How do we keep America strong and its citizens free?

How do we keep America strong and its citizens free?  There is only one way…adherence to the Constitution.  The Constitution is not a dreamy eyed document of how we wish things to be.  It is a well thought out structure of government that protects us from human nature.  No other system has proven to provide both long-term stability and individual freedom.  Only by limiting the concentration of power can we assure continued freedom and liberty.  To limit the concentration of power, our Founding Fathers established three branches for the Federal Government, each branch with different roles, freely elected on a regular basis.  A Federal Government of limited and enumerated powers, with the rest of the power dispersed among the States, which States must honor the Constitution’s guarantee of individual freedom and property rights.  But, its continued success is dependent on a citizenry with the will to hold the Federal Government to those limits.  Certainly, long term, the path that America has been on for the last half century has resulted in, and will continue to increasingly result in, reduced individual freedom and reduced property rights.  Our path has increasingly allowed a concentration of power in the Federal Government, effective tyranny over its citizens by a bureaucracy that increasingly, with no end in sight, tells what we can and can’t do with our lives and our property, and more and more national laws that are made ad hoc without regard to the Constitution, written in a way that they are nearly impossible to understand or follow, and then arbitrarily and selectively enforced or ignored at the whim of those in power.  We still have time to correct our direction, but there will come a time when the tipping point is reached, and the entrenched interests who have a stake in an all-powerful Federal Government will gain such power that it will be impossible to peacefully turn back to the Constitution.  Perhaps in 2014 we can begin to have a serious national debate regarding these issues.  Sadly, we debate myriad issues…minimum wage, core curriculum, gun laws, drug legalization, income inequality, national mandated healthcare, environmental laws, etc., without first asking the basic question “What is the proper role of the Federal Government?”  It is as if that question has already been answered, and the answer is “Whatever the Federal Government wants to do.”  If that is already settled, then not only will our grandchildren suffer the consequences, but the world will indeed lose a “shining city on a hill” and the last great hope of the world for a major power to set the standard for individual liberty, and stand strong against the huge forces around the world that want to snuff out individual liberty for a collectivist agenda that will ultimately result in tyranny and global conflict.  As this new year dawns, my hope and prayer is that Americans will wake up and rediscover the reason that we broke away from the British Empire and risked all for freedom.  Our American Founders, as articulated by Frederick Douglass, “preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage.”  We still have time for a peaceful revolution at the ballot box, but only if we will elect individuals who will promise and deliver a return of power to the States, and a return to the Spirit and Words of the Constitution.  It is that simple…it is the only way to preserve America as a land of freedom, prosperity and opportunity.  There is no other way.