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Feature Column August 2008 Save the Planet? How About Saving Our Republic? By Chuck Baldwin
Yesterday, the Politico quoted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as saying, "I'm trying to save the planet; I'm trying to save the planet." She was responding, of course, to pressure that she and her fellow Democrats are experiencing to suspend a congressional ban on offshore oil drilling in the face of skyrocketing energy prices. It would be really wonderful, however, if the liberal congresswoman could get as energized about saving our once great republic.
Herein lies another problem: the vast majority of our politicos (from both major parties) do not even seem to know what kind of country the United States was designed to be. Virtually every reference made to the United States by our civil magistrates is that we are a "democracy." That's odd; someone should have told our Founding Fathers, because they emphatically rejected the concept of creating a "democracy" in favor of creating a constitutional republic.
Has anyone quoted the Pledge of Allegiance lately? Does it say, "And to the democracy for which it stands"? Or does it say, "And to the republic for which it stands"? Of course it says "republic."
At the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention, a passerby asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got--a republic or monarchy?" Franklin replied, "A republic--if you can keep it."
Ladies and Gentlemen, that is the sixty-four million dollar question: Can we keep our republic? Can we keep our constitutional form of government? Can we keep our constitutionally protected liberties?
In Federalist No. 10, James Madison ("The Father of the U.S. Constitution") said, "[D]emocracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."
The fear of what happens to freedom and liberty under democratic rule is what prompted Madison and the rest of America's founders to labor so hard to create what they did: a constitutional republic.
Under God, it is allegiance to the Constitution that has preserved our liberties, our peace and happiness, our security, and our very way of life. Furthermore, it is the repudiation and rejection of constitutional government that is responsible for the manner in which these very same blessings are currently being lost.
Someone needs to remind Rep. Pelosi that it is not her duty (nor does she have the power) to "save the planet." And by the same token, someone needs to remind Senators Barack Obama and John McCain that they are not campaigning to be President of the World, but President of the United States.
What every elected officeholder is expected and required to do is very simple: they are required to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. Period. End of story.
Our public servants are not charged with saving the snail darter or the Spotted Owl, or saving the profits of the international bankers, or saving Wall Street in general, or saving the perks of corporate lobbyists, or saving Freddie and Fannie, or saving the peoples of the world from all the bogeymen, or even saving humankind or the planet itself. What our public servants are charged with, however, is preserving (saving) our constitutional republic.
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