Reflections and Resolutions

The new year is always a time to reflect on both the year past, and the year ahead. As I look back on 2008, I'm struck by how far we have come from the vision of our founders as a collection of states with a limited federal government. Certainly there were those, like Adams, who wanted a strong role for the federal government, but the Constitution provides the structure for a representative democracy with a strong role for both the states and their citizens and strictly limited and delineated roles for the branches of the federal government. Today, the states have almost no role in the federal government, and the entire federal structure seems disconnected from the citizenry it purports to represent and heedless of the limits the Constitution rightly places upon it.

My goal for 2009 is to use this blog to examine these issues for myself and to become an articulate voice for a return to limited government of, by and for the People. There are other voices out there that certainly know how to say these things better than I do; Mark Levin springs immediately to mind, but this is more a self-education vehicle that a site for proselytizing. In other words, I'm not going to worry about it, but just going to do it. I have my copy of Democracy in America and my pocket copy of the Constitution. I definitely need to finally get off my duff and read The Federalist Papers . These should form a good baseline to build from. Then there are books like Conscience of a Conservative and The 5000 Year Leap, as well as Upstream that beg to be read. I certainly need to read some economics too, but I'm not sure where I'll start there.

It's going to be a busy year.