Every day I hear the same words on TV from the left, about how the all the Republicans want to do is say the word ‘no’. They are labeled as obstructionist and decried as obstacles to good government. Of course, they define good government as a Democrat dictatorship.

Doesn’t a child use this same argument about their parents? "Mom always tells me ‘'no' and that's not fair". It is about as valid an argument as well.

You know our Founding Fathers were pretty bright guys. One of the reasons they decided that it was time to break union with England, was that taxation had become too onerous. Their government had lost touch with the population and as a result they felt they were not being properly represented any more by the current leadership. Those taxes were being used to control the actions of the colonists, from what crops they could grow to what goods they consumed. This was the definition of the monarchy, that the colonists themselves were the very property of the crown.  When the King came for the colonists guns, that’s when the shooting started.

In their wisdom, the founders decided to form their own government and write a document that still stands unique today, the Constitution. What makes the document unique is that for the first time, it tells a government what it CAN’T do. It is a document that LIMITS the power of government, not defines it. They said ‘no’ too. They said 'no' to government control, to heavy taxation. 

Republicans need to define themselves once more in this manner. They need to also say to the American people not only the word 'no', but to define once again the conservative values they DO stand for, much like the 1994 Contract With America. The most important thing about the CWA was that for the first time in modern history a political party agreed to LIMIT its own authority and power over the people in exchange for their vote.

There are many in today’s government that doesn’t see it that way. They see the Constitution as a document that defines what they CAN do, and that society has somehow changed and therefore our country’s laws must change with it. That’s why the voice of conservatism sounds like the word ‘no’. It is because those on the left are acting like petulant children that throw a tantrum when they can’t have what they want. What they want is control of the government to redistribute the wealth of the nation under the guise and political candy of entitlements. 

Right now, as I’m speaking, the US government controls more than half of the US economy, and that control has all happened in the last 48 months. The government owns or controls most of the automotive industry, owns or controls many of the major financial institutions (and plans to control the rest through heavy regulation), the education system (through the unions and now loan programs), the home lending industry, and with the seizing of the health care industry, now can dictate the very terms of our own lives. We have passed laws that would allow the government to tell us what food we can eat, in what manner in which we travel from house to house, where we borrow and lend our money, and at what profit we can take from those endeavors. Pretty soon they will take away our guns in an effort to claim they are unsafe and injurious to our health, like smoking or eating too much.

This is not what our Founding Fathers intended when they wrote our Constitution. The whole point of our America is written right there in the first few lines: 

We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence [sic], promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Note the important part- PROMOTE the general welfare, not PROVIDE the general welfare. 

Indeed, our government has seen fit to make those decisions for us, and then have the nerve to use the Constitution as their defending flag. They say that we aren't smart enough, or skilled enough or to be trusted with running our own lives. This is always the argument of the do-gooders on the left. The argument that only THEY know how to protect us from the evils of the world does nothing but ensure their own political power.

In the end though, we did it to ourselves. We allowed our fears, and wants, to overwhelm our good sense to vote people in who made the impossible promises of wealth and protection by using the stroke of a pen and the power of legislation. The rose of rich entitlements has a thorny end, the specter of government control, and the dangers of that far outweigh the value of the benefits they provide. Legislation can never solve the age old problems of poverty and crime and societal decay. We can only work on those problems by using the freedoms under the Constitution to grow our economy to the point where more people are wealthy, more people don’t feel the need to steal, and more people want to live upstanding lives and reap the rewards of doing so.

So yes, the conservatives say ‘no’ a lot. They say no just like a mother says to child that asks for candy or toys at the store. Not because they want to hurt their child, but because they love their child and want him or her to grow up right. Not become spoiled or grow accustomed to getting everything they want just by asking for it, instead of working for it. 

In the end the child, and our country, will be better for it.