Rep. Chip Roy SOUNDS OFF on federal government

Representative Chip Roy is on a roll.

This week when the United States Supreme Court ruled that Texas does not possess the right to defend itself from foreign invasion, the firebrand from Congress went ballistic.

"They have a duty,” he said of Lone Star State officials, “to protect your citizens, period, full stop. There is no exception to that. And if the Supreme Court wants to ignore that truth, which a slim majority did ... Texas leaders still have the duty to defend their people.”

His advice? “You tell the court to go to hell,” he blazoned.

Recently named chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, Congressman Roy is not exactly known for his — how should I put this? — docile ways. In the less than judicious summation of The Texas Tribune, “Chip Roy is a thorn in the Republican Party.”

Except, is that true?

Or is he more of a thorn in the halls of a corrupt, establishmentarian system of government?

Whatever he is, one thing is clear: Rep. Chip Roy fully embraces the thorniness. It’s a feature. A part of his persona. A gentler, more placid Chip Roy simply would not be Chip Roy. His self-embraced role in Congress is to make his colleagues — especially the more status quo-adjacent ones — uncomfortable.

Roy is, in other words, in the Swamp, but not of the Swamp — a Texas Tribune-certified “thorn.”

Of course, for that dwindling subsect of voters who still somehow imagine that politics as usual in America is going just swell, it’s easy to see why men like Roy are, admittedly, incredibly obnoxious. But before we diss the rabble-rousers — and believe me, I would love to diss more than one or two of them myself — we ought to remember why political rabble-rousing is on the rise and why it is increasingly well-received by the American people.

SEE ALSO: Chip Roy replaces Mike Johnson in key congressional position

Troublemakers like Roy exist to fill a void. They exist because traditional, highbrow politicking has unequivocally failed the American people, saddling them with $34 trillion worth of debt in the process. The era of lawmakers performing disingenuous chants of kumbaya together is over, and it ended in abject failure.

For better or worse, passivity, statesmanship, and peace-seeking are dead congressional virtues. Today is the day of disruptive politics.

Burnt by an unbroken string of do-nothing politicians, voters have given up on trying to “compromise” our way out of $34 trillion worth of debt. They’ve turned to men like Roy, even if only to swear off the vain art of “cutting deals,” reaching across the aisle, and placating a dead and dying system.

“The American people are tired of getting a complete lack of representation from their representatives,” Roy declared last week in an irate lecture to his colleagues. “Nobody in this country looks at Congress and says, ‘Wow. Heck of a job, guys and gals. Well done.’ Who would do that? Would we do that? By the way, it does not matter who’s sitting in the speaker’s seat or who’s got the majority. We keep doing the same stupid stuff.”

Unsurprisingly, the House, at that moment, broke out into chaos. As it turns out, Congress does not like being called out on its ineptitude.

But as Chip Roy’s rants increase in intensity, and the media become increasingly vexed (according to MSNBC, his bellicose diatribes highlight “the far right’s cluelessness”), we must remember, he is simply lending his voice to a voiceless people. The congressman’s pugnacious cries represent years of bottled-up discontent distributed across the whole of the nation. For far too long, Americans have put up with a government that grows, expands, spends, consolidates, and devolves with every passing year, no matter who or what party they elect. If, under those circumstances, voters eventually reward a more militant strain of politics over its polite, obsequious predecessor, they can hardly be blamed for it.

“The path to saving America is not coming from Washington but from the people,” Roy confessed in his official COS endorsement. And he really seems to believe it.

Congress keeps “doing the same stupid stuff” — nothing is changing. And that being what it is, maybe we could use a few more thorns after all.

To support Article V, the Founders’ cure to a structurally broken federal government, sign the Convention of States petition below.