Alea Iacta Est

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.