One of the main reasons I feel so passionate about encouraging you, dear reader, to become interested in my psychologically based book What Would Our Founding Fathers Say?: How Today’s Leaders Have Lost Their Way is because I feel this is the last great hope that we can get ourselves out of this morass our country has found itself in.

Basically, the reason we’re in this mess is because our two political parties are unwilling to compromise, so laws can be passed and our government can take care of the people’s business.

The reason our government is not taking care of business and, as a result, is dysfunctional, is because our office holders are not concerned with the people’s business  whom they were elected to represent, but rather, they are only concerned about their political party’s business. Both parties have taken the attitude, “The people be damned!”

President Washington anticipated what I just described. In his farewell address, he talked at length of the “baneful” or deadly affects of political parties, believing that they would be very harmful to our political system and predicted that, ultimately, they could destroy our freedoms.

We must remember that when our first President Washington was elected president, they didn’t have political parties, so no power struggle existed in Congress. It was only after President Washington had left office and John Adams, who was the head of the Federalist Party and Thomas Jefferson, who headed the Republican – Democratic party ran for president, that the two competing political parties were born.

As the years have progressed, down through the history of political parties, the power of the party and the ability to influence political decisions has been more and more determined by moneyed special interests and lobbyists. As a result, the greater the impact party politics have influenced Congressional decisions, the more distant the decisions are made by “We the People,” as opposed to “We, the special interest groups, and/or corporations,” which our Constitution was not set-up to accommodate.

It is now understandable how today’s debate over what kinds of restrictions, or bans, if any, should be placed on assault weapons, or the number of rounds that should be allowed to be used in a magazine clip have become highly politicized. As a result, that kind of discussion has usurped the use of the “We the People” Constitution in favor of  “We the special interest groups and/or corporations,” as the focal point of the debate.

Using the metaphor of magazine clips vs. a few single round bullets, the magazine clips being “We the special interest groups and/or corporations” vs. a few single round bullets as being “We the People,” the special interest groups and/or corporations, with the moneyed interest behind them and their wish to preserve the status quo, as they’ve done in the past, they will continue to make a mockery of the Constitution by exhibiting their superior fire power by shooting to shreds the essence of what our Constitution stands for.

We must remember that our Founding Fathers took great pains to write the Constitution for the “common” people. They start out the preamble with, “ We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, 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.” (italics mine)

Consistent with President Abraham Lincoln’s belief that the Constitution was written for the people, not the special interest groups, lobbyists or corporation, on November 16, 1863, in giving his Gettysburg address, said,  It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. (italics mine)