On 31 July 1982 I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign, and domestic. Today I am the Executive Director of the American Constitutional Rights Union (ACRU).
As a career military serviceman and combat veteran, I believe the oath that I took then has no statute of limitations. As a Member of Congress, that oath was my guiding principle and light, as the Constitution is our rule of law.
The U.S. Constitution was established to restrain the powers of the federal government. As a matter of fact, when you read Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution you will find the (18) enumerated duties of the legislative branch, the most powerful of our three branches of government. Article II and Article III lay out the duties, qualifications, duties, responsibilities and scope of the executive and judicial branches. Our founders intentionally described and limited the federal government.
Unfortunately, the left does not subscribe to these limitations. Today there exists competing philosophies of governance -- constitutional conservatism and progressive socialism. Leftists do not believe in the absolutism of the Constitution, our rule of law, and certainly not the ideal of constitutional rights. Leftists believe in the dangerous concept of ideological rights.
The left in America embraces an ideal that is the antithesis of our constitutional rights. They believe their ideology defines our rights. They believe they can grant and take our rights away.
I find very disconcerting the repeated assertion by the current occupant of the oval office, Joe Biden, that no amendment to the Constitution is absolute. His current focus is the Second Amendment, whose language is quite simple and forthright. His line has been parroted by many progressive socialists, elected officials and media pundits.
The Second Amendment is part of our individual Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution. It is established in our founding documents, along the principle of natural rights theory, that our unalienable rights and all individual rights come to us from our Creator God, the Judeo-Christian God. They do not emanate from the government, and that is codified in our Declaration of Independence which Thomas Jefferson referred to as the "laws of nature and nature's God".
Here we have the President of these United States of America who took an oath to uphold the Constitution declaring our constitutional rights are not absolute.
The left tells us that we have a right to healthcare. We have a right to free college education. We have a right to change our gender. None of these are enumerated rights, but they are ideological rights of the Left.
Once upon a time, during the Carter administration, the Left told us that every American had a right to own a home. They passed legislation called the Community Reinvestment Act which led to the subprime mortgage crisis and financial meltdown some 30 years later. Just last week a Democrat Congressman from Rhode Island publicly stated that he deemed constitutional rights as bovine excrement. Yes, a US Congressman who is supposed to have taken an oath to the Constitution says constitutional rights are BS!
Now you can see why we need an organization called the American Constitutional Rights Union?
If no amendment to the Constitution is absolute, then I guess the left wants to make me a slave again? Recall, Democrats did not support the 13th and 14th Amendments. Today, this same group, who now embraces socialism and Marxism, is promoting economic enslavement.
If the left in America is able to define our rights based upon their ideological agenda and have it enforced by the rule of the mob...America faces dark days ahead. And if the Left is successful in disarming the American populace, their sponsored mob, Antifa, will leverage coercion, threats, intimidation, fear, and violence against anyone not in compliance.
If the progressive socialist left does not like our Constitution, they can go through the amendment process. Passing ideologically based laws, or issuing edicts, orders, mandates, and decrees, does not override our constitutional rights.
Recall, our respective States would not ratify our constitution until it had an individual Bill of Rights. The 10th Amendment clearly states, "All the powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the States and to the People." If the 10th Amendment is not absolute, then the leftists in America become the repository of all power in America.
America is the longest running Constitutional Republic because of individual constitutional rights...not rights based upon progressive, socialist, statist, Marxist ideology.
Steadfast and Loyal.