One of the main themes from conservatives is to follow the Constitution strictly, and in fact, every civil servant and politician takes an oath to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States…so help them God. However, with God’s help or not, there are several Senators and Congressmen in the Republican Party who refuse to preserve and protect the Constitution; instead, they want to dismantle it to restrict the right to vote for the majority of Americans.
One amendment being considered by some Republicans is the 17th Amendment that allows for a state’s voters to elect a Senator to represent them. If it is repealed, a state’s legislature will appoint two Senators, and it would open up the process to more corruption and influence peddling because special interest groups would buy off the state representatives’ votes for a friendly voice in Washington. Regardless the pros and cons of repealing the 17th Amendment, the point is that Republicans who want to repeal the amendment swore an oath to preserve the Constitution, not repeal the parts that don’t favor their twisted agenda and dogma.
Since the big Republican fear mongering meme of illegal aliens dropping babies in America to get them citizenship, they (Republicans) have floated the idea of repealing the 14th Amendment that guarantees birthright citizenship. The amendment has worked well and the majority of Americans today at some point in their lineage were given citizenship because of the 14th Amendment. As stated above, it is not the pros and cons of the argument for repeal, it is the fact that legislators swear to preserve and protect the Constitution. No public servant or legislator swears to repeal the parts of the Constitution that doesn’t suit their political ideology.
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Now there is a Tea Party leader who is proposing that only property owners have a right to vote. Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips has said that only property owners have a vested interest in their communities and that home renters and apartment dwellers should not have the right to vote because they have no interest in their communities.
It is tempting to believe that Republicans, Tea Party members, and conservatives in general really want to dismantle the Constitution, and in many respects, they do. However, their main motivation for wanting to repeal the amendments is to restrict the right to vote of poor people and minorities. Republicans are afraid that minorities and poor people are going to vote for Democrats, and without literacy tests, Jim Crow laws, and voter intimidation tactics, the next logical step for Republicans is to dismantle the Constitutional protection that guarantees every citizen the right to vote.
It is not enough that the U.S. Supreme Court has given special privileges to corporations to donate as much foreign and domestic money as possible to business friendly Republicans, so conservatives figured that if they repeal amendments that give minorities and the poor the right to vote, they can have the corporate monopoly on the government they crave so desperately.
Republicans must know that within a decade, America will not be a predominately white nation, and will be more of a tan colour. The bigoted and corporate-funded Republicans owe their allegiance to their corporate masters and know that at some point, voters are going to get wise to Republican’s loyalty and they will be finished. The recent midterms should have been a lesson to Republicans, and obviously they are aware that a minority can sway an election if they go to the ballot box.
In Nevada, Sharon Angle angered Latino voters and they turned up at the polls and handed Harry Reid the election. In California, Meg Whitman spoke out against the Dream Act, and she showed insensitivity and hypocrisy regarding an undocumented Hispanic worker in her employ causing her to lose the Latino vote and the election.
Republicans, teabaggers, and conservatives do not want minorities or the poor to vote because they understand Republicans are not their friends, and in most instances are their mortal enemies. Based on their legislative voting records, it is evident that Republicans are not interested in helping anyone except corporations and the wealthy. Republicans refuse to extend unemployment benefits, provide health care, create jobs, or ensure equal protection under the law, and it shows their loyalty lies with corporations and the wealthy.
America is a representative democracy and it is a good system that worked well before every advantage was given to the wealthy ruling class. In their attempts to continue degrading democracy in favor of oligarchy, Republicans will use whatever means necessary to conserve the status quo favouring the rich and corporations.
Now that Republicans have the Supreme Court doing their bidding, the only obstacles left to oligarchy are voters who are not fooled by the conservative rhetoric that only the wealthy are worthy of governance. Their solution is to dismantle parts of the Constitution that guarantees every citizen the right to vote, especially poor and minority voters who are Republicans’ mortal enemies.
Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
