Clay Jenkins with Joe Ellis on the 2024 Presidential Election.
Feet Solidly Set in Common Sense
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
–Preamble to the United States Constitution
She highlights how our founders explicitly did not base the government on morality because individuals’ sense of morality varies. This cannot be used for a system of laws that works for every citizen.
Then she turns to fascism and how it rises and why our founders set up a structure that empowers the people through elected representatives and seating power with the people – not with any particular person or party.
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. ~ John Adams.
A Time Between
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
There is probably no other person like MLK, Jr. who knew the bleak landscapes of injustice yet held the dream that “one day little black boys and girls would hold hands with little white boys and girls.”
The vision he held advances, retreats, surges ahead with each decade of good hearted and prayerful striving. It all takes place in the heart.
When kindness and reciprocity advance the cause of freedom and liberty, we lean in toward justice. Now is a time of avarice and hoarding in which we lean outward away from each other. Justice retreats.
Freedom loving Americans, stand by Lady Liberty. The midterms – if the institution holds together – are the next vital space where we can lean together toward justice, truth and a kind but firm righting of all we hold dear. Fear not but be vocal, hold hands and keep the dream of Liberty forever alight in your heart. Let us lean in together.
A Coup on American Democracy
Timothy Snyder warns Americans that we do not recognize a new kind of Coup: It is digital. What’s at stake right now: 1) our Human Rights and 2) our Constitutional Rights.
Of Course Its a Coup
Thinking About: Timothy Snyder’s Substack
About Substack: This is a publishing platform. You can sign up for free with any of the individuals presenting news, culture, etc. When you sign up just click on free subscription to begin with. So no cost to you. Later, if you like the work that is being done on your behalf you may decide to donate monthly.
For Timothy Snyder I consider his work so valuable I subscribe. I was a free subscriber for a year before that.
Clear Vision from Timothy Snyder
“What is a country? The way its people govern themselves. America exists because its people elect those who make and execute laws. The assumption of a democracy is that individuals have dignity and rights that they realize and protect by acting together.
“The people who now dominate the executive branch of the government deny all of this, and are acting, quite deliberately, to destroy the nation. For them, only a few people, the very wealthy with a certain worldview, have rights, and the first among these is to dominate.
“For them, there is no such thing as an America, or Americans, or democracy, or citizens, and they act accordingly. Now that the oligarchs and their clients are inside the federal government, they are moving, illegally and unconstitutionally, to take over its institutions.”
To read more of this article from Dr. Snyder and to sign up for a free subscription to follow his posts- recommended during this time of total destruction of the institutions of democracy – click here:
Thinking About – Substack Account for Timothy Snyder
Actions to Assure Democracy Prevails
“Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
The quote above is for anyone afraid to stand up to the tyrants who have taken over the American government.
I am posting a Politics Chat with Heather Cox Richardson in which she delivers a host of ways we can push back against the fear tactics against the American public. Dr. Richardson also gives a brief where we stand moment. “Power is sloshing around,” she advises and the tyrants do not have the power over us yet. Joyce Vance wrote about the Loyal Opposition as our honorable duty now. See the link below the You Tube block.
Constitution 101
From the National Constitution Center
Test your knowledge about the Constitution as we travel toward the 250th Anniversary of America.
AMID DESTRUCTION, TRUTH EMERGES UNDAUNTED
We can thank the destructive forces let into the heart of Democracy for showing us the truth of our founding principles among which are consent of the governed and the rule of law.
We witness an attempt to overthrow our government by a despot and the foolish people who follow in his path. Mostly, it is a party of grievances against the restraints imposed by principles established at our founding. These establish how we treat each other and live together.
Individuals who throw off the restraining standards of behavior toward one another and detest those principles of decency, respect and caring for each other are tyrants.
Further, neglect of the Earth from devouring forces that eat at her heartwood, not only rob our children of a future but imperil all life on the planet.
Our collective culpability is grave.
Unbridled capitalism is on display in the highest offices of the land, elected by unknowing citizens concerned with the costs of living while forgetting our responsibility to elect leaders who are grounded in the virtues that our founders asserted as a restraint on the forces of tyranny.
Let us join the choir of truth tellers emerging everywhere as our nation awakens to what we have done: we let a fox into the henhouse. This is not political but our individual responsibility to conduct ourselves with respect for each other.
The preservation of our republic is of vital importance today for another reason: the mounting threat to life on Earth. We are a nation that has forgotten that we live here only by the grace of Earth’s living, breathing body and spirit. For too long we have plundered the Earth for coin.
And now we have put a despot at the helm when the Earth is teetering on massive changes which may not include life as we know it. The entire planet is in flux. Even when we watch our fellow Americans fleeing raging fires, epic floods and death, and temperatures that render farmlands barren, this despot denies even his own body and thus imperils all of us.
The first step out of this dilemma is to admit the truth of our present reality. From there, we must resist every attempt of the now unrestrained actions of a man filled with anger and hair-brained ideas detached from the truth.
We may at a time not too far from now have to make bold decisions and risk all to stop him and the hoard who follow hoping for power, money, or at least to duck his vicious nature. If we don’t, we’ll not appear in any history book as standing up for a nation of free people but for the fact that no one will be around to write that history.
Emerging Resources for Citizens Searching for Truth and Community:
Alternatives to Inauguration
Democracy Will Not Die in America.
Undaunted: courageously resolute especially in the face of danger or difficulty: not discouraged. Merriam Webster.com
A Golden Resource for Americans Who Cherish “Little d” Democracy –
The National Constitution Center Town Halls and Podcast
A great book, is Our Ancient Faith, Lincoln, Democracy, and The American Experiment by Allen C. Guelzo, Historian.
According to our ancient faith, Lincoln said in 1854, “the just powers of the governments are derived from the consent of the governed…. Lincoln translated…to mean “that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent. I say that is the leading principle—the sheet anchor of American republicanism.” From Our Ancient Faith by Allen C. Guelzo, Chapter 1: The Cause of Human Liberty, p. 26.
Citizens, those who love and cherish the ideals of our democracy, make it a weekly practice to write to your Senators and Representatives and to members of Key Committees. Here is mine today to Senator Elissa Slotkin who is a member of the U. S. Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee.
We can never know whether what actions we take are heard but I have faith that if millions of freedom loving American write, call, email or visit their Congresspersons, the flame of democracy will never die in America. She may flicker now and then when despots blown in on hot air and untruths, or when we are temporarily fooled, but freedom has its way, always. We must remain undaunted!
Susan Feathers 