In a recent post, I touched on what I believe to be our greatest threat we face today, that being our private property rights. As we continue to acquiesce them away progressively, we also are inversely limiting our ability to resist. Always under the guise of our best interests, our government has no need to forcibly take our rights away because we are more than willing to take the trade bait and surrender liberty in the name of security.

What is clear when you examine the issues of the day is a common denominator. We have a Constitutional crisis at hand. A bit dramatic you may say? I would say the issue isn’t even debatable. In fact, I would argue that we’ve even moved beyond that into a post-Constitutional period. The extremists at work today have learned to utilize a tact that doesn’t bring the Constitution into the center of the debate. This is by design. They don’t want us to be backed into a corner and have to decide one or the other. They have learned to shift the argument elsewhere. What this does is still get to their goal in an indirect manner by making the Constitution irrelevant. That is the backbone of the strategy employed by progressives everywhere.

Think about its brilliance. They can’t win when the debate is framed around the Constitution yes or no. Cloward-Piven would be an example. If you started with a clean slate and attempted to lay out a plan in which the public is dependent on its government for its very survival, you would never come right out and state your goals. They would be rejected out of hand. However, giving away taxpayer money through transfer payments not unlike a crack dealer handing out free samples on the street corner until their target customers are addicted is very stealthy.

The tax debate I have referenced in recent posts is another fine example. Simply look at what we’re debating. Should we raise taxes or cut spending? Or a combination of both? Should we increase taxes on the wealthy? Should we close loopholes in the tax code and make sure businesses are all paying their fair share? Should we switch over to the Flat Tax? How about the Fair Tax? The Fair Tax eliminates the income tax, corporate tax, capital gains tax, estate tax and replaces them with a consumption tax. Sound good?

What do these all have in common? They are merely attempts at redistributing wealth and ensuring evening out the playing field so that everybody pays their fair share. When you have a $3.6 trillion dollar budget, we don’t need to be focused on new sources of revenue and fair taxation burdens. We need to be discussing Constitutionally mandated spending of our Federal Government. We need to be returning governance to the states where applicable. We need to be eliminating entire Federal agencies and removing redundancies. In short, we need to drastically shrink our Federal government.

Rather we fight over making the rich pay more. We get mad at corporations like G.E. for having the gall to use the system to their advantage to escape the burden of taxation. Yet, did you know that the cost of regulation exceeds corporate tax receipts and corporate tax profits? Regulation costs as well as taxes are passed along to the end consumer as much as possible. But we don’t argue that issue, instead we focus on the profits of our evil corporations. People both left and right buy into the Obama argument of too much profit.

Look at the story in the news about Boeing. They wish to expand their operations out-of-state which Washington state does not like. They contend that it is union busting. The NLRB has ruled in the state’s favor. So the apparent conclusion is that whatever state you establish your company in, you are always tied to it and not allowed to grow in other states. Ridiculous. Instead of talking about the merits of job creation, the argument is shifted to retaliatory, punitive actions on behalf of Boeing. Government should have a zero role here. Now I’m sure the argument will raise the issue of tax credits issued to Boeing to get them to locate in Washington and thus they owe a debt of gratitude and now must expand in that state. This is another illustration of why we shouldn’t punish or incentivize through the government. Let the individual states compete for business in a free-market scenario rather than picking winners and losers.

These examples are illustrations of shifting the focus and the argument away from the real issue, our out-of-control Federal government. That is the point of this post. If we aren’t prepared to take on the issue of the relevancy of our Constitution, then it is over folks. Shared sacrifice and fair tax burdens are big government talking points. A big government role cannot coincide with a strong Constitution. Something has to give.

Our economy continues to flounder because we aren’t even discussing the relevant issues. Instead, social justice, the environment and other ideologically driven items top the agenda. Only a miniscule few even talk about the debt. We talk about reducing the deficit by some trivial amount. The NIMBY mantra rules when it comes to serious reductions in the size and scope of the Federal government.

I see the elites across the land just laughing their asses off at us. They continue to prosper no matter who is in power. That’s why I support removing both incentives and penalties for business. Whichever way you go, they can manipulate the system and make out like bandits. We have to cut off their power. We can’t allow the Federal government to continue in its role of the all-everything to everybody. Punishing through regulation and taxes. Incentivizing through tax credits and public taxpayer dollar “investments”. They all must go away. The free market system and capitalism will prosper far more leading to what we all want. More jobs and lower tax burdens.

Look, this will not be pretty at all. We may have to go further than we ever envisioned. But without addressing the real issues of the role of government and protecting our private property rights, we cannot and will not move past our boom/bust cycles and eventually just a big bust. Politicians won’t talk about it. The media won’t talk about it. Nobody with skin in the game wants this to be the narrative.

While I salute bloggers across the land who are doing what they can to expose corruption and the hidden issues facing our country, the Constitution has to become the focus of all these debates. Take today’s hot topic. The debt limit. We’ll debate whether or not to raise it and what deficit concessions can be tied to it. That’s fine and dandy, but it’s just a distraction. It will still keep coming up because we don’t take on the underlying issue.

So I would challenge my brethren across the land to evaluate their focus going forward. If we don’t take on the Constitution issue soon, we’ll all be become irrelevant. We’ll have to pound on it and pound on it ceaselessly. Public ignorance is a monumental challenge to overcome. Don’t allow the progressive extremists from both sides to set the table on the argument. Party in-fighting and third-party solutions have only served to distract. A gradual shift to move the Republican party towards Libertarian views may be underway, but we simply don’t have the time to wait for them to get religion. What’s occurred in the first two years of the Obama presidency shows us that. I can only hope more of you will see the desperation as well.