CONSTITUTIONAL CONVERSATIONS
This Land is Your Land
by
M. E. Boyd, Esq., “Miss Constitution”
Woody Guthrie, 1956.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway, This land is your land, this land is my land,
I saw above me that endless skyway, From California to the New York Island,
I saw below me that golden valley, From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream water,
This land was made for you and me. This land was made for you and me.
Miss Constitution prefers to stay in the realm of the domestic – of Founding philosophies, of Founding documents, of Rules of Law, and all that constitutes the Promise that is Your Land and My Land. She prefers to remind you that the Constitution protects personal Liberty against government power but that it also restricts personal Liberty in conflict with the document itself. We are a Constitutional Republic we are not a Democracy. Socialism, democratic or not, much less the next step Marxism, is not compatible with our system although the voting public has the right to abandon our system and replace it with something else. Miss Constitution hopes the public will reject such a notion in the interests of Constitutional Social Justice but who knows?
Reluctantly, then, Miss Constitution wants to walk the ribbon of highway relative to foreign affairs. The Hudson Institute recently released an article regarding China-Proofing the United States Navy. “Gray Zone Operations” are China’s way of staying just below the level of activity that would trigger military retaliation by the United States. Her construction of bases on artificial islands; her attacks on the fishing rights of other nations; her border raids on other countries; her dismantling of promised freedom of thought in Hong Kong; her takeover of many United Nation’s organizations including the World Health Organization; her forced labor camps; her genocide; and her indirect attack on the United States through a virus – all these behaviors are meant to threaten the United States but not trigger WWIII – Gray Zone Operations.
Ever so briefly Miss Constitution wants to remind you of what history has shown us. She asks that you not stop reading! She promises that it will be brief. The 20th Century saw the rise of Japan thanks to the policies of Teddy Roosevelt. Korea was given to Japan. Great Britain was stripped of its naval power after WWI in the vain hope of permanent peace. German pride resisted attempts by the world to humiliate them. The German ideologies that grew out of European revolutions of the 19th century opposed Hitler’s Fascism and many Marxist adherents came to the United States to important Chairs at our major universities. We are now living with the results of this extraordinary pollution of what were once great institutions. The unnecessary and deadly World War of the 1940’s gave rise to a Communist China and a Communist Soviet Union both of whom were dedicated to the destruction of our Republic. Greece was threatened, Berlin blockaded, and Korea attacked, first by North Korea and then by 400,000 Chinese. At this point General Douglas MacArthur, commander of our forces in Korea, thought we should contain China, but President Truman was afraid of an expanded war and relieved him of his command. MacArthur briefed Congress regarding what could happen in the future.
If we fast-forward past the end of international colonialism, if we fast-forward past the rise of Islamic aggression in the 1970’s, if we fast-forward past the “opening” of China in 1973, if we fast-forward past the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1991, we get to decisions in the 1990’s that loop back to the distinct policy differences of Truman and MacArthur. We let China into the World Trade Organization without enforcing restrictions on their behavior. We made China a “Most Favored Nation” relative to world trade. The United Nations gave China advantages as an “emerging nation.” We allowed China to dump cheap goods created without Fair Labor Standards, including slave and child labor, onto our economy with devastating results. Our manufacturing base was lost. Our urban centers became hellholes of poverty that, along with misguided federal welfare policies and viciously destructive drugs, destroyed families and encouraged social pathologies. Corporations once loyal to their country went for the money instead. Young and old entrepreneurs and their Boards of Directors sold their intellectual property and their souls to make billions of dollars at their country’s expense.
What was our political leadership thinking?
If not thinking personal gain, some thought if China could experience “the American way” she would drop her hostility and join us instead of trying to conquer us. This thinking has turned out to be mistaken. The “Gray Zone Operations” our military and foreign service professionals have to deal with is matched on the domestic front by false narratives in our education system; by China’s control of Hollywood as a propaganda machine; and of illegal data collection for future blackmail purposes. Our citizens are ignorant now of their history, of their governing documents, of the importance of Western Civilization in archiving humanity’s precious achievements and in the stewardship the West provides for human rights around the world. The Mercy ships so many lives depend upon are American ships. The Beacon of Liberty is an American beacon. Miss Constitution thinks it is time to emerge from our frozen passivity; to put down our diversions meant to entrap; to pick up the battle flag of our nation; and to say “no” to the end of the American experiment in progress toward Liberty and Justice for all. We would have to go back to a dependence on our Creator; we would have to eat dinner together as a family without our phones and tablets; we would have to insist on the Rule of Law ordering our society; and we would have to preserve, protect, and defend the United States Constitution. In retiring, General Douglas MacArthur said that “[H]istory teaches that appeasement lays the foundation for successively greater demands, until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only alternative.”
This land is your land, this land is my land, From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream water
From California to the New York Island, This land was made for you and me.
Copyright©2020 by M. E. Boyd, Esq., “Miss Constitution”
www.missconstitution.com
