2 Mar 2011
Rule of law or anarchy?
Progressives protesting the end of collecting bargaining flout the democratic process.
© St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Tad Armstrong
As important as the debate over the proper role of collective bargaining in the public sector is for our nation, far more important issues are at stake in Wisconsin.
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2 Feb 2011
How relevant is the Constitution?
© St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Tad Armstrong
The first reading of the United States Constitution in the House of Representatives last month caused some to question its relevance in today’s world. How could the supreme law of the land, complete with provisions allowing Americans to change it whenever their proposal is strong enough to persuade representatives in sufficient numbers to do so, possibly amount to anything less than the essence of contemporary relevance?
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5 Jan 2011
How much is that freedom in the window?
Missouri’s Proposition B is an example of threats to our constitutional freedoms.
© St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Tad Armstrong
The last two sentences of the Star-Spangled Banner are well known: “O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? Play ball.”
I saw Stan Musial play his last game in Sportsman’s Park and remember paying attention to the words of our national anthem, wondering how anyone could understand freedom without visiting the “land of the unfree,” wherever that was.
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1 Dec 2010
Are We Grown Up Enough to Meet the Challenges of our Time?
The next two years will define America for generations to come.
© St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Tad Armstrong
It has now been one month since the hard work of everyday Americans paid off in the mid-term elections and turned this nation back from the precipice of the type of collapse we are witnessing all across Europe. Over the past year, I have seen firsthand how much work and resolve it takes for citizens to run their own country. These folks decided they could make a difference, but it took a commitment from them they were not used to making. They passed the first test with flying colors. We are now facing challenges as a nation that will test our mettle to the maximum.
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3 Nov 2010
Movement is Here to Stay
©St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Tad Armstrong
Midterm elections were about voters choosing freedom, not any one piece of legislation.
As I write this piece, the results of Tuesday’s elections are not known. But, I will go out on a rock-hard foot-thick limb and conclude that the actual results support the notion that today is the day after Americans took a stand for freedom. I say “actual” loosely.
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6 Oct 2010
It’s not Just a Metaphor
© St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Tad Armstrong
Christians should be wary of an attempt to nullify the separation of church and state.
If some Christians’ ongoing assault upon the “wall of separation” between church and state is ever successful, Christianity, ironically, could be the first victim of the free range.
One demolition expert recently admonished me to tell my students that the “wall of separation” phrase does not appear in the Constitution. He was referring to the phrase plucked by the Supreme Court out of a Thomas Jefferson letter that likened the first amendment’s prohibition of Congress (1) from making any “law respecting an establishment of religion” and (2) from making any law “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion to the building of a “wall of separation between church and state.”
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1 Sep 2010
A Constitution to Die For
© St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Tad Armstrong
“Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world,” said Daniel Webster, acclaimed orator and constitutional lawyer. Albert Einstein, a naturalized American citizen said: “The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.” We have memorialized Webster in bronze at the State Houses of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, in New York’s Central Park and each of them in the District of Columbia. It seems our nation once thought they had something important to say.
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4 Aug 2010
We Must Raise The Bar
© St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Tad Armstrong
Too many Americans have come to accept corruption in politics as the standard – business as usual – something to be expected in our political leaders if we want them to get anything done for us back home. In Illinois, the recent (and not so recent) past has shown that one cannot get elected to the office of Governor unless he has credentials that foretell of a likely future felony conviction.
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7 Jul 2010
Elena Kagan and the Rule of Law
© St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Tad Armstrong
Interrogation is irrelevant to the outcome and extraordinarily unfair to all nominees.
The rules of “cloture” and “nuclear option” aside and assuming all 100 members are present, it would take 41 senators to filibuster a vote to confirm Elena Kagan as the 112th Justice of the Supreme Court. It seems rather odd that 41 senators could impede the will of 59 colleagues, especially since it only takes a simple majority to complete President Obama’s plan to ensure that the make-up of the Court loses no ground in the relentless pursuit of unlimited (and unconstitutional) power. Guess how many senators are Republicans?
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2 Jun 2010
Anarchy Has Arrived
© St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Tad Armstrong
No nation so openly welcomes all of goodwill to join in the blessings of liberty, and no nation’s promises are sought more by others. Naturalized immigrants cherish their newfound citizenship with a passion few natural-born citizens ever attain. These people do not define their loyalty with a hyphen.
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