Divisive PoliticsBy Thomas E. BrewtonSenator Obama's campaign is based upon a fantasy: his claimed ability  to transcend politics-as-usual and thereby to unite the nation for a  common purpose.It isn't just that Senator Obama lacks his claimed power.  It's that  the secular religion he represents is entirely antithetical to  everything that led to the foundation of the United States.  The very  existence of liberal-progressivism is divisive.We Constitutional traditionalists were here first.  It is the liberal- progressives who are an invading army of conquest, marching under the  banner of an alien, Continental European philosophy of atheistic  socialism.To be a liberal-progressive is to view people as members of social,  ethnic, and economic classes, most of them, if we are to believe  Democrat/Socialist Party leaders, belonging to Karl Marx's lumpen  proletariat of unemployed, deprived, depressed, and oppressed.  It is  to believe that only government can improve people's lives, because  individuals are powerless in confrontation with the monopolistic,  capitalist establishment.The solution, in liberal-progressive doctrine, is to restructure  society, redistributing income as evenly as possible.  With the  original doctrine of private property ownership removed from society,  people will no longer be envious of each other, but will live  harmoniously.  Crime will disappear, because everyone will have his  basic needs satisfied by collectivist government.  We will become  one, big, happy commune.This is the essence of Senator Obama's change that will bring us  together by transcending the old politics.It is hardly surprising, therefore, that leaders of the Democrat- Socialist party, joined by mainstream media editorialists and so- called news reporters, continually decry objections from  Constitutional traditionalists as divisive.  For liberal- progressives, to oppose the transition to socialism is to stand in  the path of scientific progress, to thwart the inevitable course of  history.Let's remember on this Fourth of July, 2008, that the colonists in  1776 fought for something diametrically different from the liberal- progressive vision of salvation through the collectivized political  state.Most people have seen only the opening lines of the Declaration of  Independence.  The following lines are the meat of it."But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably  the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute  despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such  government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --  Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is  now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems  of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a  history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct  object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To  prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world."He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary  for the public good."He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and  pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his  assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly  neglected to attend to them."He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large  districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right  of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and  formidable to tyrants only."He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual,  uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public  records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with  his measures."He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with  manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people."He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause  others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of  annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their  exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the  dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within."He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for  that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners;  refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and  raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands."He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his  assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers."He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of  their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries."He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of  officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance."He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the  consent of our legislature."He has affected to render the military independent of and superior  to civil power."He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign  to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his  assent to their acts of pretended legislation:"For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:"For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders  which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:"For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:"For imposing taxes on us without our consent:"For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:"For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:"For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring  province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging  its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit  instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:"For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and  altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:"For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves  invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever."He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his  protection and waging war against us."He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and  destroyed the lives of our people."He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries  to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun  with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the  most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the head of a civilized  nation."He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high  seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners  of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands."He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored  to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian  savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction  of all ages, sexes and conditions."All of this boils down to one basic affront: the British government  of George III and Parliament had consistently and repeatedly  exercised arbitrary power to compel the colonies against their own  interests.Our nation was composed of independent and individualistic colonies  that became the original states, with greatly differing geographical,  agricultural, and commercial interests.  They were united by a common  heritage of Protestant Christianity and the rights of Englishmen,  evidenced in the common law and the principle established in 1689  that even the king is subject to the laws of the land and to the  higher power of God-given morality and justice.Two years of intense public debate, from 1787 to 1789, were needed to  secure ratification of the Constitution.  The great fear was that it  might grant too much arbitrary power to the government.The fears of 1787-89 unfortunately have been realized, as the Federal  government again and again overrides states' powers guaranteed by the  Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, and as the Federal judiciary  arbitrarily creates and imposes law in opposition to the expressed  will of citizens within the states.The liberal-progressive ideal of a rabble-led democracy of the sort  that emerged in the French Revolution the year of Constitutional  ratification was emphatically rejected by the framers of the  Constitution.  James Madison, in the Federalist Papers, observed  that, historically, pure democracies had been the worst and shortest- lived form of government.  Pure democracies repeatedly dissolved into  tyrannies when silver-tongued orators appealed to the masses with  promises of welfare-state benefits in return for grants of more power  to the orator.The Constitution was, instead, intended to form a federal republic  (not a European-style monolithic sovereignty), in which states  retained most of the police powers to regulate the everyday life of  their citizens.Senator Obama represents the antithetical thrust of liberal- progressivism to collectivize power at the national level, reducing  states to hat-in-hand sycophancy, and to revoke the Fifth Amendment's  guarantee of private property rights.Only by conquest through cultural civil war can Senator Obama and his  liberal-progressive minions bring us together.  It is they who are  the divisive element in American politics, education, and business.Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc.  The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of  writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776http://www.thomasbrewton.com/Email comments to viewfrom1776@thomasbrewton.com