The Battle for Freedom Continues

This week the Supreme Court rendered two extremely important decisions in support of the Constitution, freedom, and the individual liberties of every American.

Virtually all of the media attention has been focused on the Court’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, which upholds the individual right of Americans to own guns in the District of Columbia. Since Washington, D.C. is federal territory, many of those who oppose the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms continue to argue that the Second Amendment simply allows for state militias to possess guns, and they strive to keep and expand state and municipal prohibitions against individual gun ownership. But these state and local laws will now be challenged in light of the new ruling that makes clear that our Constitution and Bill of Rights not only mean what they say, but apply to every American.

In finding the Washington, D.C. gun ban in violation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, Justice Scalia eloquently affirmed what our founding fathers understood when saying that certain rights are inherent, natural, and from God, not government, and when he explains how the rights affirmed by the founding fathers have their roots deep in ancient British legal history. These natural, God-given rights include the right to defend oneself and one’s family, to safeguard one’s home and property, even to defend one’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness against a tyrannical government.

For a great many Americans, what the Supreme Court has done in this landmark case is to affirm what most of us simply regard as “right thinking” or common sense. Yet the Supreme Court’s ruling in this matter was determined by a razor thin vote of 5 to 4.

The national attention that focused on this Second Amendment ruling has eclipsed another Court decision rendered the same day, but one that is at least as important in that it re-asserts our First Amendment right to free speech. The McCain-Feingold law has been seen by many as an “incumbent protection act” in that it restricts the quantity, content, and timing of political speech during federal elections. One provision, known as the “millionaires’ amendment,” had attempted to subdue wealthy, self-financing candidates by letting their opponents receive triple the standard campaign contribution limit of $2,300 per donor. This provision effectively had limited what one candidate could spend, thereby limiting that candidate’s speech, since it costs money to get one’s message to the voters. Also, by “leveling the playing field” in this way, the law provided an advantage to incumbents who typically are much better known than are their challengers.

This week the Court also determined by a 5 to 4 vote that this provision of the McCain-Feingold law is unconstitutional, thereby upholding the right of a candidate to spend his own money for campaign speech.

While we can be thankful that the Supreme Court has aligned itself on the side of liberties contained in our Bill of Rights, the closeness of these votes reminds us of how very fragile those liberties are.

When we hear legislators boast about how much legislation they have sponsored and passed, we need to remember that every law, whether it is promulgated by local, state, or federal governments, limits someone’s freedom. The challenge is in knowing when to make the trade-off.

There was a time in the nineteenth century when many seriously argued that our Congress was no longer necessary since our nation had all the law it needed. With the threats posed by international terrorism, by a public that increasingly thinks government should solve all problems, and by a government that seeks to manage everything from the nation’s economy to planetary temperatures, our liberties come under constant assault.

The noble battles for liberty fought at Bunker Hill, Ticonderoga, Valley Forge, Charleston, Camden, and Eutaw Springs continue today in both political parties, in our state legislatures, in Congress, and as we have seen this week, in the United States Supreme Court. The fight is never ending.

Free Markets, Not Government, Are the Answer

Americans in every part of our nation are acutely aware that something is causing steep increases in the price of gasoline. At approximately $4 per gallon and continuing its upward climb, some estimate that the price of gasoline could double in the foreseeable future. Such prices not only will create havoc with family budgets, they will stagger our nation’s economy.

We have been given many reasons for the price increases and many solutions to resolve the crisis that these increases have created. But when Congressional Democrats recently called for the federal government to nationalize the refineries, I was reminded of President Reagan’s first inaugural address in which he said:

"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

That is as true of our “present crisis” as it was of the enormous challenges faced by our fortieth President.

For four decades, presidents and Congress have yielded to environmental extremists who have opposed virtually every opportunity to move “we the people” closer to energy self-sufficiency. They have opposed hydropower because of perceived threats to the natural habitat of fish even though hydropower has been used to produce electricity since before the invention of the light bulb, it is nearly free, there are no waste products, and it does not pollute the water or the air. They have opposed nuclear energy even though it provides safe, clean, and inexpensive power to much of the world. They have opposed drilling for oil on western federally-owned lands, in the arctic wasteland, and offshore and in the Outer Continental Shelf of the United States, even while China and Cuba are preparing to drill for oil in those same waters off America’s coast. They have even opposed erecting wind turbines off our coasts that convert kinetic energy in the wind into electricity, because turbines might block the view for boaters and for those with waterfront property. Political leadership should be made of sterner stuff.

Beginning in 1982, Congress began limiting offshore drilling through the appropriations process for the Department of the Interior. In 1990, the elder President Bush issued an executive order restricting new offshore exploration and drilling. In 1998, President Clinton extended these regulations through 2012, and until this past week, our current President has done nothing to relax them. Now, at crisis stage, he indicates that he will support legislation opening the Outer Continental Shelf for exploration and drilling.

Since the 1970’s, American presidents have encouraged the American people to conserve, put on sweaters, and turn down thermostats, with the understanding that the law of supply and demand would keep affordable the inexpensive oil we were importing from the Middle East. Unfortunately, in the intervening years the same governmental leaders that have overseen our energy crisis have presided over the export of America’s manufacturing industries to other countries. As a result, we are no longer the world’s foremost consumer of foreign oil. In fact, there are far more tankers crowding China’s ports than there are in our own, fueling China’s rapidly increasing manufacturing industries. While we might hope that driving less and conserving more will bring down oil prices, hordes of foreign consumers are hungry for our share and more, thus driving up prices.

As a result of America’s energy crisis, both political parties and their candidates will likely be trying to sell us complex energy plans on how government can get us out of this mess that government got us into. As President Reagan wisely understood, comprehensive government plans are not the solution to the crisis we confront; government plans likely are the problem.

The solution to our energy crisis is not nationalization of oil refineries. That is the way of Venezuela, Russia, Cuba, and China. The answer in the United States is for our government to step aside and rescind its Executive Orders, statutes, and volumes of rules and regulations that have all but ruined America’s robust economic engine of exploration, research, development, and production.

America has the same capability it has always had to lead the world in developing new sources of bioenergy from plant matter and animal waste. It can harness geothermal energy from deep within the earth, and the sun’s energy can be more efficiently used for heat and electricity. Hydrogen can be cleanly produced from renewable sources. Tidal forces, when harnessed, offer enormous potential power. And while all of these new technologies are being developed or expanded, we have sufficient deposits of oil and coal in the United States to provide for all of our energy needs for many future decades.

Congress is very good at producing a lot of hot air, but it will not produce a single barrel of oil or one iota of the new energy technologies we need. The seemingly insurmountable problems confronting America’s families and our economy will be more likely to be addressed when voters recognize that their own government, not Middle Eastern sheiks, is causing our energy crisis. Private industry, freed of government shackles, is more than capable of providing America with the safe, clean, reliable, and low cost power our nation needs.

The Legacy of a Great Leader

As the seemingly endless presidential campaign has narrowed to the two major party’s presumptive nominees, some conservative Republicans are nostalgically longing for the Reagan years, and regret that a conservative leader of President Reagan’s stature seems not to have emerged.

President Reagan was an extraordinary leader, and many eloquent voices call him the greatest American of the 20th Century. In her moving eulogy for the late President, Lady Margaret Thatcher pointed out the daunting, historic tasks he set for himself. “Ronald Reagan,” she said, “sought to mend America’s wounded spirit; he sought to restore the strength of the free world, and to free the slaves of communism.”

These she said were “causes hard to accomplish and heavy with risk.” Yet this great, “providential figure” was a man “who knew his own mind, had firm principles, expounded them clearly, and acted on them decisively.” We know that with his unfailing optimism, humor, charm, and persistence under fire, he accomplished all that he set out to do. He won the cold war without firing a shot, and left America and the world far more free, safe, and prosperous.

President Reagan accomplished the impossible and made it look easy. His presidency was very much the culmination of what has been called “the greatest generation.” It was a generation that was forged in the Great Depression, tempered by war, and whose patience, fortitude, and faith was proven through uncertain and dangerous decades when the Cold War’s outcome was far from certain. It takes nothing away from President Reagan’s epic accomplishments to recognize that his great triumphs were the result of service and sacrifice rendered by millions of his generation over the course of their lifetimes.

It is not surprising that in our own difficult day we long for a monumental leader like President Reagan to deal with problems that seem overwhelming. Domestically we are experiencing out-of-control government growth, spending and deficits, growing political support for big government, socialist programs, record costs for oil that not only threaten families, but threaten economic havoc in our nation and throughout the world, a growing trade deficit, the export of American industry and jobs, and the continuing breakdown of the most basic units of civilization, marriage and the family. Internationally we are experiencing a weakened economic and strategic position relative to hostile governments, two costly wars with no end yet in sight, and the constant threat of terrorism with its potential for catastrophic destruction.

These epic threats, like the threats that confronted “the greatest generation,” will not be resolved with one Congress, one presidency, or even one great, historic figure. Overcoming these threats will likely consume the century ahead, and triumphing over them will likely require principled, resolute, and unifying figures like Ronald Reagan to lead the way.

As conservatives and Republicans, we need to remember that the triumph of Ronald Reagan was prepared over decades both by great names and by unknown Americans who were faithful to their present moment, relied on God’s protection, and did what they could, where they were, with what they had. Many did not live to see the great victory to which they contributed, but they share in our triumphs nonetheless.

While Ronald Reagan may have come closer to our ideal of political perfection than any other American in the 20th Century, today we face a choice between two candidates. In that choice, Senator McCain is exceedingly closer to President Reagan than is his opponent. McCain shares Reagan’s love and optimism for the United States and he believes to his core -- and spent over five years of intense suffering in the Hanoi Hilton because he would not renounce these beliefs -- that the US is a force for good in this world. He also believes, as did President Reagan, that individual Americans create our nation’s wealth, build our communities, invent today’s breathtaking new technologies of tomorrow, educate our young, and possess primary responsibility for raising new generations. All of this is in direct contrast to his opponent who believes that these are the responsibilities of nameless bureaucrats working in a labyrinth of government departments, bureaus, and agencies.

Each of us has a God-given role to play in the great epic struggle of our day. In that struggle we need first and foremost to arm ourselves with faith, as though everything depends on God, while we work in our homes, communities, civic groups, and political parties, as though everything depends on us. When we trust in God’s mercy and grace in that struggle, we not only labor to achieve President Reagan’s vision of the “great, shining city on a hill,” we participate in the eventual triumph of good over evil that God has promised to all those who put their trust in Him.

A D-Day Remembrance

Today we commemorate D-Day, the historic allied invasion of Normandy in World War II. This morning my brother forwarded me a letter he received from Captain Mark O'Brien, a close friend of his and a U. S. Navy judge advocate presently serving in Iraq. His letter is so poignant and thoughtful that I decided to publish it in this forum. Captain O’Brien wrote:

"I was thinking of the subject this morning and it occurred to me that D-Day was 64 years ago. When we were born, WWII had ended less than 10 years earlier. Putting that in perspective, Desert Storm, which seems like yesterday to me, was 17 years ago. Seventeen years after WWII was 1962. Our parents’ generation came home from the largest, deadliest, most far reaching war the world has ever seen and by the time I was 7 they had rebuilt the world and acted as if the war didn’t happen. Yet for tens of millions of Americans (who fought in it, worked to support it, lost loves ones to it or just prayed for its end) it had radically altered their lives but they simply carried on without any demands for compensation or claims as victims. They gave our generation and the ones that have followed the most prosperous blessed land God ever graced the earth with. Sadly, today only a handful of people will remember the countless millions of sacrifices made in order for us to enjoy what we have today. So we must remember to say a prayer in thanksgiving for all of those who gave us so much."