Alan Keyes
Boehner's purge wars against representation
By Alan Keyes
If you've been following events in Congress covered in connection with headlines about the so-called "fiscal cliff," you know that the top GOP leadership in the House of Representatives recently conducted an anti-conservative purge of certain of that body's committee assignments. They gave the boot to several key conservatives who actually had the temerity to oppose GOP complicity in the ongoing elitist-faction gang rape of the income and credit of the American people. This is clear proof that John Boehner and his buddies in the GOP wing of the elitist faction are betraying the people who elected the GOP majority in the House, just as they betrayed them after regaining control of the House in 2010. I feel sorry for the deluded voters who were expecting anything else. I can also say, "I told you so."
Don't get me wrong. I was one of the folks who cast my vote and did whatever else I could to keep the GOP majority in the House by supporting Republicans who have not repudiated the party's Platform. But I knew that John Boehner and his cohorts in the GOP wing of the elitist faction are not Platform Republicans. To pols like them, the Republican Platform is just sucker-bait. It exists to lure conservative-minded voters into legitimizing (with their participation) a party system that works against everything conservatives believe in, including especially the constitutional republic elected officials swear to preserve.
In a few days, we'll come to the anniversary of the events known to American history as the original Boston Tea Party. As I've discussed at length before, that original grassroots uprising wasn't about excessive taxation. It was about the principle that justice requires taxes and other legislative acts to be passed by representatives of the people. This means that, as the slogan said, there should be "No taxation without Representation." By punishing some GOP members of Congress (in order to intimidate the rest), John Boehner and his elitist-faction buddies are attempting to institute a regime of elitist control intended to keep GOP members of Congress from representing their constituents. By thus resurrecting the British colonial monarch's highhanded practice of elitist, dictatorial government, these so-called Republicans are abrogating the very principle of government that was the proximate cause of the American Revolution.
They will, of course, pretend that they are acting in everyone's best interest to avoid the "fiscal cliff." But it's a precipice of their own making, much as the British government's effort to bypass the colonial legislatures was the result of distortions in the market for tea in Great Britain caused by bad government policies at the time. When it comes to government, crisis tends to favor those who seek to consolidate and increase their power. So, the best way to achieve and consolidate the permanent control of power is to use the instrument of government to foment a permanent and continual condition of crisis. In this way, the conduct of political affairs is like conducting a continual experiment with power in its various forms, in which it is alternately used to threaten and break down a given state of affairs in order to restore and reconstitute it in different various ways.
For a privileged few, the experience involves being the masters of the experiment, rather than its subjects. For the most part, however, in the course of human events the people are its subject matter, and its aim is to find and forever improve upon the best ways to dictate and control their behavior. Happily for the American people, however, the principles of America's revolution gave them the exceptional opportunity to prove that another course was possible. Founded upon those principles, America's system of constitutional government was devised to make the people the subjects of government in a different sense, much the way a word is made the subject of a sentence. Thanks to its principles, they were called upon to act for themselves in government, rather than simply to be acted upon by others.
As articulated by their leadership during the American Revolution, Americans received their call to such citizenship (their citizen vocation) as part of an endowment from Almighty God, when he conferred upon each and every one of them their title of humanity. It gave them all an equal right to act as representatives of God's dominion. As such, it made them subject to no other dominion than His, unless it be by delegation of this, their power of representation. But as they come into that power by endowment from God, they are bound to exercise it according to His will. They can logically consent to nothing that contradicts this bond, since by doing so they would deny the efficacy of the original from which arises the power of representation that gives meaning to their consent.
Pretend if you like that Boehner's purge of conservatives is just about money, about who's taxed and by how much. But the Americans who participated in the original Boston Tea Party were wise enough to reject the king's assault on their God-endowed right to representation, even though it came in the guise of a decrease in the tax rate. People keep telling me that Americans are no longer capable of the straightforward reasoning that allowed those first patriots to see that the real issue involved in such government impositions and benefits is not whether we are rich or poor, but whether we are enslaved or free.
Be that as it may, I will go on writing for Americans who have the sense to realize that, just as we receive the power of representation from God, and should act accordingly, so our elected officials receive the power they represent from us, and should act accordingly. It's apparent that the party still calling itself Republican has become arrogantly hostile to this indispensable premise of republican self-government. John Boehner's purge of fiscal conservatives is just the most recent proof of this Soviet-style hostility. So was Karl Rove's successful political assault on moral conservatives during the late election. These henchmen of the elitist faction's twin-party sham now, quite openly, go about their business — to substitute endlessly-manipulated fear for sensible persuasion as the basis for government in the United States. They are willing to discard the God-endowed right of representation in order openly to collude with those who mean to destroy that right and the nation founded upon it. The participants in the original Boston Tea Party heralded America's withdrawal from the British Empire. So Americans still capable of understanding their God-endowed right of representation should herald their withdrawal from the Republican Party. For though it still usurps the name of the Republic, the GOP today betrays the cause of its survival.
December 17, 2012
If you've been following events in Congress covered in connection with headlines about the so-called "fiscal cliff," you know that the top GOP leadership in the House of Representatives recently conducted an anti-conservative purge of certain of that body's committee assignments. They gave the boot to several key conservatives who actually had the temerity to oppose GOP complicity in the ongoing elitist-faction gang rape of the income and credit of the American people. This is clear proof that John Boehner and his buddies in the GOP wing of the elitist faction are betraying the people who elected the GOP majority in the House, just as they betrayed them after regaining control of the House in 2010. I feel sorry for the deluded voters who were expecting anything else. I can also say, "I told you so."
Don't get me wrong. I was one of the folks who cast my vote and did whatever else I could to keep the GOP majority in the House by supporting Republicans who have not repudiated the party's Platform. But I knew that John Boehner and his cohorts in the GOP wing of the elitist faction are not Platform Republicans. To pols like them, the Republican Platform is just sucker-bait. It exists to lure conservative-minded voters into legitimizing (with their participation) a party system that works against everything conservatives believe in, including especially the constitutional republic elected officials swear to preserve.
In a few days, we'll come to the anniversary of the events known to American history as the original Boston Tea Party. As I've discussed at length before, that original grassroots uprising wasn't about excessive taxation. It was about the principle that justice requires taxes and other legislative acts to be passed by representatives of the people. This means that, as the slogan said, there should be "No taxation without Representation." By punishing some GOP members of Congress (in order to intimidate the rest), John Boehner and his elitist-faction buddies are attempting to institute a regime of elitist control intended to keep GOP members of Congress from representing their constituents. By thus resurrecting the British colonial monarch's highhanded practice of elitist, dictatorial government, these so-called Republicans are abrogating the very principle of government that was the proximate cause of the American Revolution.
They will, of course, pretend that they are acting in everyone's best interest to avoid the "fiscal cliff." But it's a precipice of their own making, much as the British government's effort to bypass the colonial legislatures was the result of distortions in the market for tea in Great Britain caused by bad government policies at the time. When it comes to government, crisis tends to favor those who seek to consolidate and increase their power. So, the best way to achieve and consolidate the permanent control of power is to use the instrument of government to foment a permanent and continual condition of crisis. In this way, the conduct of political affairs is like conducting a continual experiment with power in its various forms, in which it is alternately used to threaten and break down a given state of affairs in order to restore and reconstitute it in different various ways.
For a privileged few, the experience involves being the masters of the experiment, rather than its subjects. For the most part, however, in the course of human events the people are its subject matter, and its aim is to find and forever improve upon the best ways to dictate and control their behavior. Happily for the American people, however, the principles of America's revolution gave them the exceptional opportunity to prove that another course was possible. Founded upon those principles, America's system of constitutional government was devised to make the people the subjects of government in a different sense, much the way a word is made the subject of a sentence. Thanks to its principles, they were called upon to act for themselves in government, rather than simply to be acted upon by others.
As articulated by their leadership during the American Revolution, Americans received their call to such citizenship (their citizen vocation) as part of an endowment from Almighty God, when he conferred upon each and every one of them their title of humanity. It gave them all an equal right to act as representatives of God's dominion. As such, it made them subject to no other dominion than His, unless it be by delegation of this, their power of representation. But as they come into that power by endowment from God, they are bound to exercise it according to His will. They can logically consent to nothing that contradicts this bond, since by doing so they would deny the efficacy of the original from which arises the power of representation that gives meaning to their consent.
Pretend if you like that Boehner's purge of conservatives is just about money, about who's taxed and by how much. But the Americans who participated in the original Boston Tea Party were wise enough to reject the king's assault on their God-endowed right to representation, even though it came in the guise of a decrease in the tax rate. People keep telling me that Americans are no longer capable of the straightforward reasoning that allowed those first patriots to see that the real issue involved in such government impositions and benefits is not whether we are rich or poor, but whether we are enslaved or free.
Be that as it may, I will go on writing for Americans who have the sense to realize that, just as we receive the power of representation from God, and should act accordingly, so our elected officials receive the power they represent from us, and should act accordingly. It's apparent that the party still calling itself Republican has become arrogantly hostile to this indispensable premise of republican self-government. John Boehner's purge of fiscal conservatives is just the most recent proof of this Soviet-style hostility. So was Karl Rove's successful political assault on moral conservatives during the late election. These henchmen of the elitist faction's twin-party sham now, quite openly, go about their business — to substitute endlessly-manipulated fear for sensible persuasion as the basis for government in the United States. They are willing to discard the God-endowed right of representation in order openly to collude with those who mean to destroy that right and the nation founded upon it. The participants in the original Boston Tea Party heralded America's withdrawal from the British Empire. So Americans still capable of understanding their God-endowed right of representation should herald their withdrawal from the Republican Party. For though it still usurps the name of the Republic, the GOP today betrays the cause of its survival.
To see more articles by Dr. Keyes, visit his blog at LoyalToLiberty.com and his commentary at WND.com and BarbWire.com.
© Alan KeyesThe views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
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