We just returned from six weeks in Texas.

We noticed on television that there were many ads for Bill White. The interesting thing is that he was never identified as a Democrat in these ads. And so we were wondering who he is.

White's main campaign focus seems to be on the education of school children in Texas, where they rank as one of the worst in school records across the nation. His ads were good and had a strong appeal to parents' concerns for their kids, as well as to Texans who want to improve education. He did not say how he would achieve his goal.

In the Valley, where we stayed, the Democrats seem to dominate. We did not hear of Medina, but saw ads for Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

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Re Southern Doc and Melopa debate (or should I say secession of states debate?):

Sovereignty of this nation is as important as sovereignty of each state.

In several ways, the federal government seems to be limited (I am no historical authority) by the will of the states and the people in them through many balancing factors.

This has worked rather effectively since the Civil War, though not perfectly. The states keep a hold on federal government expansion by their ability to send representatives. Actually, had the Constitution not been amended by having Senators elected in general elections, rather than appointed by state governments, this hold on power would have remained greater today.

Granted, the federal government has grown out of balance, but it is up to us as the people to realize this and vote in representatives who will curb its power. Also, it is up to the Supreme Court to keep the Executive branch and the Legislative branch in balance, and likewise, the other branches to hold some curb on the courts.

When people who are voted to power are educated about the Constitution and desire to make it the supreme law of the land, this will work. But when the people become lazy and want a strong federal government to take care of them, freedom will be lost. That is because they are willing to vote in leaders who ignore the Constitution.

The Constitution demands and expects success in protecting freedom to be predicated on an informed and moral and even religious people, as many of our Founders posited.

The preamble to the Constitution states its purpose was to form a "more perfect government"--not a "perfect one." The Founders were well aware that governing sinful man would require many checks and balances to keep us as states and peoples from losing our freedoms. One of the main reasons for a strong (but not dictatorial) federal government is to provide for the defense of the nation. even possibly to prevent one of the several states from invading or unfairly treating another of the states.

I cannot imagine the state of Texas being able to deter an attack by some despotic leader or nation by itself--even though everything is bigger and better in Texas! Most Texans, frustrated as they are, would realize their need for the government to protect them from attack by another nation.

Thus the need for it to stay within the United States of America.

As Southern Doc said, the Constitution would provide for an overthrow of the Constitution and Federal Government if 3/4 or the states so voted. This would require a very high level of discontent in the land. This was a wise provision, because it prevents coups of the sort hinted at by frustrated Texans and, incidentally, Californians.

There is a better way. That is for all of us conservatives to work at the local levels and to reform the Republican Party. I say that, admittedly, as a Republican who is committed to the party, not because of its perfection or how well it has stood nationally by conservative candidates, but because of its excellent platform. I have seen in Kansas over the last 20 years a great transformation by conservatives willing to work from the grassroots levels for solid conservative candidates. This is what Huckabee wants to do nationwide. In Kansas, all of our federal representatives and Senators, as well as most in local offices, are Republican, and most are conservative Republicans. There are not many RINO's around. This is a great change from 30 years ago. It looks like we will have a great conservative governor if Sam Brownback wins the spot Kathleen Sibelius vacated.

In a similar way, when I pledge allegiance to the United States of America, I pledge to the Constitution and the liberty for which it stands. This is not a socialist order, nor a communist order, neither of which promote liberty. I stand for the moral goals and high standards proposed in the Republican Party, as well as in the Constitution, not for the policies of the present administration. I pledge myself to revive and renew the conservative principles upon which our nation was built. These were based on Judeo-Christian principles.

The reason these documents suffer these days is not because they are based on error or have faults. No, it is because the people have left their enthusiasm for and belief in the principles that will keep us united and free. It is in large part due to reduced quality and content of the education in schools, which our country originally intended as a means to educate young people about the Bible, morals, and freedom, so this liberty could succeed.

Because I see among home-educators such an overall adherence to teaching American government from the historic Constitutional perspective, I applaud them for helping preserve our nation. I see home-schooling as much nearer the idea the Founders had, of passing on the Judeo-Christian ethic and principle needed to perfect our nation and secure its freedoms. And many Christian schools maintain and teach true patriotism and factual history of our nation's Founders and their ideals for freedom.

I wish I could say that public education has preserved such honor of the principles of our Founders, but the textbooks prove otherwise, as American history has suffered revision. Especially in the Ivy-League colleges, Marxism has replaced old-fashioned patriotism and belief in our Constitution. Thus, we have a Harvard-graduated President who does not really understand what this nation was conceived to be. Conceived in liberty and justice for all. But committed to order and a document that would best preserve these gifts of freedom to us and our posterity.

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Melopa,

I could not hear your comment as anything but a sarcastic insult that did equate my belief that the nation is an indivisible union as I have pledged since a child, to both "Big governemt" liberalism, and worse, to Marxist Communism.



The actual "American Creed" approved by Congress and written by William Tyler Page (a patriot, like Bellamy, but without any of the baggage associated with late 19th cent Christian Nationalism movement) still contains the essence of our political thought and history distilled:



This is my creed as a citizen.

I do lose patience when I encounter those who seem to ethier ignore or be ignorant of the long and triumphant history of our nation. In my work as an historian, and especially as an historian of the American South, I frequently encounter unreconstructed Southerners who somehow want to refight the Civil War. They operate as if both the events of that war and the events since that war did not occur. It is a theoretical disputation in an historic vacuum. I know the arguments. I know that many have merrit or had merrit. But it was settled. It was settled in blood. The argument is as helpful to our current list of greviences as whether Christians could oppose by force God's ordained King and governemt in 1776. That was a serious debate. It is interesting even today. It may apply to whether Christians can today resist government. But it will never result in the restoration of the King or Queen of England to their position of authority over the colonies of North America.

But I do believe the unseriousness of proposals for interposition or secession masks the very seriousness of the issues you raise.

Many folks do feel powerless, they are frustrated, some to the point of desperation, some to the point of violence, many to the point of vicariously soaking in the warm rhetoric of violence and miliant resistance offered by demagogues and dangerous ideologues.

But this begs a point prompted by one of your fair statements of lament for our people and nation:



Are we in fact helpless? Do we possess no power legal or civil?

As frustrated as we are, I believe we still possess all the tools to fix our situation and redeem our society.

The ballot box, though battered, is still intact. And trust me, even with St. Louis or Philly or ACORN doing their best to corrupt, the ballot and the rule of We The People through elections has encountered, and defeated, far worse.

Faith remains and, though I would be among the first to argue that there is a concerted effort to drive faith from the public square, it has not come close. We remain the most religious people in the Western World. And that is why, though less perhaps than in the past, we remain the most free.

It is too easy a choice to blame our situation on powerful forces agianst which we have no recourse. That is intellectually and morally lazy. Their is no force of business, conspiracy of finance, cabal of athiests and Marxists who have brought us to this moment of crisis.

We have done it. We The People have elected this government to rule and then called it tyranny when it did what we asked it to do. And I do not mean simply the current administration, but every government under our charter.

The founders who have escaped our current obsession with their thoughts and lives (like the facination many have for Paine or Sam Adams) were those founders whose great fear was whether they were overestimating the capacity of man for self-restraint and self-government. That once unleased each and every man would "do what was right in his own eyes." Such an eventuality would ultimately lead to debt, moral decay, and social/political collapse. These founders were willing to take the risk but knew that only restrained liberty could work.

Our whole system of government with its checks and balances is an indictment against the schemes of men. The founders assumed that those with power would abuse it and must be curtailed and hemmed in. But it was not just against the grasping nature of "powerful" men but all men that we sought protections.

Our systems are brilliant and resilliant. Only four nations in the world left the 20th century with the same forms of government (Constitutions) they had when they entered them; the U.S., Switzerland, Britain, Australia (even Canada's lapsed). Our durabilty and greatness rests in our responsiveness to the will of the people without fully trusting any people, including the voter. Our problem is not the Fed, Wallstreet, or TARP (they are the symptoms not the disease). Our problem is We The People as well as blaming others for our own lack of self-restraint and our own short-sighted selfish habits in voting.

Cassius:
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)

The great hope is also in this statement. That the same capacity for self-government can be restored. A people that do not restrain themselves will not build a government of restraint. We can again recognize the risk of doing "what is right in our own eyes" and restrain both ourselves and the excesses of our fellow citizens througn the ballot, education, civil associations, and religious associations.

Melopa you are not my enemy. The Enemy (and as a Christian I know you believe this and I have read it in your posts) is our enemy.

We are the last great hope on earth. We must stand united and with hope and confidence.

This really is what it is all about:

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"As for us, our days of combat are over. Our swords are rust. Our guns will thunder no more. The vultures that once wheeled over our heads must be buried with their prey. Whatever of glory must be won in the council or the closet, never again in the field. I do not repine. We have shared the incommunicable experience of war; we have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top."

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Hear! Hear!
Yes, this is a great creed, although I maintain no union is perfect, only "more perfect" than others. The idea of American patriots sacrificing their lives and fortunes moves me deeply. The signers of the Declaration of Independence lost their homes, their health, sometimes spent years in jail, and some lost their lives for the cause we can easily take for granted. I sometimes wonder why God granted me the privilege I did not earn, to be born an American.



There is no need to fight our government in a struggle to blood. We are yet far from that point. This is our own government, and if we do not like it, we must work to change it at the ballot box. Joseph the angry airplane pilot who flew into the Austin, TX offices of the IRS tried to get his pound of flesh from the government but ended up destroying everything he held dear, because he couldn't figure out a constructive way to oppose injustice. In our country, we have many resources and recourse, including an opportunity to start over and succeed in a job or to elect more responsive representatives.



I believe the Enemy is real, so we can never let down our guard. It is something of a miracle that this experiment in freedom, this Constitution and government of the people, by the people, and for the people has lasted as long as it has.

...



And I would like to add that we as a nation are long overdue for a spiritual and moral revival. Tiger Woods confession today is an example of what we must do as sinners. We must confess before God that we have strayed and deserve His punishment, even while we beg for His mercy. This great nation, even with all its flaws and faults, has great possibilities for the future, if the conservatives who understand and believe in the principles of just government by the people will arise and do what is right with their might. We do still have the power to change America for the better. And I sincerely hope and pray that Governor Huckabee will be granted God's grace to be our leader.

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