On this Independence Day, I believe there are two very important lessons we need to learn, or re-learn, from our nation’s founders. First, the Founding Fathers were not mere rebels who simply wanted to be free to ‘do their own thing.’ They believed in law and government as being necessary to restrain the evil influences working in mankind and as necessary for the protection of our God given rights. They tried long and hard to work out their differences with King George. They only declared independence from the crown when it became evident through “a long train of abuses and usurpation” that it was the design of the king to “reduce them under absolute Despotism” (to quote the founders from their own declaration). They didn’t want to be ‘free from government,’ they wanted to be free to have good government that would protect their lives, their liberty and their property while guarding the moral fabric of society with righteous and just laws.

The second lesson we need to re-learn is that when the king’s determination to bring the colonies under absolute despotism became evident, the founders, through their Christian faith and their common law heritage, understood that, “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” So lesson number two is the fact that there is a time when it is right, and is even our duty, to throw off oppression. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.”

And that brings us to where America stands today – staring into the face of the prospect of despotism should we continue on the path that the two establishment parties have been leading us down for decades now. I have watched as we have thrown out the Democrats and replaced them with Republicans, then thrown out the Republicans and replaced them with Democrats, yet decade after decade the size of government increases, spending increases, debt increases, regulation increases and liberty decreases. The pattern is obvious. The long train of abuses to our Constitutional form of government is well established and both parties have taken their turns at it.

Well intentioned people have put their hope in one of the establishment parties to save them from the other. Some have labored for years, even decades, to reform their party, hoping against hope to turn it back toward liberty, limited government and the U.S. Constitution. Yet the political tyranny of the two party system continues as both establishment parties blame the other for the nation’s ills, then tells their followers “it’s a two party system – you have no one else to turn to, to save you from the problems we’ve created.”

Well Americans do have somewhere else to turn, but first we must be willing and ready to “Declare Our Independence From the Tyranny of the Two Party System.” Then, we need to rediscover, and renew our commitment to, the timeless principles of liberty and limited government that were understood and intended for us by America’s founders. Finally, we must possess the courage of our convictions and be willing to pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to the cause of liberty as we raise up, and give our support to, only those candidates for public office who are fully committed to America’s founding ideals as a Constitutional republic, under God, with liberty and justice for all.

It is to this end that I offer the Constitution Party – not as America’s savior, but as a rallying point for those committed to the cause of liberty and as a vehicle through which to join our efforts as we seek to Honor God, Defend the Family and Restore the Republic.