Rocky Balboa, Rudy, the Amazin’ Mets, the Miracle on Ice.
Americans love the underdog, because we were once underdogs ourselves. A hodgepodge group of British colonies perched on the coast of a wild, unexplored land had the guts to challenge the world’s superpower — and we won. It’s a story no one would believe if it weren’t written down in our history books.
After our improbable victory against Great Britain, the men who had inspired this coalition of outsiders to fight for independence now had the task of governing a new nation. They set out on a great experiment to see whether liberty really could be balanced with order in government.
On Sept. 17, 1787, they signed the Constitution that would govern these United States for centuries to come. These ordinary men, fueled by the fire of self-governance, put feet to the theory of the rule of law and insisted that this nation could and should be governed by the written word, not a hierarchy of men.
They entrusted the sovereign citizens with the power to directly influence their government. They wanted to preserve the hard-won liberty they celebrated just 11 years prior when the colonies declared their independence from Great Britain. They put safeguards in their new Constitution to avoid the tyranny they had recently escaped: three branches of government instead of one sovereign royal head, each with the power to restrain the other.
The Constitution they devised was unlike any other and has become the longest-standing constitution in the world. The Founders wrote it to avoid the chaos of being ruled by a king’s whim.
But that ideal is in trouble. When the Supreme Court can reinterpret and even disregard the written words of the Constitution, what good does it do? The president oversteps his bounds and goes around Congress to make his own laws by executive order, and no one stops him.
Our Constitution should keep the government from interfering with the citizens’ rights, the self-evident freedoms of religion, press, petition, speech, assembly, and more. But today, we live in an America where state officials can send police to terrorize the families of those who oppose them politically. They can threaten florists and bakers with personal and professional ruin when they will not be bullied into expressing a message that contradicts their faith.
But there’s good news. Citizens still have the power to take the federal government in hand and push it back within its constitutional bounds. The Founders knew that the closer power lies to the people, the safer liberty is. They carefully gave the states power to restrain the federal government. Article V of the Constitution reads: “the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments.” The proposed amendments would then be subject to the approval of three fourths of the states.
If there ever was a time to use this state-held power, the time is now.
America will not find a successful future in the political correctness of inside-the-beltway types, but in the hands of outsiders who have the grit and audacity to dream — true patriots who dare to shatter the status quo of selfishness for the brashness of self-governance and unlimited opportunity.
All Americans celebrate our Constitution, but will we resolve to do whatever it takes to restore a constitutional balance to our government? As sovereign citizens, will we take the steps necessary to preserve liberty for our children and grandchildren? Will the “underdog” of the American people continue to fight and win, or will we submit to one of our biggest foes: an unbridled bureaucracy?
We know what we will choose.
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