America’s founders’ advice for Trump
'There is no doubt that Nov. 5 will be one of the most important presidential elections of our lifetime'
The post America’s founders’ advice for Trump appeared first on WorldNetDaily.
First, it should be noted that I finished this column just before the attempted assassination of former President Trump on Saturday at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
My wife, Gena, and I join the nation in thanking God and his security detail that Trump is safe and well.
We also want to convey our most heartfelt condolences to and prayers for the family and friends of those attending the rally who were killed and critically injured by the shooter.
Our hearts go out in particular to the family of retired fire chief Corey Comperatore, who died a hero as he was shot when he threw his body on his wife and daughter to shield them from the gunman. A GoFundMe has been set up for his beloved wife and family.
We also pray for our nation that we would return to our civil and moral roots, when we agreed to disagree agreeably without resorting to vitriol, vengeance and violence. It’s with that goal in mind that I wrote the remaining of this column:
With the Republican National Convention underway this week, I was again pondering the power of the president and particularly how America’s founders might advise candidates today.
America’s founders drafted the principles and documents upon which our country was established. They knew back then what would make it great and strong, and they were right. And I believe their wisdom can still lead us, especially during this critical time and election.
If our founders were alive today, how would they advise presidential candidates and particularly former President Trump (with the focus on the RNC this week)?
I believe they gave us advice and wisdom in their statements and beliefs regarding six critical areas for making America great again:
1. Trump should double his emphasis about the power of “We the People” (not himself) and our power to vote and “Make America Great Again.”
Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence and our third president, said, “[S]hould things go wrong at any time, the people will set them to rights by the peaceable exercise of their elective rights.”
Alexander Hamilton, chief of staff to Gen. George Washington, one of the greatest advocates of the U.S. Constitution and founder of our nation’s financial system, wrote, “A share in the sovereignty of the state, which is exercised by the citizens at large, in voting at elections is one of the most important rights of the subject, and in a republic ought to stand foremost in the estimation of the law.”
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2. With excessive crime and criminals (including record numbers of terrorists) crossing into the U.S. from Mexico, Trump should double his commitment to close the borders immediately (if president) until the chaos there has been corrected back to the path our founders laid out for LEGAL immigration.
According to the Declaration of Independence, “obstructing the Laws for the Naturalization of Foreigners” was one of the objections leveled against Britain that warranted the American colonists’ seceding. If alive today, the founders would see Biden’s federal government as obstructing those laws by their open-door border policy.
The founders believed that an unvetted open-door border policy would lead to national, community and cultural chaos. Like enrolling in an Ivy League school, they considered and promoted American citizenship as a high honor. Immigrants’ positive character, credentials and contributions were essential to the founders.
James Madison, the father of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, shared the collective sentiment back then when he stated, “I do not wish that any man should acquire the privilege [of citizenship], but such as would be a real addition to the wealth or strength of the United States.”
Thomas Jefferson, hailed as one of the most inclusive among the founders, worried that some immigrants would leave more restrictive governments and not be able to handle American freedoms, leading to cultural corruption and “an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and tender it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.”
3. Trump should outline and pledge to a specific plan how he will decrease the monstrous size of the federal government’s power, regulation and overreach, while increasing power back to “We the people” and the power of individual states.
To America’s founders, the federal government has three duties: A. protecting Americans’ Bill of Rights and right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; B. protecting the U.S. states from invasion and enemies; C. engaging in international commerce. All other governmental matters should be left to individual States, which is what the 10th Amendment outlines and clarifies.
James Madison, our fourth president and one who is called the “Father of the Bill of Rights,” similarly said in 1788: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”
Thomas Jefferson again said in 1791: “I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition.”
4. Trump should propose and pledge to a specific plan how he will decrease federal spending and the national deficit and debt as well entitlements and tax burdens on citizens.
George Washington wrote in 1799, “To contract new debts is not the way to pay for old ones.”
Thomas Jefferson spoke for most founders when he said in the beginning of his presidency in 1801: “A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.”
Jefferson also wrote in 1816: “This is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. … And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.”
Regarding entitlements, Benjamin Franklin said, “I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
5. Trump should outline and pledge to a specific plan how we all can (better) protect and stand up for preserving the original intent of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence, said in 1826, “I do hereby recommend to the present and future generations the principles of that important document as the best earthly inheritance their ancestors could bequeath to them.”
Daniel Webster encouraged, “Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster, and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, because if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.”
George Washington summarized, “The Constitution is the guide which I will never abandon.”
6. Trump should outline and pledge to a specific plan how he will encourage and produce good (better) character and faith in God in citizens and society (including himself), for they are the bedrock to morality and civility in society.
Samuel Adams, organizer of the Boston Tea Party and signer the U.S. Declaration of Independence, wrote, “Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust be men of unexceptionable characters. The public cannot be too curious concerning the character of public men.”
William Paterson, a signer of the U.S. Constitution, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court and second governor of New Jersey, wrote, “When the righteous rule, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan.”
John Jay, the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court appointed by George Washington and second governor of New York, wrote, “Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”
John Jay’s words bring me back again to the words of that most famous American and leader of our republic, George Washington, who worried back then about the future of his new nation just as many of us do now. It was far-too-divided, with further potential of tearing at its constitutional seams. He was also concerned that unbridled freedom, coupled with relative morality and expediency, would give way to an uncivilized society and the ultimate dissolution of our republic.
GovInfo.Gov rightly concluded: “In September 1796, worn out by burdens of the presidency and attacks of political foes, George Washington announced his decision not to seek a third term. With the assistance of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, Washington composed in a ‘Farewell Address’ his political testament to the nation … designed to inspire and guide future generations.”
Washington implored the present and future Americans in his address with final words:
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
If our country is ever to return to moral decency and civility, Washington paved the only real path to get there. As the sister of the Trump rally victim Corey Comperatore wrote after her brother was killed, “Hatred has no limits and love has no bounds.”
It is because of our founders’ advocacy for the six foundational areas above that my wife, Gena, and I are both Republican and conservative, and endorse and vote for those who are the same. Though we respect other political persuasions and even know many Independent and even Libertarian voters who believe and vote as we do, we believe conservative Republicans best represent our founders’ vision, wisdom and solutions to making and keeping America great.
There is no doubt that Nov. 5 will be one of the most important presidential elections of our lifetime – there is so much on the line. That is why I encourage Americans everywhere to get out of the political bleachers and onto the battlefield. It’s time for the black-belt patriots to fight for our founders’ vision for America!
(To learn more about America’s founders’ solutions to our modern-day problems, please read my New York Times bestseller, “Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America”)
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The post America’s founders’ advice for Trump appeared first on WorldNetDaily.