Safer streets is a reflection of a healthier self-rule, but we won’t get there without a wholesome conservative message from candidates. It means a well-rounded message, and well-rounded means addressing not constituents and trying to reach their culture, but enunciating well-rounded values and reaching all of America as one culture: the Independence culture looking for smaller government. This is 80% of the electorate.

This gives the conservatives a distinct advantage over the liberals who rely on emotional promises to several cultures, almost each one differently. The Republicans could prevail if only they will clarify the platform as it relates to all homes, and they haven not been doing that. Somehow, the Republicans see the armed citizen as uncouth and unseemly. Yet, many of them are themselves armed. This incongruity hurts the platform.

Not only are there about 90 million gun owners in America who would like to see smaller government on all issues, but 80% of the electorate likely wants smaller government for the same reasons.

Bundling is an emerging business style; why not bundle the issues into the Republican platform and include the repeal of all gun laws as the first step instead of ignoring it?

Guns are not a controversial issue. Who told you that? There is no controversy when one makes the connection of the armed citizen to the Sovereignty of the people and as the first step to smaller government. If smaller government is not controversial – and it really should not be – then the armed citizen is not controversial either. Both are the Sovereign speaking in authority, not opinion.

In short hand, the Sovereign have all the authority to be armed without asking others, and no opinion to the contrary is reasonable. You could not have the opinion, for instance, on owning another person in this country. It’s illegal, and no opinion could stand.

The secret to this wholesome message is that there is no extremism itself, only apolitical integrity, and right about now, conservatives, libertarians and independents are looking for just that. Most of the country is.

One of the most profound reasons the left hates the right is for the right’s efforts – most of which are successful – at resisting corruption. The women candidates and thought leaders in this country have integrity, and it bugs the left like mad. It means that the conservatives will not easily play ball with corruption. Smear then prevails. In the blogosphere, we call them Trolls. Trolls are readers who politically oppose your content and harass and smear your content and values. Mockery is the order of the day for Trolls. All because of integrity.

Gun control is a measure of corruption, and the platform that defeats it is the platform of integrity for smaller government.

Jobs

Many voters are interested in how servants will get down to creating more jobs. Well, this one is simple: the government doesn’t create jobs, the private sector creates jobs. This then builds the tax base on a healthier plane and brings prosperity by reducing welfare roles and other beneficence bureaucracies. The key is to shift out of dependency programs into independence policy, and that means getting the government the hell out of the way.

Presidential candidate Governor Rick Perry announced that he would like to make government inconsequential. Well, we don’t want our public servants to be inconsequential. We need them to be present, alert, paying attention, honest, and able to carry out our wishes and their duty. We need our safe highways and airlines, safe food inspection, prompt and reliable deliveries of cargoes and the mails, and tons of other things we hire them for. We cannot see safer anything as long as corruption prevails, and making our public servant executives neutered or trivial means that we won’t be getting things done through our servants as well as when they are involved and fighting corruption.

The whole point of a republic over a democracy is that the majority rule of democracy means corruption rule of the strongest, while the representative form of government means self-rule from the people up.

The conservatives, libertarians and independents never said or even implied that we hate government. Whoever thinks that is tragically misguided or worse, spitefully against our way of life.

The Sovereign in this country does not loathe its own servants; it does, however, insist on the respect and self-respect of being the Sovereign and of being obeyed. This is not hate for servants, it is to summon them to their duty.

This is not hate. It is the reasonable expectation of duty and public service from them.

Our government – our servants – are necessary, just not needed as being so heavy handed. The relative positions are that we are to be independent of our servants while the servants are in no way independent of us.

Got it?

And in self-rule, the idea is not to make government go away, it is to make government get out of the way and do the job we tell it to do. Servants are executives of ours, not rulers of ours.

The jobs will then return to the private sector if the servants stop talking and start listening.

Americans do not hate their government, we instruct our government. Making our servants inconsequential is not something we ever wanted, we still want servants; the key is to reduce them and limit them, not eradicate them.

Integrity as a Plank on the 2012 Platform

It is vital that the conservative candidates enunciate a message that specifies integrity, one of holding others to a standard of integrity, and recognizing the electorate’s reasonable expectation of it in their servants. For this to work, heads have to roll in some sectors, and gun control needs to be one of those rolling away.

It all comes down to one question, and real journalists will ask this and then follow up. C'mon, fellas, be bold! “Mr. / Ms. Candidate, would you please answer this question Yes or No and please elaborate: Are the American people the Sovereign in this country?”

This may seem silly at first, but if candidates do not believe that the people are supreme authority, the interview then goes nowhere on the stump. If the candidate does know that the people are the Sovereign, then the dialogue can begin and the candidate’s views more meaningful.

Who has dared to say this on the stump? It could mean the difference between our seeing a London in Louisville or Lansing and not one anywhere here. No guns in England is because they had no second amendment, because the people there are subjects, not free people. The government confiscated guns in 1997, and it seems that whatever reason they gave was not good enough in the final analysis. Gee, who could have foreseen this?

There is never a reason for gun control where the people are the Sovereign. There seems to be a reason making sense only to the State. In the U.S. – where the people are the Sovereign – the armed citizen is in the public interest for many reasons. Gun control challenges the very authority of the Sovereign and is therefore consistently against the public interest whatever the reason.

We shouldn’t be interviewing candidates to learn their views on liberty, second amendment and Sovereignty as much as we ought to be instructing them to carry out our views. Where the electorate has been making its mistake has been in expecting candidates to tell us; we should be telling them and telling what we expect from them with precision.

In order for that even to begin, all candidates for all offices need to reflect first that we are the Sovereign, not them.

And quit this notion that the people hate their government.

John Longenecker is author of Even Safer Streets – The Second Amendment as a Mainstream Value in digital and paperback formats.