The Constitution Party of Tennessee

Sometimes we take what has come to be thought of as the ideals of America for granted, and we assume that most people, and certainly our leaders, hold these ideals as sacrosanct.

Many of the ideals of America can be found in the Declaration of Independence. A partial list of those ideals would include: That all men are created equal; That we have certain rights that come from the Creator such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and those rights are unalienable, which means they cannot be taken by government.

We also learn from the Declaration that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. In other words, we are a self-governing people and our government representatives must represent our views and cannot legally assume power that we do not give them.

There are many other ideals that most people assume to be widely held by Americans – concepts such as freedom and liberty. We Americans believe that we are freer than any other people. Justice is another ideal widely believed to be dear to Americans. By justice, I mean equal justice before the law – i.e. the president is subject to the same law to which the rest of us are subject.

The basic rights set out in the Bill of Rights are also ideals assumed to be widely held. There are many others, but the point is that these ideals are closely associated with America and are believed to be almost universally held and cherished.

It is shocking then, to learn that our leaders, who are charged with upholding the ideals of America, instead hold those ideals in contempt. I’m not only talking about the current administration and Congress, although our current leaders are the most obvious. I’m talking about something that has been ongoing for decades at least.

How does the ideal of equal justice before the law hold up against a president who asserts that he is above the law and it does not apply to him? Equal justice is especially difficult if Congress meekly accepts the president’s assertion.

How does “government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed” hold up when Congress routinely robs the states and the people of legitimately held 9^th and 10^th Amendment power? How can we continue to call ourselves self-governing people when Congress continually enacts legislation overwhelming opposed by the American people?

How is justice upheld when Congress and the president rob us of rights protected by the Bill of Rights? The right to a fair trial, right to counsel, right to have charges presented to a grand jury, right to a speedy trial, right to be free from warrantless searches, right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, all are violated with regularity, with impunity, and without consequences for the violator.

Perhaps the most obvious and most damaging example of the contempt in which our leaders hold our cherished ideals is the government’s wars of naked aggression and constant violations of the sovereignty of other nations. The pointless slaughters conducted in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are but the most obvious examples. Our leaders have been militarily intervening in the affairs of other nations for about 100 years now. Just about every nation in Central and South America has been invaded at one time or another.

In addition to the disregard for human life and human suffering which has been inflicted on a mass scale, our leaders have admitted to war crimes and crimes against humanity – as defined by the Nuremberg standard, which was created by the United States post-WWII.

The former President George W. Bush admitted to torture and said he was proud of it and that he would “do it again.” Torture, and specifically waterboarding allied prisoners, was one of the war crimes for which Hideki Tojo, premier of Japan, was hanged as a war criminal on December 23, 1948. His other listed crimes had to do with waging aggressive war against the various allied powers. Mr. Tojo probably was a war criminal, but it’s a bit hypocritical to exempt our own leaders from his crimes, don’t you think?

Ideals like justice, equal rights under the law, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and even simple concepts such as “mind your own business” may be widely held by the American people, but they are held in contempt by America’s leaders.

- Darrell Castle