Letter to the Editor
Do not be fooled. The current versions of health-care reform are all about power and control -- period! No more evidence need be given than the absolute contempt Democratic lawmakers have exhibited toward the bastion of our liberties and freedoms: the Constitution.
Adherence to the Constitution made our nation a great republic. Failure to adhere to the Constitution has resulted in our country devolving into a democracy with all its perils and fallacies.
We the people, through ignorance and greed, have allowed the federal government to assume unprecedented unconstitutional power. Do we really expect nationally elected politicians of either party to willingly abdicate this unconstitutional power and return to true federalism? Moreover, do we expect unelected federal officials -- who write the majority of federal regulations and overwhelmingly have guaranteed lifetime employment -- to limit the power of their fiefdoms?
It defies logic to answer affirmatively to either question. Then why do freedom-loving Americans devote their energies almost exclusively toward reformation at the federal level? The election of 1994 illustrated conclusively that conservative passions by nationally elected politicians are fleeting, and are bound to the principles of the Constitution only as far as the next election.
Our republic can be rescued, but it will not occur at the federal level where constitutional fealty is diluted in the quagmire of Washington power and corruption. True federalism can be restored only by the states through inimitably more accountable state legislatures and governors.
It is a tactical and strategic error to march on Washington. Tea party demonstrations should be directed on every state capital. State legislatures must be made to uphold their oaths of office or face replacement.
The lack of public denunciation of federal actions -- by Ben Harbin, Lee Anderson, Bill Jackson and Sonny Perdue -- indicates that they are "leaders" who do not comprehend their oaths of office and the extremely influential role they have in the reformation of our republic.
Perhaps it is time for some local change we can believe in.
Dale Schmacht, M.D., Ph.D
Evans