Florence Sheesley, St. Joseph
Our country was founded by strong statesmen and Christians who were tired of totalitarian control by England. They were being taxed unfairly and fought and died to break ties with England. They wrote a constitution and Bill of Rights that protected their God-given rights. They built a government with three branches – executive, legislative and judicial – with a checks-and-balance system so one branch wouldn’t get too powerful.
In recent decades, power has shifted dramatically away from Congress (elected representatives) to the executive and judiciary (appointed members). Rather than representing our citizens, Congress has delegated broad lawmaking authority to a growing array of regulatory agencies (such as FDA, EPA, OSHA, Obamacare bureaus, executive councils and more). The president and his executive agencies are making laws and policies on their own and will until noon Jan 20, 2017. We seem to be moving away from a Democratic Republic to a dictatorship.
Can constitutional government survive in the United States? Can liberty survive? Freedom is not free. There are profound changes in modern society and culture, and we are losing God-given rights – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Radical secularism is a spiritual disaster. Everyone knows the story of the frog in the frying pan; he tolerates the change of increasing heat until he dies. Most strong societies last 200 years, then they crumble.