Liberty 2023
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Give me Liberty
Rodger Williamson
I am nether a Conservative, nor a Liberal. I am neither a Republican, nor a Democrat. I agree with the Republicans on some issues and disagree on others. Likewise, I agree with the Democrats on some issues and disagree on others.
In the end, I will always defer to what our Constitution states, and as intended by the writers, and I will always defer to more liberty, more freedom and more individual responsibility and less authoritarian government mandating of what I can or cannot do as I attempt to navigate my way through my limited time here on this planet. For what it is worth, I am appreciative that the Supreme Court of the United States recently handed down several wins for liberty.
In Biden v. Nebraska (2023), the SCOTUS ruled that President Biden’s student debt relief program was NOT within his authority as the executive. This is something that I called back when Biden first announced his student debt forgiveness plan, back when he was still a candidate running for the 2020 election.
I found it repulsive that Biden was OK with the idea that the everyday tax payer; the ones who, like myself, earned and paid our own way through college with no student loans, as well as the working class that never went to college; should be saddled with the burden of paying a debt that was assumed by those who chose to take on debt to attend a university of their choice to earn a degree of their choosing, but have proven themselves too irresponsible to attend to their own financial obligations.
Fortunately, it is Congress that controls the power of the purse, and the president, as the executive, is denied that authority under the separation of powers enumerated within our Constitution. I found it difficult to conceive that a presidential candidate could be so clueless regarding the authorities of the office they hoped to win, but it was, after all, Joe Biden that was making the pledge, so maybe not so inconceivable.
But given that Biden is showing clear signs of cognitive issues, which leads me to presume that he is being led about as a puppet and being told what to say, I later came to firmly believe that at least all of Biden’s staff members were completely aware that his student loan forgiveness plan would never pass a constitutional review by the Supreme Court, but they chose to throw the plan out into the public anyway, as a way to sway the gullible toward voting Democrat, so that they would possibly have the chance that their debt would be wiped clean.
If I am correct with this assumption, his plan worked, as he was elected. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton agreed on little publicly, but they did agree that when the public treasury becomes a public trough and the voters recognize that, they will send to the government only those who promise them a bigger piece of the government pie. Thankfully the SCOTUS shut this down, making it a win for “We the Taxpayers,” who will not be put on the hook for an estimated additional $430 billion.
In Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (2023) the court ruled that “affirmative action,” especially when used in college admissions, was giving a certain sub-set of applicants special privileges based solely upon the color of their skin, which by definition qualifies as racism.
I’ve said this before, and I will say it again. I choose to not see color. I choose to not see sex, or religion, or any other personal attribute in a person. We are all humans, and we all deserve the equal opportunity to rise, each according to their own capabilities.
The problem that I have with affirmative action is that it is an announcement to the world that because a person has a different skin tone that they are incapable of competing on an equal playing field based upon their own accomplishments, potential and the content of their character.
My personal rule is that if any statement, action, or idea would be offensive if it were for specifically “white people,” then it should be considered offensive regardless of the race, or sub-set, that is being promoted. We need to stop dividing ourselves by color, and we need to start seeing everyone as simply our fellow American.
The Supreme Court ruled in 303 Creative LLC. v. Elenis (2023) that conservative Christians have a free-speech right to refuse to provide some business services for same-sex marriages. Personally, I would rather that it had been expressed as U.S. citizens have a free-speech right to refuse to conduct business with those whom they do not approve of as customers. I see it as the right of the business owner to steer their ship in the direction of their own choosing, and to thus take on the full responsibility of how that ship will fare in those waters.
If I were to go to another business, where they and I had differing viewpoints, I would prefer to not give them my business and instead support a business that had views more aligned with my own. Let the free market decide who shall win and who shall lose, and hopefully, those who are bigoted, will eventually fail.
I could continue on, as there are several other decisions recently handed down by the Court that I agree with. Let me suffice it to say that every decision by the SCOTUS should be neither liberal nor conservative, but strictly constitutional in their interpretation.
Perhaps our nation would be better off if our politicians, as well, were less partisan and more constitutional in their actions, for I stand firmly behind the words of John F. Kennedy, when at a 1958 speech at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland, he stated that: “Let us not despair but act. Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past – (but) let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”