CHRIS CHRISTIE AND COMPROMISE

  Chris Christie opened his campaign for president by telling us that compromise isn't a dirty word. He has boasted of being a Republican governor able to survive by compromising in a blue state. There is a time and a place for compromise. I define real compromise as when your side gets a substantial concession and the opposing side also gets a substantial concession. Reagan said that half a loaf is better than nothing. The problem far too often with establishment Republicans like Christie, Boehner, and McConnel is that the Republicans get the crumbs and the Democrats get the whole loaf. I know a little something about negotiation and compromise. I was on four negotiating committees with a local Union and we negotiated some pretty good contracts. There were some issues that we were unwilling to compromise on and some that the company was unwilling to yield on. Luckily we never ended up on a picket line while I was involved in the leadership of the Union.

  If possible you never compromise with evil unless you find yourself in the position of our Founding Fathers. During the Constitutional Convention there were staunch anti-slavery men like Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. They would eventually compromise with the institution of slavery in order to negotiate and ratify our Federal Constitution. They had risked everything, their lives, wealth and sacred honor.in a long revolution fighting the most powerful army and navy in the world. These men continued to speak out against slavery for the rest of their lives and Franklin even led an attempt to abolish slavery in 1790 but his attempt failed. The men of the Constitutional convention set the legal machinery in place for the eventual demise of slavery.  However we have seen the consequences of compromising with the evil. A bloody Civil War that produced nearly 800,000 deaths and 1,000,000 injured over the issue of slavery.

  We have discussed successful compromise but we tend to forget when it was not successful. The Americans tried over and over to reach an agreement with the mother country over taxes. Americans considered themselves to be English citizens and entitled to the same protection and benefits of English common law.  Britain however thought that the Colonists should help to pay for the French and Indian War, since in their mind English money and troops had protected the Colonists from the French and their Indian allies. This was only partially true since much of the army used to fight the enemy had been Colonial. The Americans were independent minded already, being so far away from the mother country. Each time the British imposed a new tax like the Stamp Act and the Townshend  Duties the British would compromise after a while by removing most of the taxes but leaving just enough in place to let the Colonists know who were really in charge. What is really ironic is that the Patriots were upset over an average of 3% taxes. When you count federal, state and local taxes, many of us pay 50% or more of our income in taxes As late as the Spring of 1776, after the Revolutionary War had been going on for a year, there were still Patriots seeking compromise with England. Thomas Paine's Common Sense was able to convince most American's that it was time to declare our independence from England. If satisfactory compromise had been reached the United States of America, the greatest country the world has ever known, would not exist.

  Although compromise was sought after by many patriots like Franklin, John Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Rush and many others early on, they all on their own timetable, reached the conclusion that compromise would not be possible and that revolution was inevitable. There were radicals like Sam Adams who was always the radical. He and others were not interested in compromise. They saw the writing on the wall from the beginning. The American Revolution was not a liberal or progressive revolution. It was a conservative revolution. It was conservative because the Americans were seeking to preserve rights that they felt they already possessed as Englishmen. At the beginning anyway they were simply asking for a redress of grievances as stated in our Declaration of Independence. They were not trying to create a new country. True Conservatives today are trying to do the same thing. We want to return to the original meaning of the Constitution. A constructionist view of it. Conservatives expect the Federal government to stay within those powers granted to it in the enumerated powers of the seven articles and subsequent amendments. That the states powers are as defined in the 10th Amendment and that the Bill of Rights be strictly followed  as interpreted by the Founding Fathers

Amendment X 

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

 It is time to use the constitution to bring our deficit under control by reducing spending and limiting the powers of the president and congress to spend money. To bring our taxes under control and to remove much of the regulating power of the Federal government. We would like to see the Supreme court limited to it's original role of interpreting the constitution rather than the power of judicial review. Or as many call it the the power to legislate from the bench. The Founding Fathers intended for laws to be written by the legislature. Law should not be enacted by executive action unless that power is delegated by the legislature. No President should have the power to bypass the legislature with a pen and a phone. Our Constitution should not be changed by an activist Supreme Court but by the Amendment process as the Framers designed it. It has taken us a very long time to get where we are today. We did not arrive here overnight. It is not all Obama's fault, although I think that he has been the most Marxist, arrogant, and lawless president that we have ever had. However former Democratic and Republican presidents have done their share of damage. I could go down the list. You can trace the decline of our Republic back to the progressive era of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. The legislature of course has done a great deal of damage. The judicial abuse can be traced all the way back to 1803 with the Marbury vs. Madison ruling in which the court usurped the power of Judicial Review. This ruling led to atrocious decisions such as Dred Scott in 1857, Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896, Everson vs. the Board of Education in 1947, Roe vs. Wade in 1973, Lawrence vs. Texas in 2003. the original Obamacare ruling in 2012 and the recent Obamacare  ruling last month. Finally the ruling last month legalizing same sex marriage.

  Dred Scott was one of the many factors that led to the Civil War. Chief Justice Roger Taney declared that blacks were not citizens nor did they have any legal standing in our court system.  Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896 upheld segregation and nullified the 14th Amendment. This would not begin to be reversed until the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling and the 1964 Civil Rights Act which was just a reaffirmation of the 14th Amendment. Everson vs. the Board of Education turned the 1st Amendment on it's head and reversed 158 years of American jurisprudence regarding freedom of religion. It established an imaginary wall of separation that has guaranteed Americans freedom from religion as opposed to freedom of religion. Roe vs. Wade created a right of privacy out of thin air and established the right to kill children through all nine months of pregnancy and the right to perform late term abortions. Lawrence vs. Texas in 2003 was the basis for the recent ruling regarding homosexual marriage. It violated the Tenth Amendment, as did Roe vs. Wade and basically made homosexual behavior a civil right which was the basis for court rulings over the last twelve years regarding same sex marriage and the recent court ruling that supposedly settled the issue. This ruling has opened the door for incestuous marriages, polygamy, pedophilia, and beastiality. Finally there was the original Obamacare ruling in 2012 that forced Americans to buy a product that they do not want or need which is unprecedented in American law. They got around the law by using the government power to tax. Along with that in June the court ruled that the IRS had the right to establish Federal exchanges in those states that had chosen not to establish them under the original law. This was another violation of the Tenth Amendment and federal exchanges are not even written into the law.

  When Christie calls for compromise I could agree with him if it were 1900.  However we are in a pre 1775 period. Our government, like the English government, has usurped far too many of our inalienable rights from us. They make the English look like rookies in my opinion. Today is July 4th. In the spirit of that document we not only have a right but a duty to alter or abolish this form of government. However what ever is done should be to reestablish the republican form of government envisioned by the Framers. Usurpation will eventually lead to tyranny and I believe that we are already there. The time for compromise is over.