The Constitution and the Rule of Law

 In the year 1761 the Seven Years War, AKA the French and Indian Wars in the colonies, was finished by treaty between England and France and Spain. One of the effects of the peace treaty was that French Canada was ceded to the British.

This had a tremendous effect on the British colonies from before. For the first time they did not have a hostile foreign power to their North. One that had been in the habit of destabilizing things through their proxies, the Native Tribes of the area.

And Britain was kinda broke. And they decided that they needed to raise some revenue and that the colonies, that they had just fought a long war to keep from getting wiped out by Natives or Conquered by France, should help pay the War debt thru a series of Taxes and Fees.

Some people in Massachusetts (Massholes were trouble makers even then 😂) looked at these taxes and fees and decided that they should not have to pay them. They stated that as they had no say in them that they should not have to pay them. And thus was born the slogan "No Taxation without Representation".

And these guys had one erroneous idea. They believed that King George the III was responsible for all of this. Britain was already a Constitutional Democracy where the Monarch Reigned and did not rule. He had a very little bit more power than do todays present Monarch, mostly of an advisory nature.

After a series of mis-steps by the British Government, including stationing Troops in Boston, a military occupation, the Commanding General in North America, in the spring of 1775, decided to go to the villages of Lexington and Concord, in Massachusetts, where he believed that the colonists were storing supplies for a possible rebellion and seize those supplies.

Thus began the North American Rebellion that is known today as the American Revolution.

In the very beginning it was a mostly North Eastern thing. Most of the Colonial Governments were not at all sure that they wanted to rebel against the Legitimate Authority of the British Government, the British Crown.

At the Continental Congress in Philadelphia it was decided to give overall command of the forces in rebellion to a Virginia Slave Holding Plantation owner named George Washington. It was hoped that more colonial governments would support the rebellion by making it more than a North Eastern affair.

A year later, in 1776, the Continental Congress decided that this now needed to be a full Independence Movement and no longer an armed protest against British Governmental policies. So they wrote the Declaration of Independence. And in it they wrote the most powerful statement, "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".

Now this was, and is, a radical statement. especially at the time that it was written.

Think about it, "We hold these truths to be self evident". These are truths then that are so basic as to be known to all without it even needing to be stated. Self Evident. Yet the person who wrote this held other Human Beings in Bondage in Race Based Slavery that was practiced in these colonies.

"that all men are created equal". All men. Not just some. All. And yet, to these men, it meant only White men of North European stock who were Protestant Christian. Yet this was still a massive step forward from the "Rights of Kings" and the Privileges of "Nobility".

"Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights". Rights that were inherent in being alive and could not, should not, be denied.

"that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness". Among these. There are more. Yet these are the ones that are so important that they must be mentioned. And there are more.

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed". No longer could Kings and Nobles say they govern freely, that All governments must have their basis in consent from all governed.

And this is what they announced to the world as they proceeded to lay out their case as to why they should no longer be subjects of King George III and the British Parliament, and why they should be a Free and Equal Nation among the Nations now.

In 1781 they Militarily achieved their objectives and with the 1783 Treaty of Paris the United States of America was born and recognized as a Free and Equal Nation among the Nations of the World.

For the next several years each state was, in effect, a Nation unto itself. There was a very weak central government known as the Confederation of States. It had next to no power and could not enforce any rules that it thought it should have.

In 1787 they called for a Congress to tweek the Articles of Confederation somewhat to give the central government a little bit more power and possibly stabilize things a little.

The members of this Congress pulled a fast one. They had a Constitutional Convention instead and wrote the United States Constitution creating the Federal Government that we have today.

And they gave it a preamble that I think says everything about why we need to keep this document as our guiding light and why it has always been a living, breathing, growing and changing thing:

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America".

And notice it says in the beginning, "We the people", meaning all the people. And one of the genius measures of this document is that it had and has room to expand what we mean by people over time. It stopped being only White, Male, Anglo Saxon, Protestant, property owners. Eventually it came, in the ideal although the practical application is still wanting at times, to mean all of us.

"In order to form a more perfect union". Meaning that this is an unfinished business. We will always be striving and never arriving. Perfection in Government can not be reached, striving for that perfection, for that "more perfect union", is our job now.

In order to pass this they had to make several compromises with the Slave Holding States to make it "workable" for everyone. And those compromises haunt us to this day.

One of the biggest things that they established was that this was to a Nation that was more than anything else Governed by the Rule of Law. In Theory. In Practice we all know that you get the Law you can afford. However, the idea of the Rule of Law was established.

And part of that was the idea that Governmental Figures were not above the Law. They were, unless they Legislated otherwise, subject to the laws that they passed.

And they also created a Balanced Government. With three legs, Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of Government balancing each other out so that no branch had too much power. They, for example, did not give the President a Line Item Veto as they felt that would give the Executive Branch too much power and diminish the power of the legislative Branch.

If you follow the writings of the members of the Convention during and after the event, and read the Federalist Papers, which I have, which were a series of articles written to sell the Constitution to the Country, in no place or time do they ever say that any member of the Government is above the Law. In fact they write extensively about how members of the Government, including the President, can be removed from office and prosecuted if they do behave badly.

The idea of our current Imperial Presidency would have been a totally insane idea to them. They already had experience with the idea of a Monarch who was above the Law and there was no way they were going to create another. And they did not.

So we come to the present day. Where so called Constitutional Originalists have twisted themselves into such a pretzel that they have become the Strong Man Party. AKA the American Nazi Party. They believe that the President should be Above the Law and a Dictator. They have so corrupted the Supreme Court that it just ruled that the President is above the Law. Immune from Prosecution.

Our Founders NEVER intended this at all.

They have effectively erased the last vestiges of our American Constitution and replaced it with Strong Man Rule.

I have seen a series of memes going around social media about how President Biden can fix this by using these rules against the perpetrators of this abomination. And I personally would love to see these Nazi pieces of excrement hoist by their own petard.

It will not happen however. President Biden believes in the Rule of Law. His entire public life shows this.

So folks, unless you want to be made into a Nazi Nation of Dictatorship and all the sick shit that goes with that then you had better get out and vote. And get over the F***ING idiot idea put out there by the Oligarchs that Biden should step aside because he is to old, feeble, etc. They want the Traitor Trump and his dictatorship because that will strengthen the oligarchy. Get over yourselves people.

We must, and I mean must, completely destroy the Republican Oligarchical Nazi Party in this and every other Election. Like it or not, and I don't, we must Vote Blue no matter what. We must get President Biden back in office. We must give him a Filibuster Proof Majority in Congress, get the Rethuglicans out of office.

And then, and only then, we must work to break the Two Party Hammer Lock upon our electoral system.

And what that will look like and how to do it is the subject of another day.