The American Pipe Dream

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by Brian Roberts

The politicians in Washington DC are hard at work killing the American dream and replacing it with an engineered American pipe dream.

From Wikipedia:

A pipe dream is a fantastic hope or plan that is generally regarded as being nearly impossible to achieve.

Engineering Tyranny

The pieces have actually fallen into place rather quickly. Every word of this article would have been rejected as paranoid fiction less than 2 years ago, but we all know now that the events have happened and the claim that “it can’t happen in America” is starting to sound like a punch line to a bad joke. It is happening here and the engineered destruction of our life, liberty and property is moving along at full speed. Now that health care has passed, the corrupt politicians in D.C. will have set themselves up to rapidly pass the rest of their agenda which includes the heavy burdens of amnesty legislation and cap and trade legislation.

Consider the following:

• When a government rejects 200+ years of Constitutional restraints in order to pass unconstitutional laws then there are NO RULES.
• When a government ignores its own citizens and proceeds to enact laws that are not desired and are undeniably destructive to the economy there is NO REPRESENTATION.
• When a government consolidates large industries such as banking, automotive, health and real estate the result is ECONOMIC POWER.
• When a government enacts laws that force citizens to beg the government for services such as Health Care, Energy, Education and Jobs the result is COERCIVE POWER.
• When a government begins to execute these new powers the result is always TYRANNY. Read your history.

So we find ourselves in a unique place in American history. Against the will of the people our federal representatives have given themselves a blank check of taxpayer funds to build a foundation of coercive and economic power. And through the Slaughter option and misuse of reconcialiation, they have set themselves up to wield unchecked power by setting a precedent that procedures previously used to make minor adjustments to existing laws can be used to actually pass massive new laws that change the fundamentals of this country.

The wolf is truly at the door.

Piecing Together a Defense

Since the Constitution is being shredded at the federal level, what recourse do we the people have? Appealing to federal representatives at town halls has failed to stop health care, massive marches on D.C. and tea parties have failed to get their attention, and phone calls to DC are useless. Even the unprecedented election of a Republican Senator in Massachusetts is blown off as a just a bad campaign by the Democrat. There is a message in all of these actions for those that care to hear it. These are peaceful methods of communication but they don’t care what the people have to say.

Many have put their faith in the elections of 2010 and 2012. Although, more allies in Washington will be helpful, it will not fix the problem, at this point I doubt it will be able to even slow it down. There simply will not be enough true patriots put into positions of power to make a dent in the D.C. mess.

If national health care ever becomes “old news” then it will never be undone, the political will to “take away the free health care” will not be present in enough Republicans. Make no mistake, “taking away from innocent victims” will be the new battlefield and that is a losing battle, the media will make sure of it. So the battle against this unconstitutional legislation must start now.

The sooner we as citizens realize that the answer does not come from looking to the federal government, the easier the next steps will be. The only peaceful solution left is to simply ignore Washington. En masse, citizens should focus their attention on state representatives and demand that the state government be used as a legal front to render unconstitutional federal laws null and void in their state. The time has come to reset the balance of power.

To date, 37 states have begun the process of passing legislation that rejects federal meddling in health care. Idaho has already passed such legislation and Virginia just awaits a signature from the Governor. But more must be done for this strategy to be effective.

It’s common knowledge that in order to lose weight and keep it of, you don’t just diet, you change your lifestyle. So the tenth amendment movement must find ways to remind Americans that politics are local not global and decentralization not centralization of power is the key to freedom.

Reverse Engineering Madison

In Federalist Paper#46 Madison argued that the people would always choose to support state governments over a federal government. Madison enumerated many natural constraints that would keep power decentralized in the various state governments. Unfortunately many of these have eroded over time and massive power has centralized in Washington D.C.

Here are some of the Madison’s observations that served to convince him that states would naturally remain the dominant partner:

“Many considerations, besides those suggested on a former ocaasion, seem to place it beyond doubt that the first and most natural attachment of the people will be to the governments of their respective states.”

“greater proportion of people will have the ties of personal acquaintance [in the states]…”

“greater number of offices and emoluments will flow [from the states]”

“all the more domestic and personal interests of the people will be regulated and provided for [by the states]”

“It has been already proved that the members of the federal will be more dependent on the members of the State governments”

“The opposition of the federal government, or the interposition of federal officers, would but inflame the zeal of all parties on the side of the State”

“should an unwarrantable measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular States, the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand”

“ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole.”

Do many of these observations seem true today? Not likely. However, I hope that the current state legislation opposed to Obamacare is an indication that Madison was not completely off base. But the point is that for long term freedom via decentralized power, the plan needs to include education of the public to reverse engineer a local mindset in harmony with Madison’s observations. The tenth amendment movement is about changing the focus from centralized power in D.C. to a decentralized power based in state governments. That is heart of federalism and continued freedom requires that we find our way back to this simple premise. Consistency is key.

Federalist #46 also indicates how badly Madison misjudge the ability of the federal government to usurp the restraints placed upon it  by the Constitution and more importantly he misjudged the level of apathy the people of this great country could be lulled into. This paragraph from Federalist #46 seems eerily possible today. At the time, Madison thought the following scenario was preposterous:

“The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism. Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made.”

As a Texan, I think my fellow citizens have no problem symbolically considering Texas dominant to the federal government and in this regard, Madison’s observations are correct. However, many Texans are way too quick to seek a solution to political problems in D.C. when Austin is just down the road.

So friends, turn your attention to your state house and demand your legislators draft nullification legislation, and begin the winning process of ignoring the federal government.

It’s time the States entered the room.

Brian Roberts [send him email] is the State Chapter Coordinator for the Texas Tenth Amendment Center

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 5:48 am. It is filed under Current Events, Liberty and tagged with American Dream, big-government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.