I believe...

My American Beliefs

I believe the Constitution says what it means and means what it says and it doesn’t take a genius or a law degree to read it and understand it.

I believe that the Constitution can only be properly understood in light of the people who wrote it, whether it is the main body or an amendment.

I believe the Constitution defines what government can do, and that government can’t do anything the Constitution does not give it permission to do.

I believe the Preamble to the Constitution is a description of what the rest of the Constitution puts into place, and cannot be correctly understood to be binding in and of itself.

I believe that changing the “understanding” of a standing portion of the Constitution is changing the Constitution itself, and is therefore anti-Constitutional. Only one method exists for the changing of the Constitution; that method is by amendment. Otherwise, any phrase in the Constitution means today and tomorrow what it meant yesterday and it has the same effect today and tomorrow as it had yesterday, unless it is modified by amendment. That is true for any set of three days since the signing of the Constitution into perpetuity. If a court determines something to be unconstitutional, it is only properly done if the action determined would always have been unconstitutional, as long as the phrase proposed to have been violated was in effect.

I believe that the next order of legislation that should taken up by both federal houses is the disallowance of specifications in legislation that are not materially connected to the stated title and purpose of the legislation. In this vein, all legislation must be required to have a stated title and purpose, and said title and purpose cannot be compound.

I believe that the body politic and the body social are not the same body, even though comprised of the same people. Political solutions do not solve social problems and social solutions do not solve political problems.

I believe that equality before the law can only possibly apply to opportunity. If failing to avail oneself of an opportunity occurs because of a personal decision (whether immediate or historic) or a personal capability (as opposed to a non-personal restriction), the law cannot address these in a free nation. Any attempt to make the law address either of these is attempting to apply a political solution to a social problem and is therefore doomed to failure.

I believe that convenience is no justification for legislation, under any circumstance.

I believe that in our present population, there are at least two generations of Americans who have been taught by precedent that convenience is sufficient to establish need, whether an objectively bona fide need exists or not.

I believe that the moment any elected official takes the oath of office, that their political affiliation should become moot, and I believe that their constituents should hold them accountable for this characteristic first and foremost.

I believe that all constituencies should have the ability of recall of any elected official at any time, when a simple majority of the constituency indicates so by personal signature, or by an equivalent accounting to the method of election when a simple majority is not the method of election to that billet. I believe that this should be the subject of the next amendment to the US Constitution, and to every state constitution, and that this must be undertaken before this nation can recover the concept of government of the people, by the people and for the people, which concept is now lost. In this application, recall should be a separate action from replacement.

I believe that because leadership can be sometimes stern and serious, that actual leadership was rejected in a previous generation in favor of convenience and the sanctioning of ease and irresponsibility; therefore leadership is now unrecognizable by the overwhelming majority of Americans.

That is what I believe.

Liberty for the Brave,

Al