An Action Plan for Restoring Our Constitutional Republic
Where do we go from here?
Today’s post was inspired by a conversation I had recently with a fellow on Twitter. He asked some questions and I tried to answer. To put it bluntly, at times I wondered if he was a troll. His questions and input was often obtuse. In fact, the whole thing started with a comment he made and I replied asking for clarification. In the end, I’d say he was sincerely looking for answers. Those I supplied there and offer here are by no means to be considered authoritative. They are simply my thoughts, wishes, and opinions… among other things.
It all began with a discussion of elections. Maybe you are better than I when it comes to following a Twitter thread. It’s a low bar, trust me. To that end, I won’t attempt to reconstruct the thread nor post it. Instead I’ll touch on some of main points.
First off, I’d say it is foolish to think any one or truncated series of elections can fix the mess we find ourselves in today. It has been over a century in the making. Restoring our Constitutional Republic will take time and effort. It is the effort part where I fear we will fall short.
To gain a better idea of my perspective, let’s consider a working Constitutional Republic with other forms of government. For brevity’s sake, I’ll simplify my examples. A kingdom is reasonably straightforward. The King (or Queen) rules. He may have a council. Some administration may be delegated but in the end, what the King says, goes. Subjects, those under him are expected to obey and as such, really don’t have all that much say in “government”. A dictatorship is a similar setup. Those in charge say what’s what and that is it. A communistic society – a so-called “People’s Republic” is essentially a government run by committee. As such it features all the benefits of any iron-fisted rule with the problems associated with too many cooks. Once again, common citizens need not concern themselves with issues of government.
Now a Constitutional Republic starkly differs from the above formats in that citizens are not subjects but are rather self-governing. The authority and responsibility of government falls on the citizens themselves. To ease that burden, other citizens are given the responsibility of representing groups within the nation. These representatives meet and handle the business of government while day to day operations are delegated to permanent employees.
All of the problems we face today stem from the notion we can “set it and forget” it by trusting those we choose to represent us and, by proxy, those they choose to take care of the day to day stuff. The end result is, our “representatives” were bought by opportunists who saw a bigger picture. These are the “money men”. In the early days, certain individuals influenced representatives to spend our tax dollars on projects where they would profit. More often than not, I’d say, those representatives were rewarded handsomely for their loyalty – not to their constituents, but to the money men. At some point, or maybe from the very beginning, these same money men came to understand that to continue to enjoy such profits they needed to ensure the “right” people were elected to office. Thus they gained control of the parties that nominated candidates for office. How? Why by being very generous of course.
In addition to influencing the party process, money men often prefer to
directly control certain representatives. While the price of a politician can often be steep, the well of funds is only limited by how much public funds can be diverted to the coffers of the money men. At some point, they found an additional stream of income – political elections. You see, by owning media outlets, the politicians can spend mountains of money for re-election generating even more profits for the money men. As these money men tighten their control of the election process, I’m sure they enjoy many a laugh at the irony of it all – they collect money from those they intend to steal it from to pay for putting their own lackeys in place to steal even more money from the citizens who voted to put the thieves in positions of responsibility!
These days the money men own just about everything. According to their own missives, they won’t stop until they own everything. I, myself, wonder about the wisdom in this. They already own us, or our labor, at least, via income tax. Through various other taxes they own most everything else as well. We can buy nothing, rent nothing, sell nothing without paying tribute to the masters. Irony again rears it’s ugly side. Technically speaking, WE are the government. In reality, we’ve handed our very souls to those who we intended to represent us and those caretakers charged with day to day operations.
Now we come to the current pickle. Being human, and, despite how difficult this is to admit, those in office and government offices are indeed human, these individuals – or rather their controllers, the money men, are never satisfied. They want more. They want it all. To that end, they’ve taken off their masks to show their true reptilian nature. Many of us are stunned. The screws are now becoming tight enough, painful enough, to jar us awake. Now we see them for what they are and we don’t like it. More and more agree: we need to take back what is ours. But how?
As I indicated before we’re in deep do do. The above was to illustrate to some extent just how up to our noses we have sunk. This coming election is not going to “save” us. A new duly-elected president is not going to save us. A civil war is not going to save us. (Sorry dudes, it’s just not.) What then can save us?
Remember a few paragraphs ago, where I described the “set it and forget it” mentality? That has got to go. WE the People need to roll up OUR sleeves and do what we’ve always needed to do, and avoided at all costs. We need to involve ourselves in our governing. By involvement, I mean more than simply “voting”, much more.
The restored Republic as I see it revolves around our individual county seats and incorporates town and village boards as well. In other words, local rule. The current systems, from the political parties to government has been systematically built to “rule” from the top down. That is not a republic. A republic is ruled from the bottom up. We’ve been turned on our heads and we need to right this. So… local rule. A modern, New England style system of “town halls” comes to mind. Already there are some advances towards such things. My own county has a “Facebook group”. I cringe on that idea. There is no way I want the current Facebook operation to have any hand at all in my local government. Now if Facebook was owned by us citizens, really owned, then I might reconsider, but I digress. What I’m getting at is our local “town halls” can easily be partly, even wholly virtual. (Personally, I’d prefer the option of showing up to meet face to face, at least on occasion.) The counties then meet with state and federal representatives to discuss our approach to current issues. Elections are no longer party affairs but individuals announce their intentions locally, then regionally as the situation calls for. They set up their own web pages/site and do their own stumping. I would entertain the idea of forbidding political advertising altogether. Let’s put some meat between those buns. Those standing for elected offices can be written in at first, at least until we can open up the process to better accommodate citizen candidates.
How do we get there? Since the above is only my idea, maybe a better question is how do we extract ourselves from this current muck? As many likely already see, the first step is to stop the bleeding. What I’m specifically referring to is the need to secure our election process so we can trust it again. To this end we start now. None of us can accomplish this by ourselves so we need to circle our wagons and bring our allies and potential allies in. Voting is still important. To gain purchase we need to ensure we are putting people into elected offices who answer to us citizens. We need to get out the vote. In addition to this we also need to monitor the coming election in force. By this I mean not just one poll watcher but several at each poll, with backups ready to descend should there be an issue that those in charge wish to ignore. All I am advocating here is making a concerted effort to ensure those facilitating and counting our votes are doing so by the laws of the land.
In addition to the above, we must regain control of our political parties and throw out those who pull the strings. My personal ultimate preference is to eliminate political parties entirely. Instead, those who stand for office should make their own inclinations known to all and be elected or rejected based on what they have to offer rather than hiding behind some “party platform”. Keep in mind, party politics is always about control. In our “two-party” system, each party struggles to control the narrative. How do they do so? By growing government in their own image. Constitutional limitations be damned.
None of this can be resolved without a great deal of time, effort, and diligence. Not only must we deal with the leviathan that our government as become but we must rethink our own role in government, step up and do our part. Our backs are against the wall. Either we rise to the occasion and take back our nation our we will lose it. Are you up to the task?