Screaming at the TV

Lately, I find myself in awe of the seemingly total lack of awareness on the part of many TV pundits. So I sit and scream, "NO! NO! NO!", but no one hears. I threaten to write letters, but do not. And as they say, the beat goes on. Along with the screaming.

Following the elections in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, I keep hearing that the country is "swinging to the right". Like the American people have suddenly adopted some strange new philosophy and are launching off into some strange new direction.

There was a time when Americans did abruptly swing to the right. But that was in the late 1700s when they had had quite enough of "times that try men's souls" and sought a better way. That better way was smaller government, lower taxes, greater personal freedom... ideas that have become known as "the Right".

True, there have been groups along the way who have supported those ideas, along with other cherished ideas, like certain fundamental religious beliefs. They trumpeted both ideas with equal volume, and some began to see the two as inseparable. They were not.

In what George Washington described as a miracle, the Americans of the 1700s drew up a basic law of the land - a constitution - which would trump all other laws. There was, not surprisingly, some initial confusion, and so they clarified their intentions by amending that constitution with phrases such as, "Congress shall make no law..." Talk about limited government! Congress shall make NO law abridging certain rights! NO law!

Got the picture? No? Okay, read this: If we herein do not specifically PERMIT the federal government certain rights, or herein DENY the people those rights, than those rights, and any others you can dream up, shall remain the rights of THE PEOPLE!

That is what defines "The Right" and it is where this country began and should remain.

But every few years, some attractive, articulate person comes along and tries to insert some new idea, one that, on the surface, perhaps, seems fairer to some group of Americans. The American people like to be fair, and they go along.

But always, and always, those ideas become expanded to extend more rights to the government and less to the people. Finally, the people say STOP. That is happening now.

That is not a swing to the right. It is like the old gospel song advised, it is "keeping your hand upon the throttle and your eye upon the road." It is holding the steady course on which America was founded.

We are not a "Center right" nation as some are so fond of saying... we are a RIGHT nation. We are not "swinging right". We are simply putting the brakes on attempts to swing to the left.