“In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.”
Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws
In our constitutional republic and free-market capitalist economy, the people’s rights are supreme. In the theoretical Wilsonian progressive democracy, based on a “living” constitution, social justice, redistributive economics and government control over the people’s rights are supreme.
The American Republic established by our founders is constitutional because it has been established by the people. A progressive democracy established under a “living” constitution is unconstitutional because it has been established by judges, legislators and bureaucrats, not by the American people.
The progressive approach to government is a theory that has crept into our legal system through judges and justices who enabled the political class to expand government control over our creator-given rights and capitalist, free-market economy.
A prime example of the abuse of progressivist theory is the faux impeachment of President Trump by members of the House of Representatives. Faux because, while piously wrapping themselves in the Constitution, Speaker Pelosi and her committee chairmen stretch a plain statement into meaninglessness and end up abusing the limits of the power granted to them by the Constitution in the process.
Speaker Pelosi and her committee chairman have taken the “…sole Power of Impeachment” as giving them license to conduct themselves in any way they see fit in order to bring Articles of Impeachment against a sitting President.
Let’s look at what the Constitution says about Impeachment:
· Article I, Section 2: “The House of Representatives…shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.” The sole power means that only the House of Representatives may bring Articles of Impeachment.
· Article I states the Speaker, her committee chairmen and the House are the who and what of Impeachment. It does not give them the how of Impeachment.
· The Constitution, as a whole, limits the how by its overarching mandate to preserve and protect the rights of each American. Rights included in the how are: due process, presumption of innocence, an open (not secret) trial, the right to confront one’s accuser, the right to due process among the many rights that were violated by the House during the impeachment process.
Nowhere in the Constitution are the Speaker of the House, committee chairmen or any member of Congress given the right to negate the rights of any American citizen, let alone the rights of an accused citizen. The idea that the Speaker, committee chairman, other members of Congress, jurists or bureaucrats can change constitutional rights on an as-needed basis is only allowed in the penumbras and emanations of a theoretical “living” constitution foisted on us by progressive elites. The end result of unconstitutional creeping progressivism is mob rule.
The belief in progressive elitism does not give the holder of such views the right or authority to amend our constitution; only the American people can do so through the procedures outlined in the Constitution’s Article V.
What we are seeing is the fatal flaw in the progressive theory of a “living” constitution as opposed to our actual written constitution.
“They [the founders] proclaimed to all the world the revolutionary doctrine of the divine rights of the common man. That doctrine has ever since been the heart of the American faith.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower
