The anti-political establishment sentiment that is gripping the country reflects something more basic that is going on. What we have is a national renewal movement - a search and discovery mission by Americans to restate and restore those first principles that define us.
And, indeed, part of what is bothering so many is a sense that we are now in our current mess because of wholesale loss of appreciation that we even have first principles that uniquely define us, let alone understanding what they are.
Now we have a new book that will serve as an invaluable resource and operating manual in this national struggle to “bring back America.”
“The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency”, by Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski, provides comprehensive chapter and verse of what we need to understand and what we can do about the challenges we’re now confronting.
Blackwell is currently a senior fellow at the Family Research Council (and a longtime conservative friend and colleague of mine) and Klukowski is a constitutional lawyer and journalist.
Blackwell and Klukowski provide one stop shopping for understanding the philosophic departure of our current administration from traditional American principles, identification of each key battlefront where they are changing the country, and what, in each case, we can do about it.
American history, of course, has never been defined by smooth and tranquil sailing.
Life itself, and certainly life lived in freedom, is a daily struggle. Our only choices are the battles we choose to fight.
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What so uniquely defines today’s times and struggles is the extent to which they are about core principles. Yes, of course, we’re battling daily on policy. Health care, energy, environment, financial services, etc.
But our differences on these questions reflect more profound differences about what defines us as a nation.
Is the role of government to protect life, liberty, and property? Or is the role of government, in the words of President Obama, “redistributive change”?
It is unprecedented in our nation’s history that legislation of the size and scope of the recent health care bill, that will cost trillions of dollars, that will restructure one sixth of our economy and impact even more, passed with effectively zero support from the opposition party.
This is not because of political calculation, as the President suggested the other day. “Before I was even inaugurated congressional leaders of the other party got together and made a calculation that if I failed, they’d win.”
You don’t have to be a constitutional lawyer to sense there’s a problem in America when the federal government defines to the last detail what a health insurance policy must look like and then forces every citizen to buy one.
Blackwell and Klukowski show that the departure point defining American exceptionalism is a nation rooted in God-given first truths and our constitution that defines a federal government, with limited and enumerated powers, that preserves and secures those truths.
Our president sees things differently. Rather than a nation of men who live by laws, he sees us as a nation of men who enact laws to implement particular agendas of what they deem to be fair and just.
Under this leadership, we’ve started up the path of becoming a social welfare state rather than the free nation under God that our founders envisioned.
As result, we’re now seeing unprecedented government expansion and intrusion into our private lives. And the bills that are piling up to pay for this new socialism are strangling us blue.
How it’s all playing out in health care, education, our courts, our media, how we do the census, and how we vote, is laid out clearly and chillingly in this powerful book.
Blackwell and Klukowski have given us a roadmap back to freedom, morality, and prosperity.
This is an important read during this summer of American discontent.
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