Today I was pondering the nature of a republic. Not just the definition of republic, namely, what a nation must possess to be one, but rather the essence of republic and the means towards which it may be strengthened and tyranny avoided. The notion of the average liberal college student seems to be counterintuitive to the very notion of democracy.What with the pasting over McCain-Palin bumper stickers with Obama stickers on the UNC-Asheville campus, and with the excoriation of dissenters from the liberal norm as "bigots", "homophobes" or "hatemongers" words hurled meaninglessly to censor and attack, it makes it difficult to be open about one's conservatism in today's "liberal", ironically intolerant, academic world. What makes the college student most inimical to democracy, however, is his quest to paradoxically give the government more power, not less in the quest for freedom and human rights. Neither history, logic, nor the ideologies and philosophies of the founding fathers back up these claims as elaborated below.

Throughout history, people have foolishly traded freedom for security. Hitler is an overused example, but in many times throughout history people have been under a threat and given their threats away to a tyrant to turn away that threat. The emperors of Rome abolished the Republic with this technique, George Bush (a false conservative if there ever was one, with his big-government, foreign interventionist balderdash) with the PATRIOT Act playing upon the fears of Americans of terrorism, and now Barack Obama's stimulus bill and gun control plans.

What fear is Obama exploiting? The fear of depression. We must pass this bill or the economy will collapse. We must resort to socialistic tactics or this country will fall apart. They lie and ignore facts in order to play upon the fears of the people to give them more authority. Same with gun control, ignoring that locations with the most guns in fact have lower crime rates, and also the fact that some of us aren't cowards and are willing to fight to defend our families and our rights. One of the first things dictators always do? Disarm the populace so that they can't resist. Guns are a Sword of Damocles which enables the weak to stand against the strong.

But this isn't a blog to merely complain about the liberal tyranny, rather it is to offer a solution. The solution is simple:

Dismantle the Federal government's power to do anything not allowed by the Constitution. Anything not explicitly allowed will be within the power of the states, as per the constitution. Gay marriage? States rights. Abortion, one of the worst evils in America? States rights. Taxes? States rights, get rid of the IRS and establish the Fair Tax. When government is closer to the people, at the state and local level namely, the power is closer to the people. When government is in the hands of the states and the many, as opposed to the White House and Congress where it is concentrated in the hands of the few and the special interests. When government is relegated simply to the protection of our inalienable rights: rights that would exist regardless of the government, as the founding fathers intended, and not engaging in Keynesian economic interference and giving everyone a "right to succeed" with a mindless "everyone's a winner" attitude, we will as free men and women observe a Renaissance of American Government whereby we may all live free in the spirit of the founding fathers. I leave with a quote:

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. -Thomas Jefferson