Republicans hear call: ‘America needs her citizens’

“It is plain to see that what I refer to as a Patriot Uprising is alive and well and indeed what is saving America today aside from the grace of God.”

This was the rallying cry given by Rep. Brian Nieves, of Washington, keynote speaker at the Lincoln Day dinner sponsored by the Randolph County Republican Central Committee March 19.

“Celebrating Our Constitution” was the theme of the evening with copies of the Constitution in pamphlet form distributed to all in attendance.

Nieves pointed out that the pamphlet is small yet it not only includes the entire Constitution but also the amendments and the Declaration of Independence.

“The document is small because the founding fathers meant for government to be small,” said Nieves.

He led the audience in reading certain sections of the document. Article I, Section 8 states the powers of the U.S. Congress.

“It lists less than 20 enumerated powers,” said Nieves. “They are a set of chains that would bind down the federal government. We have allowed the federal government to get out of control like a bratty three-year-old. Government left unchecked will always be government gone wrong.”

Further emphasizing his point of state sovereignty, “state power”, Nieves read Amendment 10 to the Constitution and said it was the only redundant amendment since the issue of states rights is plainly indicated in Article I Section 8. The amendment reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Nieves said the idea of the federal government telling the states what they are and are not allowed to do is “functionally upside down” according to the Constitution.

“Personal liberties have been trampled,” said Nieves. “The federal government has forgotten the Tenth Amendment. They have forgotten states sovereignty, the independent sovereign states.”

But, Nieves said, the people of America, especially the people in Missouri, are joining the tea party movement which is the beginning of a “patriot uprising”.

“It is the middle of a dawning of a new day,” said Nieves, “and Missouri is the new epicenter. People are falling in love with the Constitution. America is beginning to wake up. The time has finally come. Time to rise up to be part of the patriot uprising, to ask what we can do to get our nation back on the right course.

“Thirty years from now America will still be talking about 2010, 2011, 2012, but primarily 2010. There have been precious few windows of time when America has needed her citizens. I thank God I am living in such a time as this with liberty-minded, America-loving people. A time when we can look back and say, ‘We the people of the Unites States turned this ship around.’”