Before I was old enough to vote, I still remember looking at the Presidential candidates and noticing that there were always people from other “third parties” running for office. You never really heard of these people in regular conversation because, I suppose, they had little if any chance of winning the election. One such candidate ran throughout the 70’s and early 80’s. His name was Gus Hall from the Communist Party USA. It intrigued me that anybody from any political persuasion could run for President. What a free country!  Without knowing too much at all about the politics of Mr. Hall, I wondered what would happen if he in fact did win the office of President. In my naive teenager mind, I figured, mistakingly, that if this country decided to elect a Communist as President then that was our choice as a country. After all, we live in a democracy and majority rules! If a majority of people want to change to a socialist system or a communist system of government, then we simply go to the ballot box right?

Wrong, as it turns out. It wasn’t until AFTER I got out of public school that I learned that we do not it fact, live in a democracy. Majority does not rule. We live in a Representative Republic with a limited federal government that has specific enumerated powers. We have a Constitution that is very specific as to what the federal government can do. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. We cannot simply elect a President and a  new form of government because the form of government that we have is mandated in the Constitution.

So even if we elect a socialist or a communist into office, we are still a representative republic.

Some people, including members of the current Obama Administration, believe that Big Government can do as it pleases – as long as it has the votes in Congress. “We won, you lost – get over it.” They believe that they can do what they want unless the Constitution prohibits it. This type of thinking is exactly the opposite of reality. In truth, the Constitution declares that the federal government can do NOTHING – UNLESS it is specifically ALLOWED in the Constitution. Just the opposite of Big Government. Simply being the party in power does not allow you to change our form of government.

There exists a legitimate method of changing the Constitution – and that procedure is specifically spelled out in the Constitution itself. It is not easily done, although it has been done 27 times so far. This is of course, an important safety feature built in by our founding fathers to preserve all that they worked so hard to create. The Constitution and its Amendments make for interesting – and to some – shockingly-eye-opening reading. Copies are available for free on many web sites and in libraries throughout the world.