Beto O’Rourke was right to question our Constitutional principles

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In a recent interview with The Washington Post, potential 2020 presidential candidate, Beto O’Rourke, the Texas Democrat who barely lost his 2018 Senate bid to “conservative” Ted Cruz in one of the reddest of red states, openly wondered if the “principles” of our Constitution still worked in America today.

When asked by the interviewer if he thought the U.S. was capable of changing how it deals with today’s issues or if the country was “incapable of implementing sweeping change,” he responded:

“I’m hesitant to answer it because I really feel like it deserves its due, and I don’t want to give you a — actually, just selfishly, I don’t want a sound bite of it reported, but, yeah, I think that’s the question of the moment: Does this still work?

“Can an empire like ours with a military presence in over 170 countries around the globe, with trading relationships … and security agreements in every continent, can it still be managed by the same principles that were set down 230-plus years ago?”

While it’s easy to dismiss Beto’s answer as the mindless meanderings of a Marxist muttonhead, I too wonder if the Constitution still works because, quite frankly, no one in Washington — neither Democrat nor Republican — uses it anymore.

Just this week, Donald Trump signed The Foundations For Evidence-Based Policymaking Act (FEPA) into law. Touted as a way to improve data gathering and sharing between federal agencies and to facilitate making that data available to outside interests, FEPA creates a government-controlled database that can be used to track and monitor every U.S. Citizen, beginning with our children.

In a piece I wrote last year commemorating the 17th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I documented a long list of ways that the government had chipped away at our liberty since that fateful day at the hands of both parties in every branch of government.

Conservatives held out hope that giving the GOP control of Washington in 2016 would end the assaults on the Constitution that became standard operating procedure under Obama. Unfortunately, Trump and the GOP continued the attacks.

Freedom of Speech. Freedom of the Press. The right to bear arms. The right to due process. These are just a few of the Constitutionally protected rights that Trump and the GOP have continued chipping away at by passing unconstitutional laws and issuing unconstitutional executive orders.

With the rise of socialism within the Democrat Party, the growing number of Americans warming up to socialist ideals, and the absence of anyone to defend the Constitution, we may never know the answer to Beto’s question.

In order to know if our founding principles work, we actually have to try them out.

 

 

David Leach is the owner of The Strident Conservative. His politically incorrect and always “right” columns are also featured on NOQReport.com.

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