In what is arguably one of the longest lasting and stable constitutional republics in human history, we have witnessed a markedly unstable and rather tumultuous political landscape in just a few short years.  This government evidenced by a separation of powers with checks and balances has seen fit to challenge those sacrosanct institutions in every way imaginable.  How shall we respond?

We have witnessed the rise and fall of political dynasty.  The people have endured the rigors of an impeachment of a national leader.  Elected officials have proposed the dissolution of representative democracy in favor of a purely democratic system.  Citizens have been subjected to endless partisan rancor.  Each of the three branches of government has attempted to exercise undo supremacy over the others.  The people have been subjected to multiple proposals by the legislature to grant mass unconditional citizenship to aliens.  Myriad lives and untold treasures have been spent in an unending war in the Middle East.  And one party has sought to gain hegemony over the other by a blatantly unconstitutional legislative decree.

Of course, I’m referring to the end days of the Roman republic which culminated in a bloody civil war before finally arriving at the appointment by the Senate of Julius Caesar as Dictator Perpetuum.

I took pause to ponder this history in recent days with the thought that the United States House of Representatives may very well move to upend the Constitution, which grants them their limited powers, by “deeming as passed” the largest federal entitlement program in the history of mankind.

Considerations of whither health care reform aside (because at this point they are really very moot), we have witnessed a decades-long assault on the U.S. Constitution of the sort we have learned from the proverbial frog in the pot.  And because we as a people have refused to recognize how very hot the water is, our constitutional republic is poised ultimately to boil to death on the heels of this so-called Slaughter Rule.  And after all, it is an appropriate moniker given that it threatens possibly to deliver the final death blow of what has been a deliberate slaughtering of that “venerable document” and the freedoms for which our founding fathers pledged their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.”

We have learned all too well that Americans’ regard for lessons in history goes back as far as yesterday’s lunch.  Nevertheless, we stand watch on the precipice in hopes that this great republic will not go the way of the last one.  And in that spirit we ready ourselves with a sobering recollection of those immortalized words:

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn 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.”

Whether the “deem as passed” scheme is executed, that we have witnessed its serious consideration warrants another revolution.  Not of munitions and soldiers, we are now duty-bound to return to a government by consent of the governed, and in this revolution November is our battlefield and the ballot our weapon.  To that end, the Post Party movement marches onward, adding to its ranks every day.

A good friend of mine recently quipped, “We have to hold government accountable. But if we don’t know what they’re doing in the government, how can we hold them accountable?” This is certainly true in Washington with bills that go unread, negotiations and deals being struck behind closed doors, and legislation being “deemed as passed.”  But it’s equally true of local government.  Enter the recent report by Oklahomans for Responsible Government that exposes the lack of openness and accountability in Oklahoma’s municipal websites.

In their report OFRG details the hits and misses of websites for the 75 largest municipalities in the state.  There are some startling revelations.  In this 21st century, some cities have no website at all while others borrow space on the sites of local civic organizations.  And of the ten criteria for evaluating the sites, open records, lobbying, and taxation posted the worst ratings.  Only fifteen of the 75 cities successfully met six or more of the ten criteria for an open and accountable website.

It should be noted that in this evaluation, only the websites for towns and cities were included.  School boards and counties were not included in the study.  I’m willing to wager that, had they been included, the results would be stupefying.  It comes then as no surprise to learn of the recent scandal in which a small school district paid over half a million dollars to a contractor for janitorial supplies, in many cases paying four times the prevailing market price for some items.

All the more reason for American Majority’s recent successes in Oklahoma school board elections wherein 19 of 25 AM-trained candidates won their races.  And we’re just getting started…

There are only a few movies I really, really enjoy watching.  Among them is Amistad.  After all, I’m a history buff (particularly of antiquity and of the American founding era) as well as a political junky.  So it comes as no surprise that I see all sorts of political metaphors on the silver screen.  And Amistad does not disappoint.

In case you missed the epic story circa 1997, it tells of the struggle of a group of mutinous slaves who steer their way to the coast of New England to find themselves embroiled in a legal battle for their very lives.  The 1841 Supreme Court case quickly becomes the catalyst for the brewing fisticuff between the northern and southern states that eventually erupted into full scale Civil War, costing more than 600,000 American lives.

We tend to look upon that tragic chapter in our nation’s history as a necessary evil, one that resulted in the end to slavery in America.  Never again would a class of people have absolute control over the labor and fruits thereto of another class.  Or so we’ve thought…

The panoply of costly legislative dicta currently on parade in Washington — replete with promises of reform, justice, and equity — obscure the fundamental question at hand, to which more than a few members of our elite Senate have failed miserably to muster a cogent answer.  The question is presupposed, after all, in one of James Madison’s better-known declarations: “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

Not unlike the taxation without representation that sparked the Revolution, we are besieged by a political class in Washington hell-bent on taxing us despite our representation.  It is a class beholden to anything but the Constitution.  And when this class lays claim, a priori, both to the means and fruit of the American people’s labor for its own redistributionary schemes, what else shall we call it but slavery?

And so we find ourselves once again embroiled in a civil war.  Though not on the battlefield and without weapons, we are faced with the same struggle.  Will we throw off the chains of our oppressors with the very constitutional means which our Framers afforded us, or will we rest idly bye whilst our chains get heavier still?

For his portrayal of John Quincy Adams in Amistad, Anthony Hopkins received an Academy Award nomination.  To be sure, one of his greatest movie lines is one we must heed now more than ever: “James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington… John Adams. We’ve long resisted asking you for guidance. Perhaps we have feared in doing so we might acknowledge that our individuality which we so, so revere is not entirely our own. Perhaps we’ve feared an appeal to you might be taken for weakness. But, we’ve come to understand, finally, that this is not so. We understand now, we’ve been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding… that who we are IS who we were.”

On the morning of March 1, 1788, James Madison published his now-famous article in New York’s Independent Journal, the 63rd in a series of 85 such newspaper articles that came to be The Federalist Papers.  In it he relayed why extreme deliberation was needed in a large republic, as proposed by the Philadelphia Convention in the Autumn previous.

Madison warned: “[T]here are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn.”

I was reminded of this tome by the “Father of the Constitution” one day last week whence it was brought to my attention that the Left has christened this new year with its answer to the Tea Party movement.  The unwitting followers of the so-called Coffee Party (no this isn’t an Onion spoof, much to my surprise) have weighed in on the conservative-led gridlock in Washington.

Of course, one wonders why they couldn’t at least pine for corporate benevolence from Starbucks with a Via Party moniker, but I digress.

On the front page of the website they invoke the gods of Big Brother Bi-partisanship and imbibe leftover spirits from the French Revolution with peculiar and empty phrases like “cooperation in government” and “expression of our collective will” and “positive solutions,” inveighing against those “who obstruct them.”

Rather belated and nonsensical as their retort is – a dead horse comes to mind – it shouldn’t be of any surprise that civic action and reaction in a republic caught them so off-guard.  The Left is oft-quick to regurgitate revolution-era platitudes to justify their own revolution against the very institutions which the Revolution was fought to protect.  Whilst the real meaning of it all escapes them still.

Despite the legerdemain of these coffee partiers and their elitist ne’er-do-wells in Congress, Madison’s wisdom shines through the whole affair in Washington.

Where these java-heads see obstruction of the collective will, Madison foresaw the “salutary interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind.”

And in the memory of Madison, we members of this American Majority, the Tea Party – the Post-Party movement for the republic – rekindle the spirit of the Framers in working to bring to a screeching halt the irregular passion of interested men keen on hurling this experiment in liberty into the abyss of despotism.

So with our fellow temperate and respectable citizens, we say “obstruct…obstruct away.”  After all, the Framers much preferred tea over coffee … and as for me and my house, we’ll have a Venti Sugar-free Breve Vanilla Earl Grey Latte.