All political discussion can be distilled down to this question: What is the proper role of government? Which of the following philosophies of history’s political thinkers do you wish to live under?
“We created a lot of millionaires…Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy…Look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. There was a great teach
er somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.” - Barack Obama
Or,
“The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors…That government is best which governs least, because its people discipline themselves. If we are directed from Washington…when to sow and when to reap, we will soon want for bread.” - Thomas Jefferson
How about this contrast:
“We must… put down all resistance with such brutality that they will not forget it for several decades… The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won, and maintained, by the use of violence, by the proletariat, against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws…And violence means neither a fist nor a club, but troops…The greater the number …of the reactionary clergy and …bourgeoisie that we succeed in shooting on this occasion, the better, because this “audience” must precisely now be taught a lesson in such a way that they will not dare to think about any resistance whatsoever for several decades.” - Vladimir Lenin
Or,
“And yet even among the friends of liberty, many people are deceived into believing that government can make them safe from all harm, provide fairly distributed economic security, and improve individual moral behavior. If the government is granted a monopoly on the use of force to achieve these goals, history shows that power is always abused. Every single time.” - Ron Paul
Redefining the Role of Government (RRG) was founded to answer this question; to reorient people back to the paradigm of a little group of people in 1776 who decided to demand their unalienable right to life, liberty and property. But RRG is more than an academic discussion. RRG will lead the way toward genuine restoration of the principles so eloquently penned in the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
RRG focuses exclusively on one key word in the Declaration, secure. That is the role of government: to secure unalienable rights. Is that what the so-called federal government is doing today? Clearly, we citizens need to redefine the role of government, and alter or abolish government which is destructive to our rights. Mark Kreslins–a talk show host on 930 WFMD and featured on Fox News, CNN and NPR–opened RRG as a new front on the battlefield of ideas. Partnering with Mike Church of the Mike Church Show (Sirius Radio) and numerous academic groups from around the Union, and backed by an impressive Board of Directors and Board of Advisers drawn from all walks of life, RRG is unafraid to examine history and forensically investigate how a confederation of sovereign thirteen colonies could eventually grow into a conglomeration of fifty non-sovereign States, enslaving future generations to the tune of $17 trillion. We presume nothing and reassess everything. No political tradition or paradigm is accepted as normative; from the two-party system, the federal government, state government, all the way to local government, every level of government will be tested by the questions should it exist and in what form should it exist? The United States Constitution is our plumbline. For example, RRG will question the Constitutional authority for every legislative act that has bankrupted the Union. With questions like “where exactly in Article 1. Section 8 of the United States Constitution do you find any authority to have created Obamacare, or Medicare, or Medicaid…and on and on and on. In the end, RRG is the indispensable organization at this time. We believe government is NOT innocuous! It has and will do really bad things to a free people, sometimes gradually, in the guise of doing good…and sometimes suddenly and violently. Throughout history, as you have read in the quotations above, government has wrought great harm when seized by people who do not supremely value individual liberty. This is the state of affairs in the beginning of the 21st century. RRG exists to empower citizens with tools to Redefine the Role of Government in our lives.
