I’m a Christian. I’m a conservative. I reject the politics of fear and tyranny. I embrace the Constitution because it’s the only way for us to be free to enjoy our God-given right to liberty.
I reject party politics, which means I place no importance in the Republican or Democrat labels worn by most politicians today. I support people, regardless of party affiliation, who adhere to the Constitution and believe in the foundation laid out by the Founding Fathers. I believe in limited federal power, states’ rights, respect for the three separate but equal branches of government, and an unwavering commitment to our unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness endowed to us by our Creator.
To be clear, I don’t expect our representatives to be able to quote the Constitution verbatim, but I do expect them to uphold the ideals outlined in this sacred document instead of looking for ways to work around it or ignore it.
With the 2024 election nearly upon us, and with the Republican Party busy playing the partisan games they play every election year, conservatives must expose them as frauds who are no different than their Democrat counterparts — an important distinction when it comes to choosing between the politics of fear and tyranny or the Constitution and liberty.
Fear is perhaps the most powerful weapon used by governments and tyrants to silence and control the masses. Fear is a real and legitimate emotion, but when government, corporations, and others in power use it to manipulate others and grow their own power, society has slipped into what Montesquieu once described as despotism.
Montesquieu, a famous theorist in the 1600-1700s, wrote a book called The Spirit of the Laws detailing how a spirit of fear is a prerequisite for despotism to survive and thrive. Through the use of fear, the despot or dictator can wield the power and force needed to manipulate the masses, turning them into slaves of his tyrannical rule.
Conversely, liberty motivates the masses to live with the passion and commitment to live in freedom as defined in the Declaration of Independence and protected by the Constitution.
Unfortunately, America has lost her heart of liberty, and she has yet to realize that she won’t find it in Washington politics.
After years of submitting to the politics of fear and tyranny, America has veered from the road that leads to liberty and plummeted over the cliff of self-centeredness. The guard rails erected by the Founding Fathers to keep us on that road — the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence — have been destroyed under the misguided and selfish assumption that we can maneuver the road without them.
Throughout history, liberty in America has been under assault, but it intensified when George W. Bush and a nearly unanimous Congress brought us the PATRIOT Act and other liberty-killing laws post 9/11, and we saw it reach new heights when government applied the lessons learned from those terrorist attacks and used them to spread COVID tyranny.
During the so-called pandemic, the assault on liberty was unprecedented and it brought America dangerously close to the end of her existence. By leveraging the growing acceptance of socialism, liberty-killing policies were passed or proposed by both Republicans and Democrats — better known as Nationalists and Socialists — as they channeled their inner Rahm Emanuel by not letting the COVID “crisis” go to waste in order to do things they would never have been able to do had they been committed to the Constitution.
Nationalist Republicans — they incorrectly refer to themselves as conservatives — believe many of the same things as their Democratic Socialist counterparts. They both preach that the “evils” of capitalism and individualism are responsible for the ills of society and that bigger, more tyrannical government is needed to protect our right to live our lives as we choose.
By blurring the lines of conservatism, Trumpist Republicans have created a political environment where fascism — the evil twin of socialism — is now being embraced by the Republican Party as the solution to America’s ills. We witnessed firsthand how fascism now dominates conservatism during the failed presidential campaign of Gov. Ron DeSantis.
We witnessed another example of what this looks like when Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell joined Democrats in 2021 to advance Joe Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure spending package — a plan that had little to do with infrastructure and everything to do with paying off political allies and advancing the far-left agenda of both parties in areas such as the Green New Deal.
By the way, for those ready to play the “we wouldn’t be dealing with this if Trump didn’t have the election ‘stolen’ from him” card, let me remind you that he was working with Nancy Pelosi on a bigger infrastructure plan during the 2020 campaign that, according to the Narcissist-in-Chief, would have made him the “greatest infrastructure president” in history. His proposal included plans to spend money on many of the same far-left priorities included in the Biden legislation.
This is the America we live in after years of assaults on the Constitution by the Republican/Democrat duopoly; an assault that reached the stratosphere during the presidencies of Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Trumpist Republicans want conservatives to believe that nationalism and fascism will make America great again provided we get rid of Democrats and their Marxist/socialist ideals, but the bottom line is this: unless we return to the Constitution and reject party politics, our republic will not survive.
It’s impossible for liberty and fear to co-exist equally. We either surrender to fear and allow tyranny to rule, or we embrace liberty and the Constitution regardless of the consequences. It’s the only way for Americans to ever live in freedom again.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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