"Once Upon a Time!!"

How many of you had “fairy tales” read to you as a young tot? They always started with the words “once upon a time” and always ended with “they lived happily ever after”. These stories usually had handsome princes, beautiful maidens, witches and magical lands. Some of these stories had evil villains who were trying to oppress simple villagers and steal all of their possessions and their freedoms.

I would like to tell you all a “fairy tale” today.

Once upon a time, there were some villagers who sailed to a far off land to flee from an evil king who wanted to control their lives by taxing them without the benefit representation, and occupying their new land with soldiers who enforced all of the evil king’s laws.

After many years, the villagers could no longer stand the oppressive king and rebelled against him with great fury. Villagers from all over the land formed an army that drove the evil king’s soldiers away; they armed themselves with their own weapons, as each person had the right to own those weapons and because they were armed, they were able to protect themselves from a bad ruler.

After the evil king was removed, the villagers got all of their wisest leaders together to form a document for a new government which would guard all of the villager’s rights from those who might try to take those rights away. Months and months went by before a document all could agree on was accepted. They called the document “The Constitution of the United States of America”, and it was lauded the world over for over 200 years.

The villagers had many happy generations under the rules and laws established under this fine document; even when it had to be defended in armed conflict and blood had to be shed.

Leader after leader followed this document scrupulously as it was a great trust to guard the individual rights of all the villagers.

Life in the land wasn’t always easy, but everyone had a chance to be a success; although this wasn’t a guarantee. Even after a great economic trauma, the land flourished because the individuals rose to the occasion and helped to restore the economy by investing in the people and their ability to bounce back toward success.

After many leaders who believed in the great document, the villagers elected a leader who had very different ideas about the great document. He said things about the document that were never said before, things like the document was no longer applicable in today’s world and he would like additional powers to “compensate” for the shortcomings of the document. He appointed many “czars” to oversee his new direction for the villager’s rights. Slowly but surely, the rights of the villagers were being altered to fit the new leader’s ideas of what each individual’s rights should be; all the way down to what they could eat!

Now there is talk of allowing the new leader to be able to serve more than the “constitutional limits” than the document permits; and some people are considering this. The leader is now sounding like a monarch instead of an elected official, and the “fairy tale” is turning into a tragedy.

If we, as a people, don’t put a stop to this pursuit of absolute power from Barack Obama, there will be no “they lived happily ever after” for America. Remember, he is not a king!!!