Term Limits
One of the larger (ongoing) topics swirling around is the topic of term limits for elected officials. This is not likely to get done any time soon. An act of law limiting the power and influence of the lawmakers themselves is a hard sell for anyone. However, a de facto limit can be imposed within a political party.
At the Texas GOP Convention, much thought was put into this. We were pitched the idea of effectively using the Right of Association to impose term limits on our own candidates. If a person has held office for a certain number of terms, they are ineligible to secure a Republican nomination from the Republican Party of Texas. they would be welcome to run as a Democrat or as an Independent, just not on the Republican ticket.
We all know a person who ran, won, and worked as a Republican has little to no chance of securing a nomination on the Democrat ticket. We also know Independents secure 10% or less of the vote. This policy effectively drains the Texas GOP swamp.
This may not be a sweeping policy to fix the entire issue, but we can clean up our side of the street at the very least. Even the people who have no time to research candidates and vet policymakers should have some guidance from their party and their party’s delegates. This mechanism forces that to be the case.
Contract With Texas
This is one of the most important movements in Texas at present. It is effectively asking our Republican political candidates to pledge they will do their jobs. We all know they have not been doing their jobs. We can all feel the weight of their failure to perform. It is common sense they should be doing better, but they overwhelmingly do not pledge to do better.
A full list of signatories and abstainers can be found on the website. We can see why failing to sign would send a powerful, anti-liberty, anti-grassroots message upon inspection:
Only solicit support for Speakership from Republican members
End the practice of awarding Democrats with committee chairmanships
Ensure all GOP legislative priorities receive a floor vote before any Democrat bills
Replace the current liberal Parliamentarians with staff committed to only offering advice on adherence to House rules, not to advancing their personal ideology
Limit the Speaker to two terms to reduce their power over individual members
Ensure there are no longer any Democrat-majority committees
Stop parliamentary abuse by requiring only substantial adherence to House rules to keep hyper-technical points of order from killing good legislation
Allow audio/video recording of all House proceedings, including point of order debates
Start substantive work as soon as Session begins to end delays that kill priority legislation
Reform the Calendars Committee to increase transparency and accountability
Select a Republican as Speaker Pro Tempore
Decentralize power by prohibiting the distribution of political funds from the Speaker.
If you ran on the Republican ticket, you were, through Freedom of Association, endowed with the ability to do so by your Republican constituency. This implies you are accountable to the Republicans who put you in that position. you are not accountable to the Governor of TX; you are not accountable to the President of these United States. You are accountable to We, the People. Things do not work backward here; we are not Democrats. We do not worship Government. We do not wait for Government to fix our problems. We do not kow tow to the current order. This was made clear the last round of primaries where 15 incumbents lost their seats.
If you do not represent our values, we will remove you from the ticket. This is plain, simple, easy, and understandable.
Democratic Weakness
It is a sobering realization that the seeds of tyranny can be sown so easily. The birth of the United States was founded on the belief in every individual’s inalienable, natural rights, bestowed upon them by their Creator. These rights were considered self-evident. However, in the 1800s, a profound battle of ideologies unfolded, pitting pro and anti-slavery forces against each other. The anti-slavery advocates, aligning with the concept of inalienable rights, found themselves in a moral struggle against the pro-slavery forces who vehemently disagreed.
A man by the name of Calhoun was, perhaps, history’s greatest critic of this self-evidence. He argued, inter alia, that it was far from self-evident that all men were created equal - that Government’s job was to take these unequal births and align them to duties best suited by birthright. In Calhoun’s vision, some persons (whites) were born of better position than others (blacks). Freedom would, then, be a reward for good behaviour. The better a group behaved, the less governance would be imposed upon that group. The worse a group behaved, well, they could be relegated to outright chattel.
Once we have human chattel, we certainly have tyranny. All Calhoun needed to do was distract from self-evidence and change the focus from individual liberties to group behaviour, and we descend very quickly into an unequal society where rights are given by the Government according to group membership rather than power and sovereignty being the people’s to distribute.
Our nation’s founding is full of accidents of timing. Two great writers and speakers simultaneously fought for the cause of abolition: Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln. Although they had their differences, they were both instrumental in the eventual success and persistence of the founding’s principles. Douglass attacked the premise of slavery as a valid and natural order quite directly when he said:
“Natural and harmonious relations easily repose in their own rectitude, while all such as are false and unnatural are conscious of their own weakness, and must seek strength from without. Hence the explanation of the uneasy, restless, eager anxiety of slaveholders.” - Frederick Douglass, June 16, 1861
In more contemporary language, we mean to express that laying out a society within which black and white coexist on equal terms with equal opportunity takes far less work than laying out a society of the opposite kind. As nature exists without a human organizing hand, it must stand to reason that a society of master-slave dynamics is one far from and against the natural rites. This is why the slaveholders must fight so hard and violently to maintain their position. More of this was stated by President Lincoln one year prior:
“In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them. These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them.” Abraham Lincoln, February 27, 1860
It was true that the anti-slave States meant to leave alone the slave states. They had left them for at least 3 generations. The slave States; however, pressed forward and attempted to grow their aristocratic society past their own boundaries. It was clear that the slave States would not bend to reason, and would never calm their fire. In fact, every argument the US had over the slavery question was lost by the North until 1850. Every single argument was given to the slaveowners. In the 1850s, a series of events gave strong Due Process rights to free blacks, and the South could not abide this.
You see, the South was fine to live harmoniously when it would get its way. It was fine to stand by the union of States as long as the union would kow tow to its order. It loses one argument and attempts to bail out of the entire arrangement. Democrats, it would appear, have always been this frail and childish. Lincoln argued that the Constitution so ratified by all States cannot be then broken by a single party. It is a contract, and no party can decide to leave a duly sworn to contract without the consent of the other parties. Lincoln then leads us to fight for the union as a whole:
"Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it." - Abraham Lincoln, February 27, 1860.
As we know, the Democrats lost then and the union was preserved. Our Creator-given natural rights were reaffirmed in that time. Now, we have a similar unnatural order attempting to subvert the founding. Again, this subversion is the work of Democrats.
Democrats would have the Federal Government take property from those who had earned it, and redistribute it among the lazy. They despise property rights.
Democrats would have the Federal Government impose measures upon the States that the State’s people would never elect for. They despise a pursuit of happiness.
Democrats would have the Federal Government run our elections when this is a duty clearly given to the States in the Constitution. They despise free, fair, and secure elections.
Democrats would have the Federal Government impose religious and ideological prescriptions upon the youth when this is a duty given to the Parents by our Creator. They despise families.
Democrats would have the Government decide what individual liberties a person, family, and community have rather than those individual liberties heretofore established. They despise freedom.
A great Democrat thinker by the name of Woodrow Wilson stated in an overt attempt to undermine the principles of the founding “If you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface.” The preface of course being the part regarding inalienable rights. He and his contemporaries (typically referred to as the Progressives) argued that the world had moved on from what had given rise to the Constitution, and as such, the Constitution should be replaced by a new social order - that the Government should be able to control the individual’s liberties in the context of the whole society,
We see the same thread pulled through from prior Democrats. We see Democrats attempting to govern according to a group dynamic rather than according to an individual’s freedoms. All it takes is to disagree with or ignore the self-evidence of the inalienable natural rights. Once rights are no longer inalienable, they are subject to removal. This is the Democrats’ game. This continues to this very date.
The reason Democrats are so fragile was explained by Douglass. Their move toward tyranny is unnatural and thus cannot repose in its own rectitude. Instead, they are conscious of their own weakness and must use the Government as a tool to strike down those of us who live in our individuality. The Democrat seeks to crush those who disagree with them under the full weight and force of an outsized Government. We resist because it is right to resist. We will always remember what our first Republican President taught: that right makes might.
https://frederickdouglasspapersproject.com/s/digitaledition/item/9084
https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/abraham-lincoln-cooper-union-speech-text/