Patrick Henry, before a vote was taken on resolutions he presented in support of joining the other colonies in a war for freedom, spoke without any notes in a voice that became louder and louder, climaxing with the now famous ending,

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Have we come so far from those words and the meaning of liberty itself, that we are now a nation of people who would accept chains in return for a government providing for our every need?  Are we a people who would give up our principles and perhaps most of our own sovereignty in exchange for peace defined as not having to take any individual action or responsibility?

We are burdened with crushing debt and even heavier unfunded liabilities necessary to support an expanding central government that is attempting to control every aspect of the lives of the American people.  Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, the environment, health care and business regulation are not found in the Constitution as powers of our central government.  However, liberal interpretation – false interpretation if one reads the Federalist Papers – of the Commerce Clause and the Social Welfare Clause of the Constitution opened a back door for the central government to assume powers well beyond the seventeen outlined in the enumerated powers specifically granted therein.  Each time a new power was taken, it was in return for some form of entitlement or relief from self-reliance.  It has reached a point today where it is difficult to distinguish who has the greater hand, the central government or the people.

As the lame duck 111^th Congress meets this week to conclude before its permanent adjournment, many issues are on its agenda ranging from extension of the current income tax rates, to a number of social and foreign policy issues.  These matters need to be addressed but the continuing debate going into the 112^th Congress, as demanded by the American people in the recent Midterm Election, needs to be focused on the continuation of individual liberty in our country.  Those who believe in more central government control over our lives and those who still hold dear the principle of individual liberty, need to demand an open and direct debate by our elected representatives on the role of the central government and the future of liberty in our nation.

If the American people still believe that American Exceptionalism is defined by a government that is empowered by the people and which governs according to a system of individual liberties, then the debate will be won by those who believe in self-reliance and a smaller central government. This victory will establish the framework necessary to intelligently address entitlements, education, housing, welfare, the environment and especially health care. It will redefine where the central government’s power ends and where the authority of states and the people begins.

If we are going to avoid the loss of our sovereignty and of our freedom itself that will certainly result from the path toward financial ruin we are currently on, reducing the size and reach of the central government is the only workable initiative.  Experience has taught us that more efficient use of resources is achieved by having state and local government, along with the private sector, take charge of the larger issues facing all of us.

Our Founders were careful to limit the powers of the central government because they feared the development of a ruling class in the free nation they envisioned.  They clarified in writing parts of the Constitution and instructed future generations how not to misinterpret some of its meaning.  We ignored their warnings too long and now must take action.  The 112^th Congress needs to tackle the issue of the size and reach of the central government and that is clearly what the American people are demanding.

Our elected representatives need to understand that the electorate is better informed that it has been is decades and is far more engaged in the political process then it has been since the formation of our nation.  This involvement and cry for a return to greater individual liberty is only going to grow stronger.

There is also the practical need to unleash the American spirit and allow liberty to do what is has successfully done for the past 234 years, which is the generation of wealth; scientific, technological and medical advancement; and the superiority of military power – all of which has never been achieved together to the same degree by any other civilization in history.  A return to individual liberty is what our country needs to avoid a financial collapse that will put us all in chains.

Robert Allen Bonelli is the author of “Liberty Rising,” an accomplished business executive, public speaker and involved citizen.

Every federal office holder swears allegiance to the Constitution, not to any leader, not to any party, not to any political philosophy—only to this document, which is the foundation upon which our form of government is based and against which all legislation and judicial actions are measured.  The President vows to do his job faithfully and, to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

And while there is no way of divining what today’s crop of leaders would have thought of the Constitution had they been present at the founding when it was first circulated prior to ratification, we have our doubts whether many of today’s ruling class, including President Obama, would have found common cause with Washington, Adams (John), Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton or Jay, all of whom loomed so large on the emerging American landscape.

This speculation is not intended as criticism of our political leadership or of the president.  Many great American patriots who were present at the founding opposed ratification of the Constitution.  Indeed, such American icons as Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, George Mason and James Monroe, were resolutely opposed to ratification of the Constitution, so wary were they of concentrated federal power. Time has, of course, demonstrated the remarkable wisdom of those who fought for ratification and the value of the gift they bequeathed to us all.  The question raised by this essay, however, is posed as the basis for discussion of whether a document written so long ago, which lays out with simplicity certain fundamental rules and relationships, can truly guide this nation 221 years later.

And while we can’t know for sure how any politician holding office today would have voted had they been in a position to support or to oppose ratification of the constitution, we pretty well can determine whether the political views they hold today are consistent with the views of those founders whose genius produced it.  Let us, again, reiterate that support of, or opposition to, the Constitution at the time of its ratification was not an indication of one’s patriotism or love of country.   Those who drafted it also anticipated that it might have to be changed from time to time and provided an elaborate, albeit cumbersome, procedure for doing just that and, in fact, it has been amended twenty-seven times, with the first ten amendments literally a condition of ratification.

George Washington, who was a strong proponent of ratification and without whose support, ratification would have been impossible, nonetheless, faced severe constitutional crises during his very first administration.  One would think that determining the intent of its original drafters would have been pretty easy back then.  After all, the original drafters were all right there. All one needed to do was just ask.  Not so.  While they were all there, they didn’t all necessarily agree on what each of them intended in each sentence, section or Article.  They, of course, anticipated that there would be constitutional disputes and thus they constructed an independent and co-equal judicial branch, the pinnacle of which is our Supreme Court.

However, even the Article establishing the judiciary was not universally accepted by all the founders as giving the judicial branch the power to be arbiter of the meaning of the Constitution.  It wasn’t until the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison in which the concept of judicial review was established, or the Supreme Court labeled a Congressional act to be “unconstitutional.”

Washington also faced Supreme Court contests over his right to remove cabinet officers, the Jay Treaty, which formally ended the war with Great Britain and, arguably, whether or not the federal government had the right to send federal troops to put down a domestic rebellion.  Yes, we had a rebellion within the United States during the first Washington administration (“The Whiskey Rebellion”) and we did, indeed, send in federal troops to quell the insurrectionists.  .

But there was one principle about which there were no controversies at the founding.   Americans would be the freest people on the face of the earth, free in particular of undue government interference in their lives.  They would live in the world’s first meritocracy and they would be free to make their own choices about their political preferences and their economic pursuits. And while it would take close to a century before the young country would finally throw off the yoke of slavery, an institution that had long predated the founding, American citizenship represented a bold new experiment in human progress.

What was it, exactly, that launched this new phenomenon…a nation of free men, free to choose their own destiny…this catalyst that transformed a confederation of varied individuals with varied interests, skills and intellect living in separate states that zealously guarded their individual sovereignty into the greatest engine for progress and wealth generation the world had (or has) ever seen? The question answers itself.  It was the Constitution and the fidelity to it of the founding generation and the generations of American leaders who have followed.  It is the great balancing of limited and enumerated central government power, with the rights of the individual states that comprised the United States of America and, most importantly, the rights of individuals to live their lives largely free from governmental intrusions by either the state or federal governments..

This raises a question well worth pondering.  Should America expect its political leaders to embrace the aspirations of the founders?  After over 200 years with our form of governance the world is greatly changed.  Forms of transportation, communication and commerce between and among citizens, the several states and foreign nations which, while commonplace now, were non-existent in 1789.  Is it reasonable to expect that a governing document written back then could be relevant to such dramatic changes in the lives of the citizens of successive generations or to inventions which the founders could not have imagined?  We are not referring to nuance or style or even interpretation but rather to the hard, elementary, substance of individual freedom and liberty and a government whose bedrock-governing instrument constrains it from interfering with those basic liberties in the face of such sea changes in the lives of the people who are, today, governed by that venerable document.  Personal freedom and liberty, with specific guarantees against government interference is, after all, the bedrock of American exceptionalism and the defining characteristic of the American experience, but in the 21^st century there are countervailing forces pushing not only for greater government regulation of our lives, but for a very substantial role for government to reallocate private wealth and property based on some nebulous concept of fairness.

Political leadership that is insensitive to this reality may be, we believe, at the root of so much of the dissension throughout the country today.  While we recognize that numerous issues divide the American body politic as they always have, we believe there is something much more fundamental antagonizing so much of the country today.  Contentious issues are nothing new or unique in America.  We have dealt with major issues about which the people often had strong and differing views throughout our history.  We believe, however, that we are dealing with something (or a confluence of something’s) that represents a growing concern for many, if not most, Americans.  A national healthcare program, which a substantial majority of the people do not want; a federal spending binge, which a substantial majority of the people do not condone; unprecedented deficits, of which a substantial number of the people are extremely wary; an emerging federal redistributive wealth philosophy about which many people feel a growing unease, and an unelected regulatory bureaucracy that seems to be expanding at warp speed to make rules which amount literally to an assignment of legislative powers to unelected officials, have all coalesced to confront the American electorate with a troubling question.  Is the fundamental transformation of America that candidate Obama promised and that President Obama certainly seems clearly to be delivering, a transformation that most Americans really want?  And does such a transformation square with the essential relationships of citizens with their government or even with the relationships between the branches of government envisioned by the founders?

This brings us full circle back to the question we posed in the headline to this essay.  Would President Obama have supported ratification of the Constitution of the United States had he been in that position?  We believe President Obama and many members of Congress would have voted “nay” and not because of the fears of the dissenters in 1789 that too much power was being assigned to a central authority, but, rather, because of the converse, e.g., not enough power was granted to the national government to regulate our lives.

Early in the president’s political career, when he was but a state senator from Illinois’ 13^th district, and while he was still a lecturer in the law school at the University of Chicago, he agreed to be interviewed on Odyssey, a public affairs program on Chicago’s WBEZ radio station.  The interview, portions of which are quoted below, is especially illuminating.  Mr. Obama seems to lament the fact that neither the Constitution nor the courts evidence support for a federal policy of redistributing wealth.  That is, the courts have found nothing in the Constitution that provides for such government intrusion.  In fact, it wasn’t until 1913 and the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution that Congress even had the authority to tax income at all.  We believe the interview excerpted below, while a few years old, nonetheless, provides meaningful insight into the political philosophy of the president.

OBAMA:” If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be okay”… But,” Obama continued, “the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn’t that radical.  It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way…that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you, it says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted. One of the… tragedies of the civil rights movement”, he said, “was because the civil rights movement became so court focused. I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributed change (emphasis added) and in some ways we still suffer from that.”

In a subsequent interview Mr. Obama clearly expressed his opinion that once a certain level of income is achieved, that people then have enough (and presumably, thereafter, all of the balance should be taxed for redistribution or some other government purpose). And while that was Mr. Obama’s view, he did go on to say that it wasn’t the American way. Fair enough.  We’re sure there are many others who may feel the same way, but we’re equally sure that none of the drafters of the Constitution felt that way.  In fact, that was the very type of government power the founders were determined to avoid whether it be through the judicial or legislative branch of government.  We do not think the founders, any of them, would have condoned the appointment by future Presidents of a coterie of czars, all unconfirmed by the Congress, with broad, almost dictatorial powers, over entire swaths of the economic, social and business life of the new nation.  Certainly, they would have recoiled at empowering such overlords whose writings and public statements represented the very antithesis of what the founders had fought to create.

Had President Obama been a delegate voting on ratification of the Constitution, and had he held the same personal beliefs then that he expressed in the above-quoted interview, we believe he (and many others in today’s Congress) would have been in the opposition, and that he would not have found the Bill of Rights comprehensively responsive to his agenda for the new nation.  Moreover, many of those legislators who continue to pass legislation, the effect of which is to transfer wealth from the wealthy to the “underserved,” could not in good conscience have voted to ratify a document so clearly restrictive of such governmental power.

This is, of course, but speculation.  As we stated at the top of this essay, the founders anticipated that there would be need for change from time to time, and provided the means to affect such change. We also understand that dreams inform the thinking of leaders today just as dreams did 230 years ago.  We can only hope that the dreams that ultimately prevail in this generation mirror those dreams of the founders whose ideas made America the greatest engine for both liberty and prosperity in the history of humankind.  It would be folly to follow the illusory dreams so prevalent in those statist nations around the world whose policies are leading to out-of-control public debt, economic collapse, stagnation and will lead, ultimately, not to universal welfare, but, rather, to universal poverty and its all-too-frequent companion, repressive government.

By Hal Gershowitz and Stephen Porter

To us the word “freedom” embodies the individual right of free choice. The word equality encompasses the bedrock principle that every person should have the same rights to all the protections and rights granted under our Constitution.  Thus, the rallying cry of Patrick Henry, “give me liberty or give me death” exists side by side with the proposition best enunciated by Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech where he envisioned a world “where people would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.”   In other words, the concept of  “equality” defined as Dr. King stated it can, and should, live side by side with the concept of “liberty (an individual’s right to personal choice as enunciated by the famous remark of Patrick Henry. But with regard to the expansion of government into the private sector the two words can run into conflict.

Those of us who were, and are, appalled by last week’s heavy-handed spectacle of one-party rule mandating the biggest expansion of government in the lifetime of almost everyone reading this essay are alarmed about the ramifications of almost tyrannical rule by a ruling class seeking to expand government into the furthest reaches of what has always been within the domain of the private citizen’s personal choices. Our friends on the left say that we are on the wrong side of history, but it is they who occupy that space.  It is they, including our president and his party, who are racing full speed backwards to emulate societies with entitlement systems that threaten to hobble one nation after another. Think Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, Great Britain, France, Ireland, Japan and on and on.  The governments and economies of Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain are hanging on by their finger tips, more or less, counting on the healthier members of the EU (e.g. Germany) to bail them out although “not so fast” say the Germans.  We could go back into history a little further and romanticize the failed egalitarian dreams of the Soviet revolutionaries or, perhaps, Chairman Mao’s People’s Republic of China.  But the Soviet Union crashed nearly a generation ago and China abandoned Chairman Mao’s dream as soon as he died (and they have had nothing but robust economic growth to show for it).  So exactly who is on the wrong side of history here?

Make no mistake; the transformation that the left has in mind for America is nothing more than a grab for the redistribution of wealth.

They disdain the creation and broadening of wealth. And that is where liberty and equality may very well come into conflict. The left wants to create a society based on some expanded notion of egalitarianism which has nothing to do with equal opportunity under the law, and throw under the bus the ordered liberty which has been the bedrock principle which every generation of Americans has enjoyed, and countless others around the globe have envied. It is what Ronald Reagan had in mind when he correctly described our country as the shining city on the hill. Unfortunately the leftists who now run this nation only know one hill and of course that is Capital Hill from which they dictate their ever-expanding mandates.

We believe that individual liberty, that radical Lockean idea which our founders bequeathed to us, has produced the greatest, most vibrant and most promising society man has ever known and, in fact, actually provides the greatest amount of equality for the greatest number of people.  Our society has prospered because so many Americans were willing to fully participate, to the best of their ability, in pursuing the proverbial American dream.  Wave after wave of immigrants who escaped oppressive regimes or societies that afforded no real hope of achieving their highest aspirations for their children have invigorated our nation and been an engine for constant economic growth and the creation and expansion of private wealth to the betterment of all our citizens. A national policy such as that which appears to be unfolding in America today, the cornerstone of which is the promotion of economic egalitarianism (as we said above, nothing more than a fancy term for the redistribution of wealth) can only be pursued by vastly limiting the personal freedom of individuals to chart their own course through life.

The radical 17^th century thinker, John Locke, whose writing so influenced our founding fathers, advanced the notion that the role of government should, more or less, be confined to protecting the people…and their liberty.  His writing, Second Treatise Concerning Civil Government could have served as a template for our own Constitution (and it probably did) with its formulations of checks and balances and representative government. He equated government encroachment on individual liberty as tyranny.  To our founding fathers, that said it all.

Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, George Mason and others enshrined the thinking and, indeed, the exquisite wisdom of Locke in our founding documents including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. That radical thinking generated the energy that enabled a newborn country of mostly poor people to make a dash to freedom and prosperity the likes of which the world had never seen. The peoples and governments of Europe, much of Asia and even many in Latin America were quickly inspired by the American experience.

As we watched the well-orchestrated farce played out from the US House of Representatives last Sunday night, we couldn’t help but think of the choices being stripped from the people and their state governments throughout the land.  As has been frequently written in recent months, many healthy, young families choose to allocate their limited resources to other needs besides health insurance. Many of us would view that as a poor choice.  But the choice to buy or not to buy health insurance has always been theirs to make, and the argument that if the uninsured fall ill it is a burden on our economy is not nesessarily true. Friends, families, private charities often cushion the impact.  Not anymore. “You will buy and you will buy the coverage we say you must buy, or we will fine you,” our government will, in effect, soon tell them.  And just in case anyone thinks that might be an overstatement, the government is now authorized to hire nearly 17,000 new IRS personnel to monitor which individuals are, and are not, complying with these and a plethora of other new rules.

An individual or a small business making over $200,000 is now deemed to be wealthy, which is Obamacare speak for those who will find the government’s hand in their pockets to grab extra tax money to help fund this newest of entitlements.  And, if those same people have worked hard enough and have saved some money to invest in dividend or interest-bearing securities, well, thank you very much, the government will tax that income over and above the higher tax already to be paid on it under the now higher personal income tax they have now legislated for these wealthy citizens.  A variety of businesses will also be (pardon the term) shaken down to help fund the new health-care “entitlement”.  Pharmaceutical companies, medical device companies, tanning salons, medical cosmetic surgery practices, insurance companies and other industries who we presume will be added will be charged fees to help fund the program.  We will leave it for now to others to pick apart the new so-called health-care  “reform.” There is no end to the writers and commentators who are already doing that.  We do, however, wish to advance the thought that the reported 30 million Americans who are uninsured and are, therefore, according to the government’s case for taking control of the nation’s health care, denied adequate medical treatment, can be doctored up for a lot less than the trillions this enormous new medical entitlement is going to cost.  In fact, the government could hire 30,000 new doctors at $200,000 per doctor (more than the earnings of the average physician) each managing 1000 patients a year (less than the average number of charts per physician) and provide doctors for all of the uninsured for about $6 billion per year. And yes, we recognize there will a few billion more required for various tests and procedures, but the trillion-plus-dollar takeover, for the medical-care makeover is an enormous and irresponsible burden to place on the American economy.  We can’t afford it, just as Europe can’t afford it.  But as the President said, that’s what he came to Washington to do.

Perhaps the ubiquitous Reverend Al Sharpton who seems to insinuate himself into every high-profile controversy said it best on Fox as the infamous vote was being tallied. When rhetorically asked by the equally ubiquitous Geraldo Rivera whether he was concerned that the vote was a big step toward socialism, Reverend Al happily responded that when America voted for Barack Obama, America voted for socialism. And he was right…only most Americans who voted for Obama really didn’t know or believe that.

That is why, with this president and this Congress we are facing the possibility that the change Mr. Obama promised could be irreversible. Entitlements, once enacted, become taken for granted. Moreover, they become the baseline for future generations . To those in power, the thinking of John Locke, Adam Smith, not to mention, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and virtually all of the founding fathers are clearly passé. Instead our leaders, seemingly blind to the wreckage caused by regimes which followed the discredited theories of economists who preached about the wonders of state-controlled economies, are blindly heading in the wrong direction in order to take over more and more of what has always been part of the private sector and our private personal responsibilities.  In their view, government knows best.

The president’s audacious but absolutely honest campaign promise that he was going to “fundamentally change America” couldn’t have been more candid.  And as last week’s House vote was evolving toward a nearly certain majority in his favor, he, again very candidly, told the Democratic caucus (and the American people) “this is what I came here to do,” not to simply make health care a government preserve, but to fundamentally change America. Watching all of the back patting taking place following the signing ceremony last Tuesday, it is evident that the President and his administration really believe that America wants him to fundamentally change the country.  As Vice President Biden, whispered to the President (and 300 million other Americans) “this is a big f——deal.”

If we wish to be free–if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending–if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained–we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight!

We leave to you, in the comments, to note the relevance of this anniversary to activities that may be planned today.