The ability of a nation to peaceably govern itself is entirely dependent on its willingness to abide by previously stipulated agreements wherein limits of governmental action are established. Most importantly, such rules must define the method by which authority transitions from one leader to another. The alternative to this approach can only be violent revolution.
For more than two centuries, the United States has, with the notable exception of the Civil War, operated in an orderly manner in which the rights of citizens have been generally regarded as paramount. However, in the past decade or so, an emerging pattern of overt contempt for the American political process has presented the potential to completely destroy those qualities of the Republic that once moved Thomas Jefferson to describe it as a “near perfect” form of government. Consider some events of recent decades. Though they are neither the first nor the only such incidents, the increasing regularity with which they are occurring should be cause for great alarm.
In 1963, the Supreme Court effectively countermanded an inarguable pretext of the Bill of Rights by substituting a phrase “separation of church and state,” for the free expression of religion unambiguously stated in the First Amendment. A decade later, “Roe v. Wade” established as constitutional a