A Slippery Slope

If you want a sturdy house you need to have a strong foundation.

If you want that house to stand strong you are well advised to not weaken that foundation in any way.  You should not be messing with the supporting pillars.  You risk bringing the whole house down.

I have serious concerns right now that we are seeing too many people in leadership positions in our government messing with the supporting foundational pillars of our country.  Those pillars are some of the most important institutions and ideals that define our system of government.

My fear is that this disregard starts to take us down a very slippery slope.

Credit:www.dailymail.co.uk

A few examples in just the last few months...

• Using the Internal Revenue Service to target political opponents.

• Using the National Security Agency for questionable data gathering in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

• Refusing to defend a duly enacted law of the United States (Defense of Marriage Act) before the U.S. Supreme Court.

• Delaying a critical section of a duly enacted law (employer mandate of Obamacare) that is clearly beyond the power of the executive branch.

• A Prosecuting Attorney in Florida castigating an individual acquitted in a court of law (George Zimmerman) for not taking the stand in his own defense which is the most fundamental legal constitutional right for any citizen.

• A state attorney, who when asked to describe an individual duly acquitted in a court of law of murder and manslaughter, called him "a murderer".

There are many more examples but these easily jumped to my mind in recent days.  

What is so troubling is that each of these examples seem to represent a direct attack on those supporting institutions and ideals that provide the needed legitimacy and order necessary for a well-functioning society.

My suggestion is that we need some real leaders to step up and move us away from the edge of the abyss that we are on.  The slope down to that abyss is very steep and very slippery and we need to be very, very careful about these core foundations holding us up if they are being disregarded and denigrated every other day.

Things sometimes may not go the way our government leaders want them to.  However, they must always show respect for the law and the process.  For if they don't, why should the people feel obligated to do the same? 

People have to trust in our basic foundational principles and know that our leaders are going to support and defend those principles through thick and thin.  If that trust is not there, what separates us from total anarchy? 

We may think Egypt is a long way away.  If we keep traveling this road, it gets uncomfortably closer every day.