In Iowa, Cruz imagines ‘reigniting the miracle of America’

The Houston Chronicle's Texas Politics ^ | January 24, 2015 | Theodore Schleifer

[2ndDivisionVet]

Ted Cruz unveiled a possible new theme for a 2016 presidential campaign — “reigniting the miracle of America” — as he wooed the Iowa conservative activists critical to a victory in the Republican caucuses next year.

“It is the most important cause that unifies us together, and Iowa believes in the miracle of America,” he said Saturday.

Appearing at the Iowa Freedom Summit, the unofficial kickoff of the race to win the Iowa caucuses, Texas’ junior senator appealed to the evangelical voters who could cast about half of the votes in February. Cruz spoke thoroughly about both Mayor Annise Parker’s subpoena of area pastors this past fall and about his father’s journey from alcoholism to priesthood after discovering Christianity.

“Men and women here have experienced miracles like that throughout our lives,” Cruz told the Iowans in Des Moines, who are hearing from two dozen conservative speakers throughout the day. “Compared to that, the challenges facing this country are nothing.”

Billed in his introduction as the day’s “main event,” Cruz had three prescriptions for “reigniting the miracle”: growing the economy, protecting religious freedom and restoring American leadership in the world....

[2ndDivisionVet]

All those heavyweights attending and he's the "main event" at the summit? What does that tell us?

[Chickensoup]

Cruz and Walker what a ticket together. I really would like them to work as a team, not as a prez and spare.

[PapaNew]

‘reigniting the miracle of America’

Yes but it won't start at the federal level, it will start at the state level.

The "miracle" is independence from oppressive government and freedom to govern our own lives as we see fit.

[loveliberty2]

A line from a Kurt Kaiser hymn begins, "It only takes a spark to get a fire going, and soon all those around can warm up in its glowing."

Perhaps the same might be said for exposing the uniquely American beacon of liberty whose beams summoned oppressed people from all over the world to America for over 200 years.

Our Constitution embodied a UNIQUE IDEA. Nothing like it had ever been done before. The power of the idea was in the recognition that people's rights are granted directly by the Creator - not by the state - and that the people, then, and only then, grant rights to government. The concept is so simple, yet so very fundamental and far-reaching.

America's founders embraced a previously unheard-of political philosophy which held that people are "...endowed BY THEIR CREATOR with certain unalienable rights.." This was the statement of guiding principle for the new nation, and, as such, had to be translated into a concrete charter for government. The Constitution of The United States of America became that charter.

Other forms of government, past and present, rely on the state as the grantor of human rights. America's founders, however, believed that a government made up of imperfect people exercising power over other people should possess limited powers. Through their Constitution, they wished to "secure the blessings of liberty" for themselves and for posterity by limiting the powers of government. Through it, they delegated to government only those rights they wanted it to have, holding to themselves all powers not delegated by the Constitution. They even provided the means for controlling those powers they had granted to government.

This was the unique American idea. Many problems we face today result from a departure from this basic con­cept. Gradually, other "ideas" have influenced legislation which has reversed the roles and given government greater and greater power over individuals. Early generations of Americans pledged their lives to the cause of in­dividual freedom and limited government and warned, over and over again, that eternal vigilance would be required to preserve that freedom for posterity.

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Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III:  ISBN 0-937047-01-5

Essay reprints available here.

[SoConPubbie]

Yes but it won't start at the federal level, it will start at the state level.

Good thing it's Cruz that saying that then, since he is a BIG proponent of States Rights!