Campaign season again, the silly season, the season when we're told continually that our differences are more important than our agreements. My personal experience has been that the vast majority of us agree on our most important goals and values: peace, prosperity, security, good health, literacy, a healthy environment, etc. However we're repeatedly told by the proponents of political punditry that the self-proclaimed liberal (who's usually not liberal) or the self-styled conservative (who's usually not conservative) is the fount of wisdom and the source of solutions to all of society's problems.

Our constitutional system was designed so that our federal government could fill its proper limited role regardless of party or political philosophy; and therefore if the constitutionally mandated restrictions on federal activities were scrupulously observed we could safely ignore party politics.

The genius of our constitution, and of the other founding documents of our republic, is in their explicit recognition that all of our rights originate in ourselves (placed there by our creator), and that we have granted only a very limited portion of those rights to our federal government in order to secure all of our rights against despots and criminals. We private citizens were then secure and free to generate and promote prosperity, good health, universal literacy, a clean environment, etc.

In choosing which candidates to support this season we must therefore select those who most clearly demonstrate their recognition of the true source of federal power (us) and the proper limited role of our federal government. Only in so choosing have we done our part in preserving the goals and values and freedoms we share and cherish.