OPINION:
What if the government’s true goal is to perpetuate itself? What if the real levers of governmental power are pulled by agents and diplomats and by bureaucrats and central bankers behind the scenes? What if they stay in power no matter who is elected president or which political party controls either house of Congress?
What if the frequent public displays of adversity between the Republicans and the Democrats are just a facade and a charade? What if both major political parties agree on the transcendental issues of our day?
What if the leadership of both major political parties believes that our rights are not natural to our humanity but instead are gifts from the government? What if those leaders believe that the government that gives gifts to the people can take those gifts back?
What if the leadership of both parties gives only lip service to Thomas Jefferson’s assertions in the Declaration of Independence that all humans “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” and that the purpose of government is not to redistribute wealth but to protect these rights?
What if the leadership of both parties dismisses those ideas as just Jefferson’s outdated musings? What if Jefferson’s words have been enacted in the federal laws that all in government have sworn to uphold?
What if the leadership of the parties believes that the constitutional requirement of due process somehow permits mothers to hire doctors to kill the babies in their wombs out of fear or convenience? What if the leaders of both political parties believe that the president should be able to kill any foreigner he wants out of fear, because due process is an inconvenience?
What if President Donald Trump has used high-tech drones to kill foreign people in foreign lands and claimed that he has done so legally, relying not on a declaration of war from Congress but on the convenient arguments of former President Barack Obama’s attorney general, who falsely told Mr. Obama his killings were consistent with due process?
What if the U.S. Constitution requires a congressional declaration of war or due process whenever the government wants someone’s life, liberty or property, whether convenient or not and whether American or not? What if due process means a fair jury trial, not an extrajudicial secret killing?
What if the congressional leadership and most of the membership in Congress from both major political parties believe in perpetual war and perpetual debt? What if the history of American government in the past 100 years is proof of this nearly universal belief among the political class?
What if the political class believes that war is the health of the state? What if the leadership of that class wants war so as to induce the loyalty of its base, open the pocketbooks of the taxpayers and gain the compliance of the voters? What if the political class uses war to enrich its benefactors? What if the government has been paying for war by increasing its debt?
What if the political class has been paying for prosperity by increasing the government’s debt? What if that class has controlled the cash-creating computers at the Federal Reserve and the free cash the Fed creates is to bankers and traders what heroin is to addicts?
What if the $21.7 trillion current federal government debt has largely been caused by borrowing to pay for wars and false prosperity? What if 22 cents of every tax dollar collected by the feds today is spent on interest payments for the government’s debt? What if, at this rate, in seven years the federal government will pay more annually to debt service than it will to fund the Pentagon?
What if American taxpayers are still paying interest on debts incurred by Woodrow Wilson, FDR, JFK, LBJ, Ronald Reagan and every modern president?
What if the banks have borrowed the money that they lend? What if they can’t pay it back? What if the stock market is soaring on borrowed money? What if mansions and office buildings are popping up but they will soon secure more debt than they are worth? What happens when the plug is pulled on this temporary artifice and those debts come due?
What if the government demands transparency from all of us but declines to be transparent to us? What if the government fosters the make-believe notion that it exists to serve us? What if government leaders assert that they work for us but recognize silently that we work for the government? What if the federal government has access to all of our communications, bank accounts, health and legal records, and utility and credit card bills? What if the government knows more about us than we know about it?
What if the government stays in power by bribing the states with cash grants, the rich with corporate bailouts, the middle class with periodic tax cuts and the poor with reliable welfare? What if the courts have approved this bribery?
What if we live today in an inversion? What if the government the Founding Fathers gave us needed our permission to do nearly everything? What if today we need the government’s permission to do nearly anything?
What if, on Thanksgiving Day, our gratitude is not to the government that mocks our freedoms and steals our wealth but to God, who gave us our freedoms and our ability to reason? What if, on Thanksgiving Day, our gratitude is for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? What if these are integral to our humanity despite the government assault on them?
What if, on Thanksgiving Day, we should be most grateful that we are free creatures made in God’s image and likeness? What if we are so free we can reject the government?
• Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is a regular contributor to The Washington Times. He is the author of nine books on the U.S. Constitution.
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