Get Back to The Basics and Fundamentals

    In football, teams that win consistently do one thing, stick to the basics. Losing for them usually comes from a breakdown in the basic fundamentals of blocking, tackling, and catching the ball. Often you will hear a coach say after a loss, ‘We need to get back to the basics’. The same goes for our country. When society and the culture start going haywire There are two fundamental things we need to do to restore our country to what it should be.

    The first is to return to God. Repent means to turn around from doing wrong and choosing to do right. This nation needs to repent and turn back to God for forgiveness, guidance, and blessings.

The second is to return to the original purpose of the Constitution. The progressives have over time, eroded the Constitution so that its original meaning and purpose are lost. Free speech is lost to politically correct speech. Freedom of the press is lost to propaganda and an agenda-driven press. Now warrantless searches and seizures, wiretapping, etc. Freedom of religion is lost to freedom of worship (keep your religion to yourself). And of course, today the cry is to limit or end the 2nd amendment.

    I drove by the capital building in Atlanta this morning (because I didn’t listen to my GPS) and I encountered hundreds of students (not in school) and adults protesting gun violence and crying for more gun control. Guns are already one of the most highly regulated products on the market. There are plenty of gun laws. Enforcement of those laws varies across the country. For some reason, where gun laws are the greatest, gun violence is also greater. Logic will tell you that strict gun laws in those jurisdictions do not prevent crime and murder. 

It is obvious to say most laws only apply after a crime has been committed. 'That felon shouldn't have had a gun, but he did. Or, 'he sould not have passed a background check, but he still got a gun.' 

    Again, let’s talk about the fundamentals and constitutional basics. Many progressives will tell you that the Constitution is old and outdated because it was written in a different time and things and technology have moved us past that. Not so. The Constitution was written in a unique period of time where they could look back at 2000 years of history and at the success and failure of governments over that time. The Constitution was not written based on technology or technical advancements, it was written based on observing 2000 years of human nature. The Constitution is about the nature of man and how he relates to government and has no basis in time. The nature of man has not changed no matter how much technology does. The writers saw that man could not be trusted so they created a Constitution to limit what men in governments could do. 

To start with they created three branches to counterbalance each other. It put limits on the size and what government could do and left everything else to the people and the states. They listed the basic natural human rights that people should have and that the government should not be able to take away. Now, over the years congress has eroded these rights as I listed above. The government we have today would be totally unacceptable to the founders today. The solution to what ails Americans is to return to the basics and do what the writers intended.

With all the talk about guns, the 2nd amendment is a clear example of that erosion. It clearly says that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT be infringed”. Yet we have many cities and states that have severe restrictions on guns and who can have them. This is definitely an infringement and many liberal courts have supported that errant position. They interpret the Constitution according to what they wished it to say. They have over time, taken away the right to freely keep and bear arms and that leaves us no alternative but to have to trust the government to be our protector and safe keeper. People have come to believe that someone else is responsible for their safety and they should be totally passive and wait for help. The basic right to self-defense is replaced and you have no right to protect yourself without government help.

We have reached the point where people believe it is not their responsibility to protect and defend themselves. The memory of that right is gone and the students that are protesting today, totally believe it is the government’s job to keep them safe and provide for their defense. The problem is not more guns or fewer guns. The problem is knowing and understanding our rights and being able to defend our rights and ourselves. Parents need to demand that schools enforce the right to keep and bear arms and equip the schools with whatever force necessary to prevent whatever harm might try to come their way. This is not a federal government thing. This is a local thing where parents demand that their child will be safe and the 2nd amendment affirms the right to do that.

 It is reported that criminals fear people with guns. That is why they pick areas and people who look like easy targets (gun-free zones maybe). A nation that is truly free and allowed to keep and bear arms will have criminals fearful and look for less harmful ways to do their evil deeds.

    Governments, dictators, and tyrants also fear a well-armed nation. We need to keep them fearful, very fearful. When the government fears the people, we are free. When the people fear the government, we are no longer free. Tell me, right now, who is fearing who?
It is often said that the 2nd amendment is the protector of the 1st amendment rights. As we look at our society and culture we can see that we are losing many of our rights. We need to take our country back and return it to our roots, the basics, and the fundamentals. We need to return to God, and the Constitution and start protecting our rights. A single man will not make America great again. It will take millions of God-fearing, Constitutional freedom-loving people to make America great again. Otherwise, the alternatives are not good.