A 2020 Vision

Now that the mid term elections are over, we must look ahead to our goals for 2020. The hyper partisan national divide that is centered in Washington today makes it critical that every American citizen—including the 135 million no-shows of the 235 million eligible to vote in the 2018 election—must now become urgently engaged with helping to determine America’s future and, therefore, their own. Every one of us is needed to help with the adversarial situation—a self-imposed clear and present danger—which threatens to undermine our freedom and democracy as a great nation.

All hands on deck are required for the cause of America’s leadership at home and in the world. The greatest promise set forth in the Preamble in 1789 was tantamount to the moral equivalent of war for a new nation greatly threatened by aggressive European nations exploiting its weaknesses. The Founders understood that America would truly need to become organized by “We the People” who could unite a diversified mix of states into a unified structure that would be capable of growing strength in changing times.

In 1858, shortly before the Civil War broke out, Abraham Lincoln warned that “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” And we all know about the horrific loss of life that followed in the aftermath of the effort to heal that division. The publicly polarized leadership and the publicly forgotten follower-ship today threatens once again the consequences of a house divided. These 100 million no-shows are a consequence of this national divide. And this national division has let loose an avalanche of invective and foul play among politicians as well as among their enemies and their advocates.

It is past time for for those who want to lead this nation – and those who would select these leaders – to unify the nation by giving more attention to the U.S. Constitution. Every Member of Congress, the President, and each Justice of the Supreme Court are sworn to support it as their principal condition for taking office. The Constitution’s very first sentence, called the Preamble, sets forth what legal historian, Peter Charles Hoffer, calls “a series of positive commands to government to perform its duties in the best interest of the people.”