Liberal pundits are panicking over constitutional conservatism. They shouldn’t, because every child—whether the parents are liberal or conservative—will benefit from constitutional conservatism’s ascendency. If America elects a constitutional conservative president and Congress in 2012, we’ll move forward as a freedom-loving nation.

Several outlets on the Left—such as The New Republic—are raising an alarm about this disturbing new term, saying that it’s secret code for “absolutists” and “zealots” on economic issues, overturning Roe v. Wade, and implying that constitutional conservatives are segregationists bent on creating a theocracy.

As two constitutional conservatives who wrote a new book on the issue, Resurgent: How Constitutional Conservatism Can Save America, we’ll correct the record on defining constitutional conservatism, how it now dominates Republican politics, and why America needs it so desperately.

Constitutional conservatism is the system of government the Founders gave to this country. They set out a series of principles on the rights of man and the role of government in the Declaration of Independence, including that God creates us equal and gives us rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit (not guarantee) of happiness, that government exists to secure these rights, and that the people either consent to this government or have the right to change it.

After years of trial and error, the country then adopted the Framers’ proposed Constitution to be the Supreme Law of the Land to fulfill the Declaration’s purpose. This Constitution strictly defines the federal government as one of enumerated powers, giving it authority over specific areas of our national life, splitting its powers between three branches that check each other, and leaves the states sovereign on all other matters. They also declared certain individual rights. Knowing that they were fallible human beings, the Framers also included an amendment process so that when the Constitution was found lacking, a complex supermajority could change it (and have, twenty-seven times).

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From The Law, by Frederic Bastiat:

What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

Each of us has a natural right–from God–to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties?

If every person has the right to defend — even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

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Well, my friends, it’s Christmas in America once again. And one way to keep our gratitude levels high (and stress levels low) is to reflect on how Christianity and Freedom go together, both in the words and deeds of the Founders, and even in our secular society today. Many of us are not religious at all these days, but we all benefit from the influence of Christianity on the men that designed and built this amazing Nation of Desire.

Plus, the Sears catalog! And we use the word “mountebank” post-ironically!

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On Fox News Sunday, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer spoke of his dissenting decisions in the several Second Amendment cases that he heard as a Justice. He told host Chris Wallace that he thought that James Madison only included the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights as a sop to the states and Breyer insisted that historians agreed.

In essence, Breyer was saying that Madison was not interested in an individual’s right to gun ownership and self-protection and for that reason his dissenting opinions against that individual right accorded well with what the founder’s thought on the issue.

But Breyer’s assumption that a citizen’s right to bear arms is not sacrosanct and his following contention that the founders would agree seems to ignore much of the history of the era not to mention the precedents in law and the historical record upon which the founders relied to define their political ideas — including Madison.

Of course, it is a bit ridiculous to take one lone founder’s words and assume that it represents the opinion of all of them. It is quite easy, after all, to find quotes from any particular founder that in no way reflected even a minority opinion of the day. For instance, Thomas Jefferson once advocated that all laws be dumped every few decades so that the next generation could start over with their own ideas unencumbered by past generations. Even Madison thought that idea was absurd. Hamilton found that many of his most dearly held financial ideas left his fellows cold. John Adams thought that we should call the president “your majesty,” an idea that earned him much derision. And Poor Richard himself, Benjamin Franklin, once proposed that each galaxy had it’s own “God” that ruled in his own sphere meaning that there were infinite gods for infinite galaxies. Not every idea the founders had were gems, to be sure.

Still, Madison spoke with most of his contemporaries, not outside them, when he considered the meaning of the Second Amendment.

It is certainly true that the founder’s chief interest in creating the Second Amendment was to serve two important roles. One was to create a citizen army, a militia that could be called upon to defend the nascent nation. The second was to prevent the necessity of a large standing army, a body that most of the founders feared. Based on a clear reading of history, the prevailing opinion of the day was that a standing, powerful army served the forces of tyranny far more often than it served those of liberty. Consequently they wanted to figure out a way to make sure that the U.S. Army was small and too weak to threaten the citizenry.

This fact is what Breyer pointed to in order to prove his contention that Madison was not concerned with an individual’s right to own firearms.

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George Will in today’s Washington Post:

The theory – perhaps by now it seems like a quaint anachronism – on which the nation was founded is, or was: Government is instituted to protect preexisting natural rights essential to the pursuit of happiness. Today, that pursuit often requires flying, which sometimes involves the wanding of 3-year-olds and their equally suspect teddy bears.

What the TSA is doing is mostly security theater, a pageant to reassure passengers that flying is safe. Reassurance is necessary if commerce is going to flourish and if we are going to get to grandma’s house on Thursday to give thanks for the Pilgrims and for freedom. If grandma is coming to our house, she may be wanded while barefoot at the airport because democracy – or the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment; anyway, something – requires the amiable nonsense of pretending that no one has the foggiest idea what an actual potential terrorist might look like.

But enough, already.

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Pollsters Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell, both Democrats, took on President Obama in a column in the Wall Street Journal last week, criticizing him for not being true to his campaign promise to unify the country.

“Rather than being a unifier,” they say, “Mr. Obama has divided America on the basis of race, class, and partisanship.”

They don’t see Republicans as any better. They claim that Republicans have just followed the administration in trying to exploit hot buttons of race and class.

“….the Republican leadership has failed to put forth an agenda that is more positive, unifying, and inclusive.”

Although it seems so warm and cuddly to consider the idea of national “unity”, what does this really mean? Particularly, what does it mean in a free country?

Isn’t the whole point and beauty of freedom that we recognize differences among us as natural and that we view debate, differences of viewpoint, and dissent as healthy? Doesn’t the idea of “unity” – of uniformity – conjure up images of exactly what this country is not about?

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Far-left ideologues and self-styled intellectual illuminati have, for years, labored overtime to highjack the notion of American Exceptionalism by equating it with their own notion of American arrogance.  Let us put an end to this calumny. Let us recall and, indeed, praise the American Exceptionalism at which Alexis de Tocqueville marveled when, during his travels through the young country in 1831, he coined the term in his treatise, “Democracy in America.”

De Tocqueville was writing for the European reader, especially for his fellow Frenchmen far more than he was writing for the new and vibrant American marketplace.  Whereas revolution had produced chaos and anarchy and hatred of almost anything that smacked of religion in France, de Tocqueville was quick to observe that something quite the contrary had emerged in America.  Here he saw the budding fruits of freedom, individual liberty, equality of opportunity and a people absolutely free to practice religion however they chose or not to practice any religion at all.   What he saw, first hand, was the world’s first functioning meritocracy, and what he described so eloquently was the fantastic differentiation of America from Europe.  He called it American Exceptionalism. It was, and has been, that exceptionalism that produced the most industrious nation the world has ever known.

That is something we should celebrate each and every day…that which made us different, that which made us great, and that which, thankfully, a rapidly growing number of Americans are determined to reestablish as the great American paradigm.  And while American Exceptionalism shouldn’t merely be about what was, but rather about what is, it is worth remembering that twenty-five thousand Americans died during the War of Independence to establish the great American experiment.  Relative to population that first American war was the second costliest in human treasure, exceeded only by the Civil War.   During the course of the 235 years since the shot at Concord that was heard around the world, more than 1.3 million Americans have died defending freedom and liberty.

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Send lawyers, guns and money…the sh%$ has hit the fan!

Seriously!  Justice Thomas opened a whole new chapter in constitutional jurisprudence with his concurring opinion regarding the 14th Amendment’s “privileges and immunities” clause.

Part II deals with Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion in McDonald v. Chicago. Part I dealt with the plurality decision written by Justice Alito, and the dissenting opinion of Justice Breyer, and is relevant to a discussion on the doctrine of incorporation.  Part III will address Justice Scalia’s concurrence directed at Justice Stevens’ dissent.

Let me preface this article by saying Justice Thomas is my favorite Supreme Court Justice.  Progressives often ridicule him for being “silent,” but why should he bother asking attorneys questions when their arguments focus on SCOTUS swing-vote, Justice Kennedy.  His textual approach to interpreting the Constitution makes the most sense.  While originalism and textualism both seek the original meaning of a statute or provision of the Constitution, originalism seeks the intent of the authors, where textualism focuses on the contemporary meaning of the text.  Primary sources on the intent of authors leads to a cogent argument, but primary sources on the meanings of words promotes a sound argument (and if you never learned logic then you have some studying to do; progressive arguments are rife with fallacies). (more…)

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

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President Obama made the right decision to appeal the ruling issued by U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb, which held that the statute establishing the National Day of Prayer violates the Establishment Clause and is therefore unconstitutional.

In so doing, the judge substituted her opinion for 135 calls to prayer by presidents of the United States, the actions of virtually every Congress that has been in existence both before and after the Constitution was written, and the actions of all 50 state legislatures. Her decision is a part of the continuing assault on America’s religious heritage. America’s Judeo-Christian principles are so interwoven in a tapestry of freedom and liberty, that to begin to unravel one is to unravel the other.

Our Founding Fathers spoke eloquently not only about their personal belief in God, but also about how our nascent nation was called to a higher purpose by God. Out of respect for that purposeful birth, the first act of the U.S. Congress was to appoint a minister to lead the legislators in prayer. And, in deep and abiding faith, Presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama have called upon God for his protection, mercy, and guidance.

These acts are instructive; they show how deep America’s religious roots run. The Declaration could not have been clearer: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights….”

The freedoms and liberties that we enjoy are granted by God. They are not man-made, nor government-granted. Man or State may shackle us, may separate us from our freedom; but ultimately, we will reclaim what is rightfully ours. Government’s purpose is to preserve man’s rights and when government treads on those rights, it breaks a sacred covenant. Then, as the Declaration states, it is the people’s “right, it is their duty” to reclaim what God has given.

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As far as white people go, you couldn’t get much whiter than Teddy Kennedy. He was utterly luminescent. Running around in his boxer shorts, chasing the college girls his nephew William brought home that night, he must have appeared almost ghost-like. Yet when he proposed Nationalized Healthcare, we soundly rejected it.

I can’t think of a bigger white cracker redneck than William Jefferson Clinton. He grew up in a trailer, and had a pick-up truck lined with Astroturf. While he was fooling around in the Oval Office, his wife tried to get Nationalized Health Care passed. America hated that idea so much, that we turned over the House and Senate to the Republicans for the first time in 40 years.

But now that Barack Obama has managed to shove a deplorable piece of questionably constitutional legislation through the corrupt purchasable legislature, we are tarred as racists for criticizing his actions.

We weren’t even allowed to hope he failed. That remark caused a lot of ruckus over the past year. For some reason if you don’t want the President’s agenda to pass, you are rooting against the Nation. Yet for eight years our opponents were allowed to get away with the remark: “I support the troops but I don’t support the mission.”

It always sounded kind of dumb to me, like “I support the Cubs, I just don’t want them to win the World Series” (and in my lifetime, they’ve yet to disappoint). Now when we on the Right say that we support the President, but not his policies, we are ignorant bigots. Which brings us around to the most common rationale you hear on the Left. “They’re only opposed to Barack Obama’s health bill, because they don’t want a black guy in the White House.”

I beg to differ.

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One way that leftists have managed to keep alive their dead, defeated, bankrupting theories on issues like so-called health care is by perverting the definition of very basic terms.

The word “right” is one of the most glaring examples of a definition that’s been distorted by the intellectual house-of-horrors mirror that is leftist theory.

Image: CATO Institute

Every American has the “right” to health care they argue.

They’re right. Every American does have a right to health care. In fact, they have that “right” right now. They have the right to buy insurance. They have the right to not buy insurance. They have the right to pay out of pocket. They have the right get a second opinion. They have the right to rub a little dirt on it and suck it up. They have a right to help out  a friend in need.

What they don’t have is the “right” to health care in the perverted leftist sense of the word.

A “right,” in the traditional American lexicon laid out by the likes of Thomas Jefferson, is something that exists by virtue of our humanity. It is “inalienable” and we are endowed with these rights by our creator. No government or institution has the power to take away these rights. You exist, therefore these rights exist.

In the leftist sense of the word, though, a “right” is something very different. In fact, it’s not a “right” at all: it’s a handout provided to you by government, often at exorbitant costs to society.

“I have the ‘right’ to health care!” the leftists demand angrily. “Therefore, the government must provide it for me!”

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The Democrat Party’s “40 year majority” will come to a close 38 years early. The unbearable trinity of Pelosi, Reid, and Obama has managed to alienate a nation desperate to support new leadership. They accomplished this by an insistence on unwanted quasi-Socialist policies and an irritating propensity to lead with their chin in foreign policy. The era of Obama is over, even as his Health Care proposal will likely pass. But does this mean a new era of Republican leadership is about to begin? This remains to be seen.

Peggy Noonan, a former Reagan speechwriter who supported Obama, has views similar to many who consider themselves centrist. She now realizes her support for Barack Obama was misguided. Yet she is tempted to take a “pox on both your houses” approach. She remains skeptical of the Republican Party, as I imagine many voters do. In her recent opinion essay in the Wall Street Journal she states:

“The question isn’t whether they’ll win seats in the House and Senate this year, and the question isn’t even how many. The question is whether the party will be worthy of victory, whether it learned from its losses in 2006 and ‘08, whether it deserves leadership. Whether Republicans are a worthy alternative. Whether, in short, they are serious.”

I had grown weary of many of Ms. Noonan’s commentaries. Her support for Obama was predicated on an obvious misunderstanding of his politics, nature, and ideology. But her implicit challenge to the GOP is spot on. While the critique premised in her comment is not completely fair, without question Republicans are viewed with skepticism. After all, it was a Republican administration which brought us bailouts, supported expansionary and unsustainable housing policies, expanded domestic spending, proposed an immigration policy as unpopular as the Democrat’s current Health Care Bill and made “earmarks” a household name. Worst of all, the party seemed to lose any sense of foundational principles. Just what do Republicans stand for?

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You’ve undoubtedly heard someone, maybe even yourself, say that you have a Constitutional right to free speech, right?  While that seems to make sense, it’s not true, or at least wasn’t before the government got so big that it started intruding into areas of our lives in which it has no business; and it is part of a modern mentality that has the potential to harm our individual liberty.

To understand what I’m talking about, the first thing you have to understand it that the Constitution does NOT grant you rights, it protects the rights you inherently have from government intrusion.  The First Amendment in the Bill of Rights is this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.  

Just look at the part that addresses speech, “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…”  Nowhere does it say that you are granted the right of freedom of speech, it says you have it, were born with it, and the government cannot do anything about it.  But that’s not how it’s viewed or even talked about by politicians these days.

By saying that someone has a Constitutional right for free speech implies that it is granted to you and, therefore, can be taken away at some point by amending the Constitution.  While legally this is possibly true, trying to get that amendment passed would have about us much of a chance as getting a safe driver of the year award named after the late Teddy Kennedy.  But the mentality that uses and teaches that erodes, even a little, our basic liberties.

While our Founding Fathers agreed that our basic right to free speech was granted by God, you don’t have to be religious to embrace the idea that we were born with it. In fact, avowed leftist atheists are often the ones wrapping themselves falsely in the First Amendment with the claim that the government protects what they have to say. But it’s not exclusive to leftists, people on the right often cite this mythical right granted them.

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