Musings After Midnight: No-Compromise or Compromise -- How to Decide

Good evening.

Pull up a chair, have some coffee, hot tea, scones, or whatever you wish to make you more comfortable. It's time for another session of these late night chats.

It's been rather cold in the Carolina mountains and Piedmont regions this past week. I like it. Colder weather seems to suit me much, much better than hot weather.

Tonight we turn our attention to some issues that have come to the surface since the last time we talked, namely, that Barack Obama has referred to our position as conservatives and libertarians as "my way or the highway." Each time the debate about the debt ceiling comes up, this is his standard manner of caricaturing the opposition.

Funny that Obama is a man who has persistently blamed others for things he himself does. When he complains that we won't budge on our insistence that Obamacare be defunded, he fails to mention that his position is set in stone as immovable as the Rock of Gibraltar. He never compromises. Not at all. Not even a little bit.

But this is his modus operandi. Blame the opposition for what you yourself are doing, and thus hide your actions in public view by focusing all of the attention on your detractors. Obama has done this on any number of issues. So have the Democrats in Congress. So has the elitist Republican leadership structure that aids and abets them.

Thus, he wants all of the pressure to be placed on his opposition to compromise while he himself doesn't have to compromise at all.

And then his lemmings go to work in the public square to continue the pressure by claiming that "he is the president, duly elected, and thus he is entitled to get what he wants."

Uh, no. Wrong. No president is entitled to get everything he wants, no matter how many people voted for him. Where in the Constitution is such an asinine notion found? It isn't there.

In addition, all of the Tea Party conservatives in the U.S. House of Representatives were duly elected by the people as well. Does this automatically entitle them to get everything they want?

The concept of a president being given such broad, sweeping power fails to grasp the concept of separation of powers and the system of checks and balances that is inherent to our form of government. A president does not have the power, for example, to raise taxes, dictate a budget, or usurp the authority of the Congress in any way whatsoever.

Those who claim he does, or who promote such a concept, support a dictatorship, period. We do not have a dictatorship in the United States of America, and multimillions of patriots will make sure with their own life's blood that we never have one.

The separation of powers concept is central to the Constitution. A president has certain enumerated powers, and his authority is limited by those enumerated powers. The House has certain enumerated powers, and their authority is also limited by those enumerated powers. The same with the Senate. The same with the Supreme Court.

The Congress, the Court, and the President have no power whatsoever except what is specifically enumerated in the Constitution. Their authority rests solely within the bounds established by the Constitution. And when they step outside those bounds, they are in violation of the law and are acting as criminals.

And you know what we do to criminals. Are presidents, Congressmen, and judges above the law? Absolutely not. Enough Congressmen have sat in prison to make it abundantly clear that crimes committed while they are in office carry a heavy price.

Presidents have been charged with crimes and impeached. So have judges. Judges have sat in jail just as surely as the criminals they have thrown into such a place.

All citizens of the United States, whether they sit in elected offices or not, must abide by the same laws. We have never had a ruling class. Our Founders fought long and hard to prevent it.

Yet there are many voices in America today who want exactly that -- a permanent ruling class of elitists who "know what's best for us, the citizens, who lack the understanding to make those kinds of decisions." Bull.

And many would make Obama a dictator. They want him to have anything he wants, with no opposition. And woe be unto you if you oppose him. You will be placed on some watch list, probably as a suspected domestic terrorist, harassed by the IRS, the FBI, and other law enforcement agencies who have targeted you, and at the very least you will be caricatured as enemies of America, hard-headed, stubborn, and irrational sticks in the mud who insist on "my way or the highway."

Oh, my, the horror of it! I am a hard-headed, stubborn, irrational stick in the mud who insists on my way or the highway!! Well, hell, tar and feather me, throw me in jail, draw and quarter me before I go on a maniacal spree.

Let's tell the actual truth here. It is the president who is anti-American, hard-headed, stubborn, irrational, and exhibits an attitude of "my way or the highway."

Now that we have established the unvarnished truth about the current occupant of the White House, let us turn our attention to this whole notion of "compromise."

Misguided Republican elitists who are now attempting to destroy the Tea Party (people such as Karl Rove, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, Eric Cantor, John Boehner, Orin Hatch, and many others) claim that we must always be willing to compromise. After all, our Founders did.

Even Hugh Hewitt spoke of this on his radio show, claiming that since the Founders had to compromise to get what they wanted, conservatives must do so today.

Again, bull.

Now, let's dissect this notion for a moment so we can understand clearly what we are dealing with.

First, it is true the Founders compromised. But the issues on which they were willing to compromise were things that they considered secondary in the short term. Either they were not important enough to take on now, or, they could be dealt with once some other things they wanted to do were out of the way.

Second, the Founders did not compromise on the broad, basic, elementary issues of liberty and personal freedom. The God-given rights of citizens had to be protected by government against any and all who would attempt to prevent the citizens from exercising those rights.

I can just hear the hopelessly ignorant now, howling in some indeterminable gibberish that the Founders did not agree on these broad issues because there was significant opposition to having a Constitution.

Wrong again, Einstein.

The reason why some of the Founders did not support a Constitution at the federal level was NOT because they did not believe in personal freedom and maximum liberty but because they had already addressed these issues or were in the process of addressing these issues at the state level. The individual states had Constitutions. Some of the Founders believed this was enough, and thus, they opposed a federal government structure. They believed that the individual states were sufficient to protect the God-given rights of citizens through various state militias.

And no, if you think this means the National Guard, you are wrong yet again. They did not oppose a National Guard under the control of state governors, but they believed that each individual citizen was part of the militia, that they must be willing to fight at the drop of a hat to protect their lives, property, and states from tyranny. And thus, they must be armed.

So, the next time you hear some self-appointed genius on Constitutional issues (mainly public school teachers, university professors, judges, law professors, and politicians) talk about the notion that "even the Framers disagreed on key issues and had to compromise," you will know in your own mind that this individual is a bare-faced liar unless they specifically cite the fact that they compromised only on secondary issues.

The fact is the Framers were in complete agreement on the key issues -- self-government, maximum freedom, individual liberty, unalienable rights, etc, etc. If they did not support codifying these in a national Constitution, they certainly did support doing it at the state level.

The areas in which the Founders disagreed were not considered to be as important as the specific issues they enumerated in the Constitution. And it was not always the fact that they considered such things to be unimportant. In some instances they came to conclude that those particular issues had best be put off until later, that this was not the time to move on them.

Did they always do the right thing in being willing to compromise on or table such secondary issues? No. But we have never had to live under the circumstances they did. How do we know we would have done any better? It was a time of great danger, of war, of bloodshed, of great suffering and loss. And they almost lost to the modern, advanced, and large British army.

So, there were no guarantees anyway. They did the best they could under the circumstances.

Thus, compromise is reserved only for those issues that are secondary, those issues that do not strike at the heart of what this nation is about. But when it comes to the basic philosophy of liberty and individual freedom, there can be no compromise because to do so would mean someone would be deprived of exercising their God-given rights. Rights are not subject to majority vote. It does not matter how many vote against the right to free speech, for example, if such a vote were to be held. The right to free speech is protected in the Constitution against any and all attempts to deprive the citizens of the right to exercise that freedom, no matter how many disagree with it.

The same is true with freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom to assemble, unfettered gun rights, and so forth. These rights are protected even against a majority vote. You have no right in a free society to vote to deprive citizens of their rights!

These are matters on which there can be no compromise whatsoever. None. Zero.

Patriots will never allow such tyranny to stand if it ever occurs. War will break out that is every bit as bloody, painful, and sad as the Revolutionary War.

And so, Mr. McCain, Mr. Graham, Mr. Boehner, Mr. Obama, Mr. Reid, save your talk of compromise for the votes during which you decide whether or not to give lump sum to California to build a high speed rail system to Las Vegas. Don't lecture me about the need to compromise on issues that go to the very heart of a free society -- immigration limitation, unfettered gun rights, taxation and the debt, socialism (Obamacare), the freedom to speak freely against the government, the freedom to write freely against the government and you barnacle politicians, and such.

We have drawn a line in the sand on each of these issues because to compromise on THESE things means we lose some more of our freedom. Any anybody who supports such things only prove they are tyrants, despots, slave-masters, and elitist scum who need to be ousted from your seats of power and put out to pasture.

Now, some of you barnacles whose lips are permanently fixed on the taxpayers' tit, will call me all sorts of names. Reid and his Democrat vermin called us "arsonists, anarchists, hostage-takers," and even worse.

Well, I am but a Constitutionalist. A Jeffersonian Republican-Democrat (at the time both terms were used interchangeably). I want the Constitution upheld and followed as the final rule of law of the land. And I want to preserve ALL of the liberties our Founders fought and died for.

If you think I am a threat to America, a homegrown terrorist, an insurrectionist, and such simply because I support these things, then that shows just how perverted, evil, and dark your mind and your motives have become. In America we used to hold up such people as role models. Today they are trashed, their reputations assassinated.

YOU are the ones who are the threat to America. And under no circumstance should you be allowed to serve in public office, not as an elected official, or as an unelected official appointed to that vast, underground, illegal bureaucracy that you have created to rule over us with no recourse.

I, for one, have no intention of stopping until this has been totally dismantled, the Constitution upheld with its barebones, limited federal structure, and YOU are run out of town on a rail.

And THAT is where you can take your precious "compromise."