The term Crusades is popular. The second they hear the word, people imagine devout armies of God, heroic men, clad in white tunics with red crosses bisecting their chests, mounted on equally heroic steeds, willing to die to recapture the Holy Land from Muslim rule. Give the warriors credit. They fought Four Crusades and lost. But the effort bought Europe precious time. Scholars agree the crusades “slowed the advance of Islamic power,” suggesting that Western Europe otherwise could not have escaped conquest. Popular history says Europe fought The Crusades to save Christianity in Jerusalem, but realistically what they saved was Western Europe — from certain Islamic subjugation.

You have to laugh. All that sacrifice. All that spilled blood. Now Europe is overrun as it throws open its doors to Muslims by the millions. Reminds you of the board game World Domination. In the real world, it never ends.

Now, centuries later, you have embarked on your own personal crusade. But your campaign has nothing to do with Sharia Law or bloody carnage. You don’t want to dominate anyone or anything. Just the opposite. You simply want to help prevent the continuous desecration of the U. S. Constitution by a continuously domineering Federal Government. In human terms, the Federal Government is morbidly obese — a grotesque monstrosity — the kind of obesity in human beings that forces confinement, requiring a phalanx of 24-7 care and resources. Unfortunately, this particular glutton demands ever more obeisance, ruling with an obscenely bloated appetite. Most of the people you know complain about this abuse of dictatorial power. Day after day, month after month, year after year — educated people in social settings, in civic conferences, on radio and television, on social media — protest, criticize and bellyache that America cannot sustain the assault on freedom — can no longer tolerate corruption and bureaucratic excess and overreach. They dissent, grumble and shake their heads in dismay — then go home to more important considerations like doing the laundry and taking out the dog. In their nightly exhortations, some may pray for a White (or Black) Knight to swoop down and save the day. Some think Trump (The Donald) is their Big Fix. Finally, they believe they can rest, trusting that he will force the Fed to relinquish power, submit to a crash diet and visit the gym.  They believe he will restore the Balance of Powers created by  “old” white men in Pennsylvania in 1787. So help him God, he will see to it that the Fed spends less and less, and decides to return most of its unauthorized power to the respective States, as commanded by The (Original) Constitution. These people — the ones who believe Trump can shrink The Beast — have a theme song. It’s entitled “I Can Dream, Can’t I?” The refrain lyrics sum it up perfectly — “for dreams are just like wine, and I am drunk with mine.” As Trump said recently, “Americans are dreamers, too.” Only he didn’t have you and other Crusaders in mind. He might well have reminded you that the first dreamers on this soil were the Founders, themselves. He could have reflected that the Crusaders gave birth to America — that this America would not exist today without Crusaders. He might have told thoroughly oblivious U.S. citizens that the States created the Federal Government. Surprise! That The Constitution (written by the States) gave the Federal government specific, narrow, enumerated powers. He could have reminded an ignorant public that the States were Master and that the Federal Government was Servant. And he could have pointed out the obvious — that today the Fed is Master and the States are Servant. Everybody complains but nobody does anything about it. Why? Donald can answer that question,  too, if he would. He would say the people don’t have a clue that the most powerful political arm in America is The States. Not Congress. Not the Supreme Court. Not the President. The States have absolute power to act, if they will. Originally, they acted to create the Federal Government in 1789. They can act today to stop the madness in Washington, if they will. Only the States have that power. That means you and you and you. Like the Constitution says: It means “we the people . . .”

www.conventionofstates.com