Average American lives are suddenly surrounded by chaos and upheaval, whether from job loss, business loss, a pandemic, illness, lockdown orders, cancel culture and character assassination, riots, and even from manufactured crises on which the media and politicians capitalize.
Fear tactics are now the favorite tool of those interested in grabbing political power. State legislators may not consciously be seeking such power and dominance over the average individual.
But even for any political ambitions they may have, which have unseen consequences for constituents, an alternative legislative method of less political control to quell the chaos and ease the pressure of public life is the answer. Surely this approach benefits every legislator facing an ever-increasing angry public.
No matter where people live in the United States or the world, a majority of them just want to live their lives in peace, be healthy, raise their children, and be secure. If they possess a higher purpose, they also want to add value to their community through business, faith, charity, and education.
The preferred method of authoritarian dominance is politics, but lately we are witnessing crony capitalism with the emergence of big tech, big corporations, and big banks that are now wagging the tails of media and government.
Government was established here in the United States to represent We the People. However, Washington, D.C., rarely listens to the states, much less individuals still represented to a greater degree by state legislators.
Yet those individuals are the building blocks of a civil society. Corporations and government are organized specifically to assist in economic prosperity and security of private property, respectively. However, the oligarchy of big government and big business has evolved to be served by the individual.
Innovation, problem solving, and solutions flourish in communities, associations, and amongst individuals, who are secure in their human rights (outlined in the Bill of Rights) given by God, not by government.
The problem rising to the surface of awareness for the average American is that those rights, freedoms, and choices are fading, as government grows bigger and the individual grows smaller. When options to live and thrive are taken from the average person, civility will become the exception, not the rule.
Rule of law, rather than men, has been our American heritage securing peace, prosperity, and liberty. But over the decades both parties and the federal bureaucracy in Washington, D.C., have engaged in skirting and twisting law, while ignoring who gives them the consent to govern.
So what is the alternative for a state legislator? Respecting the self-governance of our responsible fellow Americans. More regulation, bureaucracy, and taxes will further erode the engine of a vibrant functioning economy and destroy lives.
The counter-intuitive yet proven method of governing--as was practiced by the 30th president of the United States Calvin Coolidge and other rare statesmen in our history--was to limit the federal government to its enumerated powers set forth in the U.S. Constitution.
The positive results aren’t rocket science. Most importantly they return legitimate legislation and choice to the states and Americans, where results of their work and prosperity belong.
These ideal consequences--including flowing cost and price structures that cannot be managed by officials--are the phenomenon of spontaneous order, the decisions of billions of people worldwide, policy adherence to the Laffer Curve, and Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand (Wealth of Nations).
Economic outcomes cannot and never have been duplicated successfully and efficiently anytime in history by state central planning.
I, Pencil The Movie
Understand that the states are the fourth branch in the balance of political power. The original intent of the U.S. Constitution was to constrain the growth of the federal government only to the powers enumerated therein.
Our last remaining choice to save our republic from the civil unrest witnessed last summer and the tyranny of an absolute central planning agenda is already in the supreme law of our land and the hands of We the People: Article V of the U.S. Constitution.
That is why support and passage of a resolution in the states proposed by Convention of States is vitally important. The status quo of business-as-usual for governing is unsustainable and a race to the bottom.
Make Americans great, again!
Guy Monahan is the Convention of States Idaho Regional Captain for districts 8-23.
