Yes indeed the President arrived armed with a remarkable missive and oratory skills to match. He had me, completely, at least up to the point where he contaminated the efffort with a somewhat temperamental understanding of this nation’s founding principles.
The cornerstone of my observation relies upon a proven understanding; that Principles are not transient and ever-changing. Now then, Mr. President, is it not the case that what defines a “Principle”, the essence of its nature, is that it must also be Absolute? True, given the partisan rhetoric of “our time”, I suppose it a form of poetic convenience or functionally rebellious for one (or all) to collapse upon the collective and malleable perspective that would suggest otherwise; a distortion one can clearly observe, in particular, through the Presidents use of the work “Absolutism.” For me, and perhaps you the reader, his misunderstanding reveals his ambitions by way of two key phrases both appearing in his Inauguration Address.
The first:
“Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life, it does not mean we all define liberty in exactly the same way or follow the same precise path to happiness.”
This one phrase captures the Presidents own interpretation of the Declaration of Independence and is the core of his personal political compass; his own quatrain of “Absolutism”; the reinterpretation of the historical and the proven non-transient domain of the Principal which is also an Absolute Ideal; the “…unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”; the very Ideals the Declaration calls us to account and converge upon.
And the second:
“We must act knowing that our work will be imperfect; we must act knowing that today’s victories will be only partial.”
Who among us would be willing to act with knowledge that our efforts were imperfect; knowing that your effort is less than equal to that which is required, that which you are capable of? Why bother? Serioulsy, with so much at stake is this now an acceptable leadership strategy; have we fallen to so low a point that we now are to willingly endure failure and to accept it as an integral component of the process? I surely hope not however I do confess that this is, to be sure, the This of course is the belligerent nature of Partisanship; this single phrase perfectly characterizes the nature of mediocrity; this one phrase is what gives license to failure and dysfunction; it also provides the tools for their justification and the very process that allows this brand of “Absolutism” to persist; the cycle of lunacy which I refer to as “arbitrating down to the lowest possible uncommon denominator.”
Capturing the nexus:
As is always the case, we must be free to interpret the world as we see it however what we should all be considerate of is that it be the same world to which we refer; it is, after all, fulcrum we have in Common. Likewise, when we think of the Declaration of Independence it is important to remember that it is not a political document; it is, to be sure, first and foremost a Declaration of Principles that we all “Hold” as “Truths.” When one studies and come to understand Jefferson’s academic history and his ethos then you will also come to understand that he viewed the Declaration of Independence as, quite actually, a deeply spiritual manifesto which, for the first time in history, acknowledges the un-severable connection between the Created and their Creator; the document not only memorializes both that we are Common to one another and what we have In Common with one another is that we are the Created endowed with these “certain unalienable rights” that must never be tampered with; it pronounces, for all time, that which is the Common Ideal; our cause worth perfecting; an absolute that will never change.
The source of the problem:
The Professional Politician has evolved to be a completely synthetic and situationally adaptable; it is for this reason, due to Absolute’s confining structure, they trend toward loathing of Principle. Ironically, the Professional Politician is an Absolutist of a sort as to their own agenda which lends itself toward their defining (or redefining) the parameters and methodologies as required to achieve their own end.
In both phrases of the President’s address we observe this self-redefining metaphor at play; if the President truly understood the meaning of the Common Ideal then he would also have to concede that there is no contest as there is no inherent conflict in established and proven Principles. In other words, the only task at hand is to move toward the action perfecting the Common Ideal. If this were done, if this process was restored to be the as-intended focal point then the perfecting outcome would occur from the People expressing for themselves their Freedoms within the boundaries of their Liberty to do so.
What the President (and most Politicians) is intimating in his words exposes the truer essence of the adopted and adapted role of Government:
“At-Will Legislation of Transient Absolutism”
Government, “in our time”, views its role as ever-expanding and not self-perfecting or self-containing; it has purloined the domain of the once Unalienable Right of Individual Conscience which it now views as its exclusive domain. In the Presidents own words (on January 16th, 2012; amidst the theatrics of his gun control agenda) he illustrates, quite clearly, his preferences:
“We are responsible for one another.”
When the President uses the word “We” he means Barrack H. Obama along with the entrails of his extended government apparatus; one feeding off the other for the benefit of a those whom “We” selects (yes, not unlike others before him but you must admit, he has refined it to point of mastery). Conversely, if we were to converge upon the message of the Common Ideal, the phrase would then appear as:
“We are responsible to one another.”
In this case the use of the word “We” implies that each of us is responsible to one another in the spirit of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Quite a difference don’t you think?
“As the era of ever-expanding government continues to expand into yet another millennium its reach becomes indistinguishable in the void of public conscience. The glutton no longer views the farmer and his field in quite the same way.”
Is it just me or are there others as well who are certain that the American People are trapped inside a narrative that is nowhere near our Common Ideal or approaching the effort required to perfect it? More and more I find the following phrase a powerful tool for understanding the implicit prohibitions of government:
“Man must be Free for Independence to be at Liberty to be Expressed.”
Think about what this means and decide for yourself if government is working on your behalf to assure that such is the case.
The truly remarkable:
The political narrative of “our time” is one that recycles with regularity and there will always be some variant of the same until such time that we, as a People, decide to set it aside the divisive overtones that breed social, economic and political anarchy. To instead pursue our common cause; the Common Ideal that mankind is destined to achieve.
In the meantime, there remains much about our national structure that is truly remarkable; the peaceful transitions that take place every four years however now in a form that routine seems to prefer pageantry over memorializing the event as an extraordinary legacy of our Founding Ideals. A process that is emblematic of a far greater gift, one tempered by the thousands of lives that over human history suffered under tyranny of thought and predation; their sacrifices pressed forward the Ideals that one day would be memorialized in our own Declaration of Independence; the very Principles which lay above and behind the U.S. Constitution; the magnetic force which faithfully directs the compass of this Republic; these United States of America.
Outside Independence Hall when
the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended,
Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin,
“Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded,
“A republic, if you can keep it.”
As it was in Mrs. Powel’s day it would be no different for all that were to follow; the sacred duty to join in the Cause from which a Free Mind of Sacred and Unalienable Conscience will be free and at liberty to fulfill a perfect destiny. Nothing you will ever do can possibly matter more, without it…
“We are forever burdened by the unknown good intrusive government silences.”
Curtis C. Greco, Founder