Semiquincentennial/250th: Death, Tyranny and the Pursuit of Largess

I'm compelled to begin with how dear I hold my country [Alabama] and the Constitution it voluntarily joined, as did my former countries [Maryland and South Carolina] after succeeding from the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union which followed our Declaration of Independence defying King George's asserted 'Divine Right.' I love what we were designed to be and evolving into the more perfect Union promised until forced into a coalition proffering despair observing what we are today. In fact what began in 1775 ended for my country 90 years later; hence this 160th Anniversary of our hegemonic union.

Many will espouse 1776 folklore. Fireworks, parades, politburo members donning flag lapel pins reading the Declaration aloud and pretending its grievances were settled two and a half centuries ago. They were not. Most have been quietly reinstated, lifted by each wing of the duopoly parties to get the gluttonous hog's largess to fly, albeit under more digestible nomenclature.

Signators in Philadelphia pledged their lives, treasure and sacred honour against a distant government which taxed without consent, kept standing armies in peacetime, made war on its own initiative, etc. All these grievances were imposed by persons the colonists couldn't elect/remove. Read the particulars in the Declaration again, then observe what we've built and become. The Framers would not recognize this country. Not the automobiles, planes, telephones and other new and improved appliances... these marvels would delight them. They'd despair observing a government this invasive, this bloated, this corrupt, unrepresentative and casually incompetent with other persons' money and posterity. We kept the Fourth of July pomp and circumstance while slowly discarding the Spirit of the Declaration. On the 250th we observe Death, Tyranny and Pursuit of largess.

Let's begin illustrating with the 'purple elephant' few politburo members at city councils/county commissions, up to Goat Hill or Moscow on the Potomac will say aloud. Total federal debt currently amassed a record $39.23 trillion. It ended 2025 near $37.64; roughly $1.6 trillion borrowed in under six months, in 'peace and prosperity' with no Hoover/FDR depression or world war to blame. Comrade Trump's soviets added to it, as did Comrade Biden's soviets, then Trump again... witnessed in 'One Big Soviet Bill' ballyhooing as both the Blue and Red party use greater disdain for one duopolist to turn increasingly more deranged, poorly educated individuals even stronger to the other soviet. Two demons, same master. The Framers feared a monarch's debts - a clear carryover from the Magna Carta penned by rebel Barons at Runnymede. The authors and adopters of the Constitution never imagined a Republic borrowing a fortune every quarter simply to keep the lights on and feed parasites of corporate and social welfare largess.

Government debt is openly reported. Unfunded promises are purposefully hidden. 2026 Trustees Reports, released this month, confirm the arithmetic has grown worse, not better. SSA's retirement fund pays full scheduled benefits only through the fourth quarter of 2032. Medicare's hospital fund goes insolvent in 2033. Combined long-run shortfalls in these two programs alone exceed $78 trillion; Social Security's seventy-five year gap widened 16% in a single year. These are not my projections. They're government actuarial reports, signed by the Trustees then ignored by the politburo who appoint them.

Righteous people find insolvency in seven years an emergency. Our soviets treat it as a campaign prop, something to demagogue every even-numbered year and fund never. Ceteris paribus, a promise the maker has no plan to keep is not generosity. It is fraud with a longer fuse.

Recent military deployments provide yet another illustration of how little the four (Executive, Senators and HoR member) I participate installing to DC read/understood the roughly 8,000 words in the Constitution they've sworn to uphold. The federal government commenced bombing Iran 2-28-2026 and is still engaged in military actions with little reason/defined objective(s). Congress never declared this 'war.' Congress never authorized any military engagement(s) after set in motion. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 gives the power to declare war to the legislature (designed to be the people's representative House) and to nobody else. War power acts resulting from LBJ/Nixon debacles do not 'Trump' the Constitution no matter how many times an Executive may assert 'rights' which exceed their authority. The last time our Republic adhered to that clause was 1941, now driven by executive adventures cloaked in some rhetoric... this iteration is no different. Comrade Trump calls it a "skirmish." Other soviet predecessors evoked "kinetic actions" and "overseas contingency operations." Euphemisms change color with the jersey. The lawlessness remains constant.

The HoR voted four times to compel the Executive to obey the Constitution, most recently [6-3-26] 215 to 208 with four Republicans supporting the Constitution over party politics. The Senate buried it. The President would undoubtedly veto it. So the people's chamber instructs the Executive to follow Article 1, who simply declines and that's the end of it. That is not a representative republic. That is an unconstitutionally correct elected/installed monarchy with extra steps for window dressing.

The 'war tab' was delivered. Administration officials told the Senate behind closed doors the first six days cost $11.3 billion, with $5.6 billion in munitions expended in the first forty-eight hours, approx. $2 billion a day. Independent estimates put the daily tab to float two carrier strike groups and run two hundred aircraft at roughly $59 million, before a single missile fired. The same daily sum could be spent elsewhere - like debt reduction, soundly rejected by recent Red soviet executives from Reagan to Trump - both big gov't./modern Democrats who 'donned' the red jersey when more expedient. So more borrowing, from the same emptying trust funds, to wage a 'war' not Constitutionally authorized.

Time to address 'Letters of Marque' over-degreed, under-educated Biden buffoons and Trump chumps won't address or can't understand. The Framers anticipated our young republic's desire to strike an enemy abroad without deploying a permanent war machine draining the treasury and tempting administrations into mischief. The very same clause that reserves war to Congress, offers an alternative remedy. Congress may "grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal." Authorize a specific party to strike a specific target, pay on results, and fold the operation when the job is done. No standing morass. No billion dollar mornings. No carrier group idling off Hormuz at $60 million a day while the comptroller prints the difference.

The instrument was never repealed. It was simply abandoned, because a cheap, effective and accountable tool is useless to parasites seeking wealth transfers for what Eisenhower dubbed the 'military industrial complex.' The corporate military contractors, the 'think tank' prostiticians, the appropriators who broker and launder glory into reelection won't benefit via letters of marque. They get rich off the morass. Follow the money and the Constitution starts to read like a confession of what we gave up. Sadly, scholars who write and explain the economic merit of this Constitutional device are fired and vilified by educrats at corrupt institutions like Auburn University who sacrifice their students into this failed machine.

The decay is structural (not partisan as the Blue/Red demons want the sheeple to believe) and runs through every clause they ignore. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 commands tariffs "shall be uniform throughout the United States," precisely to avoid picking winners and losers at the customs house. Today's tariffs are disuniform by design, sector by sector and country by country, a tribute system run for whoever lobbies hardest. The Framers wrote uniformity to specifically handcuff politburo members now boasting their leverage. Much talk these past weeks of NYC 'kingmakers' like Comrades Mamdani and Trump. Sad people can't see it is the rigged duopoly system proffering these uncompetitive results, not failed businesspeople like Trump and parasites like Mamdani accomplished at being recipients of wealth transfers. Sad Alabamians fail to shun those who allowed/brought back the more destructive Red Republican soviet party without firing a shot, instead of replacing the modern Blue Democrat soviet party becoming just as deleterious.

Furthermore, the chamber designed to check this largess is no longer representative. The Constitution contemplated one Representative for every 30,000 persons. The House froze itself at 435 with the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, an unconstitutional abomination where now a single member "represents" some 760,000 souls. That frozen number also warps the Electoral College, since a State's electors are its House seats plus their two Senate seats. Cap the House and you rig the result for President making it more likely to get increasingly more soviet Execs like Comrades Biden and Trump. Representation approaching 30,000 persons becomes a rounding exercise, which is the point.

The Declaration indicted a king for "imposing Taxes on us without our Consent," for keeping "Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures," and for a "long train of abuses and usurpations" aimed at "absolute Despotism." We've violated it and gilded the result for the 250th Trumpified reality TV show. A $39 trillion debt, $78 trillion in promises we cannot keep, another 'war' Congress refused to declare burning two billion a day, tariffs the uniformity clause forbids and an unrepresentative House too frozen to govern as designed... to enumerate a few of the most vulgar abominations. Our wise Framers would know exactly what they were looking at. They wrote the Declaration to keep us from returning to British mercantilist tyranny and slavery.

In closing, I have no illusion parade-going folks will read the document they're saluting any more than a flag kissing president sincerely understands the evolution from the First Continental Flag of freedom to the hegemonic 50 Star military flag misused today. Most will choose Barabbas again and again calling it Christian patriotism. Nonetheless just like Scripture, the text is still there... for those willing to (re)read it and sincerely come to understand the Spirit of the words. The standard it set has not expired, we simply stopped meeting it. A republic, if we can keep it, was always the wager as Franklin proclaimed. Two hundred fifty years on, the honest assessment is we have not kept it. Perhaps one of the most indelible memories of learning how the Declaration spread through the colonies was public reading by Sheriffs (the most important figure of law enforcement at the local level) at the local courthouse or town commons. I witnessed a Sheriff who had that Spirit slowly polluted by our corrupt county politburo to publicly proclaim belief in an indicted (later convicted) politician in his jurisdiction, fail to enforce dumping laws to promote a curbside trash monopolist, be used to advance socialized sports, champion an incompetent/unbonded engineer harming lives, etc., then go to Montgomery and champion another serial felon wanting to return to the White House to continue his largess - i.e., it has failed from bottom to top. Deo volente, some remnant still wants to rekindle this Spirit of '76 as voters remove some of our most corrupt incumbents and those 'too fatigued into submission' to stand against the wicked.

"Above every paternal figure in our lives, there is our Heavenly Father, to Whom we pray, and upon Whom we depend for our very existence. He is our Creator, and is so fundamental to our lives that the Lord Jesus said the following: 'And do not call anyone on earth your 'father,' for one is your Father, Who is in Heaven' (Matthew 23:9)."

John Sophocleus is a retired Ford Motor Company Warranty & Policy Administrator and a retired Auburn University Instructor of Economics. A former Libertarian candidate for Alabama House and Governor, U.S. House District 3 and US Senate candidate, he's also a monthly Alabama Gazette columnist since 2009.

Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Alabama Gazette staff or publishers.