U.S. Gov't Seceded From The American People

Lawrence Sellin Ph.D. * Sonoran News

The Preamble explicitly declares that “We the people…do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The federal government is entirely a creature of the Constitution. It is a government of delegated powers, possessing no authority not expressly or by implication granted to it by the instrument that created it.

Edwin Vieira notes that, without exception, “We the people” are the sole source of whatever legal status the Constitution, the federal government and public officials have. “We the people,” therefore, are personally responsible for maintaining and protecting the Constitution and seeing to its enforcement even when the government, as an institution, proves to be impotent and our representatives are incompetent or dishonest. The republic could fall through domestic usurpation and tyranny when evil or misguided men corrupt, subvert and pervert the government by misusing the law to break the law, while, simultaneously, claiming to act under the law and in the interest of the American people.

In his 1999 book “Machiavelli on Modern Leadership” political scholar Michael A. Ledeen notes that republican governments don’t turn into dictatorships overnight. He quotes Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), who, in Discourses (Book III, Chapter VIII), blamed the influence of corrupt leaders on society:

“To usurp supreme and absolute authority…in a free state, and subject it to tyranny, the people must have already become corrupt by gradual steps from generation to generation.”

The implication is that people living in a free state will not go quietly into tyranny unless they have become complacent following generations of political corruption.

The assault on the Constitution and representative government has indeed been ongoing for generations. During the 1880s, Congress evolved from an institution of “citizen legislators” to a place where professional politicians advanced their political careers and member reelection and internal power incentives began to shape its proceedings.

According to Angelo Codevilla , in his book and Johns Hopkins University doctoral dissertation, “Congressional Government “ (1885), Woodrow Wilson argued that the U.S. Constitution prevents the government from meeting the country’s needs by enumerating rights that the government may not infringe. (“Congress shall make no law…” says the First Amendment, typically). Wilson maintained that an electoral system based on single member districts, empowers individual voters at the expense of “responsible parties.” Hence, the ruling class’s perpetual agenda has been to diminish the role of the citizenry’s elected representatives while enhancing that of party leaders as well as of groups willing to partner in the government’s plans. Fundamental to that effort is to craft a “living” Constitution in which restrictions on government give way to “positive rights,” meaning the growth of government power.

continue article at Sonoran News:

http://www.sonorannews.com/archives/2013/130717/guested-sellin.html;

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a recently retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve. He is a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq.