — federal, state and local — eats up more than 43 percent of our national income — a huge price to pay for government. As we all know, governments don't produce wealth, they consume it. Not only do governments not produce wealth, they inhibit those of their citizens who do.

And just about everything that we find reprehensible in Washington has come about through the actions of — or the inaction of — the U. S. Congress.

It is Congress — which has turned its back on the Godly principles upon which this country was founded.

It is Congress — that has spent us into the huge national debt — which will burden our children for the indefinite future.

It is Congress — that has created the bureaucratic monster that continues to grow day by day and year by year.

It is Congress — which passes legislation that buys votes by purporting to eliminate the risks of life, then sends us the bill.

It is Congress — whose social experiments have encouraged habits of sloth and irresponsibility.

It is Congress — which has sat idly and passively by while the judicial and executive branches have stood our Constitution upside-down.

The report card for our U.S. Congress is F's — across the board.

A recent study estimates that regulatory compliance costs American business $677 Billion annually — two-thirds of a Trillion Dollars each year — all imposed on our economy and our taxpayers by Congress and its own creature, the bureaucracy.

Congress could put a stop to this nonsense tomorrow morning if it had the will to do so — but it lacks the will.

While all this has been going on, government has been inflicting upon our children a huge debt, the acknowledged on-the-books dimension of which is more than Five Trillion Dollars, but is much higher when all the off-the-books obligations are counted.

Two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson wrote, in a letter to James Madison:

…the earth belongs in usufruct to the living… no man can by natural right oblige the lands he occupied, or the persons who succeed him in that occupation, to the paiment [sic] of debts contracted by him. For if he could, he might during his own life, eat up the usufruct of the lands for several generations to come, and then the lands would belong to the dead, and not to the living, which would be reverse of our principle…

Today we might substitute "country" for "lands." Yet a recent study by a congressional committee — a creature of the Congress itself — reported that for the last half century every time Congress has extracted an additional incremental tax dollar from our pockets it has managed to spend a dollar and a half. Think of it: A Dollar in, a Dollar and a half out; a Billion in, a Billion and a half out; a Trillion in… you get the idea. This continues to place our unborn children further in debt — a debt run up willy-nilly as a legacy of our careerist Congress, in the atmosphere created by Liberal Elitism, and one hundred, eighty degrees opposite from Jefferson's dictum.

Congress could stop this scandalous spending tomorrow morning if it had the will to do so — but it lacks the will.

Through its subsidization of illegitimacy Liberal Elitism has created, encouraged and perpetuated generations of victims of illegitimacy. Children born of children who were themselves born of children have nothing to pass on to their children. As a result an entire subculture has been deprived of nurture, values, and a sense of its own worth and its place in society. One out of every three children born in the United States today is illegitimate. The result is creation of a permanent underclass of citizens which is uneducable and untrainable, a huge burden on the welfare system and the populace, wasted lives deprived of the opportunity for useful pursuits, and a main cause for the alarming increase in the crime rate, but it is also a potent political base for Liberal Elitism.

The social cost of illegitimacy is enormous. William Bennett tells us in his book "Index of Leading Cultural Indicators" that in the three-decade period from 1960 to 1990 illegitimate births increased fivefold, the divorce rate doubled, children in single-parent households tripled, and violent crime was up sixfold.

Americans recognize all these problems, and realize that Congress created them. That is why congressional term limitation is such a powerful force in America today — because the public supports the concept with 70% or more majorities. A Louisiana poll showed 86% support. When we write about congressional term limits, we are not being theoretical. We have a track record — in the Louisiana Legislature. Yes, Louisiana! It was there that a predecessor to Citizens for Term Limits was able, with help from many sources, to obtain passage through the Louisiana Legislature of a constitutional amendment limiting members' own terms. Legislators voted against their own career interests. The amendment passed the Legislature by huge majorities of eighty and ninety percent. Louisiana, not always a bastion of good government, is the only non-initiative state to have done this. Since the ballot initiative was not an option, we had to slog it out, vote by vote, one at a time, but with stunning success, the dimension of which surprised even us. It was then ratified overwhelmingly by the electorate.

We have a plan for getting term limits through Congress. We have already completed a successful pilot program in Louisiana.

Congressional term limitation is an overriding issue that resonates with the electorate because it is the key to all the others. Voters know this. Without a Citizen Congress those other issues won't ever be addressed, let alone solved. Voters know this, but so do the careerists in Congress, who oppose all efforts to bring about term limits. For this reason Congress continues to be imprisoned by the selfish careerism of so many of its members. Congress — and America — can only be liberated by citizen legislators who are willing to make the pilgrimage to Washington to serve — serve their country and their neighbors for a limited time, then return home to live among those same neighbors while others take their places. We have a precious few of these now, but they will never prevail and we will never have a Citizen Congress until we get congressional term limitation. Until then we continue to sink deeper into the quicksand of insatiable Liberal Elitism.

Americans know their country has been stolen from them, but they also know that congressional term limits will make it possible for them to reclaim it.

We will not reclaim our country until we recapture our government.

We will not recapture our government until we regain a Citizen Congress.

We will not regain our heritage, our values and our freedoms until we recapture our government.

We will not reclaim our national soul until we recapture our government.

We will not regain the right to serve God in our own way until we regain our heritage, our values and our freedoms.

And it won't happen by itself.

It will take leaders.

Our nation was founded 200 years ago by a few dozen giants — Godly men of intellect, courage, dedication and honor, men who for all their differences had one thing in common — a desire to serve what they perceived to be the best interests of their new country.

That one attitude of service — if we but had it today — would put us light years ahead of where we are now.

Giants are hard to find in public life these days. Yet in a nation of 260 million people there are still giants aplenty. It's just that few are willing to come forward to offer themselves up for public service in the circus atmosphere that prevails in our seats of government in these times.

Where can we look for leadership today? Among our giants.

We must track down those giants and convince them that their country needs them now as never before. This is an agenda too important to entrust to Congress as it is presently constituted.

Citizens for Term Limits knows how to accomplish a constitutional amendment for a Citizen Congress Our Louisiana success is a blueprint for achieving congressional term limits in Washington. Americans CAN recapture their country.

First we must convince the giants.

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