Where Left and Right Come Together: "Honor your Oath"

Remember the early 90's? Biased radio was still relatively new, and still had a little bit of sense (people still remembered the Fairness Doctrine, which Reagan had turned off). Part of the argument against Hillary Clinton back then was the argument against centralized socialism. This made sense to many because Centralized Socialism was demonstrated to be a dangerous failure in Stalinist Russia and (with a huge fascist element) in Nazi Germany. Both regimes murdered millions of their own people. Centralized power in a governing body was what Reagan was talking about when he said that "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help,'". His rhetoric here had a point.

There is a centralized-socialist bent in much of the propaganda being spewed from commercial radio and television right now (although they would be the first to scream denial of it). You can smell it whenever you hear them deriding "individuals" or "elitists" or artists or intellectuals. They are attacking those who refuse to amble along to slaughter with the rest of the herd. Beware. You can smell it the thinly-veiled, universal media messages: "don"t trust your neighbor" and "pay no attention to the [monied interests] behind the curtain".

We ALL fear an overbearing, centralized governing power.

That's why we have three branches of government and that's why it's absolutely essential to America that those three branches be equally weighted, with an un-monopolized, free press watch-dogging their every move.

On the Left, many (or most) would point out that excessive power in the executive branch, backed by monied interests, is dictatorship. FDR knew it. Andrew Jackson knew it. Even hard-core republicans like Teddy Roosevelt Knew it.

On the Right, the point can be made that mob-rule would be a disaster. Who would want a bunch of lazy, uneducated fools running things? I wouldn't.

When our system of government was in the design-phase, many populists and leftists advocated a single legislative body. Fearing mob-rule, Folks on the right (Chiefly John Adams) wanted a system of checks and balances to ensure a stable economic system. This tension between "mob-rule" and "rule by the respectable" characterizes the nature of what they came up with for a solution.

They came up with an excellent model, defined in our Constitution, including the promise of guaranteed freedoms for the people, some of which freedoms (but not all) are enumerated in the first ten amendments of the Constitution (which would not have been ratified without them). Those first ten amendments are the Bill of Rights, and this Bill of Rights is why we are called the "Land of the Free".

Everybody in the federal Government, including all the Armed Forces, Swore an Oath to their highest spiritual notion of righteousness (referred to in the oath as "God") to DEFEND our Constitution.

So. Left, Right, Whatever, we have a problem. There is something wrong. More and more of us are beginning to shudder at the presence of something that is supposed to be "here to help".

I volunteer that the solution is a unanimous effort to defend the Constitution and the system of checks and balances, and the guaranteed liberties, that it defines.

To those in this entity that is supposed to be "here to help" I charge you: HONOR YOUR OATH.

---- Mark Frankenberg.