Sunday, December 8, 2019

Who Are the American People?

 Article by Greg Roller in "The American Thinker":

Today, we hear our representatives (it seems increasingly less clear just whom they represent) frequently invoking the phrase "the American people."  I ask, who are these American people whom politicians so flippantly feign to speak for?

The preamble to our Constitution states: "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 to secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity ..."

The implementation of a more perfect union is to be carried out by "We the People."  President Kennedy said in his inaugural address that it was by his fellow citizens, far more than him, that the final success or failure of our freedoms would be decided.  He said the graves of young Americans around the globe bore testimony to their answering the call to service in their generation.  Will we continue to answer the call that so many have died in answering, or will we despise their sacrifices on the altars of ease and pleasure?

Today, I see our country divided into many disparate social groups, presided over by egotistical, self-indulgent politicians.  As a young man with many ethnic bloodlines running through my veins, I saw myself as an American first.  Today, Americans identify predominantly by their ethnicities, pronouns, and gender preferences.  We've become balkanized along the lines of sexual preferences and pronounced racial differences, and in place of a more perfect union, we're becoming splintered, apathetic, and divided.  Our current leaders aren't doing anything to repair it.  In many instances, they're exacerbating it.

From the moment President Trump was elected, the focus of the majority in Congress has been to impeach him, which certainly hasn't contributed to a more perfect union.  One Democratic congressman said, "I'm concerned if we don't impeach this president, he will get re-elected."  Does that echo the sentiment of Democratic president John F. Kennedy, placing the fate of our republic in the hands of his fellow citizens, or does that sound like a tyrant wanting to remove from office the president his fellow citizens duly elected?

The vague and opaque testimony of quid pro quo and bribery against our president by handpicked witnesses can be seen and heard in the words of Joe Biden bragging about doing the very thing our president is accused of.  Before cameras, he bragged about withholding billions in loan guarantees to Ukraine until a prosecutor in their country was fired — a prosecutor who purportedly was considering investigating a gas company from which Joe Biden's son was receiving an exorbitant amount of money.  Is this why President Washington warned against the perils of foreign entanglements?

I support President Trump asking Ukraine's president to look into Biden and son's activities in Ukraine, and here's why.  While my dad was fighting in Vietnam in the Tet Offensive and the battle for Khe Sahn, Joe Biden was graduating law school and receiving student draft deferments to keep him out of Vietnam.  For all of his tough talk, you would think he would have been more than willing to visit some of his bravado on a hostile enemy in the jungles of Vietnam...

When my dad returned from Vietnam in 1969, strung out on speed and consuming large volumes of alcohol, Joe Biden was being admitted to the Delaware Bar, and while my dad would spend the majority of his life battling alcohol addiction and losing, Joe Biden would spend the majority of his life winning in Congress and enriching himself and his family at taxpayers' expense.

Despite the horrors of war that my dad experienced, I too joined the Army's airborne infantry at 18 years of age.  Joe Biden's son Hunter graduated from a private school at 18 years of age and went straight to college and on to law school, graduating from Yale in 1996.  Finally, in 2013, Hunter Biden got around to serving his country by joining the Navy Reserve in a limited duty position, but only after he received two waivers, one for his age and one for a past drug-related incident.  His dad presided over his commissioning at a special White House ceremony.  A month later, he tested positive for cocaine and was subsequently discharged from the Navy.

If I had tested positive for drugs during any part of my military career, I would have been chaptered out of the military, at the very least with a less than honorable discharge.  That would have made it extremely difficult for me to find a job in the civilian sector.  My alcoholic Vietnam veteran father wouldn't have been able to help me, either.
But when your father is the vice president of the United States, popping hot for cocaine on a drug test and getting kicked out of the Navy Reserve is actually a blessing in disguise.  If your dad just happens to be a draft-dodging politician, you can actually parlay that small set back into a job on a foreign gas company's board of directors and rake in over 80,000 dollars a month, a salary I've never come close to making in a year.  For some perspective, in some areas of our country, a public school teacher's salary is around $35,000 a year.

Were the lives lost in Vietnam sacrificed so Joe Biden's son could get kicked out of the Navy for drug abuse and then land on a foreign gas company's board of directors and make 960,000 dollars a year?  And that's only in Ukraine.  What about his affiliations in China?  When you answer that question, please tell me again why our president shouldn't ask about Biden and his son profiting from a foreign government.

Who are "the American people" that our representatives frequently invoke?  Are Joe Biden and his son indicative of "the American people" whom so many of our best have sacrificed their youth for?  Are you willing to send your sons and daughters off to die in foreign countries so Joe Biden and his son can enrich themselves in foreign countries?

Thomas Paine, a prominent voice during the American Revolution, wrote, "[G]overnment even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."  Joe Biden is symbolic of government in its worst state, and it's intolerable.  As a veteran and the son of a veteran, I for one am grateful that President Trump asked Ukraine's president to look into Joe Biden and his son's activities in Ukraine.

Who are the American people?  "We the people" are the American people, and we are all that's standing in opposition to an intolerable government that will always seek to enrich itself at our expense.  Those currently seeking to impeach our president are seeking to impeach us as well.  They are seeking to impeach him before he can expose the corruption of the prior administration and return government to we, the people.  As a veteran, I stand with him.
 
Image result for cartoons about the founders ridiculing modern congress