CONSTITUTIONAL REFERENDUM

I had a very traditional July 4^th – parade, barbeque, fireworks – but I couldn’t enjoy it. I kept thinking this might be the last national birthday we celebrate as a free country. I say this because the election coming up in November is about much more than choosing who will represent us in Congress. It’s a referendum on the Constitution.

As I’ve pointed out several times on this blog, human behavior has no intrinsic value. We do what we do because it gets us what we need or want. It isn’t until a group of people comes together to pursue a common interest or purpose, identifies the behaviors it expects from its members, and then codifies those expectations in the form of norms, rules and laws, that behavior becomes good or bad. Our founders did that when they came together to form the United States of America. They set out their expectations in the Declaration of Independence, codified them in the U.S. Constitution and underscored them with the Bill of Rights.

Admittedly, it has taken two centuries to clarify that Jefferson’s “all men” includes women, children, people of color and people with non-traditional sexual preferences and identities. And, to be honest, we haven’t always agreed on the interpretation of the norms, rules and laws our founders established. We fought the bloodiest of all our wars, the Civil War, over these differences. However, throughout most of my lifetime, not only have the vast majority of Americans shared the values upon which this Nation was founded and pledged allegiance to them, tens of thousands of Americans have given their lives to protect and preserve these values.

This is no longer the case. A frighteningly large number of Americans have decided, or maybe they always felt this way, that they do not value representative democracy, the rule of law, equal opportunity or freedom and justice for all. They obviously believe it is OK to gerrymander election districts so that candidates for office can choose their voters rather than let the voters chose their candidates. And, it’s OK for government officials to make it harder for people who disagree with then to vote. They believe it’s OK if the people who make the laws don’t have to follow them. They believe the rich are entitled to have more power and influence than the poor just because they have more money. They believe it’s OK if the people they elect to public office use that office to further their own financial interests instead of to serve the people who elected them. It doesn’t bother them that our President is a liar and a cheat because he gets away with it and that’s all that counts. Nor do they care that he is cozying up to our most powerful and dangerous enemies while, at the same time, alienating our most trusted and loyal allies. It doesn’t matter to them what the rest of the world thinks of us. They reject science. They ignore facts. For the past year and a half, Congress and the White House have been systematically dismantling the institutions that were established to protect the rights gauranteed to citizens by the Constitution. Their supporters think that’s just fine. They don't want the government telling them what they can and can't do. Clearly, these are not the values I was taught. and I am quite certain they are not the values the founders had in mind when they wrote the Constitution. 

If we don’t take back control of Congress this fall it is only a matter of time before Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress abolish the Constitution and declare themselves the ultimate, unquestionable and unchallengeable rulers of the United States of America - forever. That’s why this election is a referendum on the Constitution. Voting these people out of office by a significant margin sends a clear message that the vast majority of Americans still believe in the values the Constitution represents.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the people in power now will walk away even if voted out of office. I started warning folks about that possibility last summer. This summer, a number of well-known liberal and progressive thinkers, including many respected Republicans, have jumped on the band wagon. They are starting to realize that the President and the Republican Party will challenge every vote they lose in every court they can find. They will allege all sorts of conspiracies to inflame their supporters. They may even encourage violence (or terrorism) so that they can use it as an excuse to declare Marshall Law, which would suspend Habeas Corpus and stop the election results from going into effect. Some pundits are now calling what is happening a “slow moving coup d’ etat” and suggesting that we are headed toward another Civil War.

I don’t discount that possibility, but I believe we have an alternative to violence and that alternative is our labor and our purchasing power. Massive strikes and boycotts will bring the new breed of Robber Barons, who are bankrolling Donald Trump and the current Republican Congress, to their knees because, for them, it’s all about the money. Without our labor to produce goods and services and without our purchasing power to buy those goods and services, the super-rich won’t make any more money and their investments, which is where they keep most of their wealth, will lose their value. In other words, they will go broke. And they will do anything, including giving us back our country, to avoid going broke.

It will take a great deal of sacrifice on our part to get our country back, assuming there is still a majority of us who want it back. But, we are going to have to make those sacrifices or face an all-out shooting war to get it back . We need to make sure every citizen who believes in the Constitution goes to the polls in November and votes for people who will support it. And, we need to prepare ourselves to survive the deprivation that we will all surely face if we have to stop working and stop buying stuff in order to take our country back from the Robber Barons and their tools in Congress and the White House who now think they own it.