The political climate in Washington is the most mean, perverse and polarized as it has ever been in the long history of our nation. At this point in time we have grown men and women, our supposed “representatives,” acting like spoiled and selfish  children in a quest to obtain political primacy over one another. Republicans and Democrats alike act and say things that only serve to benefit the party or the party line. This fact wouldn’t be so galling to me if the reason that these numskulls were in Washington in the first place wasn’t to represent us, the American people in our government, and to act as strict guardians of our constitutional rights.

For you see, there are no provisions for politically polarized parties and affiliations in the Constitution. The way I see it, the Founders wanted our representatives to be ardent proponents of our individual rights. I believe that the Founders never dreamed (or intended) that our legislators would pass law after law that infringes or outright abridges our Constitutional rights. And neither did the Founders anticipate that legislatively lazy elected officials would try at every turn to skirt the Constitution…or create legislation so constitutionally flawed that they simply “throw it out there” and let the Supreme Court settle things. That is not lawmaking…nor is it representation with a strict fealty to the Constitution. It is craven political gainsay that not only borders on criminal behavior, it leaps over the line.

Our elected representatives are supposed to be our insurance policy that the constitutional rights and liberties of the people in the districts which they represent are unassailed, regardless of the noble intent of the lawmaker proposing the legislation. If a well-intentioned law violates my constitutional rights and/or limits my liberties, then it is a bad law. It’s as simple a concept as that!

But making things so very complicated are the intergalactic-sized sums of money necessary to run the bloated government that our elected representatives now use to their personal benefit. Providing for our defense and insuring that we have the adequate tools and infrastructure for vigorous interstate commerce aside, our nation is involved in a spending orgy that would put any nation, past or present, to shame. We, the people, have allowed the legislative process to become a greedy and sinful proposition. We also have allowed political parties, unaccounted for in our Constitution, to ride roughshod over our governmental and legislative processes. As 19th century English writer and historian Thomas B. Macaulay so presciently put this:

“A democracy cannot survive as a permanent form of government. It can only last until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority will always cast their ballots for the candidates promising [the] most benefits from the public purse with the result that a democracy always collapses from loose fiscal policies, always followed by a dictatorship.”

Why was this message so clear to Macaulay yet it is so difficult a concept for the modern American citizen to grasp? Perhaps we just don’t care. Perhaps we’re caught up in the 24/7 ‘greed-a-thon’ that government has become. Perhaps we don’t fully understand that WE are the ultimate guardians of our rights and liberties, and that we cannot trust any elected representative to be a faithful custodian of these precious quantities for us. I don’t know, but I believe there is something else afoot. I think that over time we have allowed government to exist for government’s sake, and not for ours. Government is supposed to be our facilitator and servant, and not vice versa. However, by education and practice we have become indoctrinated and inured to an all-powerful government structure dictating what rights and responsibilities we will have. And we have allowed our elected representatives, regardless of their noble intentions when seeking public office, to feed the beast called government when they become elected: Elected and entrenched like a malignant cancer because of the corrupt and contemptible political system.

This corruption of process hasn’t happened overnight. And it wasn’t accomplished by any one set of legislatures or individuals. Rather, it has been a slow, insidious occurrence that has crept into accepted practice on its tiptoes over the past century or so. We now suffer under a system that would be simply revolting to the Founders, yet we call it (and accept it) with an almost fatalistic resignation as “the way things are done.” To our collective shame and denigration, we have allowed those who should represent us with a sense of fear and awe to rule us with an obvious contempt and detachment. The process of governance has become turned upside down…with the emphasis taken away from the rights and the “welfare” of the individual and replaced with a perverse legislative self-aggrandizement and personal enrichment modus operandi by all of our elected representatives. We have allowed ourselves to be replaced on the legislative pinnacle by greedy and power hungry oligarchs.

I often think it might take a theatrical moment from both The Godfather and A Christmas Carol motion pictures to move the present set of Washington lawmakers to a constitutional epiphany — to in essence reset the process. Rather than a severed horse’s head being placed in Moe Green’s bed by the mafiosi in the Corleone crime family, we need parchment-paged copies of the Constitution to be placed on the night stands of each and every one of the almost 500 members of Congress as well as that of the president so that they may be reminded of the precise reason that they get to enjoy the good life in Washington, DC. And to add a theatrical flourish to further drive the point home, those copies of the Constitutional should be placed there accompanied by other-worldly wailing from the ultimate “Ghost of American Patriots Past,” none other than Thomas Jefferson. If each modern-day politician could be given the tongue lashing and vigorous scolding that they richly deserve by the prototypical American legislator then perhaps some, if not all, would awaken from their self-absorbed funk and repent, Scrooge-like — and begin to do the job that we citizens expect and that the Constitution demands.

Otherwise, we are fated to have our individual rights eroded by the very people we entrust with them. And, I’m afraid, that we’re doomed as a nation because as we are fast approaching the tipping point where there are more of our citizens who are dependent upon the Frankenstein monster government and the corrupt and contemptible “representatives” that we elect over and over and over again. And these co-dependent citizens will demand more and more entitlements and goodies, which will be gleefully provided by the vote-seeking politicians. This is a vicious cycle that begs to be broken if we care one whit about our children and heirs.

I can see why the Tea Party movement has gathered such momentum in a rather short period of time. I’m with them…I fully understand the personal consequences we all will be forced to bear if a politically partisan and out of (constitutional) control government is allowed to gain more power from or dictate more behaviors to us. It is time to reset our government to a place that would feel comfortable to the Founders. It will be a painful process…and many people will be expected to now contribute as productive members of our society rather than as politically cultivated parasites. The responsibility that we are told comes with freedom works both ways, not only for the taxpayer and the productive, but also for the recipient and the drain on our nation. It’s time to pay the piper, and the debt is enormous! But this pain we will encounter will be small in comparison to the pain of waking up some day and realizing that our status as freeborn citizens is but a fond memory of the past, and we could have done something to stop this loss.

It’s up to us, the individual citizens, to make up our minds and to demand that we return to strict constitutional fealty in all facets of life as a nation. We can passively accept the inevitable future…or we can get actively involved as modern-day patriots and rekindle the American spirit that our Founders bravely implemented in our young nation over 220 years ago. What these brave men and women colonist patriots accomplished with the spilling of their precious blood all those many years ago, we may accomplished today with our voices and with our votes.

If we are wise enough to do so. If we are dedicated and disciplined enough to put the Constitution before our personal gain. And if we are brave enough to utter a new rallying cry:

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!