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In support and defense of the Constitution of the United States of America

Corporatist / Federalist Lie:  “I swear to support and defend the Constitution..”

 

     Only about half of all voting-age Americans (54%) voted in 1996.  By 2000, voter registration was at an all-time low.[1]  Most Americans don’t write their legislators either, or sign petitions.  If you ask people why they don’t participate in their government, many will tell you it is because they think the system is a sham, a lie.  A joke.  They will tell you that they believe politicians are crooks and that money and greed are the real drivers of national affairs. 

     Much of this cynicism comes from the suspicion that the people in charge aren’t playing by the rules.  The rules for our system of government were established after careful (and often heated) debate when the Constitution went into effect in 1789.  Since then, many of these rules, in fact, have been and are being, broken. 

 

For example:

 

     The Constitution says that Congress, not the President, decides when and if we go to war.[2]   This is a key element of the Constitution.  It is a primary difference between America and the monarchy we separated from.[3]  The founding fathers wanted to make sure that the power to make war would never again be in the hands of one man.[4] [5]  They constructed the constitution to place the power to make war in the hands of Congress, the legislative branch (representing the people).   Having just wrested our freedom from a tyrannical king, our founders had no intention of enabling any future tyrant to use the military for his own designs.

     Fast-Forward to Vietnam, which cost the United States the lives of 58,184 soldiers, sailors and airmen[6], along with untold millions of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian men, women and children.  The American people were re-awakened in their determination never to enable another sitting president to conduct a war for his own (or his corporate backers’) purposes, and we passed the Presidential War Powers Act in 1973.

     Had it been enforced by a legislature of good conscience, the Presidential War Powers Act would have prevented the 2003 invasion of Iraq[7], which (based on all evidence) was for the purpose of gaining “Political Capital”[8], and for conquest-hungry industrial powers to seize key real-estate in the Middle-East, which is strategically significant and which happens to be sitting on the second largest oil-reserves on the planet. 

     In violation of the Constitution and of the reinforcing Presidential War Powers Act, and in the face of any conscientious American who cares enough about his family’s future to look, this illegal adventure of the executive branch has cost us 1,873 American dead on the battlefield at this writing, thousands more American dead en-route to medical facilities away from the combat-zone, and tens of thousands of wounded; not to mention the utter destruction of entire cities and the general infrastructure of Iraq, and the wholesale slaughter of the human beings there, often with poisonous, depleted-uranium munitions that will leave the country contaminated and sick for years to come.

     Why, then, since after World War II, have we had wars all over the world[9] that were not declared by Congress and were largely pet projects of the corporate-backed Executives in office at the time?  The fact that George W. Bush calls himself a “War President” indicates part of the answer:  in wartime the Executive has more power, and in wartime the electorate is far less likely to replace that Executive.

     Beyond War powers, the constitution also plainly states that Congress controls the money.[10] This is to provide a check on the power of the President.  Why, then, are billions of dollars spent every year in covert “black operations” run by the Pentagon, a subdivision of the executive branch, without any oversight by Congress?  John F. Kennedy intended to put a stop to it.[11]  He himself was stopped.[12] 

     The first amendment has been hijacked by corporations so that when they are caught lying all they have to do is yell “free speech”[13] [14]; while peaceably-assembled protesters across our country are herded into makeshift, guarded, barbed-wire pens insultingly called “free speech zones”[15]. 

     The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution clearly defines the right for people to be “secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures”.  Why, then, do we now have a law on the books that enables police to break into your home at will, search or seize the contents, and not even tell you about it for weeks or months afterward?[16]  Why then, are government spies authorized to peruse your health, purchasing, financial, even your library records, gagging the providers of such information from even telling you about it?[17]

     Given that the Fourth Amendment is intended to protect our reasonable expectation of privacy and our basic right to be “let alone”[18], strong cases could be (and have been) made against the prohibition of intoxicants (the basis of the “drug war” and the “booze war” of the 1920’s), and against persecution of women who exercise freedom of choice regarding their reproductive health[19].

A Country that Strayed from its Constitution:

     After World War I, Germany became a constitutional republic, but it was under great social, economic and political stresses.  Both the ruling class and the ordinary people gradually lost confidence in their democratic government.   Common people pretty much ignored it.  In this climate of popular resignation and indifference, one radical party gradually gained influence in the legislature.  That party grew under a false demagogue (someone who appealed to the “masses”, the “mainstream”, while the corporate elite quietly encouraged him and backed him financially).   Taking organized, decisive action amid a relatively sluggish and inept government (the Weimar Republic), this fake demagogue ultimately gained the executive office of Chancellor (appointed by then-senile president Hindenburg).  Shortly afterward, the capitol building that housed the legislature (the “Reichstag”) was burned under suspicious circumstances. The false demagogue quickly claimed “emergency” powers through a new law called the “Enabling Act”, canceling out the rights of citizens guaranteed by the constitution. 

     Hitler then proceeded to thoroughly militarize the country, using propaganda that harnessed hatred and simple, mindless nationalism; and he built a culture that proceeded to persecute and ultimately murder millions of its own people; and to destroy a huge portion of Europe and the people who lived there. 

     This was before the better judgment of the world crushed him along with his corporatist regime.  Ordinary working Americans who had been suffering from the mistakes of the corporate elite here at home (the giant “bubble-burst” called the “Great Depression”), rallied behind Franklin Roosevelt and fought with holy determination in that war against Evil.  They fought to protect the freedoms defined for them by the Constitution.  Moreover, they fought to defend their homes against the onslaught of a Germany and Japan who were “on the march”[20] in campaigns of global conquest.

     What would happen to America under conditions of economic misery in modern times?  How does the fact that one state governor recently, publicly boasted that soldiers who were “locked and loaded” would soon be fully able to “shoot to kill” American citizens in one of her cities?[21]  Is history repeating itself?[22]

     America purportedly was once the envy of the world not just because of her economic success, but more importantly because of the freedom afforded her citizens.  America offered the promise of opportunity for a poor person to improve his or her own circumstances.  The reason that America was the inspiration for billions of people all over the world is because America is the first, model free republic (representative democracy) in modern history.

     The beauty, the dream, the power and the hope of America are embodied in our Constitution.  The constitution defines America.  The Constitution is America.  Anyone who tries to subdue it, circumvent it, or ignore it is a true enemy of America.

     To be truly “conservative”, one would have to be in full support of returning our government to what is described in the design outlined in our Constitution, because “conservative” means “resistant to change” and “focused on traditional values”.  This is one reason many conscientious conservatives like to display American flags.

     Why, then, does the constitution represented by our flag suffer its current, maligned, misrepresented condition, buried under a code of laws so complicated that people make entire careers out of interpreting it?   Why do corporate-paid, sold-out blabbermouths in commercial radio and television tend to spin the notion that the Constitution is an old, irrelevent document? 

     The answer lies in the nature of people, and in what made it necessary for us to have government in the first place:  “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”[23]  Logic follows that those who are by all means not angels would desire to reduce or destroy government.   Government is needed in order to protect the good from the bad.  When it is working properly, it ensures that the game of capitalism is played fairly, ensuring competition, which benefits the consumer with superior goods and services.  The best government we have been able to come up with, to date, is the one outlined in our Constitution.  It’s in the deviations from its plan where we have gotten into trouble.  The fourteenth amendment was hijacked by robber-barons a century ago, resulting in corporations stealing the rights of “personhood”, without even establishing true legal precedent[24], while the intended recipients of protections afforded by that amendment, the former African slaves in America, benefited little if any from it at the time.[25] 

     Every person in the federal government swears an oath to support and defend the Constitution.  Loyalty to the Constitution is reaffirmed in the Code of Ethics for Federal Government Employees[26].  If a government official undermines the democratic processes defined in the Constitution, that official is acting against the best interests of the United States.  Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution says, “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” 

     One “High Crime” is “violation of public trust”[27].  George W. Bush violated the public trust by lying to the United States Congress and the American People that Saddam Hussein had attempted to obtain Nuclear materials from Africa[28], as alleged justification for his attack on Iraq[29] (directly undermining the democratic process).  This is a violation of the public trust in the highest degree.  In the face of this, and in almost complete denial of it, millions of misinformed (or indifferent) Americans stand behind this lie simply because its perpetrator and his ilk claim to be “Republican”.  They are not republicans.  They are radical, corporatist federalists.  “Republic” means representative democracy.  Any true republican legislator should be clamoring for the impeachment of this acting[30] president and his entire cabinet by now.

     The Constitution has been misinterpreted and misdirected.  It is today being brutally attacked.  It will continue to be attacked and possibly destroyed or fully disabled very soon unless all of us wake up, wake up our neighbors, talk to each other and get out of our comfort zones and demonstrate about it, circumventing the lying corporatist/federalist press.  Call your “elected” officials.  DEMAND that your ELECTED OFFICIALS DO what is RIGHT and LIVE UP to the OATH to DEFEND the CONSTITUTION that EVERY LAST ONE of them TOOK.  Without such action, America will continue to devolve into dictatorship, and we don’t want to go there.

--- Mark Frankenberg