By Lanny Ebenstein
Human equality leading to democratic government is the essence of liberty.
When America's founders wrote in that most revolutionary of documents, the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal," they enunciated perhaps the most radical idea in political history ever -- that all people should have a stake in their governance.
And even if the founders did not entirely enact this principle initially, they looked forward to the day when it would be more extensively implemented, and set in motion the forces that have led to the fuller realization of this dream and goal.
The election on November 5, certainly the most important in this writer's lifetime, is among the most significant in American history.
The issue is not policy. The issue is that one candidate, Donald Trump, is a gangster who seeks to subvert the essence of the American experiment -- that all individuals have a right to participate in their governance and that no individual's vote counts for more than anyone else's.
Immediately after enunciating the self-evident truths and inalienable rights that governments are established to secure, the Declaration goes on to state that governments derive their "just powers from the consent of the governed."
Democratic governance is not an adjunct to the meaning of America: democratic governance is the fulcrum on which America turns. If democratic government is lost in the United States, the United States itself is lost.
Donald Trump's misdeeds in continuing to contest the outcome of the 2020 election long after it had been decided beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty -- and, in particular, his advocacy on January 6, 2021, of the overthrow of the lawfully constituted and democratically elected government of the United States -- permanently disqualify him from being elected to office.
No true conservative -- no American who reveres the founders and believes their words and ideals should endure forever, as does this writer -- should vote for him.
George Washington said in his first inaugural address of the "people of the United States" that theirs is a "government instituted by themselves."
Throughout the Declaration of Independence, the King of England is condemned for his abrogation of the rights of elected colonial legislatures.
Thomas Jefferson held that the "will of the majority ... is the only sure guardian of the rights of men." According to James Madison, the "fundamental principle" of the Revolutionary War was to "rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government."
John Marshall wrote in the seminal McCulloch v. Maryland case in 1819 that the government of the United States "proceeds directly from the people; it is 'ordained and established' in the name of the people"; the government of the United States is "emphatically, and truly, a government of the people."
Perhaps most significantly, Abraham Lincoln maintained in the Gettysburg Address that the United States was "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" and the ultimate cause over which the Civil War was fought was whether "government of the people, by the people, for the people" would endure upon the earth.
Accordingly, American conservatives, to remain true to their creed, must vote against Donald Trump on the November 5 ballot. No other position is compatible with the great truths on which the United States was founded.
Lanny Ebenstein is a former member of the Santa Barbara Board of Education and teaches economics at UCSB.
Image: Illustration from the Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Ebenstein makes assertions here without offering any evidence. The evidence of why we can't afford four more years of Harris is in the prices we all pay and will continue to pay for bad economic polices starting with expensive energy. Harris is part of the corrupt regime that suppresses free speach and puts forth fake news. Down with Big Pharma and Big Military. Let's take our country back!