by Diane Rufino, Nov. 8, 2015

Federal spending is clearly out-of-control. Most everyone acknowledges it. But no one seems to want to focus on a real remedy. Rather, most spend their time blaming one political party or the other (while the truth is that they both are equally to blame) or sometimes calling for a balanced budget amendment. The latter is totally unnecessary if one is willing to simply acknowledge that the Constitution itself, by its very word and spirit, requires limited spending. Any amendment will merely ratify (memorialize) the People’s concession that the government has the exceedingly broad taxing and spending powers that it was able to get the Supreme Court to grant it. And once that amendment is added, our government will no longer be a limited one. The Constitution will be one that is incapable of reigning in the powers that be. And that is why those organizations supporting a Convention of States have conveniently used a “Balanced Budget Amendment” as the reason to call such a Convention.

Any real remedy to the out-of-control spending that plagues our nation and threatens to burden our children and grandchildren and weaken our national security must address the reason for that spending. The reason we have this problem is that the federal government has exceeded its authority when it comes to its taxing and spending powers and it has greatly over-exaggerated its purpose in people’s lives and its responsibility in the matters of this great land.

For example, there are the more than 1,100 “grants-in-aid” programs (“conditioned” federal grants, usually for a specific purpose) that spend one-sixth of the federal budget on matters that are the exclusive business of state and local governments.

According to an article by James L. Buckley in the Wall Street Journal:

“Those programs, which provide funding for Medicaid as well as everything from road and bridge construction to rural housing, job training and fighting childhood obesity—now touch virtually every activity in which state and local governments are engaged. Their direct cost has grown, according to the federal budget, to an estimated $640.8 billion in 2015 from $24.1 billion in 1970.

Their indirect costs, however, go far beyond those numbers both in terms of dollars wasted and the profound distortions they have brought about in how we govern ourselves. Because the grants come with detailed federal directives, they deprive state and local officials of the flexibility to meet their own responsibilities in the most effective ways, and undermine their citizens’ ability to ensure that their taxes will be used to meet their priorities rather than those of distant federal regulators. The irony is that the money the states and local governments receive from Washington is derived either from federal taxes paid by residents of the states or from the sale of bonds that their children will have to redeem.

Congress finds the authority to enact those programs in the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution’s general-welfare clause in Steward Machine Co. v. Davis (1937). More recently, in the court’s 2012 NFIB v. Sebelius decision upholding the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that Congress may use federal funds to “induce the States to adopt policies that the Federal Government itself could not impose,” so long as participation by the states is voluntary. To put it another way, Congress is licensed to dabble in areas in which it is forbidden to act, which it does by bribing the states to adopt Congress’s approaches to problems that are the states’ exclusive responsibility.

It is impossible, in this article, to detail all the costs imposed by those programs, but here are some of the most egregious ones: They add layers of federal and state administrative expenses to the cost of the subsidized projects; distort state priorities by offering lucrative grants for purposes of often trivial importance; and undermine accountability because state officials bound by federal regulations can’t be held responsible for the costs and failures of the projects they administer.

Finally, and of prime importance, those programs have subverted the Constitution’s federalism, its division of federal and state responsibilities, that was intended to prevent a concentration of power in a central government that could threaten individual liberties.

The states are free to decline to participate in the programs, but that has proved very hard to do. Money from Washington is still regarded as “free,” and state officials are delighted to accept grants, strings and all, rather than raise the extra money that would be required to pay the full cost of the projects they freely undertake with federal subsidies. What makes declining grants particularly difficult is the fact that if a state does not participate in a program, its share of the money—derived in whole or part from its own taxpayers—will go elsewhere.”

[Reference: James L. Buckley, “How Congress Bribes States to Give Up Power,” Wall Street Journal, December 25, 2014. Referenced at: http://www.wsj.com/articles/james-l-buckley-how-congress-bribes-states-to-give-up-power-1419541292. Mr. Buckley is a retired federal appellate judge and a former U.S. senator]

I have proposed a remedy. I like to call it the “Rightful Remedy” for curbing federal spending. The remedy relies on the sovereignty of the states, on the federal nature of our government system, and on the Tenth Amendment.

In short, the remedy summons the states to step up to their unique and historical responsibility to act as the last safeguard of their citizen’s individual’s liberty. The remedy would have each state, through their Treasury Department, establish an “Escrow Account” or “Escrow Fund” into which it would deposit its citizens’ federal income tax withholdings or funds. To be clear, citizens of each state will direct their federal income tax withholdings to go to the state Escrow Account rather than to the IRS. Similarly, citizens who don’t receive a salary but have other assets that the government taxes will send their federal income tax check to the same state Escrow Account instead of to the IRS. The funds will remain in the Account while the State Treasurer (either as a solo effort or in collaboration with other state treasurers) evaluates the federal budget for constitutionality. The Treasurer will review each item of spending and evaluate it according to the original meaning and intent of the Constitution (as it was debated, understood, and adopted by the People of each state, acting in convention in the years 1787-1790 to establish the Union of states) to see if it consistent or inconsistent with Article I, Section 8. After reviewing each item, the NC Department of State Treasurer will determine the percentage of the federal budget that is constitutional (as opposed to that portion that is unconstitutional and should rightfully be reserved to the states). The State Treasurer will then re-calculate each individual’s federal income tax burden according to its determination of constitutionality.

The State Treasurer will then forward to the IRS that portion of each individual’s tax burden that corresponds to the constitutional purposes of the budget and the remainder will remain in the State Escrow Account. The state can then determine what it should do with the amount remaining in the Account. It may choose to keep it there (“just in case”). Preferably, it will return a good portion to the individual on account that he/she was overtaxed in the first place. It may also choose to keep a portion of the amount to fund state projects that normally would have required federal funding, including “conditioned” grants.

The State could also have its citizens direct their FICA withholdings to a state Escrow Account (a different one, perhaps – a state “Social Security Escrow Account”) rather than to the IRS in order to protect their interests when they enter their retirement years. The State Treasurer could research the best investment scheme to invest the funds for the citizen so that when he or she reaches the age of retirement, the retirement funds that he or she receives will be secure and plentiful.

This remedy, in general, achieves several goals:

• It reminds Congress that not all of its spending is constitutional.

• It divests Congress of the broad interpretation of its taxing (and spending) powers that the Supreme Court has generously provided over the many years.

• It puts an important check on the scope of the federal government by the sovereign that was always intended to provide that check – the states (under the Tenth Amendment and under Compact and Agency theories).

• It helps States break free of their dependency on the federal government and hence resume their sovereign responsibilities and sovereign status.

• It forces government to divest itself of the functions and agencies that it can no longer ‘pay for.’

• It forces government to “exist within its means” (just as ordinary people are required to do).

• It provides an element of transparency and accountability in government.

• It reduces the individual federal income tax burden and allows citizens to keep more of their own money, or at least to have it spent in their “own back yard” (in their own state, to accomplish goals that benefit them more directly).

• The reduced federal income tax burden allows the states to tax according to their own schemes in order to fund directly their own projects, as they themselves see fit for their people.

• The scheme introduces a degree of innovation and creativity on the part of the state (“50 independent laboratories of innovation”) which will serve to make our government system most efficient.

• If the federal government becomes too abusive and continues to usurp reserved state powers or if it threatens individual liberty, it is much easier to shut it down and effect the remedies provided to the People in the Declaration of Independence (“to alter or abolish” government) by withholding tax funds completely.

I have written my proposal in Resolution form, and in a particularly detailed form, in order to clearly state or establish the foundations for the proposal. I believe the foundations have been lost on Americans for many generations now and it is probably for that reason that we have are in the situation we now find ourselves.

If our country doesn’t get its finances in order, and if we, as a People, don’t get our government back to work for us instead of for itself and its longevity and get it back within reasonable boundaries in our lives, in our livelihoods, and on our property (all forms), then we will lose everything good about the experiment that was started by those who reached our shores to escape various types of persecution from their own governments and who instigated for independence.

Looking at history I am reminded of countries that take different views of the role of government. There are strikingly essential differences between the governments of different countries. Most striking are those between the western nations and communism. Communism exalts the state over the individual and the family while western societies value the rights of the individual. With our federal government attempting to take care (“control”) of the individual from cradle to grave, with its massive schemes to redistribute wealth and property, with its funding of Planned Parenthood (the unborn can be sacrificed for higher goals), and its latest schemes, Obamacare (forcing the young and healthy into the health insurance market to help pay the healthcare fees for those who can’t afford it) and Common Core (uniform “programmed” education), one has to wonder what our government exalts, or promotes – the state, and what is best “for the state,” or the individual.

RESOLUTION – THE USE OF STATE ESCROW ACCOUNTS to CURB FEDERAL SPENDING

Whereas, “The Creator has made the earth for the living, not for the dead. Rights and powers can only belong to persons, not to things.” (Thomas Jefferson). Rights and powers do not originate or belong to a government, unless that power is exercised for the People – on behalf of them – and NOT against them;

Whereas, the several States, by a compact under the style and title “Constitution for the United States,” and of amendments thereto, voluntarily constituted a general government for special common purposes;

Whereas, the several States are parties to the compact (Constitution), with the people of said States acting in their own conventions to consider, debate, deliberate, and ratify it;

Whereas, our government structure is predicated on separation of powers between the States, as sovereigns, and the federal government, which is sovereign with respect to only certain responsibilities (Article I, Section 8; express language, as re-affirmed in the state ratifying conventions and the Federalist Papers, the leading authority on the meaning and intent of the Constitution);

Whereas, this separation of powers, known as federalism, is a critical feature of our government system, intended to safeguard the “precious gem” of individual liberty by limiting government overreach;

Whereas, there is no provision in the Constitution nor any grant of delegated power by which the States can be said to have (willingly or intentionally) surrendered their sovereignty, for it is clear that no State would have ratified the document and the Union would not have been established;

Whereas, the States were too watchful to leave the opportunity open to chance and using an abundance of caution, insisted that a series of amendments be added, including the Tenth Amendment, as a condition of ratification and formation of the Union;

Whereas, the Preamble to the Bill of Rights expressed the unambiguous intention of those amendments, and reads: “The Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution”;

Whereas, that relationship between the states and the federal government is defined by the Tenth Amendment, which 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”;

Whereas, the critical relationship has been eroded through the many Supreme Court decisions which have transferred power from the States to the federal government in order to enlarge its sphere of influence;

Whereas, the relationship has been further eroded by the dependence that States have on the federal government for funding;

Whereas, the Supreme Court has upheld the notion that the government “has the power to fix the terms upon which its money allotments to states shall be disbursed” (South Dakota v. Dole, 1987) and therefore has upheld its conditioned funds to the states as permissible (as a matter of contract law);

Whereas, with the blessing of the Supreme Court, the government can achieve through conditioned spending that which it cannot achieve constitutionally, thereby allowing it to do an end-run on the Constitution and to avoid its limitations under the Tenth Amendment;

Whereas, while the decision in Dole has noted that the conditioned spending must be for the General Welfare, it incorrectly interpreted the Constitution’s “General Welfare” Clause (“to provide for the General Welfare”) as vesting the federal government with an independent grant of power rather than recognizing that the clause merely serves as a qualifier for the 17 enumerated objects of legislation that follow;

Whereas, the federal government is not the sovereign body vested with the responsibility to address all the nation’s concerns, including local issues, which is what the “General Welfare” clause could easy be used to do;

Whereas, the federal government has made itself the exclusive and final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, and as such, its need for power and its discretion – and not the Constitution – have been guiding those decisions.

Whereas, the federal government has created for itself an absolute monopoly over the nature and scope of its powers and has consistently assumed powers it wasn’t meant to have – misappropriating them from the States and from the People;

Whereas, the federal government has used said monopoly to change the nature of the Constitution, to redefine its terms, and to re-establish boundaries of government on the individual without using the lawful route, Article V;

Whereas, the particular security of the people is in the possession of a written and stable Constitution. The branches of the federal government, acting in unison rather than apprehension, have made it a blank piece of paper by construction;

Whereas, the government, once populated by representatives who were primarily beholden to the interests of the people and the States, is now populated by representatives who are primarily beholden to the interests of the government;

Whereas, through the consolidation and concerted action of its branches and said monopoly, the federal government has transformed itself into a strongly centralized, bloated national government, vested with illegitimate powers and barely recognizable as the government intended by our creators and adopted by the States in the years of our founding. This bloated central government is coercive, wasteful, corrupt, and out of touch with the People. Less than one quarter of the people trust it, most are afraid of it, and those who are required to support it by paying federal income taxes believe they are paying too much and question the legitimacy of the purposes for which it taxes and spends. Most importantly, the government is one that poses serious threats to the exercise of the freedoms that Americans are deemed to be endowed with;

Whereas, the direct consequence of a government that has enlarged its powers and functions is that it requires a larger budget and therefore has to tax its citizens more;

Whereas, with respect to federal grants and other forms of funding, if the government’s budget includes funds to “bribe” the states and otherwise attempt to influence state policy or planning, then it clearly overtaxes its citizens. Bribing the states or otherwise paying for any of its internal functions or projects is not one of the objects for which Congress can tax and spend under the Constitution, even if said bribe is cloaked in contract terms. The states are so financially strapped that there is effectively no “choice” involved in accepting grants of funding from the federal government and essentially, the offer amounts to an act of coercion. The government is absolutely forbidden to coerce a state government or its agents;

Whereas, the power to prevent the further consolidation of powers in the central government and the right of judging on infractions of inherent powers is a fundamental attribute of sovereignty which cannot be denied to the States, and therefore they must be allowed to do so;

Therefore, in order to reverse the unintended concentration of power in the federal government and in order to divest it of powers it has misappropriated and assumed for the past 200 years, and perhaps even to provide an additional check on the federal government by the People themselves (for whom the government is to serve and be accountable, according to the Declaration of Independence, lest they find the need to “alter or abolish”), the State of North Carolina will adopt the following scheme:

• The citizens of the state of North Carolina will have federal income taxes withheld from their paychecks but instead of those withholdings going to the federal government, they will be ear-marked to a state “Escrow Account” or “Escrow Fund” established by the NC Department of the State Treasurer.

• Likewise, citizens of the state of North Carolina will have FICA taxes withheld from their paychecks and also ear-marked to the state “Escrow Account/ Fund.”

• Citizens of North Carolina who receive no salary (that is taxable) but who have other assets that the federal government is able to tax under the federal Income Tax laws will send their federal income tax burden to the State (NC Department of the State Treasurer) to be deposited in the “Escrow Account/ Fund” rather than send the check to the IRS.

• The NC Department of the State Treasurer will evaluate the federal budget for constitutionality. It will review each item of spending and evaluate it according to the original meaning and intent of the Constitution (as it was debated, understood, and adopted by the People of each state, acting in convention in the years 1787-1790 to establish the Union of states) to see if it consistent or inconsistent with Article I, Section 8.

• After reviewing each item, the NC Department of State Treasurer will determine the percentage of the federal budget that is constitutional (as opposed to that portion that is unconstitutional and should rightfully be reserved to the states).

• The State Treasurer will then re-calculate each individual’s federal income tax burden according to its determination of constitutionality.

• The State Treasurer will then forward to the IRS that portion of each individual’s tax burden that will fund constitutional (legitimate) objects of the government’s authority. The remainder will remain in the State Escrow Account/ Fund.

• Of the remaining funds, the State Treasurer will return a major portion of the individual’s federal income tax withholdings to him or her. It will have the option of keeping a portion of those withholdings to fund state projects that normally would have required federal funding, including “conditioned” grants.

• With respect to the FICA funds, the NC Department of State Treasurer will establish a separate state Escrow Account/ Fund (a state Social Security Escrow Account/ Fund) for which to deposit them. The NC State Treasurer will research the best investment scheme to invest the funds for the citizen so that when he or she reaches the age of retirement, the funds that he or she will receive to make up for the loss of wages will be secure and plentiful.

The state Escrow Account/ Fund scheme, in general, achieves several goals:

• It reminds Congress that not all of its spending is constitutional.

• It divests Congress of the broad interpretation of its taxing (and spending) powers that the Supreme Court has generously provided over the many years.

• It puts an important check on the scope of the federal government by the sovereign that was always intended to provide that check – the states (under the Tenth Amendment and under Compact and Agency theories).

• It forces government to divest itself of the functions and agencies that it can no longer ‘pay for.’

• It forces government to “exist within its means” (just as ordinary people are required to do).

• It provides an element of transparency and accountability in government.

• It reduces the individual federal income tax burden and allows citizens to keep more of their own money, or at least to have it spent in their “own back yard” (in their own state, to accomplish goals that benefit them more directly).

• The reduced federal income tax burden allows the states to tax according to their own schemes in order to fund directly their own projects, as they themselves see fit for their people.

• The scheme introduces a degree of innovation and creativity on the part of the state (“50 independent laboratories of innovation”) which will serve to make our government system most efficient.

• If the federal government becomes too abusive and continues to usurp reserved state powers or if it threatens individual liberty, it is much easier to shut it down and effect the remedies provided to the People in the Declaration of Independence (“to alter or abolish” government) by withholding tax funds completely.

by Diane Rufino

If you are ever confused as to the order of things, the emphasis of individual rights with respect to government, the rights of States with respect to the federal government, and the states’ rights of nullification and disunion with respect to the government’s position, it helps to refresh oneself with the wisdom of the men who wrote our Founding documents and provided us with the bedrock on which our nation was established and grounded.

James Madison (the principle author of our Constitution) wrote to Thomas Jefferson (the author of our Declaration of Independence) that the Constitution was subordinate to the Principles and Rights enshrined in our Declaration. Madison noted, “On the distinctive principles of the Government … of the U. States, the best guides are to be found in … The Declaration of Independence, as the fundamental Act of Union of these States.” In other words, although the Articles of Confederation and its successor, the U.S. Constitution, were the contractual agreements binding the several states into one union – E Pluribus Unum – the innate Rights of Man identified in the Declaration are the overarching act of that union, and would never be negotiable by way of “collective agreement and compromise.”

Nor are those Rights negotiable today or tomorrow.

Similarly, the government as a political institution primarily tasked to protect the essential liberties of the people is the only grounds for allegiance by the people. Once that purpose becomes frustrated, abused, diluted, or convoluted, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish government.

Leftists and progressives refuse to acknowledge that the Rights of Man are non-negotiable, as we have seen in the debates over gun control. Leftists like Barack Obama do not believe that individuals have the inherent right to own guns. In other words, they don’t believe in the Second Amendment. Furthermore, if they don’t believe in the Second Amendment, then they fundamentally do not understand the Bill of Rights and the role of government. Rather, they subscribe to the errant notion of a “living breathing constitution” (“living breathing document”) – one which is subject to an at-will interpretation, and most conveniently, to the interpretation of the very government that the Constitution seeks to limit. A living, breathing constitution” is one that has no fixed meaning and therefore individual rights are subject to executive and legislative encroachment whenever it suits the government’s agenda. A “living breathing constitution” is one that can be judicially amendment by diktat, instead of its legally prescribed method of amendment in Article V. This enables them to undermine the Constitution’s fundamental protections of Human Rights and to transform government into whatever suits them.

Likewise, even though our Founding Fathers and indeed the drafters of our Declaration and Constitution acknowledged that the states have a right to check the power of the federal government and prevent it from encroaching on its sovereign powers and they have the right to voluntarily leave the union, and these rights supercede the Constitution, the federal government, through the voice of Presidents and the men (ie, puppets) they appoint to the Supreme Court, has attempted to deny that these rights do not exist. [see Texas v. White (1868, decision written by Lincoln’s appointee as Chief Justice, his former cabinet member and right-hand man, Salmon Chase) and Cooper v. Aaron (1958)]

At North Carolina’s first Ratifying Convention in Hillsborough in July-August 1788, attorney James Iredell explained the status of the Constitution: “When Congress passes a law consistent with the Constitution, it is to be binding on the people. If Congress, under pretense of executing one power, should, in fact, usurp another, they will violate the Constitution.” In other words, if a law is passed by the US Congress that exceeds the authority granted at the time (1787-1788), that law is null and void and therefore is no law at all. The States must not enforce it. At that Hillsborough Convention, the NC delegates voted 184-84 not to adopt the Constitution. The anti-Federalist majority concurred with delegate William Gowdy of Guilford County, when he remarked: “Power belongs originally to the people, but if rulers be not well guarded, that power may be usurped from them.” It should be noted that the Hillsborough Convention is perhaps the most insightful convention regarding the original intent of the Constitution. The transcriber of the debates in that Convention was non-partisan.

Alexander Hamilton, who co-wrote The Federalist Papers, the series of essays assuring the States that the government created under the Constitution is one of very limited powers, wrote: “The Supreme Being gave existence to man …; and invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty and personal safety … Hence, also, the origin of all civil government, justly established, must be a voluntary compact between the rulers and the ruled; and must be liable to- such limitations, as are necessary for the security of the absolute rights of the latter: for what original title can any man, or set of men, have to govern others, except their own consent? To usurp dominion over a people, in their own despite; or to grasp at a more extensive power than they are willing to entrust; is to violate that law of nature, which gives every man a right to his personal liberty; and can, therefore, confer no obligation to obedience.”

Although Presidents and Congressmen and justices (and all other government officials as well) swear a solemn oath to “to Support and Defend” our Constitution (with some taking the oath on the Koran, a document that demands allegiance to a system that must ignore the Constitution), most politicians on the Left and too many on the Right ignore that obligation, and have trampled on the notion established by the Constitution – The Rule of Law – with reckless abandon. The implications for Liberty are dire.

The debate between right and left, of progressives/liberals and conservatives, characterizes all fundamental historical debates regarding Liberty and tyranny and begs the core question: Who endows the Rights of Man? — God (as ordained in natural law) or government (as ordained by man)?

The Left’s position has been made plainly evident by Barack Hussein Obama, who has a history of deliberately and repeatedly omitting the words “endowed by their Creator” when citing in open constituent forums the Declaration’s reference to “Rights.” He intentionally compares himself to Abraham Lincoln for a reason. Lincoln himself ignored the intent and the letter of the Constitution perhaps more than any other president and enlarged government in a way that no Founder could have envisioned (although Hamilton had hoped, and maybe even Madison too for just a brief period in time).

“Obama and other contemporary leftist protagonists seek to substitute Liberty as ensured under the Rule of Law established by our Constitution, with the rule of men in their so-called ‘living breathing constitution.’ They do so because the former is predicated on the principle that Liberty is innately ‘endowed by our Creator,’ while the latter asserts that government is the sole arbiter and grantor of Liberty. Ignorance of the true and eternal source of the Rights of Man is fertile ground for the Left’s assertion that government endows such Rights. It is also perilous ground, soaked with the blood of generations of American Patriots defending Liberty at home and around the world. Indeed, as Jefferson wrote, ‘The tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.’” [Mark Alexander, “The Inalienable Rights of Man”]

[These comments are based, in large part, on an article by Mark Alexander – See Mark Alexander, “The Inalienable Rights of Man: A Brief Civics Lesson on Liberty,”The Patriot Post, February 18, 2015. Referenced at: http://patriotpost.us/alexander/33261 ]

by  Diane Rufino

Have you ever thought of what it would be like if Jesus hadn’t been born, hadn’t assembled a group of loyal disciples and followers, hadn’t taught his lessons of love and forgiveness and charity, hadn’t been executed on the cross, and hadn’t risen? When he traveled and taught, he was the Son of Man. He belonged to the People, as their teacher. But when he rose from the dead, he was the Son of God. He was the new and everlasting covenant with the Father, forever and ever.

Without Easter, we would have no hope of heaven. We would have no hope of sharing in God’s kingdom. We could only hope for a righteous and blessed life here on Earth, for whatever that life and fate happens to deal us.

Without the hope of heaven, there would be no repentance, no personal transformation, no inherent obligation to love and help one another, and no attempt to follow biblical principles. We would miss out on the true meaning of life which is the love and fullness that other human beings bring to our existence.

Without Easter, we would lose our way in this world of sin, temptation, chaos, and darkness. Jesus’ death and resurrection. One mistake, one moment of weakness, would condemn us to eternal damnation and a permanent separation from God our Father. Feeling that permanent separation would send us on a downward spiral, for we would believe our Father had already condemned and turned His back on us. Believing that he have lost His love would strip away our moral compass.

But because of Easter, we can be reborn. We have a reason to live better, to do better, to love stronger, and to reflect His shining light into the shadows and minimize the darkness. We can live the life that God intended — as humble witnesses to his love. We can do all these things because even though we are sinners by nature, immersed in an increasingly sinful and tempting world, we are forgiven of our misdeeds because God wants the relationship to continue and to flourish. A person can’t help but be humbled by a love that is so great and unconditional.

Jesus paid the ultimate sacrifice not only that we who believe will have an eternal relationship with God but also that we may be encouraged to live our lives to the fullest – to be better, to do better, and to love stronger. Remember, in Jesus’ eyes, ALL LIVES MATTER !

HAPPY EASTER, Everyone. May you feel the love today and every day.

by Diane Rufino

Governor Pat McCrory
20301 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-0301

Dear Governor McCrory,

I am writing with a heartfelt THANK YOU for standing for common sense, standing for the constitutional protections of privacy, and perhaps most of all, for standing with conviction and exemplifying the courage one rarely sees in a politician these days. I am, of course, referring to your readiness and willingness to address the bathroom ordinance passed by the Charlotte legislature and pass HB2.

I know you and the entire state of North Carolina is coming under attack from the liberals for your stance in this matter. I know that the mayor of San Francisco, Edwin Lee, has banned flights for city employees from SF to North Carolina in protest, as did the mayors of NYC and Seattle. I know that New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo has also banned non-essential flights to North Carolina for state employees in protest over the bill. And Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin and Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy have done the same. I know that director Rob Reiner has called for a boycott among filmmakers not to film in our state until HB2 is repealed. Wow, the wave of intolerance is strong. But waves that crash on rock do no damage and cause no erosion.

The point is that none of these individuals live in our state and how dare they try to engage in coercion to change our laws and policies. Decisions that affect the day-to-day conditions of our lives here in our own state should rightfully be made by us who live here, and by our representatives. And other states ought to respect those decisions. It’s one of the hallmarks of a federation of sovereign states. Let’s not forget that in 1973, when California legalized marijuana, North Carolina didn’t issue any boycotts in protest. In fact, there were no boycotts at all issued by states who did not agree with California’s decision. North Carolina and other states respected California’s right. And recently when California enacted an extreme gun control law, again North Carolina stood silent. North Carolina, a state that has a deep respect and affection for our Bill of Rights and especially for the big daddy of them all, the second amendment, could have easily acted in protest.

I know that our state Attorney General, Roy Cooper, an avowed liberal who believes strongly in gay marriage, not only refused to enforce the state constitutional amendment that passed overwhelmingly in our state defining marriage as between a man and a woman but now refuses to enforce HB2. He has publicly called our state an “embarrassment.” The truth is that HE, a man elected as Attorney General to defend the laws of the state who has not done so, taking an oath to perform the duties of that office yet violating it over and over again, taking a paycheck while he has essentially done nothing in performance of the duties of his office, and then turning his back on the great majority of the North Carolinians is the real definition of an embarrassment. Roy Cooper is an embarrassment to the state and to the government of this state. Why is this man still in office and why does he continue to collect a paycheck? Where are the articles of impeachment to remove him and give us a vacant office (pretty much what it is with him IN IT). The people of the state are entitled to a public servant that carries out his or her function. Governor McCrory, you were right when you said that Mr. Roy Cooper was elected to do a job and that “he is an attorney first and a politician second.”

Hypocritically, Cooper and his kind want to force OTHER officials into doing their job – such as issue marriage licenses to homosexuals, despite political and religious differences – but as for themselves, they believe they can refuse to carry out their elected responsibilities for the same reasons.

The bottom line is that the people expect their laws to be defended and someone will need to take this one on, with all the energy, sincerity, legal know-how, and passion that it takes.

We face an uphill battle in trying to remain a normal state with normal, natural-law values and trying to fight off the degenerate policies of liberals and progressives (and the LGBT community) who would love to see the entire country become like the biblical dens of iniquity, Sodom and Gomorrah. Biological confusion, biological rejection, massive sexual experimentation, and the unfettered personal freedom to live life as one sees fit without regard to boundaries, natural or social…. These are the goals of the progressives and liberals. By-products of such lifestyles are just collateral damage that we must all live with. But certain things are worth fighting for because the society that results is the one that will prove most successful.

The condemnation and the protests….. these will pass. If we don’t start standing up issue by issue, then North Carolina becomes no better than places like San Francisco and New York City, and neither place provides the safety and comfort needed to encourage and embrace family values and all the wonderful things that come with the proper focus on the family. Governor McCrory, you are doing a wonderful job in sticking up for HB2 and explaining it truthfully and fairly. Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest is also doing an outstanding job defending it.

You mentioned that other states and some politicians are calling our state an embarrassment. I contend that when such states and when such politicians attack our policies, then we should be consoled in the fact that we are doing the right thing. North Carolina is NOT California. North Carolina is NOT New York. North Carolina is NOT Vermont. North Carolina is NOT Washington. North Carolinians have different values than San Franciscans. North Carolinians have different values than New Yorkers. There are communities of people all across this country defined by the values they embrace and wish to live by. And they are entitled to live by, as long as they don’t discriminate in violation of the long-settled principles solidified in our Constitution. How have we as a body of people been allowed to tolerate bathroom facilities separating on account of biological gender differences all these great many years? Clearly there have been no constitutional violations. A one-size-fits-all society is not what we want in this country. We want differences so that people, as diverse as we are, can find the place – using our constitutionally protected ability to be mobile – that allows us to live as faithfully and as comfortably with respect to our values. People forced to live in a changing environment where they must hide their values, apologize for them, be ashamed of them, and worse, live in contradiction to them are people ripe for discontent and hatred. A state that respects the values embraced by nature, that stands up for the values that promote wholesome family and gender values, a state respects the voice of the majority of its people (so that the minority cannot force their demands on others who are not ready for them), that refuses to engage in the type of cultural transformation of places like San Francisco and others that put individuality and selfishness before proper guidelines, embedded in natural law, for the good of society and its bedrock foundation, and that does not back down from the bullies of this country…… is NOT an embarrassment. It is an example.

As an attorney, I agree with your assessment of HB2. It is a common-sense bill that invokes no constitutional protection for the groups that are attacking it. The bill protects men, women, and children when they use restrooms, lockers, and showers. Individuals have a basic expectation of privacy in these areas. In fact, I would argue that there is a heightened expectation of privacy in these areas. Individuals have a right not to feel uncomfortable, traumatized, nervous, or scared when they enter a bathroom for biological purposes. They have a right to feel protected when they shed their clothing in locker rooms and in shower areas. The bill protects the elderly and the young who are most vulnerable to intimidation and fear. They are the ones who most assuredly need protection. Governor, you are correct when you say that this right must be protected and secured. If the very governing body of a state cannot protect a child or a grandmother in an area traditionally set aside for only members of society biologically identical to them, sharing similar concerns, functions, and risks, then that governing body should dissolve in favor of one that is able to protect its citizens.

A doctor who operates on a male (regardless of his “identification”) will need certain operating implements and gadgets to do the job. Just because that person may “identify” as another gender does not somehow change the reality that physically there are differences that require separate attention.

HB2 requires that requires that public bathrooms or changing facilities (locker rooms and/or showers) to be designated for and only those persons based on their biological sex; that is, the sex identified on their birth certificate. This bill only reasserts the status quo. It makes sure that the current situation – the one that has existed for over one hundred years – continues to remain as such. Without this bill and having the possibility of other cities and towns adopting the radical plan put forth by the Charlotte legislature, would expose the overwhelming majority of people to traumatization in an area that they should feel most comfortable.

Last year started a movement to demonize the Confederate flag and in fact, all symbols and names that are associated with the antebellum South and the Civil War. [I’m referring to the movement that was independent of the flag’s removal from the state capitol in SC]. All of a sudden, the flag and all such symbols, monuments, historical figures, street names, etc were deemed to only have ONE meaning, and that meaning was one of hatred. I watched and read time after time as a mayor or town official, or college student, or African-American citizen cried “trauma” and “discomfort” at having to lay his or her eyes on the flag, a monument, a street sign, a building name, etc etc. I imagined them convulsing, vomiting, and having to be hospitalized with live-giving fluids delivered to their failing veins. But no, they were healthy as can be. They were just exercising a misguided freedom to personally feel shielded from a message they didn’t care to see. Now, most of these individuals, of course (and clearly) have no clue about history. But governing body after governing body gave in. The right of one person not to be traumatized was treated as paramount to the overwhelming majority of people to embrace or be reminded of the history of our country.

I see this as an analogy, to some degree. We must respect the right of biologically-oriented people NOT to feel traumatized when they use a public restroom, locker room, or shower. This is simply common sense. Imagine the trauma and confusion that a young child will suffer? A young girl is taught not to talk to a stranger that is of a different sex. A young girl is taught that there are differences between herself and someone like her daddy. We teach our children about the proper roles they are to assume in the school system (because, after all, a boy who dares put his arm around a girl simply to show affection can be sent home with a charge of assault) and the role that gender plays in society and in rightful expectations. What about the parent who is trying to teach her child about biology and nature and the natural order of life? How can a child reconcile what she NEEDS to learn (for her safety and protection) with what she might confront in a public bathroom? What about the trauma a grandmother will feel? The fear as well?

There are reports all over the internet of assaults, rapes, videoing, and uncomfortable situations when men “pretending” to be gender-confused go into a women’s bathroom. All one needs to do is simply research them. It is far too easy for a male to pretend to be gender-confused to gain entry into a woman’s bathroom in order to do something that is less than legitimate or legal. He can film what he sees (and there are very secret ways to do that) or he can force himself on unsuspecting females. He can also rob them because they have let their guard down or because they are temporarily away from their purse, their mace, and their purchases. [Jay Delancy of the Voter Integrity Project, has posted several of these incidents, for example]. The only conceivable scenario where a male should be allowed to enter a women’s restroom, locker room, and shower is when he has been surgically altered and is on hormone therapy to officially change his gender. That is the only REAL way to “identify” as a woman. That would provide the only reasonable confidence to show that the person identifies as a woman and that the associated intent is there.

Finally, should bathrooms become open to individuals of a different biological identity, I believe patrons will not want to use the restroom lest they be made to feel uncomfortable. I have been in a public bathroom in a mall that was marked “Ladies” and watched as a male emerged from one of the stalls. There was nothing about the individual to comfort the women and teen girls in the bathroom that he/she was “identifying” as a female. All we knew was that he was a male, looked like a male, was zipping up his pants as he walked out of the stall, and he was in the women’s room. It was unsettling and my daughters and I immediately left. We felt uncomfortable and uneasy. We should have never been put in that situation. We opted to leave the mall and go somewhere else to get a bite to eat so that we could eventually take care of nature (take care of business) in a more private setting. I believe patrons will wait to go home to use the restroom and they will use the food court areas less frequently so as not to have to use the restrooms. Hence, their time in malls, etc will be shortened. Eventually, with policies as the LGBT desire and as the progressives and liberals who support the Charlotte initiative desire, people will begin retreating into their own homes or the homes and meeting places of people they feel comfortable with and reverse discrimination will tacitly result. Such policies will have a disparate impact on those who believe in a rightful expectation of privacy and who believe that nature, after all, is the immutable basis for life.

In addition to the provisions related to public/education bathroom, locker, and shower facilities, I want to thank you for the provisions added to the bill which protect business owners/government sub-contractors from the coercion of local laws which they ordinarily would not have to be subject to. The pre-emption provisions – pre-emption from – the pre-emption of local laws that expand the categories of non-discrimination to “sexual orientation” – are the icing on the wonderful cake that is HB2. I truly believe you showed your commitment and respect to the business community by: (1) recognizing and emphasizing that HB2 does not affect them and they are free to handle the bathroom situation as they see fit; and (2) making sure they are not subject to local laws that force them to participate in speech with which they do not believe (which underscores the rights recognized in the First Amendment – speech, religion, conscience). The guarantees protected under the First Amendment are firmly-rooted in our history and in our collective conscious and government law (including state) must not force businesses, small or large, or sole proprietors to participate in events or promote an agenda which violate their deeply-held beliefs and their collective conscience. Such a law is a dangerous violation of the First Amendment guarantees of free speech and freedom of religion and they certainly threaten businesses just as acutely as issues such as discrimination and the failure to provide bathroom accessibility to transgenders. Even more telling is what such a law says about our treasured freedoms. It sends a message to the world that we aren’t the nation that we claim to be. Hypocrisy may work for others but it shouldn’t be an accusation that attaches to the state of North Carolina.

Thank you again in joining with the NC General Assembly and standing together in a courageous moment of clarity and allegiance to the good people of the state and signing HB2 into law. This mother, parent, attorney, school teacher, and someday soon – grandmother wanted to take this opportunity to express my gratitude and respect. Please, please, please continue to stand firm in the wake of the growing opposition and demonization of our state with respect to HB2.

Most Sincerely,

References:
Language of Bill — http://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/2015E2/Bills/House/PDF/H2v1.pdf (“Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act”)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjyHBZTkGZA (In this video, Governor Pat McCrory explains and supports HB2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvOjfj82ymE (In  his video, Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest clarifies the mistruths about HB2 to the commentators on CNBC.  He then expresses his support and defends why the bill needed to be passed)

by Diane Rufino, April 9, 2016

I AM NOW BOYCOTTING BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN!  PLEASE JOIN ME!!

Bruce Springsteen cancelled his upcoming show in Greensboro as a protest against the state’s controversial ‘bathroom’ law – HB2. HB2 provides that public bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers assigned separately for Males and for Females can only be used by those individuals who have the correct biological genitalia. A person’s sex is identified on one’s birth certificate. A person who is truly a transgender – which means “crossing from one gender to another – is one who has made certain commitments to making that cross, including having a medical procedure and hormone treatments. Once these “concrete” steps are taken, the person’s birth certificate is changed and then there is no issue about which bathroom the person can rightfully use (and feel comfortable in, as well as the others who use in). Absent any concrete steps towards changing one’s sex, then we just have a gender confused individual.

I am a Jersey Girl and have always been proud of it. I have always considered myself blessed to be born and raised in a state that values education and success, appreciates culture, and enjoys the unity and pride that great Jersey rockers like Bruce Springsteen and John Bon Jovi foster. For most of my life, I have made it a priority to buy every Springsteen album, update every Springsteen playlist, share his music with my new neighbors (North Carolinians), and attend every one of his NC concerts. That loyalty ends today.

It is one thing to make great music and give a great show. There is an implicit bond made made with fans. Great music and great shows earn loyalty which eventually benefit the musician when he no longer can make great music and put out great albums. Fans let certain things slide. But to let fans down because of a personal grudge and a personal campaign is a material breach of that bond and that loyalty. Fans have gone through far worse in their tolerance of Springsteen and in the distance and inconvenience to attend his shows than he has in his tolerance of North Carolina’s HB2.

To be clear, Springsteen lives in California and NOT in North Carolina. Laws that affect his backyard are made by politicians that he has a voice in electing. He needs to respect the backyard that belongs to the people in North Carolina, as they’ve created through THEIR voice and their duly-elected officials.’

And above all else, he needs to respect the loyalty of his fans. My guess is that a good chunk of his fans, including those who WOULD HAVE attended his Greensboro show, think like him and also are offended by HB2.

Now, I wanted to write a more scathing opinion of Springsteen, the bully, but frankly I am swamped with school work and in preparing lessons for my US Government & Politics class. I work hard to prepare lessons that are objective and are fair to both sides of all issues. That is the very least that my students expect and that is what politics is about… the robust education and discussion/debate on issues that determine what government will do for us and what laws should be passed for the best interests of our communities. Luckily, I found a rant that sums up perfectly how I now feel about Springsteen, and I don’t think its author will object to me sharing it.

From Jerseynut.blogspot.com:

I used to really dig Springsteen. The best I’d ever known in Rock, absolutely the best.

On a beautiful day in Los Angeles at the reservoir, many people were walking. Springsteen came toward me and my girl Rona, a cute and savvy Jewish girl from Brentwood. He was walking with his then wife, I think her name was Julia (?). I remember what they were wearing. Shorts, socks, tennis shoes, t-shirts, zippered hoodies, baseball caps and big sunglasses. Springsteen had that shit eatin’ grin on his face…he finally got a half way decent chick. A feeling only another guy would know and understand.

After we passed each other I really felt the urge to “jack that muther fucker”. Reasons: For sellin’ out his music (only sissyboy chumps sell out there music), and for sellin’ out on the United States of America. Springsteens liberal and negative viewpoints on this country bruised the image of the only true Promised Land. The land of the United States of America. The land and everything that the Pilgrims gave up just to gain so little for their personal selves. Freedom…you can’t hold it in your hands…you can only hold it in your heart…

Springsteen is now just an old piece of shit with money, a past, and disrespect for his wife. When you take a vow and you take a wife, you make a covenant with God. With God and Country, you may not sell out. God is too powerful and country is too cherished. Springsteen for me is now dead…

http://jerseynut.blogspot.com/2010/04/bruce-springsteen-born-to-be-liberal.html

BOYCOTTS GO BOTH WAYS. I HOPE THE GOOD FOLKS OF THE SOUTHERN STATES WILL BOYCOTT SPRINGSTEEN… the man who used to be called “The Boss.” Now he’s just a bully. How he’s just another elitist who uses his celebrity to be a social and political Bully when others don’t think like he does.

by Diane Rufino

This Memorial Day week-end, we remember the greater than 1,448,900 servicemen who fought and died in our wars and battles over the many years. Beginning with the American Revolution (a war originally begun over the colonists’ right to have and bear arms for protection of their person, property, and rights), to the Civil War (where over 620,000 young men were slaughtered over one man’s zeal for the federal government and his determination for the role of the States), to WWI (when the United States became a world power) and WWII (when we liberated Europe from tyranny and the evil ambitions of a single man who believed in an empire of ethnically pure and engineered people living in service and in fear of their leader), to the Korean and Vietnam Wars (although they were politically unpopular, they were intended to contain the spread of communism, where the government has total control of the individual), to the current War on Terrorism (a war for the right to life itself, as well as for the luxury of living safely and securely as Americans on our own soil and when traveling abroad), these men put service before self for a country they love, for ideals that were more important than any single life, and for a better and more secure future for their family, friends, and even total strangers.  My hope is that I will always conduct myself, in words and deeds, worthy of their sacrifice.

Please remember that Memorial Day is not about bombs and battleships and aircraft and war memorabilia. It’s not about the American flag (which, as we all know, at times stood for oppression) or about burgers or beers. Memorial Day is a holiday set aside to honor individuals… American brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, classmates, neighbors, relatives, and ancestors who died in military service.  We honor every American who gave their life for this country in order to protect the freedoms we often take for granted and are blessed to wake up with every morning, as well as to secure the image of the United States as the most powerful bastion of freedom in the world.  Whether we realize it or not, every American reflects their sacrifice. Memorial Day is not about barbecues, parades, a holiday week-end, or family reunions.  It’s about courage under fire and about the ideals and values that a young man in uniform was willing to sacrifice his life for.

As I look at pictures of the caskets of our fallen soldiers and the many grave sites marked with white crosses, and I realize that each one of those dead had a mother and a father, family, and friends, I am reminded that each life is a costly sacrifice that has been laid at the altar of freedom.

It’s true, whether we realize it or not, as Americans we reflect their sacrifice. Every Memorial Day should remind us to wear that badge proudly, responsibly, and honorably. And always in our mind should be the goal to live our lives, to raise our families, to educate our children, and to be responsible in our civic duty as if we are deserving of their sacrifice.

“The legacy of heroes is the inheritance of a great example.”

by Diane Rufino, June 6, 2016

Mohammed Ali once said: “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” Some think that it is impossible to reverse the destructive course our government is on now. For a long time now people have given up, believing that they are railroaded into one party or another, where neither represents their issues or concerns but each works together to entrench a bloated and corrupt government that is more and more out-of-touch with ordinary people. People have become convinced that their voice and their votes are meaningless, except to advance a party interest, and thus, to transfer power to a powerful political elite. Is democracy, for all intents and purposes, dead? The individual voter is NOT the party. He is merely the dupe who, in numbers, makes the party possible. Yet the two-party system is the only available option/mechanism for voters to translate their voice into political power. The mechanism is corrupt and self-serving.

And then Donald Trump enters the race and for once, we hear a candidate who sounds like he really and truly cares about the ACTUAL issues of the decent, hard-working, law-abiding, personally-responsible, family-loving, well-intentioned, country-loving people. I don’t think that he is using the rhetoric as a political ploy, which is the tactic of every other politician. I don’t even think he thought he was going to be taken seriously as a candidate. I think he genuinely threw his two-cents out there just to say the things that no other politician would say for fear of political suicide. The fact that it resonated with so many people just goes to show that the establishment two party system only cares about its issues and its agenda. And the fact that the GOP for so long tried to find schemes to disenfranchise Trump of the nomination goes to show that the party is not the people. The GOP only embraced him in order to remain politically relevant and to avoid becoming irrelevant.

So, back to the original question: Is it IMPOSSIBLE to turn this country around? Is is impossible to break the stronghold that the establishment has had on this country for too long? Is it impossible to restore limits and sanity to government and to restore historical institutions and foundations so that prosperity and morality can once again define America and its people?

Well, “impossible” is a big word but Donald Trump is not a small man. He’s never been one to sit still while something needs to be changed or improved. I believe he will find and explore the power to seek change – the change to make America “America” again and to make her great again. I believe he will be the leader that this periled time requires. I believe he is capable of the Impossible.

by Diane Rufino

In March, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the biggest abortion case in decades. The question before the court addressed the permissible or impermissible obstacles to a woman’s right to an abortion – or more correctly put: to abort and end the life of the fetus growing inside her. This was the question that faced the Supreme Court for the first time in the landmark case, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, which was decided in 1992.

The Pennsylvania legislature amended its abortion law in 1988 and 1989. Among the new provisions, the law required informed consent and a 24 hour waiting period prior to the procedure. A minor seeking an abortion required the consent of one parent (the law allows for a judicial bypass procedure). A married woman seeking an abortion had to indicate that she notified her husband of her intention to abort the fetus. These provisions were challenged by several abortion clinics and physicians. A federal appeals court upheld all the provisions except for the husband notification requirement. An appeal was made to the Supreme Court. In fleshing out the scope ofRoe v. Wade, the Court addressed this question: Can a state require women who want an abortion to obtain informed consent, wait 24 hours, and, if minors, obtain parental consent, without violating their right to abortions as guaranteed by Roe?

In a bitter, 5-to-4 decision, the Court again reaffirmed Roe, but it upheld most of the Pennsylvania provisions. For the first time, the justices imposed a new standard to determine the validity of laws restricting abortions. The new standard asks whether a state abortion regulation has the purpose or effect of imposing an “undue burden,” which is defined as a “substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability.” Under this standard, the only provision to fail the undue-burden test was the husband notification requirement. The opinion for the Court was unique: It was crafted and authored by three justices. If you have any question what Judicial Activism looks like, this was it.

The case Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt addressed a statue passed by the Texas legislature in 2013 – House Bill 2. House Bill 2 (HB2) required, among other things, that doctors performing the abortions have admitting privileges at local hospitals and that clinics meet the standards for ambulatory surgical centers (ASC), such as wider hallways, specifically sized “operating” rooms and other medically unnecessary building code rules — restrictions that have led clinics across the state to close. Texas clinic owner Amy Hagstrom Miller sued the state of Texas over the bill.

The justices asked such questions as what is the necessity of such a law and what exactly is its purpose, whether a woman seeking an abortion is presented with an undue burden by having to travel a bit further for the procedure if it means that the procedure is safer and the experience is better. Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a staunch defender of the unfettered access to an abortion and the unfettered right of a woman to control her fertility and reproduction, asked: “What is the benefit of having to go to an ambulatory surgical center to take two pills?” She was questioning the medical necessity of the law.

On June 27, the Supreme Court handed down its decision. In a 5-3 split of the justices, the Court concluded that the provisions of HB2 do not offer medical benefits sufficient to justify the burdens they place on a woman’s access to an abortion. Each provision places a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking an abortion and therefore acts as an impermissible – unconstitutional – undue burden on abortion rights. [Decision at: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/15-274_p8k0.pdf%5D

Unfortunately, the debate among the Justices and the decision itself was likely diminished by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February.

In his article “SCOTUS and Abortion: Three Failures and Opportunities for the Pro-Life Movement” (July 1, 2016), Harvard Law student Josh Craddock writes: “There comes a time where gross disregard for human life and for our constitutional order should stir us from docile obedience and impel us to resistance.”

In his article, Craddock criticizes the Supreme Court’s decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt and explains how it exposes three failures and opportunities for the pro-life movement.

With respect to the failures and opportunities, he writes:

First, a pro-life strategy of compromise-rather than principle-has failed to convince the public or the courts. This offers the opportunity to refocus our efforts on the ultimate goal of the pro-life movement. Second, Republican judicial nominations have failed to overturn unconstitutional pro-abortion precedents and have even contributed to them. This offers the opportunity to eschew blind partisanship and to create constructive social tension that prompts political change. And third, our constitutional system has failed to constrain the judiciary. This offers the opportunity for lesser magistrates to resist unjust edicts.

An honest assessment of these failures and opportunities should convince those who are committed to the pro-life cause that the time has come to stop compromising. We must demand that our political leaders end the legally sanctioned killing of unborn children.

A Strategy of Compromise Has Failed —

The Hellerstedt decision reaffirmed that any significant impediment to abortion will be struck down under the existing judicial regime, even regulations designed to keep abortion “safe, legal, and rare” (a goal that has been embarrassingly adopted by many pro-life leaders). Such regulations, even if upheld, merely serve to sanitize abortion in the public eye. “At least there are no more Gosnells,” the well-intentioned public might say, as the local abortionist with hospital admitting privileges commits the same atrocities legally in a regulated clinic.

Those who are serious about ending abortion need to acknowledge that laboring within the confines of Casey is futile. Hellerstedt proves that approach will never achieve abolition. We cannot satisfy ourselves with petty regulations on abortion that trim the abortion weed while strengthening its root.

Instead, we should seize the opportunity to smash the existing legal paradigm by transforming the cultural and political landscape. The personhood movement is one such example. Traditional wisdom (and Gallup polling) suggested that only 15 to 20 percent of Americans would support a total abortion ban, but more than twice that many actually voted in various states to recognize the personhood of the preborn and ban abortion. In 2006, 44 percent of South Dakota voters supported a total abortion ban. In 2011, 42 percent of Mississippians voted for personhood and against abortion in all cases. And in 2014, 36 percent of Colorado voters supported an initiative to criminalize all fetal homicide, without exceptions for abortion. This is, of course, not the only strategy to end abortion. But it is illustrative of the bold, principled tactics and messaging that will be required to do so.

Instead of relying on vague language about women’s health and safety as they seek to kill their children or on the argument that some preborn children feel pain, we need to refocus the pro-life message on the inherent dignity of the human person from conception to natural death. We must take active steps to protect preborn children by love and by law, without exception or compromise.

Republican Judicial Nominations Have Failed —

Justice Kennedy, reprising his role from Casey, joined the Hellerstedt opinion in favor of more expansive abortion access. That shouldn’t surprise us. In 2007, he authored the abortion procedure manual known as Gonzales v. Carhart, which advised abortionists to find “less shocking methods to abort the fetus” and suggested various dismemberment techniques that would skirt the Partial Birth Abortion Ban.

We shouldn’t be scammed and scared into voting Republican in order to get conservative Supreme Court justices. While it’s true that the three justices who would return the question of abortion to the voters have been appointed by Republican presidents, it’s also true that Republicans have appointed even more justices who think the Constitution requires abortion. Think of Stevens, Souter, O’Connor, and Kennedy. All three justices responsible for the plurality opinion in Casey were appointed by Republican presidents. Color me an extreme skeptic that a President Trump is going to do any better.

Instead of putting our hope in the Republican Party and the Supreme Court, we have the opportunity to increase social tension over child-killing. Human rights movements have the tendency of making opinions and policies irrelevant, as the world’s repudiation of slavery over a century ago makes clear. America did not confront the brutality of slavery until abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison made it inescapable.

Garrison considered constructive social tension to be a vital element of cultural and legal reform. As a non-violent agitator, Garrison was able to clarify the perils of wrong or weak choices in a way that many politicians could not. He pushed the well-intentioned toward firmer statements and action by making complacency unbearable. Garrison understood that abolition had to accomplish a moral revolution before it could effect a political one, for “only an aroused public conscience could persuade legislators to withdraw protection from slavery.”

Following Garrison’s example, we must ensure that there can be no child-killing with tranquility. We must be unrelenting, so that purportedly pro-life candidates, pastors, priests, and persons of influence cannot comfortably coexist with legalized abortion. We must not retreat from voting and politics-far from it. Instead, we should engage with politics in a way that demands principled leadership, especially from Republican politicians. If they won’t provide it, we shouldn’t provide our votes. When the people lead, the leaders will follow.

Our Constitutional System Has Failed —

We are no longer a nation governed by laws rather than by men. As Justice Thomas said in his Hellerstedt dissent (quoting Justice Scalia), “we have passed the point where ‘law,’ properly speaking, has any further application.” The way in which the Hellerstedt majority mangled the law to achieve its preferred outcome was transparently contrived and deliberately dishonest.

The Supreme Court has long since undermined its own legitimacy as a fair and neutral arbiter. Last year’s ruling in Obergefell, as well as so many others, have exposed the Court as nothing more than another political branch-a robed oligarchy that has unconstitutionally aggrandized itself through the false doctrine of judicial supremacy and cloaked its unconstrained willfulness in the language of law.

Our Founding Fathers understood that judicial supremacy was incompatible with the preservation of self-government. To “consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, would be “a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.” When judicial supremacy is combined with an utter disregard for our constitutional text, the “supreme law of the land” becomes nothing more than the fiat of five lawyers.

This naked power grab presents elected and appointed leaders with an opportunity to disregard and resist the Court’s unjust and illegitimate rulings. Although we ought not lightly upend our judicial system, there comes a time when gross disregard for human life and for our constitutional order should stir us from docile obedience and impel us to resistance.

Just as Lincoln denied the force of the Dred Scott decision to settle the question of black citizenship, so too must state governors and other officials who have sworn oaths to uphold our Constitution deny the force of the Supreme Court opinions to settle the question of preborn humanity. Governors in particular should reassert the rightful status of their states in our federal system and take action to protect every innocent human being in their jurisdictions. We should encourage officials to stand against the judiciary’s unlawful and unjust decrees and rally behind those who do.

*** Josh Craddock is a student at Harvard Law School. He formerly served as the vice president of Personhood USA.

Reference: Josh Craddock, “SCOTUS and Abortion: Three Failures and Opportunities for the Pro-Life Movement,” The Witherspoon Institute, The Public Discourse, July 1, 2016. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/07/17284/?utm_source=The+Witherspoon+Institute&utm_campaign=f20712aec5-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_15ce6af37b-f20712aec5-84177661

by Diane Rufino

Obama’s legacy will be his disastrous foreign policy, his rejection of Christianity, and his disassociation from traditional American values. When he promised to “transform” America, he wasn’t kidding. Unfortunately, when voters were attracted to that promise, they naively believed that there was an element of patriotism and respect for the foundations that have made our country great and the people before us who have laid the greatest of foundations. But Obama implied no such respect; in fact, he used the term “transform” to mean the most liberal of definitions: “to make a thorough or dramatic change in the form and character of.” Our country used to be “a melting pot,” where people of all backgrounds, races, places of origin, religions would live together with a certain level of respect and shared values, mostly appreciating that this country sinks or swims together for all our futures, and for the future of our children and grandchildren. Obama exploited every division among the people of this country to create disharmony, distrust, hatred, social upheaval, erosion of values, and erosion of age-old rights. He’s planted in the minds of certain people that personal ambitions and personal agendas are more important than the preservation of a free society. He’s sold the country on the promises of entitlement and the benefits of victimhood. To advance his narrative and his plans for “transformation,” as well as plans to further the interests of Islamic groups, he has had to reject Christianity, which he has done at every instance. True transformation requires the destruction of former foundations and one of our greatest foundations was our belief in and our reliance on God, his laws, and the teachings of Jesus Christ. Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States and looked at our institutions and our people, and he spent time in our churches, and he remarked: “America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.” (Democracy in America). He was struck by how strongly Americans incorporated the teachings of Christ in their national fiber. But Obama’s most serious legacy will be what he has done on the international stage. He has surrounded himself with members of the Muslim Brotherhood as advisors. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood advise Homeland Security and matters of international policy. With the Muslim Brotherhood having the ear of this morally weak president, Obama has used his power to remove leadership in Egypt and Libya, has encouraged and welcomed the Arab Spring, has proposed the removal of Syrian leadership, and has directly provided the opportunity for ISIS to establish itself. All of these have had a DEVASTATING IMPACT ON THE European Union (EU). The disruption of all these countries, the exposure of minority sects, the barbaric violence, and the rise of Islamic terrorism and violence has resulted in civil wars and turmoil in otherwise traditionally peaceful EU capital cities, as well as resulting in massive Muslim refugee immigration throughout the EU, disrupting cultural identities that have extended back through antiquity. We see violent crime and bombings where none had existed before. We see the restriction of long-held civil rights because of “political correctness” (and the fear of terrorist retaliation), and we see self-censorship and pandering for the same reason. We see chaos. THIS IS THE LEGACY OF OBAMA AND CLINTON. He has used the full resources of the US government and the US media to force globalization, to force diversity, and to force cultural transformation. The EU experiment will die a violent death and that will be a good thing. Sovereignty before Globalism!! How on earth can Obama, and even Hillary, claim ANY SUCCESS. Lets see what Holland, Denmark, and Sweden do next. As Briton goes – so do they. Whats left for the socialist EU experiment? Will Germany be content to fund the remainder of EU? Don’t bet on it. As Germany goes, so does the Euro. Socialism has once again showed itself as the failure it will always be.

The disasters of Obama MUST be reversed by a leader who puts AMERICANS first and who puts AMERICA first. I wonder who is pushing that message?

by Diane Rufino, July 4, 2016

Independence Day – What it really means….

What does Independence Day – the 4^th of July – mean to you?  Is it just a holiday to eat, drink, and light off fireworks?  Do you display and wave the flag of the United States out of habit – because everyone else on the block does it?  Do you cover your table with a plastic tablecloth of stars and stripes and decorate your yard with red, white, and blue because that’s what Target and Walmart remind you to do with its holiday displays and sales?   Do you actually understand what the 4^th of July signifies?  Did you sleep through that lesson in American History Class? Was it even taught to you at all?

I just hope you aren’t one of those Americans who doesn’t think it matters.

When I was very young, I thought Independence Day marked the day when the 13 colonies defeated the British for our independence.  Then in middle school, I learned that it marked the date the Declaration of Independence was signed.  That was the extent of my understanding until I did my own reading.  Soon I learned that not only was the Declaration of Independence signed on July 4, 1776, but that it was an act of treason against the British Crown. It was an act of treason because while the colonies were fighting for their independence, the British were fighting to quash their rebellious nature for good. Rebellion against the Crown was high treason and it would not be tolerated.

But it wasn’t until I graduated law school that I was finally able to appreciate the real significance of the Declaration of Independence.  Simply put, as its author Thomas Jefferson explained: “The Declaration of Independence… is the declaratory charter of our rights, and of the rights of man.”  And in that magnificent document, Jefferson has laid out the natural order of our rights and the natural purpose and limits of government.

The document was almost forced on the colonies by history’s happenstance. It began with the colonies’ restlessness in the wake of an over-zealous King and Parliament which first sought to extract tax revenue from them (without representation) and then to oppress and subjugate them as a means of punishment. They were punished for daring to stand up for their rights as Englishmen, as Englishmen had done for over 500 years of their history.  Indeed, the history of England has been a history of repeated attempts, first by the barons and then by all subjects, to assert basic human rights and to demand from the King a promise (a charter) that he will respect such. Some of the attempts were successful and some only temporary, but all of England’s notable charters were signed and limited the reach of the King and Parliament, even if only for a very short time.

Some of these charters and other significant documents include: The Charter of Liberties of King Henry I (1100), the Magna Carta (1215), the Petition of Right (1628), the Grand Remonstrance (1641), and the English Bill of Right of 1689.  This history is critical for the foundation for our country because all total, these documents establish the notion that government must respect boundaries on the individual, acknowledging that they have certain essential rights and liberties.  The rights and liberties asserted and re-asserted in these documents are the “rights of Englishmen” that the colonists most eagerly embraced and were most eager to protect.

Author Brion McClanahan explains the significance of England’s grand history in his article Rethinking the Declaration of Independence: “In 1100, King Henry I of England agreed to restrictions on his power through the Charter of Liberties. The English barons rejected absolute authority and sought to preserve traditional decentralized “government.” Just over one hundred years later, in 1215, King John was forced again by the English nobles to sign the Magna Charta. The “Great Charter,” as it is known in English, declared that the king was not above the law – making him essentially equal to the nobles – and it resisted the trend toward centralization in England. Though on the books, the Magna Charta was often ignored by more powerful English monarchs, but several of its provisions became the basis of English common law, most notably the writ of habeas corpus.” (See the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679).

In October 1214, King John returned to England in disgrace. His mission to reconquer his lost territory in northern France had failed and other military campaigns were unsuccessful as well. He taxed England’s barons heavily to finance these campaigns and they were not happy.  Upon his return, he found that a group of angry barons from across the country had formed an association and were prepared renounce him as king. Over the next eight months, they made repeated demands to the King, requesting that he give them a guarantee that he would observe their rights. But the negotiations amounted to nothing. And so, on May 5 of that year, the barons gathered and agreed to declare war on King John. On May 17, 1215 they captured London, the largest town in England, without a fight.  With London lost and ever more supporters flocking to the side of the barons, the King John realized he would have to address their concerns.

On June 8, he notified the barons of his willingness to negotiate. Over the next few days, the barons assembled in great numbers at Runnymede, a relatively obscure meadow just a few miles from Windsor castle, where King John was based. They arrived to repeat their demands and negotiate peace terms. On June 15, the barons presented their terms to the King and he signed the great document – The Great Charter (“Magna Carta”).

In Chapter 39 of Magna Carta, one of the document’s most important clauses, King John made the following promise:  “No freeman shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.”

Here, it was agreed that the Crown and his administration would not arrest, outlaw, banish, or incarcerate any free man, deprive him of his rights, possessions or legal standing, or otherwise take official and forceful action against him, except in accordance with the lawful judgement of his equals or in accordance with the laws of the Kingdom. This was, in embryonic form, the principle of due process of law: The government shall not deprive any person subject to its jurisdiction of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The Magna Carta provided that justice was to be guaranteed to every person in the Kingdom, that the right of justice would not be sold, delayed, or denied to any person. Thus, this critical, historic document provided that every freeman — i.e., every Englishmen who was not a serf — was to enjoy security and protection from illegal interference by the King (ie, government) in his person and property.   [See Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr. (Professor of Political Science), “The American System of Government….”]   The terms listed in the Magna Carta would later be referred to as “the ancient rights and liberties of Englishmen” in the English Bill of Rights of 1689.

King John, in giving his consent to Magna Carta, agreed that: (1) the Monarch was subject to the law of the Kingdom and (2) the law placed limits on royal authority. This reflected an early stage in the development of the central idea of English and American constitutionalism — the idea that the ruler was not above the law and therefore had to abide by the law and stay within the limits the law imposed on his power.  [See Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr.]

Under Magna Carta, the King still governed England, but he had to share with the barons one important sphere of political authority — the power of taxation. All royal requests for extraordinary taxes had to be submitted to the Common Council for its consideration and decision. When it came to the King’s raising revenue by means other than collecting the feudal fees and aids in amounts due him by customary right, he had to share with the barons, the largest and most powerful bloc in the Common Council, the authority to make binding decisions. The requirement, stipulated in Magna Carta, that the King submit proposals for extraordinary taxation to an assembly of his leading subjects — the barons and the Church officers of high rank — was one small but significant step on the long road to firmly establishing as a constitutional guarantee, truly binding on the Monarch and all other officers of the government, the age old principle of English government that no subject could be taxed without his consent, given by the subject directly in person or indirectly through elected representatives in a legislative assembly.   [See Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr.].

When Britain began taxing the colonies without allowing them representation in Parliament, particularly with the Stamp Tax, the colonists asserted this basic right from the Magna Carta in their protest slogan “No taxation without representation.”  The phrase actually originated with Massachusetts attorney James Otis about 1761, who proclaimed: “Taxation without representation is tyranny!”

After the Magna Carta, the Petition of Right of 1628, which was written by Parliament, was presented to King Charles I to re-assert the civil liberties of his subjects.  The Petition contained four main points: (1) No taxes could be levied without Parliament’s consent; (2) No English subject could be imprisoned without cause–thus reinforcing the right of habeas corpus; (3) No quartering of soldiers in citizens’ homes; and (4) No martial law may be used in peacetime. Each of these four points enumerated specific civil rights that Englishmen felt Charles I had breached throughout his reign. Although he’d never been that popular as the monarch, his abuse of power against the people escalated to an intolerable level after Parliament refused to increase taxation and finance his unpopular foreign policies. The purpose of the Petition was to seek redress for the serious grievances Charles had committed.

When Charles showed no sign of repenting, Parliament drafted an extensive list of grievances which it presented to him on December 1, 1641. The grievances included 204 instances of gross abuses of the King’s power and usurpations of the rights of the people.  Preceding this list of grievances were the following significant paragraphs:

For the preventing of those miserable effects which such malicious endeavours may produce, we have thought good to declare the root and the growth of these mischievous designs: the maturity and ripeness to which they have attained before the beginning of the Parliament: the effectual means which have been used for the extirpation of those dangerous evils, and the progress which hath therein been made by His Majesty’s goodness and the wisdom of the Parliament: the ways of obstruction and opposition by which that progress hath been interrupted: the courses to be taken for the removing those obstacles, and for the accomplishing of our most dutiful and faithful intentions and endeavours of restoring and establishing the ancient honour, greatness and security of this Crown and nation.

The root of all this mischief we find to be a malignant and pernicious design of subverting the fundamental laws and principles of government, upon which the religion and justice of this kingdom are firmly established.

The Grand Remonstrance would help precipitate a civil war in England and eventually lead Parliament to file official charges of high treason against Charles I.  He would be tried, convicted, and executed (beheaded) in 1649. His son Charles II was exiled and his other son James II was able to escape to France dressed as a girl.

When England erupted in this civil war, the Parliament asserted its authority and suspended the reign of the Monarch, and by 1688 had become the driving force behind English law and policy. From 1649 to 1660, England became a republic. At first it was ruled by Parliament, but in 1653, Oliver Cromwell, commander of the army, became Lord Protector of England and served until he died (1658; his son took over briefly). Eventually the blood line of Charles I was restored in 1660 first with Charles II (who sat on the throne at the time of the plague and the great fire of London) and then in 1665, with James II. He was terribly unpopular, and in fact, was widely hated by the people. Not only did he force his Roman Catholic faith on the British people, but he willingly allowed the persecution of Protestants. He was forced to give up the crown in the Glorious Revolution (the “Bloodless Revolution”) of 1688.

When King James II was expelled from England in 1688, Parliament invited King William III of Orange and his wife Mary II (daughter of James II), of the Netherlands, to assume the throne.  Parliament promised no resistance. The only requirement was that they sign the English Bill of Rights that Parliament had drawn up on behalf the people. It condemned James II for violating the rights of Englishmen, which the Parliament called the “laws and liberties of this kingdom,” and placed restrictions on the powers of the monarch. William and Mary “gladly accepted what was offered them” and signed the English Bill of Rights.

Those from England who settled the colonies, particularly Massachusetts, seeking freedom from religious persecution (Puritans and Pilgrims) and others, brought this history – and these rights – with them. After all, they were still Englishmen; they were living on a continent claimed by England and establishing settlements and communities pursuant to land patents issued by the King.

But the bond of affection would seem to be one-way only.  While the colonists sought to live as loyal subjects to the Crown, enjoying the same the rights and liberties as the citizens of England, England sought to exploit the colonies for raw materials, trade, and taxes.  For several years, things were good. No complaints.  But just as the British colonies were growing and expanding, there were French colonies growing and expanding as well – in the frontier region west of Virginia up to Canada. They were mainly fur-trappers. Eventually, Britain felt its American colonies and interests were being threatened and the two empires went to war. It lasted seven years (the French-Indian War, aka, the Seven Years War, 1754–1763), and eventually, the French were expelled and England secured greater territory. Believing the war was primarily for the benefit of the safety and security of the colonies, Parliament enacted a series of taxes on the colonies to recoup the money it had spent. [Note that around 1750, the plantations were established and against the wishes of the colonies, Britain pushed the slave trade on them to ensure that raw materials such as sugar, tobacco, indigo, cotton, and rice were produced plentifully and productively and shipped to England]

Accordingly, Parliament enacted the following taxes:  The Navigation Acts (1651, 1660, and 1663; duties on tobacco and molasses, to name a few), the Plantation Duty Act (1673; a duty on plantations), the Sugar Act (1764; a duty or tax on sugar), the Stamp Act (1765; a tax on all documents, including legal documents, calendars, cards, etc), and the Townshend Acts (1767; duties on items imported by the colonists, including glass, lead, paints, paper, and tea).  The colonists were outraged.  They weren’t outraged at the taxes themselves, but rather by the violation of their essential right to have representation in the legislative body that passes such tax measures.  “No Taxation Without Representation!”  They compared the current king, King George III, to Charles I for indiscriminately taxing the colonies without their consent. The Sons of Liberty organized at this time – originating in Massachusetts and New York and eventually having a presence in all thirteen colonies – and they were extremely effective at protesting these taxes and frustrating their enforcement.

Protests heightened with the passage of the Tea Act in 1673. The Tea Act allowed the British East India Company, which had a surplus of tea, to have a monopoly on import tea to the colonies. In passing this act, Parliament actually thought it was doing a favor to the colonies by providing tea at a reduced price (due to the surplus).  In fact, the cost of the tea, together with the new tax (“a mere 3 pence”), would be lower than the cost of the tea provided by other sources.  But Parliament didn’t get it.  The colonists didn’t think government had the right to force a monopoly on them and interfere with the trade of colonial tea merchants. Colonial merchants couldn’t compete with the less-expensive tea that the East India Tea Company provided so abundantly. And so, the colonists once again took matters in their own hands. In Pennsylvania and New York, colonists did not allow British tea ships to enter the large city ports. They sent ships out into the harbors to block the tea ships.  In Boston, they had a “party.”  On that evening of December 16, 1773, approximately 100 “radicals,” members of a secret organization of American Patriots called the Sons of Liberty, dressed up as Mohawk Indians, boarded three East India Company ships, broke open all 342 wooden chests of tea, and dumped them into the Boston Harbor.  The value of the tea destroyed, in today’s market, would amount to about $1 million.

Well, that particular act of protest was the one that the broke the camel’s back. At first King George III didn’t seem too perturbed at the incident, but soon, the tide of British public opinion would grow against the colonists, whom they regarded as rebellious and childish, and that rising sentiment would force Parliament and King George to punish the citizens of Boston for their recalcitrance. Parliament would no longer tolerate disobedience; the colonies’ “rebellious spirit” would finally have to be addressed and they would have be made to obey British laws. Parliament would no longer be soft when it came to obeying British laws. It would show the colonies what happens to those who happen to have a “rebellious spirit” and are disobedient, and in doing so, reinforce upon them the need to obey its laws.  What followed would be a series of laws called the “Coercive Acts” (also referred to as the “Intolerable Acts”).

On March 28, 1774, in response to the Boston Tea Party, Parliament passed four acts which together became known as the Coercive Acts. These individual acts included: (1) The Boston Port Act, which closed the port of Boston until damages from the Boston Tea Party were paid (no ship carrying colonial goods could enter or leave Boston Harbor until the Massachusetts Colony paid for all the tea that was destroyed);  (2) The Massachusetts Government Act, which effectively revoked Massachusetts Charter of the Province of Massachusetts Bay (1691), its colonial charter, prohibited democratic town meetings, and turned the royal governor’s council into an appointed body with wide-ranging powers (in other words, shifting government authority from Massachusetts colony to the royal governor);  (3) The Administration of Justice Act, which made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in Massachusetts; and  (4) The Quartering Act, which required colonists to house and quarter British troops on demand, including in their private homes as a last resort.

Indeed, the situation was intolerable. Parliament ordered the Royal Navy to blockade the Boston Harbor, preventing ships from entering and bringing in goods and supplies and blocking colonial merchant ships from leaving and selling their goods.  By fiat, the basic structure of colonial government was altered. England was now governing the colony. To add insult to injury, King George appointed General Thomas Gage, who had served as the head of the British Army in North America, as the new Governor of Massachusetts, and he brought troops with him.  On May 13, General Gage arrived in Boston with four regiments of troops. Aside from the fact that the colonists felt stripped them of their previously enjoyed rights, perhaps more unnerving was the presence of four thousand British soldiers in Boston. Under the Quartering Act, there would be guaranteed residence for the British Army and the citizens of Massachusetts would be required to quarter them, if necessary (otherwise they would have to remain on ships).  The Quartering Act required the colonies to house British soldiers in barracks provided by the colonies. If the barracks were too small to house all the soldiers, then localities were to accommodate the soldiers in local inns, stables, ale houses, and houses of sellers of wine. Should there still be soldiers without accommodation after all such public houses were filled, the colonies were then required to take, hire and make fit for the reception of his Majesty’s forces, such and so many uninhabited houses, outhouses, barns, or other buildings as shall be necessary.  Finally, British officials could abuse these acts and be free from prosecution in the colony.

In response, provincial militias started to gather munitions and store them in the countryside out of reach of the British regulars.

On May 26, Parliament dissolved Virginia’s colonial government – its Virginia House of Burgesses.  And on September 1, General Gage seized the Massachusetts Colony’s arsenal at Charlestown, located just across the Charles River from Boston – near Bunker Hill.

On Benjamin Franklin’s advice, the colonies decided to meet in a common body to address Britain’s treatment of the colonies, in particular the blockade of Boston Harbor and the Intolerable Acts on the Province of Massachusetts.  And so, on September 5, the First Continental Congress met with 56 delegates in Carpenters Hall in Philadelphia. Twelve out of the thirteen colonies sent delegates (Georgia did not send any). The Continental Congress, which would meet on two separate occasions, became the governing body of the “united” colonies during the time leading up to and then during the American Revolution.

On October 14, the First Continental Congress adopted a Declaration and Resolves against the blockade, the Coercive Acts, the Quartering of troops, and other objectionable British actions. These resolutions listed a series of grievances against Parliament (where have we seen that response before?) and appealed to the King to intercede on behalf of the colonies for proper respect for their rights as Englishmen. The Declaration and Resolves began as follows:

The good people of the several colonies of New-Hampshire, Massachusetts-Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, Newcastle, Kent, and Sussex on Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North- Carolina and South-Carolina, justly alarmed at these arbitrary proceedings of parliament and administration, have severally elected, constituted, and appointed deputies to meet, and sit in general Congress, in the city of Philadelphia, in order to obtain such establishment, as that their religion, laws, and liberties, may not be subverted: Whereupon the deputies so appointed being now assembled, in a full and free representation of these colonies, taking into their most serious consideration, the best means of attaining the ends aforesaid, do, in the first place, as Englishmen, their ancestors in like cases have usually done, for asserting and vindicating their rights and liberties, DECLARE,

That the inhabitants of the English colonies in North-America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts, have the following RIGHTS:

Resolved, N.C.D. 1. That they are entitled to life, liberty and property: and they have never ceded to any foreign power whatever, a right to dispose of either without their consent.

Resolved, N.C.D. 2. That our ancestors, who first settled these colonies, were at the time of their emigration from the mother country, entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immunities of free and natural- born subjects, within the realm of England.

Resolved, N.C.D. 3. That by such emigration they by no means forfeited, surrendered, or lost any of those rights, but that they were, and their descendants now are, entitled to the exercise and enjoyment of all such of them, as their local and other circumstances enable them to exercise and enjoy.

Resolved, 4. That the foundation of English liberty, and of all free government, is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council: and as the English colonists are not represented, and from their local and other circumstances, cannot properly be represented in the British parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation in their several provincial legislatures, where their right of representation can alone be preserved.

The Declaration and Resolves was presented to the King and then to Parliament on January 19, 1775.  King George laughed and dismissed the document and the Parliament did not even address it.  King George, to whom the Declaration was addressed, never even offered a formal response, for in his mind, he did not have to submit to the demands of the colonists, whom he regarded as insolent children.  He famously said to the Prime Minister Lord North: “The die is now cast, the colonies must either submit or triumph.”  He would not negotiate with them. His tacit response made it clear that he meant to maintain political unity between the colonies and the United Kingdom even at the expense of the happiness of the colonists.

Word of the Intolerable Acts and the subjugation of the colonists in Boston began to spread to other colonies and they began to react. Perhaps the most famous response came from Virginia, and Patrick Henry!

Because England had dissolved Virginia’s colonial government, its Virginia House of Burgesses, the state’s colonial leaders were forced to meet in secret.  And so they did, on March 20, 1775, at a small church which is now called St. John’s Church, in Richmond, away from the Capitol in Williamsburg. Delegate Patrick Henry presented resolutions to raise a militia, and to put Virginia in a posture of defense. He believed that martial law would eventually come to Virginia. Henry’s opponents urged caution and patience, holding out hope that the King would eventually respond – and respond generously – to the Declarations and Resolves.  On the evening of the 23rd, Henry presented a proposal to organize a volunteer company of cavalry or infantry in every county of Virginia and delivered a fiery speech in support of it.  His final words “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!” would be a rallying cry for the cause of independence and indeed, his entire speech is probably the most stirring, most passionate case in defense of liberty in our American history.

The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfil the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offence, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the majesty of heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves, and the House? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with these war-like preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask, gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free² if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending²if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!

They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable²and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace²but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Patrick Henry succeeded in convincing the body of delegates to pass his resolutions. Virginia would call up a militia.

On April 14, 1775, General Gage received orders from London to take decisive action against the rebel-rousers of Boston – the leaders of the Sons of Liberty, Samuel Adams and John Hancock. In the wee hours of the April 19, seven hundred British troops were dispatched to Lexington, where they would capture Adams and Hancock, and then to Concord, where they would seize a secret stockpile of colonial gunpowder (Gage had received intelligence about its location).  But spies and friends of the Sons of Liberty leaked word of Gage’s plan. One lantern hanging from Boston’s North Church informed the countryside that the British were going to attack by land and two lanterns if they were going to attack by sea. A series of horseback riders – Paul Revere, William Dawes and Dr. Samuel Prescott – galloped off to warn the countryside that British troops were coming.

Word spread from town to town, and militias prepared to confront the British and help their neighbors in Lexington and Concord. Colonial militias had originally been organized to defend settlers from civil unrest and attacks by French or Native Americans and selected members of the militia were called “minutemen” because they could be ready to fight in a minute’s time. Sure enough, when the advance guard of nearly 240 British soldiers arrived in Lexington during the early morning hours, they found about 70 minutemen waiting for them on Lexington Green. Both sides eyed each other not knowing what to expect or what to do. Suddenly, a bullet rang out. It would be known as “the shot heard round the world.”  Seven American militiamen were killed in that skirmish.  The British retreated to Concord, where they found an even larger, more organized group of militiamen. They then retreated back to Boston, and as they did so, new waves of Colonial militia intercepted them. Shooting from behind fences and trees, the militias inflicted over 125 casualties, including several officers.  The American Revolution had begun.  By happenstance…. not because of the blockade of Boston Harbor, not because of the Intolerable Acts, not because of the quartering of troops, not because of King George’s rejection of the pleas of the Colonies in the Declarations and Resolves, and not because of the other instances of mistreatment of the colonies. It was because the British had come for their ammunition.

Thus, the war for independence began over the colonists’ right to bear arms and store ammunition for their defense.

Not fully expecting the standoff in Massachusetts to explode into full-scale war, the thirteen colonies agreed to reconvene the Continental Congress in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775.  Samuel Adams, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington were some of the esteemed delegates.

By the time the Second Continental Congress met again, war was already underway, and so its purpose primarily became to conduct the war and manage the efforts.  Already, colonial militias had seized arsenals, driven out royal officials, and besieged the British army in the city of Boston. On June 14, the Congress voted to create the Continental Army out of the militia units around Boston and quickly appointed Congressman George Washington of Virginia as the Commanding General of the Continental Army.  On July 6, Congress approved a Declaration of Causes outlining the rationale and necessity for taking up arms in what had become the American Revolutionary War.  The original draft was written by Thomas Jefferson but the final was written by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania. Much of Jefferson’s language was retained in the final draft. The Declaration insisted that the colonists do not yet seek independence from the mother country but were forced to take up arms “in defense of the Freedom that is our Birthright and which we ever enjoyed until the late Violation of it”, and will “lay them down when Hostilities shall cease on the part of the Aggressors.’  [Interestingly, the very first sentence of the declaration includes a condemnation of the institution of slavery, which the Crown imposed on the colonies].

On July 8, 1775, the Second Continental Congress drafted what was called the Olive Branch Petition, which it sent to the British Crown as a final attempt at reconciliation.  In it, the colonies expressed their collective desire to remain loyal to the British crown. King George, however, refused to receive it.

Rather, on October 27, the King spoke before both houses of the British Parliament to discuss the growing concern about the rebellion in America, which he viewed as a traitorous action against himself and Great Britain. He began his speech by reading a “Proclamation of Rebellion” and urged Parliament to move quickly to end the revolt and bring order to the colonies.  He spoke of his belief that “many of these unhappy people may still retain their loyalty, and may be too wise not to see the fatal consequence of this usurpation, and wish to resist it, yet the torrent of violence has been strong enough to compel their acquiescence, till a sufficient force shall appear to support them.” With these words, the king gave Parliament his consent to dispatch troops to use against his own subjects, a notion that his colonists believed impossible.

At this point, note that just as the British continued to implore the King to respect their rights and liberties with their various charters and petitions and remonstrances, the colonists followed their same path. The colonies would have preferred to remain associated with Great Britain through bonds of affection and respect, sharing the history and bounded government that had been established for over 500 years, but for over 15 years, the actions and reactions by King and Parliament amounted to “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations” which were clearly designed to establish absolute rule over the colonies. We can see how England’s own history is providing the path – even the format and the words – for Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.

Thomas Paine, who moved to the colonies from England at the end of 1774, published his pamphlet “Common Sense” in January 1776.  Common Sense advocated independence from Great Britain; Paine used moral and political arguments to encourage common people in the Colonies to fight for an independent government – one that suited their happiness; he appealed to their common sense. And it worked. The publication was wildly popular.

The two sides had once and for all reached a final political impasse and the bloody War for Independence would now be conducted in earnest.  The skirmish had now become a war for independence.

On April 12, the state of North Carolina authorized her delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence. This was the first official action by a colony calling for independence. The 83 delegates present in Halifax at the Fourth Provincial Congress unanimously adopted the Halifax Resolves.  The Resolves read:

The Select Committee taking into Consideration the usurpations and violences attempted and committed by the King and Parliament of Britain against America, and the further Measures to be taken for frustrating the same, and for the better defense of this province reported as follows, to wit,

It appears to your Committee that pursuant to the Plan concerted by the British Ministry for subjugating America, the King and Parliament of Great Britain have usurped a Power over the Persons and Properties of the People unlimited and uncontrolled; and disregarding their humble Petitions for Peace, Liberty and safety, have made divers Legislative Acts, denouncing War Famine and every Species of Calamity against the Continent in General…..

Resolved that the delegates for this Colony in the Continental Congress be empowered to concur with the delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency….

North Carolina’s state flag proudly displays this historic date.

Virginia followed suit. On May 15, 1776, the Virginia Convention passed a similar resolution. It read:

Resolved, unanimously, that the Delegates appointed to represent this Colony in General Congress be instructed to propose to that respectable body to declare the United Colonies free and independent States, absolved from all allegiance to, or dependence upon, the Crown or Parliament of Great Britain; and that they give the assent of this Colony to such declaration, and to whatever measures may be thought proper and necessary by the Congress for forming foreign alliances, and a Confederation of the Colonies, at such time and in the manner as to them shall seem best: Provided, That the power of forming Government for, and the regulations of the internal concerns of each Colony, be left to the respective Colonial Legislatures.

At that same Convention, Virginia decided to instruct its delegate in the Second Continental Congress to introduce a formal resolution to declare the colonies independent from Great Britain.  And so, on June 7, delegate Richard Henry Lee, introduced a resolution, termed the Lee Resolution or Resolution of Independence, which contained three parts: (1) to declare the united Colonies rightfully independent of the British Empire: (2) to establish a plan for establishing foreign relations with the Colonies; and (3) to establish a plan of a confederation to unite them officially.

The Lee Resolution simply read:

Resolved, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved;

That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances;

That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.

On June 11, 1776, the Second Continental Congress appointed three concurrent committees in response to the Lee Resolution – one to draft a declaration of independence, a second to draw up a plan of treaties “for forming foreign alliances,” and a third to “prepare and digest the form of a confederation.”  A Committee of Five was assembled to draft a document to explain the reasons for independence and it included John Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Robert Livingston of New York, and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. According to Adams, Jefferson proposed that he, Adams, do the writing of the document, but he declined. Rather, Adams said, it should be Jefferson.  Jefferson was known for his writing skills. As Adams told him: “Reason first: you are a Virginian and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second: I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third: You can write ten times better than I can.”

Jefferson completed his draft of the declaration in just a few days. He argued in his opening two paragraphs that individuals have inalienable rights, that governments are instituted by consent of the people primarily to secure those rights, and that people have the right to overthrow their government when it abuses their fundamental natural rights over a long period of time. Then, in a direct attack on King George (in like fashion to the Grand Remonstrance of 1641 and the English Bill of Rights of 1689), Jefferson listed 27 grievances against King George III – 27 instances when the king violated the “the ancient rights and liberties” of the American colonists. Having thoroughly laid out his proof that the king was a “tyrant” who was “unfit to be the ruler of a people,” Jefferson continued on to condemn the British Parliament and the British people.  “These unfeeling brethren,” he wrote, had reelected members of Parliament who had conspired with the king to destroy the rights of the colonists. Jefferson ended his draft by stating, “we do assert and declare these colonies to be free and independent states….. ”

When Jefferson submitted his draft to the Congress on June 28, the delegates left the first two paragraphs essentially unchanged.  Instead, they concentrated on Jefferson’s list of grievances against King George and the British people. On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress voted to declare the independence of the American colonies from English rule.  And on the July 4 – the Fourth of July – it approved the final edited version of the Declaration of Independence.

News of the colonies’ independence rang out in all the colonies.

While the 4^th of July is the date that we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the 56 signers didn’t actually affix their signatures until August 2.  John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress, was the first to sign his name and he did so in big letters. The story goes that after he signed his name, he gazed upon it and said: “There! His Majesty can now read my name without his spectacles!”

In explaining the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote: “This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.”

For most of my life, I marveled at the Declaration. Its words were stirring, its declarations were brilliant, its indictment of King George was compelling, and its conclusion was heroic.  I assumed the ideas, the words, and the flair were all the brainchild of Jefferson.  But after reviewing the historical documents he had studied all his life, and taking into account the various resolutions and declarations written and adopted by the various colonies at the time, it’s quite clear that the Declaration is a composite of several documents.  First of all, Jefferson essentially copied the form of the English Bill of Rights (and to some degree the Grand Remonstrance before it) as he sat down to compose his draft. Thus, Jefferson’s indictment of King George III was not a radical departure from accepted English practices.  He was following English tradition, which in turn he adapted to American circumstances.  I’ve seen signs and tee shirts calling our Founding Fathers “Our Founding Liberals,” but realizing that Jefferson, in writing the Declaration, followed established English tradition and re-asserted the “ancient rights and liberties” that for over 500 years have defined Englishmen, our Founders were actually quite conservative.

Winston Churchill commented on this tradition: “We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.”

In addition to historic English documents, Jefferson also borrowed language from George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Resolves in drafting the Declaration. Mason asserted that “all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights…namely the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and maintaining happiness and safety.” Jefferson altered – shortened – his language in his original draft to state: “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  In fact, Jefferson adopted his famous phrase from John Locke’s 1689 publication Two Treatises on Civil Government  –  “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Everyone at the time understood that Jefferson equated “happiness” with property and safety.  By “equal,” Jefferson meant that all citizens or freeholders are, as Mason wrote, born “equally free and independent” under the law.  Note that the barons of England asserted their legal equality with the king in 1100 and 1215.  So, Jefferson was not stating anything new.  [ See Brion McClanahan, “Rethinking the Declaration of Independence”]

By its very name, the Declaration of Independence was a bold assertion of independence. Because it was asserted in defiance of the King, it was a highly treasonous document.  Its signers were traitors. The outcome of the war would decide their fate.  On October 19, 1781, British General Cornwallis surrendered his troops at Yorktown, Virginia and the British were defeated.  After six years of fighting, the Colonies had won their independence.  And once the Colonies had become independent, the Declaration essentially ceased to have any legal force. That which it sought to accomplish had been accomplished.

But that’s not where the Declaration of Independence’s story ends.

The Declaration may lack legal force but nonetheless, it remains the source of all legitimate political authority here in the United States and it memorializes the principles on which our country is founded.  Abraham Lincoln once referred to the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence as “the electric cord that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”  And Calvin Coolidge remarked that “the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence predicated upon the glory of man and the corresponding duty to society that the rights of citizens ought to be protected with every power and resource of the state, and a government that does any less is false to the teachings of that great document — false to the name American.”

American Flag and Declaration of Independence

A review of the most famous paragraphs of the Declaration remind us of the essential principles that make up our political foundation and ground our precious liberties.

The first paragraph reads:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

The first paragraph characterizes the nature of the Declaration.  When Jefferson writes that it is time for the colonies “to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another” he is saying that the colonies intend to secede from Great Britain.  The Declaration, first and foremost, is a secessionist document.  What follows in the other paragraphs are the reasons and explanations for the decision to “dissolve their political bonds”; that is, to secede.

The phrase “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them” is a particularly significant one.  It means that our rights are not a gift from the State, but arise from our nature. This marks a paradigm shift from the system in England. English law was still dictated by the Divine Right of Kings. Even though charters, petitions, and a Bill of Rights put limitations on the Crown and to some extent, on government in general, they still acknowledged that the King and the State had power over the individual. Without such charters, petitions, and Bill of Rights, the King and government could treat the individual as it wanted, generously or oppressively.  Thomas Jefferson was making it clear that in the United States, rights are NOT a gift from the State, to be enjoyed at its benevolence, but rather that they arise from Nature and from God, separately and equally.  God and Nature go hand in hand. God who created the heavens and the Earth also created the laws of nature. For those who believe God to be the great author of Nature, then rights come from Him, as our Creator. For those who lack faith, they can rest assure that our Declaration equally recognizes that all individuals possess fundamental rights because they are natural rights – part of our very humanity from birth.  Even if you do not believe in a God Almighty, still you must respect the laws of nature.  In this way, Jefferson was laying out the concept of Individual Sovereignty in a way that its people could universally understand and agree, irrespective of the particulars of their individual and very diverse faiths.  Individual Sovereignty is the basis of our Rights in this country.

We may argue yet what are Nature’s Laws, but this much we can be certain:  All people must observe and ultimately obey it, just as the laws of nature apply equally to all human beings.  Since governments are merely fictional entities created by mankind and not by nature, rights supersede government. Saying that government is more important than the individual would be “unnatural.”

In the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.  Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

In this paragraph, Jefferson’s mighty pen goes into greater detail about the nature of the aforementioned natural rights. He tells us that our rights, which are endowed by our Creator (or Nature), are unalienable and although are numerous, the most obvious ones are “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  “Unalienable” (which is the same as “inalienable”) means that the individual can never been divested of these rights. They cannot be taken away or denied.  They remain with the individual and government cannot take them away.  “Life,” of course, is clear enough.  “Liberty,” according to Jefferson, was the degree to which an individual can exercise his rights, his freedom.  The rights which come under this umbrella would include the rights asserted in the Magna Carta, for example, or in the English Bill of Rights, or in Virginia’s Declaration of Rights. (Remember the time period that the Declaration was written).  “Pursuit of Happiness” includes property, but encompasses much more.  “Pursuit of Happiness” means an individual should be able to freely exercise all his rights in order to live his life to its full potential.  That “full potential” includes the ownership of property and the fruits of one’s labor, mind, and personality (all that which makes a person a unique “individual”).  “Property” was too narrow a term for Jefferson.  Now, just as the individual has the rights to Life, Liberty, and Property, he also has the equal right to protect them.  This right of self-protection and self-preservation is also a natural right. Samuel Adams summed it best: “Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.”

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” is another important principle.  It is a critical and basic tenet of our form of government. First it states unequivocally that the primary role of government is “to secure these rights.” In other words, in the grand scheme of things, individual rights are supreme over the authority of the State (ie, government). The primary role of government, and the motivating force behind the formation of government, is to secure the inalienable rights, endowed by our Creator (Nature), of each individual.  This means that government is to be ideally limited to the role of a policeman, a judge, a prison warden, and a military force.  Furthermore, this provision explains that government has no powers of its own, but only “derives” its powers from individuals consenting to transfer power to it.  This is where the doctrine of Individual Sovereignty comes from. In a state of Nature, man has full sovereign power to govern himself – to provide for himself, to protect himself, to think and act as he wants.  He is responsible for himself and his conduct.  What is especially critical about this principle of “deriving powers from the consent of the governed” is that power delegated by the people is always “temporary” in nature.  The people can always re-assume their sovereign power – their right to govern themselves.

Having told us the proper function of government, Jefferson then tells us what gives cause to changing it: “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

The first thing to note is that governments are always “temporary.”  Government exists at the whim of the people and have no right in and of itself to its own existence or longevity. Government is a “creation.”  It is not a natural institution. Because is arises by the “consent of the governed,” it is a product of compact.  Compacts have elements of contract law and agency law. The second thing to note is the Declaration acknowledges that individuals have the RIGHT to establish their government to effect THEIR happiness and their safety. When government ceases to serve those purposes, then individuals are well within their natural right to abolish that government and establish another.

The Declaration goes one step further and challenges individuals to be vigilante of their rights and critical of their government.  “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

How will a people know for sure when it is time to “abolish” their government?  Or how will they know when it is time to dissolve political bonds that tie them to another; that is, how will they know when it is time to secede from another political body?  The Declaration, in that last sentence, tells us: “When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

And that line, as Jefferson will explain in the section that follows, sums up the position of the Colonies.  In that section, Jefferson sets out to make the case that the conduct of the King is a history of abuses and usurpations.  He lists 27 grievances against King George III – 27 instances where he violated the rights of the colonists – which he, Jefferson (and the Second Continental Congress, as evidenced by its adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776) believe evidences a design to reduce them under an absolute Despotism (tyranny).  In the last paragraph of the Declaration, Jefferson will finally make the case that because of this evil design, the Colonies have a right and a duty to dissolve their political bonds with the King.

The last paragraph reads:

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The Declaration of Independence ends with these powerful words: “For the support of this Declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.”  We can never forget that the Declaration was a treasonous document, which, if the British had won the war, would have sealed the fate of each of its signers and earned them a date with a hangman’s noose.  But they believed in their cause. They believed in the words they wrote in that document and they believed in their case against the King.  And they were willing to risk it all.

Signer Benjamin Rush (of Pennsylvania) wrote: “Do you recollect the pensive and awful silence which pervaded the house when we were called up, one after another, to the table of the President of Congress to subscribe what was believed by many at that time to be our own death warrants?”

After signing his name in a large flowing style, it is rumored that John Hancock’s full response was this: “There! His Majesty can now read my name without his spectacles. And he can double the reward on my head!”  Benjamin Franklin, insisting that every single delegate sign the Declaration of Independence, said: “We must all hang together or surely we shall all hang separately.”  The large, burly Virginian, Benjamin Harrison, turned to the pipsqueak from Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, and joked: “I will have a great advantage over you, Mr. Gerry, when we are all hung for what we are now doing. From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes, but from the lightness of your body, you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead.”

One day after the Declaration was adopted by the delegates to the Second Continental Congress, John Adams wrote home to his wife Abagail: “I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the means. And that posterity will triumph in that day’s transaction.”

In a speech he gave on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (5 July 1926), Calvin Coolidge reflected:

“Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed. If no one is to be accounted as born into a superior station, if there is to be no ruling class, and if all possess rights which can neither be bartered away nor taken from them by any earthly power, it follows as a matter of course that the practical authority of the Government has to rest on the consent of the governed. While these principles were not altogether new in political action, and were very far from new in political speculation, they had never been assembled before and declared in such a combination… In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We cannot continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause… If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.”

By a stroke of remarkable coincidence, both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day – the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1826.  Jefferson preceded Adams in death by five hours.

When I think about Independence Day, I think of our magnificent story.  I think about the uncompromising determination of people to live free and the eternal vigilance it took to finally secure lasting boundaries on government. I think about the ways the British and then the colonists expressed their discontent with the King and the many ways they sought to exert their rights, and how the many efforts culminated in their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence. I think about how our Founding Fathers brilliantly turned government on its head – transforming a system of government based on the Divine Right of Kings to a system predicated on Individual Sovereignty.  I think of a continuum of a story that began in 1215 with a stand-off on the meadow at Runnymede in order to secure a promise from an arrogant and ambitious king that ended with a document signed by 56 delegates assembled together from 13 separate states on July 4.  The continent may have changed, but man’s yearning to be free did not.

Now, as we all know, a country is a physical location inhabited by a body politic. Principles are embraced by people and not by geography, and so liberty and independence is a spirit that must live in all of us. If it doesn’t, then we suffer oppression together. As Machiavelli once said: “It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to enslave a people that wants to remain free.”  The Declaration embraces our revolutionary spirit, and God help us when our country has the spirit of an aging grandmother. The key is to always keep that revolutionary spirit.  And maybe that’s what Independence Day is all about…. to reflect on our history and to rekindle that spirit every year.

In conclusion, I would like to implore that on this Independence Day and on every Independence Day, that we remember the advice that was once given to us by James Madison: “The people of the U.S. owe their Independence and their liberty to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprised in the precedent. Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching against every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings.”

References:

Brion McClanahan, “Rethinking the Declaration of Independence,” Abbeville Institute, July 4, 2016.  Referenced at:  http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/rethinking-the-declaration-of-independence/

Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr. (Professor of Political Science), “The American System of Government: The American Constitutional System – English Origins (1066-1558),” Cyberland University of North Carolina.

Referenced at:  http://www.proconservative.net/CUNAPolSci201PartFourB.shtml  [In-depth study of the Magna Carta]

The Petition of Right of 1628 – http://study.com/academy/lesson/petition-of-right-of-1628-definition-summary.html

The English Bill of Rights of 1689 –  http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/england.asp

The Grand Remonstrance – http://www.constitution.org/eng/conpur043.htm

The Declaration and Resolves – http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/resolves.asp

Patrick Henry’s Speech of March 23, 1775 –  https://www.history.org/almanack/life/politics/giveme.cfm

Halifax Resolves – http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-revolution/4328

Preamble and Resolution of the Virginia Convention of May 15, 1776  –  http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/const02.asp

The Lee Resolutions –  http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/lee.asp

“Boiling It Down, This Is What You’ve Said,” Mark America, October 15, 2011.  Referenced at:  http://markamerica.com/2011/10/15/boiling-it-down-this-is-what-youve-said/

Winston Churchill, “The Sinews of Peace”, address at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri (March 5, 1946); in Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897–1963 (1974), vol. 7, p. 7288.

Calvin Coolidge, speech on the Occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (July 5, 1926).

by Diane Rufino, July 9, 2016

In a deliberate and calculated act of racism, a black man ambushed and gunned down five Dallas police officers and injured seven more.  I watched on TV how the police community and concerned citizens responded. They honored each officer in a moving tribute that highlighted their life stories, the families they leave behind, their service to our country, and their acts of kindness in their communities. They came together to offer assistance to the families of the fallen officers, establishing funds to pay their mortgages and to send their children to college. They reminded everyone of the dangerous job that police officers willingly accept – serving and protecting their communities – and now, since the start of Black Lives Matter movement (“What do we want?  Dead cops.  When do we want them?  NOW!”), being innocent targets simply for wearing their uniform.  Did the community call for violence against the Black Lives Matter movement and its leaders?  Has it encouraged police officers to take aggressive and retaliatory action in their patrolling of their areas?  Has it suggested that police officers withdraw from black communities and let their violence consume them?

No.

The other side, however, responds with violence and aggression. They are completely predictable. When a member of the black community dies at the hands of police custody, which includes being stopped, subdued, transported, arrested, or incarcerated, the response is rioting, destruction, and violence.  They demand justice which always means that they want the other side to pay for what has been done, regardless of what transpired. At the center of almost all of the unfortunate incidents – and they are all unfortunate – we find a black man who had a gun and wouldn’t surrender it, who had broken the law, who threatened the officer with harm, or who was resisting the police (even though the police had probable cause to stop him).  Simply cooperating with the police would have prevented each of the deaths.

The responses from each side are strikingly different and they speak volumes.

Instead of the accusations against police and the insinuations of blatant racism, why aren’t we asking the more important questions:  Why are young black men walking around carrying guns?  Why are they breaking the law?  Where are their parents to teach them right from wrong?  Where are their parents to keep an eye on them and to know what they are up to?  And most importantly, why aren’t they teaching their children that when they are stopped by police, they must politely cooperate.  I believe that officers respond to guns, not race.

In his song “American Skin,” Bruce Springsteen writes:

“Lena gets her son ready for school
She says, “On these streets, Charles
You’ve got to understand the rules
If an officer stops you, promise me you’ll always be polite
And that you’ll never ever run away
Promise Mama you’ll keep your hands in sight”

The song was inspired by an incident involving the New York City Police Department and a West African immigrant named Amadou Diallo in February 1999. Diallo exactly fit the profile of a rapist who committed several crimes in the Bronx area, and when police caught up with him in a stairwell, they instructed Diallo to show his hands.  Instead, he reached into his pockets. Police assumed he was going for a gun, but it turns out he was only reaching for his wallet.  But it was too late. Police shot him dead.  While the song is an indictment of the rush to judgement on the part of police, Springsteen acknowledges that “these streets” are not safe.  Police patrol areas that are not safe.  At the heart of the problem in this country at this present time is the fact that are our streets not safe.  And yes, certain areas (and I don’t need to spell it out) are much less safe than others. We have to be honest in solving that problem first and not be afraid to be politically incorrect, because yes, too many young black lives are being lost.  Let’s address that root cause first, and the other issues will fall away.

Sometimes when I watch the news, I can’t help but think that we are back in the tumultuous civil rights era.  But we not in the 1960’s.  It’s fifty years down the road.  That equates to 2-3 generations. I don’t mean to sound insensitive to the concerns of the black community when it comes to their history with police, but I’m tired of the dialogue that is so intentionally and overwhelmingly politically-sensationalized and one-sided. Government – all 4 branches (legislative, executive, judicial, and the media) – has got to stop with the political correctness and stop pandering to violence, and start acting responsibly.  We have a code of conduct in this country that transcends race, religion, and ethnicity and it’s called civility and the Rule of Law. We conduct ourselves within the boundaries of the law, we respect each other’s lives, liberty, and property, we respect each other as individuals, and we contribute in a positive way to our communities. We don’t harass one another, we don’t harm one another, we don’t intimidate one another, and we don’t make others feel unsafe.  Everywhere I go, I see signs reading “coexist.”  I imagine it stands for an organization or movement urging social cohesion and peaceful coexistence.  For my entire life, I have been taught this. Growing up in northern New Jersey, I never once thought that a person of a different color was any different than me or should be treated any differently. It just never entered my mind. Since the days when the country righted wrongs and passed the Civil Rights Acts, we have been reminded at every instance to live a colorblind life.  Our schools have taught it, our human resource departments give training sessions on it, our government has put laws and policies in place to ensure it, and courts have come up with remedies to mandate it. Yet when we watch the news, read the newspaper, and listen to our president and US Justice Department speak, you would think that racism is widespread in this country and most notably, is rampant and endemic in our police forces.

I have a good friend in town who happens to be a white police officer.  As he faithfully posts reports of all those officers across the country who have been killed or injured by those supporting the Black Lives Matters movement, he clearly fears for his safety and the safety of his officers. Nevertheless, he is the epitome of public service.  He says this fear will never prevent him from doing his job nor, as far as he believes, will prevent the others from doing the same.  My friend is assigned to what is called the West quadrant, which is the “black section” of town. The West quadrant is racked with violent crime – murders, random shootings, stabbings, drug crimes, and domestic assaults. Someone asked him if, in light of the growing Black Lives Matter movement, he wouldn’t be better off transferring to a different quadrant and perhaps having black officers cover the West quadrant.  His response was quick. He said he would never request a transfer and has every intention of remaining there. When asked why, he answered: “Because I am needed there.”  He said he didn’t enlist to protect just quiet, safe neighborhoods; he enlisted to keep everyone safe.

I believe most officers feel this way.  And sadly, the Black Lives Matter movement has been responsible for the senseless murders of exactly these types of officers.

In my adult life, I’ve seen only three acts of blatant, intentional racism.  In 2010, Black Panther leader King Samir Shabazz intimidated white voters at a polling location in Philadelphia and publicly advocated the killing of white babies. Last year, Dylann Roof, a young white man, opened fire in a black Methodist church in Charleston, killing nine. And then two days ago, July 7, a black man, Micah Johnson, set out with the express intention of killing as many white police officers as he could at a Black Lives Matter protest that was planned in Dallas.  He also supported or belonged to the New Black Panther movement which advocates violence against whites.  Ironically, all these events occurred during the time when our President was jumping to conclusions and crying racism at every instance a black man was mistreated or harmed by police. It began almost immediately after he assumed office.  In July 2009, when a black Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was stopped by a white police officer for suspicious activity, President Obama jumped on the opportunity to lecture the country about racism.

In that incident, police received a call of a possible burglary; the woman was concerned that a man (no mention of race) appeared to be trying to break into a house in a respected Cambridge, Massachusetts neighborhood. A white officer, Sgt. Jams Crowley, was dispatched to the house and found Gates who had already opened the door.  Gates told the police it was his house and Crowley asked to see identification. Gates refused and instead, flew into a verbal rage and accused the officer of racial profiling. He was arrested for disorderly conduct. President Obama learned of the incident and before knowing the facts of the case, he felt he needed to make a public statement regarding Gates’ treatment.  To a country that had no idea of the incident, Obama said that Sgt. Crowley acted “stupidly.”  He went further and said this was an example of how vulnerable poor people and minorities are “to capricious forces like a rogue policeman.”  He continued: “This man clearly was a rogue policeman.”  Without knowing the facts, President Obama slandered Crowley’s good name to an entire country. As it turns out, Crowley was – is – a decorated officer, an expert on racial profiling, and an instructor on that subject for many years at the Lowell Police Academy.  The police commissioner of the Cambridge Police Department commented that his department was deeply maligned by Obama’s statement.

To an audience that is always on the look-out for instances of racism, Obama’s comments were just what they wanted to hear. Victimhood is a powerful aphrodisiac. Victimhood is a powerful position. Victimhood is big business.  The Gates incident was just the tip of the iceberg. In 2012, Trayvon Martin’s death ignited intense racial tension. When George Zimmerman was acquitted of his death, race riots occurred in Los Angeles, a place that knows them all too well (except when OJ Simpson was acquitted). With each incident, tensions grew stronger, culminating in a march in New York City in 2014, headed by race hustler Al Sharpton. The “Black Lives Matter” demonstrators called for the death of police officers, shouting: “What do we want? – Dead cops. When do we want them?  – Now!”  Not long after that, a black man stalked and killed two innocent white police officers in NYC in retaliation for the death of Eric Garner (which was a sad, tragic event, but clearly without any racial animus). Since 2014, it has been open season for killing police officers and the numbers have been adding up.

I blame the Obama administration for amplifying the voice of the Black Lives Matter movement and for eight long years, helping to fuel charges of racism in this country. The administration, at every chance, legitimized their claims and encouraged their militant responses. The administration is guilty of criminal solicitation – creating the atmosphere in this country that sadly led to this tragic shooting.

[I use the terms “white” and “black” not in any derogatory way but merely as an emphasis to the racial divide that has overtaken our country, particularly with respect to law enforcement].

by Diane Rufino, July 11, 2016

I just finished reading the latest book by New York Times #1 Best-selling author, Eric Metaxas, entitled “If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty.”  Metaxas is the author of other best-sellers, including Bonhoeffer, Amazing Grace, Miracles, 7 Women, and 7 Men, and has a weekly talk show, “The Eric Metaxas Show.”

The book is essentially a pep talk for our troubled time, peppered with wonderful bits of history to remind readers why the they need to be fired up. Hopefully the title will ring a bell with the reader. At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787, a woman approached Benjamin Franklin as he was leaving what has come to be known as Independence Hall.  She asked him: “What kind of government have you given us?”  And Franklin historically replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

And that’s the challenge we all face.  As our traditional institutions and values are eroding, and as our connection to the document that secures our rights and restrains government in our lives – the US Constitution – becomes increasingly tenuous, we see that our republic is in danger.  John Adams once said: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  The truth is that all our Founding Fathers shared the same view, and probably none as strongly as Benjamin Franklin. And so his reply to that woman implicated a duty imputed to all Americans to remain virtuous and to trust only virtuous leaders with this grand experiment that was to be America.  Once we lose that sense of duty and that keen sense of responsibility, then the days of our republic are indeed numbered.

Why is morality and religion so indispensable to our republic and its longevity?  Alexander Hamilton addressed that question clearly: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”  Men are not angels; they are forever tempted by power, greed, and other evils which corrupt men’s souls. History proves this, and history also teaches us another sad reality – that republics typically have a relatively short lifespan.  Machiavelli wrote: “Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.”  Machiavelli wrote: “Republics that wish to maintain themselves free from corruption must above all things preserve the purity of all religions observances, and treat them with proper reverence; for there is no greater indication of the ruin of a country than to see religion condemned.”  Religion is the basis of morality.  Religion teaches a person how to to conduct oneself and how to treat others.  Moral people don’t need a lot of laws because they inherently know how to govern themselves.  Morality ensures that government can remain limited.

Metaxas argues that America’s greatness cannot continue unless we embrace our own crucial role in living out what our Founding Fathers entrusted to us. And that, he says, requires us to reconnect with our history and with the brilliant and forward-thinking ideals proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence, emphasized by our Founders, and embedded in the fabric of our history.  And to remind us of some of those threads, the author weaves in selected and profound moments from our country’s earlier years. Metaxas wants us to remember why our country is great and why she is good.

In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville came to the United States, among other reasons, to study our democracy. He wanted to help secure to the people of France the same blessings that democracy in America had ordained and established for its people. After touring the states, he noted: “I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her bustling harbors and her ample rivers — and it was not there……  In her fertile fields and bound less forests — and it was not there….. In her rich mines and her vast world commerce — and it was not there….. In her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution — and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”

Metaxas acknowledges the growing trend of young people who dwell on the faults with America, which we all know punctuates our history, beginning with the oppression of the American Natives and the perpetuation of slavery and in more recent times, our willing embrace of abortions to kill our unborn. Indeed, our history is coming under attack and efforts are being made to re-write it and to even to redact parts of it from our school books. But he urges everyone to balance the bad with the good.  He urges us to go back and study our history – to re-establish those “mystic chords of memory” that hold us together as unified nation. With each chapter, Metaxas reminds us of individuals who, through their actions or words, embrace the values of the American experiment and exemplify the goodness of America.

If You Can Keep It prompts us to the urgency of our time. Our country continues to take misstep after misstep, consistently eroding morals and alienating religion. Corruption has undermined our confidence in the Rule of Law.  Our republic lies precariously on a precipice. If it tips too far to the left, we doom our republic and our last best chance to secure our freedom, especially the rights of minority groups.  And in doing so, we let down other nations and peoples of the world, who look to us to stand up for them and to export our values to their governments. After all, for over a hundred and fifty years, it was the “idea” of America that attracted the “tired, the poor, the homeless, and the wretched refuse” of other countries to our shores. It was America that provided a home for the “the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

And so, with Benjamin Franklin in mind and with Alexis de Tocqueville in mind, Eric Metaxas convincingly reminds us of our duty to “keep our republic.”  Our freedom, as Ronald Reagan once pointed out, “is never more than one generation away from extinction. We don’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”  The answer, Metaxas suggests, is for us to be good again, to find heroes in our history and emulate them, and to rekindle the American spirit.

by Diane Rufino, July 13, 2016

Benjamin Spock once wrote: “Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious, rude, belligerent, and brutal.”

Robert Kennedy once wrote: “Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.”

Let’s look at both these statements.

With respect to Dr. Spock, we can say that for the most part, his statement is true. But the reason might be that white middle-class white people obey laws, live in stable families, embrace decent values, and live in communities with others who share similar values.  Middle class white people have priorities that include education, employment, and church. They conduct themselves in a civilized manner and are respectful when they are in the presence of a police officer. I have never lived in an inner city, but from what I read and see on TV, and what I’ve seen in the public school system, it’s pretty clear that the people there don’t share the same core beliefs or values. Poverty is not an excuse to raise one’s children poorly.

With respect to Mr. Kennedy, his statement certainly sounds like it should be true.

Jay Salien, a police officer who works in Riviera Beach, Florida, assumed as much.  But Salien is no ordinary police officer.  He is an African-American police officer who patrols a predominantly black part of town. Now, Riviera Beach may sound like a resort area – a place people with money might go to retire or for a vacation. But the reality is something quite different. The town is known for its significant rate of black on black crime.

In the wake of the growing Black Lives Matter movement and the countering movement, the Blue Lives Matter movement (which is a result of the intentional, wanton violence against police by BLM supporters), Salien felt he couldn’t remain silent. As the BLM, and even our own president, allege that our nation’s police forces are filled with trigger-happy racist officers, Salien took to Facebook to post the brutal reality of what a police officer faces each day when he patrols a predominantly black community.

His entire post is shared below:

“I have come to realize something that is still hard for me to understand to this day. The following may be a shock to some coming from an African American, but the mere fact that it may be shocking to some is prima facie evidence of the sad state of affairs that we are in as Humans.

I used to be so torn inside growing up. Here I am, a young African-American born and raised in Brooklyn, NY wanting to be a cop. I watched and lived through the crime that took place in the hood. My own black people killing others over nothing. Crack heads and heroin addicts lined the lobby of my building as I shuffled around them to make my way to our 1-bedroom apartment with 6 of us living inside. I used to be woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of gun fire, only to look outside and see that it was 2 African Americans shooting at each other.

It never sat right with me. I wanted to help my community and stop watching the blood of African Americans spilled on the street at the hands of a fellow black man. I became a cop because black lives in my community, along with ALL lives, mattered to me, and wanted to help stop the bloodshed.

As time went by in my law enforcement career, I quickly began to realize something. I remember the countless times I stood 2 inches from a young black man, around my age, laying on his back, gasping for air as blood filled his lungs. I remember them bleeding profusely with the unforgettable smell of deoxygenated dark red blood in the air, as it leaked from the bullet holes in his body on to the hot sidewalk on a summer day. I remember the countless family members who attacked me, spit on me, cursed me out, as I put up crime scene tape to cordon off the crime scene, yelling and screaming out of pain and anger at the sight of their loved ones taking their last breath. I never took it personally. I knew they were hurting. I remember the countless times I had to order new uniforms, because the ones I had on, were bloody from the blood of another black victim…of black on black crime. I remember the countless times I got back in my patrol car, distraught after having watched another black male die in front me, having to start my preliminary report something like this:

Suspect- Black/ Male, Victim-Black /Male.

I remember the countless times I canvassed the area afterwards, and asked everyone “did you see who did it”, and the popular response from the very same family members was always, “Fuck the Police, I ain’t no snitch, Im gonna take care of this myself”. This happened every single time, every single homicide, black on black, and then my realization became clearer.

I woke up every morning, put my freshly pressed uniform on, shined my badge, functioned checked my weapon, kissed my wife and kid, and waited for my wife to say the same thing she always does before I leave, “Make sure you come back home to us”. I always replied, “I will”, but the truth was I was never sure if I would. I almost lost my life on this job, and every call, every stop, every moment that I had this uniform on, was another possibility for me to almost lose my life again. I was a target in the very community I swore to protect, the very community I wanted to help. As a matter of fact, they hated my very presence. They called me “Uncle Tom”, and “wanna be white boy”, and I couldn’t understand why. My own fellow black men and women attacking me, wishing for my death, wishing for the death of my family. I was so confused, so torn, I couldn’t understand why my own black people would turn against me, when every time they called …I was there. Every time someone died….I was there. Every time they were going through one of the worst moments in their lives…I was there. So why was I the enemy? I dove deep into that question…Why was I the enemy? Then my realization became clearer.

I spoke to members of the community and listened to some of the complaints as to why they hated cops. I then did research on the facts. I also presented facts to these members of the community, and listened to their complaints in response. This is what I learned:

COMPLAINT:  Police always targeting us, they always messing with the black man.

FACT:  A city where the majority of citizens are black (Baltimore for example) …will ALWAYS have a higher rate of black people getting arrested, it will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks getting stopped, and will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks getting killed, and the reason why is because a city with those characteristics will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks committing crime. The statistics will follow the same trend for Asians if you go to China, for Hispanics if you go to Puerto Rico, for whites if you go to Russia, and the list goes on. It’s called Demographics

COMPLAINT:  More black people get arrested than white boys.

FACT:  Black People commit a grossly disproportionate amount of crime. Data from the FBI shows that Nationwide, Blacks committed 5,173 homicides in 2014, whites committed 4,367. Chicago’s death toll is almost equal to that of both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined. Chicago’s death toll from 2001–November, 26 2015 stands at 7,401. The combined total deaths during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-2015: 4,815) and Operation Enduring Freedom/Afghanistan (2001-2015: 3,506), total 8,321.

COMPLAINT:  Blacks are the only ones getting killed by police, or they are killed more.

FACT:  As of July 2016, the breakdown of the number of US Citizens killed by Police this year is, 238 White people killed, 123 Black people killed, 79 Hispanics, 69 other/or unknown race.

FACT:  Black people kill more other blacks than Police do, and there are only protest and outrage when a cop kills a black man. University of Toledo criminologist Dr. Richard R. Johnson examined the latest crime data from the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports and Centers for Disease Control and found that an average of 4,472 black men were killed by other black men annually between Jan. 1, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2012. Professor Johnson’s research further concluded that 112 black men died from both justified and unjustified police-involved killings annually during this same period.

COMPLAINT: Well we already doing a good job of killing ourselves, we don’t need the Police to do it. Besides they should know better.

The more I listened, the more I realized. The more I researched, the more I realized. I would ask questions, and would only get emotional responses & inferences based on no facts at all. The more killing I saw, the more tragedy, the more savagery, the more violence, the more loss of life of a black man at the hands of another black man….the more I realized.

I haven’t slept well in the past few nights. Heartbreak weighs me down, rage flows through my veins, and tears fills my eyes. I watched my fellow officers assassinated on live television, and the images of them laying on the ground are seared into my brain forever. I couldn’t help but wonder if it had been me, a black man, a black cop, on TV, assassinated, laying on the ground dead,..would my friends and family still think black lives mattered?

Would my life have mattered? Would they make t-shirts in remembrance of me? Would they go on tv and protest violence? Would they even make a Facebook post, or share a post in reference to my death?

All of my realizations came to this conclusion. Black Lives do not matter to most black people. Only the lives that make the national news matter to them. Only the lives that are taken at the hands of cops or white people, matter. The other thousands of lives lost, the other black souls that I along with every cop, have seen taken at the hands of other blacks, do not matter. Their deaths are unnoticed, accepted as the “norm”, and swept underneath the rug by the very people who claim and post “black lives matter”. I realized that this country is full of ignorance, where an educated individual will watch the ratings-driven news media, and watch a couple YouTube video clips, and then come to the conclusion that they have all the knowledge they need to have in order to know what it feels like to have a bullet proof vest as part of your office equipment, “Stay Alive” as part of your daily to do list, and having insurance for your health insurance because of the high rate of death in your profession. They watch a couple videos and then they magically know in 2 minutes 35 seconds, how you are supposed to handle a violent encounter, which took you 6 months of Academy training, 2 – 3 months of field training, and countless years of blood, sweat, tears and broken bones experiencing violent encounters and fine tuning your execution of the Use of Force Continuum. I realized that there are even cops, COPS, duly sworn law enforcement officers, who are supposed to be decent investigators, who will publicly go on the media and call other white cops racist and KKK, based on a video clip that they watched thousands of miles away, which was filmed after the fact, based on a case where the details aren’t even known yet and the investigation hasn’t even begun. I realized that most in the African American community refuse to look at solving the bigger problem that I see and deal with every day, which is black on black crime taking hundreds of innocent black lives each year, and instead focus on the 9 questionable deaths of black men, where some were in the act of committing crimes. I realized that they value the life of a Sex Offender and Convicted Felon, [who was in the act of committing multiple felonies: felon in possession of a firearm-FELONY, brandishing and threatening a homeless man with a gun-Aggravated Assault in Florida: FELONY, who resisted officers who first tried to taze him, and WAS NOT RESTRAINED, who can be clearly seen in one of the videos raising his right shoulder, then shooting it down towards the right side of his body exactly where the firearm was located and recovered] more than the lives of the innocent cops who were assassinated in Dallas protecting the very people that hated them the most. I realized that they refuse to believe that most cops acknowledge that there are Bad cops who should have never been given a badge & gun, who are chicken shit and will shoot a cockroach if it crawls at them too fast, who never worked in the hood and may be intimidated. That most cops dread the thought of having to shoot someone, and never see the turmoil and mental anguish that a cop goes through after having to kill someone to save his own life. Instead they believe that we are all blood thirsty killers, because the media says so, even though the numbers prove otherwise. I realize that they truly feel as if the death of cops will help people realize the false narrative that Black Lives Matter, when all it will do is take their movement two steps backwards and label them domestic terrorist. I realized that some of these people, who say Black Lives Matter, are full of hate and racism. Hate for cops, because of the false narrative that more black people are targeted and killed. Racism against white people, for a tragedy that began 100’s of years ago, when most of the white people today weren’t even born yet. I realized that some in the African American community’s idea of “Justice” is the prosecution of ANY and EVERY cop or white man that kills or is believed to have killed a black man, no matter what the circumstances are. I realized the African American community refuses to look within to solve its major issues, and instead makes excuses and looks outside for solutions. I realized that a lot of people in the African American community lead with hate, instead of love. Division instead of Unity. Turmoil and rioting, instead of Peace. I realized that they have become the very entity that they claim they are fighting against.

I realized that the very reasons I became a cop, are the very reasons my own people hate me, and now in this toxic hateful racially charged political climate, I am now more likely to die,… and it is still hard for me to understand…. to this day.

The black community is responsible for a hugely disproportionate amount of violent crime in our nation’s communities – mostly in their own communities.  The senseless violence boggles the mind of men and women in uniform who devote their lives and sacrifice their safety for the protection of others. There has to be some accountability and culpability for the racial divide that is currently plaguing us by the black community instead of the usual blame game – “racism.”  Government policies MUST encourage a strong sense of family and actually achieve this goal.  Right now, its policies encourage the destruction of the family and encourage out-of-wedlock births.  Government MUST tear down its “wall of separation” from religion which it keeps “high and impregnable” and embrace policies that encourage and achieve a greater influence of religious teachings in citizen’s lives – particularly our youth.  They need this guidance so badly. Government policies MUST encourage parents to take responsibility for the upbringing of their children and stop leaving it to schools, the police, prisons, etc. There is nothing more tragic than a mother who cries over the body of her slain son, killed while going for a gun when stopped by police when she herself didn’t raise him properly, didn’t check on the friends he was hanging out, didn’t follow up on what he was doing at night, or know that he even carried a gun.”

Solutions are needed.  Serious dialogue is needed, and not just the usual allegation of “racism.”  But while the tension between the Black Lives Matter movement and the police in general seems to be escalating (BLM is now calling for a “Day of Rage” to be celebrated by a wave of protests all over the country), the last thing the BLM seems to be interested in is an honest dialogue or solutions.  I read somewhere that one of their so-called solutions is a collection of states just for blacks.

Last night, I watched a Bill O’Reilly episode, which I very rarely do. O’Reilly asked democrat commentator, Kirsten Powers, if she believes the Black Lives Matter movement is seriously looking for solutions or just acting out in rage. She responded that she believes they are interested in solutions and are essentially a peaceful group.  O’Reilly then showed her a clip of what happened when one of Fox News reporters went into a black community to ask why they hate police. It was not a civilized response. [See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7uc6YznICU.  Advance to 19:30 min for the interview segment]

I wondered then, where is this Black Lives Matter is headed. What do they want?  What can the American reasonably believe might be the outcome.  Will our nation’s communities be safer and will the rioting and violence stop?  Will the random and wanton violence against police officers stop?  And then I heard President Obama’s remarks at the Dallas Memorial Service yesterday, July 12.

As long as our President proclaims to our nation and even to the world that we are a racist nation and that our police forces are populated by officers who can’t help but be consumed by racist thoughts, why would the Black Lives Matter ever think it has to make any concessions at all.  Obama’s remarks give the black community every reason to be absolved of the behavior they exhibit in their communities and in inner cities. It was unfortunate that he publicly justified the slaughter of the five Dallas police officers because of “righteous rage” in the black community that has remained (or more correctly, has escalated) since the days of slavery and Jim Crow. In his remarks, he went out of his way to convince America – and we all know the Black Lives Matter is hanging on his every word – that racism still exists; that for the past 50 years, the country is still the same as it was back in the early 1960’s.  “If we’re honest, perhaps we’ve heard prejudice in our heads, felt it in our own hearts. We know that. None of us is innocent. No institution is immune. And that includes our police departments.”  The one thing that is most evident from what he said is that HE, the person who holds the office of President and who represents every single American, is the one who is racist. He admits that he can’t help thinking that way. He can’t help having “righteous rage” and resentment against white America. And in his remarks at the Memorial Service, he attempted to force his own personal demons on the rest of this country. It’s a sad day when a President of the United States reminds his countrymen that they are inherently evil and unjust.

What can we expect as an outcome when the President supports a violent movement?   What can we expect as an outcome when the President gives legitimacy to a movement which justifies its violence, its rioting, and its civil disobedience on “rage.”

I know what movement I would suggest for the suckers who are collectively called “US taxpayers” !!

References:

Jay Salien, facebook post –  https://www.facebook.com/jay.stalien/posts/911372818974402

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7uc6YznICU   (Bill O’Reilly, Fox News clip; See 19:30 min for the reaction of the black community when

by Diane Rufino, July 18, 2016

A contract is a promise, or set of promises, between willing parties. The law of contracts is a body of law as old as the Anglo-American division of law and equity. When a contract is breached, law and equity provide remedies. In fact, the definition of contract includes the phrase “for the breach of which the law gives a remedy.”  Court of law provide monetary remedies for breach while courts of equity provide unique remedies designed to relieve the aggrieved party when monetary awards are inadequate, such as forcing performance by the defaulting party.  [This is where we get the words in Article III. Section 2, of the US Constitution: “The judicial power of the United States shall extend to all cases, in Law and Equity.”]  Synonymous with the term “contract” are “agreement” and “compact.”  Throughout Anglo-American history, people have organized their government through compacts or “social compacts.” The philosopher, John Locke, who our Founders leaned most heavily in founding our country and drafting our foundational documents, explained that individuals, when organized in societies, form their government by way of social compact.

Historical Anglo-American jurisprudence provided a party aggrieved by a breach of contract certain choices by law:  First, he could choose to proceed to a court of law and seek damages for the loss of money in reliance upon the contract being fulfilled. In such a court, the aggrieved party would seek from the party in breach such sums as would place him in as good a position as he would have been had the contract been fully performed.  Alternatively, a court of equity could enforce the contract for the aggrieved party by ordering “specific performance” by the defaulting party – that is, the court would force the party to fulfil his obligations under the contract. Finally, Anglo-American equity jurisprudence provided for another remedy for breach of contract – “rescission,” or the annulment of the contract. Since the end of the eighteenth century in England, rescission has often been used as a remedy in conjunction with “restitution.” The aggrieved party would ask the court to annul the contract and, at the same time, ask that he be made whole for his own performance, thereby placing him in the same position he occupied before he entered into the contract.

For a States to claim the right of secession from the Union, the Constitution must be construed to be an agreement created by the States as parties.

Unquestionably, the Constitution was created as a social compact. It had all the requisites of a contract. There were parties: thirteen States, to which were added those that similarly ratified the document in the years after 1781. There was mutuality: each State promised to give up some of its sovereignty in exchange for what the Union promised to deliver – for receiving a “common defense” and some regulation of commerce between the States where it was necessary to ensure free trade. The Constitution was created by the States and ratified by the States, each acting in Convention. It could only be amended by and between the States. And if there was any doubt about the fact that the Constitution was an agreement entered into by and between the States, Article VII states: “The ratification of the conventions of nine States shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the same.”  If, then, the Constitution is a compact, what is the remedy for a State or a group of States harmed by a breach of the Constitution by the federal government or other States? [Under Agency law, the “agent” (government) would be fired].  The only remedy, short of persuading the party or parties in breach to conform, is the equitable remedy of rescission.

As most people already know, several states posed obstacles to the adoption of the US Constitution and the formation of the new Union. The states of Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island proved to be battleground states.  Ratification by the State of Virginia was made possible only so long as the people of Virginia expressly and specifically retained the right of rescission. The Virginia resolution of ratification of June 26, 1788 read, in part: “We, the delegates of the people of Virginia do, in the name and on behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression.”  The vote in favor of adoption was narrow, 89-79.  Virginia was only able to obtain this vote by linking ratification to amendments to be added for a Bill of Rights, which they recommended.

In New York, the battle was just as fierce. Like Virginia, the resolution of ratification was made expressly subject to its peoples’ right of rescission. It read, in part: “We, the delegates of the people of the State of New York do declare and make known that the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness.”  The vote in favor of adoption was 30-27. Also following Virginia’s lead, the delegates to the NY Ratifying Convention then presented a veritable catalogue of rights that they believed should be added to the Constitution by way of amendment (a Bill of Rights).

North Carolina and Rhode Island were particularly skeptical. They didn’t ratify the Constitution until after George Washington was already sworn in as the first president of the United States in 1789. They waited until the first US Congress presented a Bill of Rights, as the States has demanded. North Carolina finally ratified the Constitution on November 21, 1789 and Rhode Island ratified on May 29, 1790 (after refusing to consider ratification and joining the Union seven times!!).  Like Virginia and New York, Rhode Island adopted the Constitution subject to an express right to resume their delegated powers. It’s Resumption Clause read, in pertinent part:

      We the delegates of the people of the state of Rhode Island and Province Plantations, duly elected and met in Convention, do declare and make known

     I.  That there are certain natural rights of which men, when they form a social compact, cannot deprive or divest their posterity – among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety…..

   III.  That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness.

Because the adoption of the Constitution by Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island was accepted including their Resumption Clauses, those stipulations became part of the agreement or compact, thereby providing the same benefit to all the States of the Union.

The framers and ratifiers of the Constitution unquestionably understood the Constitution to be a “compact.” The voluminous records documenting the debates of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia of 1787 and the State Ratifying Conventions are replete with references to the Constitution as a “compact.” The Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Essays use the same language, arguing for and against the ratification of the Constitution, respectively.  Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the authors of our most important foundational documents, referred to the Constitution as such in their Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 1799 and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, respectively and the Southern States, in their Ordinances of Secession did likewise. When Massachusetts attempted to secede from the Union in 1814-1815, it also referred to the Constitution as a compact from which it retained the right to rescind. James Madison declared long after the ratification of the Constitution that “Our governmental system is established by a compact, not between the Government of the United States and the State governments, but between the States as sovereign communities, stipulating each with the other a surrender of certain portions of their respective authorities to be exercised by a common government, and a reservation, for their own exercise, of all their other authorities.”

If the Constitution is a compact, and it could be rescinded or annulled upon a breach, what would be sufficient to constitute a breach?  Whatever would constitute a breach is left wholly to the States seeking the extraordinary remedy of rescission. Obviously, in the words of James Madison’s 1800 Report on the Virginia Resolutions of 1798, the offensive act would have to be “a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of power not granted by the compact.”

While the governments of monarchs and dictators that ravaged Europe for centuries were based on the “universal law” that governments are not created by instruments that provide a mechanism for their own dissolution, the American government system flips that system on its head. The Declaration of Independence, embracing Natural Law and rejecting the Divine Right of Kings, proclaims that governments are only temporary in nature and are instituted among the People, by the People, and for the People for the primary purposes of securing their inalienable rights and for effecting their happiness. “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”  The Constitution, drafted to embrace the principles proclaimed in the Declaration, is therefore a revolutionary document. It is a revolutionary instrument created by a revolutionary people at the end of a successful revolution fought to end the rule of a monarch on the American States and the American people and to guarantee fundamental liberties to all citizens. The government created by the Constitution is worth keeping only so long as it serves this end. Sadly, this fundamental understanding of the formation of the Union was completely lost on Lincoln (or he was willfully and ambitiously blind to this understanding). The War of 1861 and the lies perpetrated on the country by the “victors” (because the victors have the luxury of telling the story and vilifying the conquered) have obscured the truth of our Constitution and our history. The transformation of our country from a republic to one oppressed by an over-zealous central government in the consequence of these lies.

The Constitution’s text and history before the Civil War did NOT change as a result of the surrender at Appomattox. Contracts do not textually change by the use of brute force; contracts change ONLY by the agreement of the parties. The Constitution was still a “constitution between the States” after the war as it was before. It remains so now.

If the government created by the Constitution ceases to guarantee liberty, there must be a remedy available to those oppressed by it. It is not the courts; the citizens may not even have standing to challenge the actions of the federal government, and moreover, the courts are creatures of the very government that would be the oppressor. To be sure, courts are not competent to even address constitutional challenges to acts of Congress that allege that those acts undermine the liberties of citizens and invade the powers reserved to the States. Resorting to the ballot may be ineffectual; the votes of a few metropolitan areas may negate the votes of all other regions. More than that, fundamental liberties should never be subject vote. What remains to protect individual liberties are the States as parties to the Constitution. As parties, they must exercise their “duty” to protect their citizens from a federal government that has grown too powerful, too intrusive, too dictatorial. They do that by exercising the right that parties to agreements have exercised for literally hundreds of years: to stand up to actions that invade the liberties of citizens and the reserved powers of the States by, first, nullifying the unconstitutional acts and then, if the federal government persists, seceding. The framers and ratifiers would not have thought any differently. After all, although they were revolutionaries who created a revolutionary form of government, they were also the inheritors of an Anglo-American legal tradition that had been developed over hundreds of years, which defined contracts and remedies available to those injured by the breach thereof.

The conflicts that divide Americans today are certainly as profound as those in other periods of our history, including those that compelled the Colonies to separate from Great Britain, those that troubled Massachusetts in 1815, and those that troubled the Southern States from 1828 to 1860.  The numerous laws, voluminous regulations, and many illegitimate rulings by the Supreme Court have abused and usurped our rights and liberties and have, in effect, evidenced the design by the federal government to consolidate us into a one-size-fits all nation untethered to the States which used to be obligated to protect us. The reasons for the Constitution have been frustrated and now forgotten. Clearly, the grounds to rescind the compact are legitimate and numerous.

In the history of the world, principles have always been more important than geographical boundaries.  We have to ask ourselves what our alternatives are in order to preserve our traditional American principles. If we continue to believe they are being subverted and eroded, and if we continue to believe that our rights, our freedoms, and our liberty are being threatened and violated, then we have to ask ourselves what our rightful remedies are.

References:

Donald Livingston, ed. “Rethinking the American Union for the 21st Century,” Pelican Publishing Company, 2013.

Kent Masterson Brown, “Secession: A Constitutional Remedy,” in “Rethinking the American Union for the 21st Century,” Pelican Publishing Company, 2013.

Thomas DiLorenzo, “The Founding Fathers of Constitutional Subversion,” in “Rethinking the American Union for the 21st Century,” Pelican Publishing Company, 2013.

by Diane Rufino, July 20, 2016

To those who are serious about preventing the federal government from coming after our Second Amendment rights, please read and take note…..   

If you really want to make a difference and prevent the government from infringing on our Second Amendment, you have to actively support Nullification as a remedy and propose nullification measures to use the power of the States and the People to protect THEIR protections expressly stated in the US Constitution – the Bill of Rights.  I’m not saying you have to necessarily come out and use that word, but you absolutely need to support the concept.

Remember what the preamble to the Bill of Rights emphasizes: “The Conventions of a number of States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added, and as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution.”   In other words, amendments One through Nine are “further restrictions on the federal government” while the Tenth is a further declaration of the intent of the Constitution (as a compact) – that the States have only delegated a select few of their sovereign powers to a common government for common purposes – for a “common defense” and some regulation of commerce between the States where it was necessary to ensure free trade – and they retain and reserve the remainder of them.

You MUST start talking about the Constitution in terms of Compact Theory and reject any characterization of the country as a Union of people rather than States (Lincoln’s rhetoric).  Only when the Constitution is once again referred to and characterized as it was intended – a compact (history is complete with its references and justifications, including from all our Founding Fathers, the Constitutional Convention of 1787, from the writings of our two greatest founders Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the State Ratifying Conventions, and even Article VII of the US Constitution itself), can we stand on the firm ground necessary to reassert our position – that the government has no authority to burden the rights recognized and protected in the Bill of Rights and indeed which formed the very basis for our independence from Great Britain. Compacts have implicit rights and remedies reserved to its signing parties, very similar to contract law and even agency law.

You MUST start talking about State Sovereignty Bills that will protect the citizens in every state from any gun control measure that burdens our Second Amendment guarantee.  And I mean, REAL sovereignty bills that include interposition provisions and intent to enforce them. Montana introduced such a bill (or resolution) several years ago which reasserted its sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment and characterizing her position vis-a-vis the other States and the federal government in terms of a social compact where each State, as a party to that compact, has the implicit right (just as a party to a contract) to reassert the original terms of the agreement, to ensure that they are faithfully followed, and to assert her right to sever its bond and withdraw from the Union when that compact has been violated and frustrated.  The Montana bill includes a provision that puts the federal government on notice that if it attempts to do any of a list of things (I believe the bill lists 5 specific things, including GUN CONTROL, limiting the Second Amendment), then it would consider it “a fatal breach of the compact that holds us together in the Union.”

This is the only way you fight back against the designs of our present bloated, self-serving government.  These bold assertions and the strong political posturing of States will put the government on notice and equally will put the US Supreme Court on notice as well. They move forward with gun control measures, they do so at the peril of the stability of the United States.

Petitions don’t amount to a hill of beans. Over 60% of the American people showed their opposition to government-mandated healthcare but the government went ahead with it anyway.

In a politically-incorrect and realistic world, laws are supposed to protect the good people and encourage constrained behavior for the benefit of an ordered and healthy/happy society.  A person should always be free to exercise his or her God-given rights and freedoms UNTIL it burdens another’s free exercise thereof.  Laws are also supposed to punish the bad people and DISCOURAGE bad behavior.  Our government is talking about Gun Control from an incorrect point of view with respect to the purpose of laws.  It seeks to punish good people because of the actions of bad people. In doing so, it will punish good people from doing what God inherently intended people to do – protect themselves, their families, and their property, using whatever means necessary to stop the evil.  The very definition of a criminal or the criminally-inclined is a person who doesn’t obey laws.  As with Prohibition, a prohibition on guns, a registry of guns, a long waiting period on gun ownership, a limitation on gun ownership and ammunition, etc etc will only create a thriving and creative black market which will only make sure that most criminals and super bad guys (and syndicates, such as terrorist organizations) will get lots of them while honest, law-abiding, vulnerable people which characterizes the overwhelming majority of Americans who now take huge risks now every time they venture out of their homes and go into public places, will have none.

I offer these comments as someone who is equally passionate in preventing the federal government from taking our rights away or even burdening them in any way.  It’s always a slippery slope to even give in just a little.

Remember, the Second Amendment is Freedom’s Strongest Guarantee !!

by Diane Rufino, July 19, 2016

This short article is intended to alert the reader to the importance of the Tenth Amendment and hopefully inspire him or her to join the Tenth Amendment Movement and help bring government power back to the States in those areas historically belonging to them and reserved to them under the Tenth Amendment.

About the Tenth Amendment Movement:

The Tenth Amendment has its roots in the intent of each State to retain its full sovereignty and its right of self-determination. The Tenth Amendment comes from Article II of our very first constitution, the Articles of Confederation: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”  So concerned about their right of self-determination and their fear of being consumed by a centralized government under the US Constitution as drafted in 1787 at the Philadelphia Convention, that several crucial states were not willing to ratify it in convention. Virginia and New York would not ratify unless they were given assurances that amendments (for a Bill of Rights) would be added, and indeed they proposed several, including one with the language of the Tenth Amendment. To make their position firmer, they included Resumption Clauses with their Ordinances of Ratification which conditioned their ratification on the explicit right to resume all powers when they desired so. “We, the delegates of the people of Virginia do, in the name and on behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression.”

Supporters of big government (such as Abraham Lincoln, FDR, LBJ, Obama, many Supreme Court justices, and today’s progressives) have actively down-played the Tenth Amendment because it embodies States’ Rights and state power.  In the years leading up to the War of 1861 and most certainly with that war and afterwards, the political elites in government understood that the ordinary checks and balances provided in the Constitution could be co-opted and controlled, but the most critical of all the checks and balances that our Founders provided on the federal government – the tension created by sovereign states (“Dual Sovereignty,” “federalism”… or as I like to refer to it: “Titan versus Titan”) – is the one they could not, especially the Southern States. And so began the movement to destroy the concept of States’ Rights, the great movement of Thomas Jefferson.  Indeed, most Americans believe what the victor of the War of 1861 (ie, the federal government) has indoctrinated, which is that the sovereignty of the federal government, in all cases, trumps the States and that the States are powerless to oppose the government or leave the Union.  The Tenth Amendment Movement knows that this indoctrination can be reversed by education and by the willing re-assertion of the Tenth Amendment by the States.  The Tenth Amendment Movement is about educating folks and especially members and candidates for state legislatures about the compact nature of the Constitution, which essentially says that the States, as willing parties, mutually agreed to the terms of the Constitution and assented to be bound by it (forming the Union, with its “creature” – the federal government – providing certain functions on their behalf), so long as the terms were faithfully adhered.  Compacts implicate the laws of contract and to some degree the law of agency.

Unquestionably, the Constitution was created as a social compact. It had all the requisites of a contract. There were parties: thirteen States, to which were added those that similarly ratified the document in the years after 1781. There was mutuality: each State promised to give up some of its sovereignty in exchange for what the Union promised to deliver – for receiving a “common defense” and some regulation of commerce between the States where it was necessary to ensure free trade. The Constitution was created by the States and ratified by the States, each acting in Convention. It could only be amended by and between the States. And if there was any doubt about the fact that the Constitution was an agreement entered into by and between the States, Article VII states: “The ratification of the conventions of nine States shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the same.”  Every one of our Founding Fathers characterized the Constitution as a compact. It was referred to as such in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, in all the State Ratifying Conventions, Anti-Federalist Papers, the Federalist Papers, in the communications by Thomas Jefferson, in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, written by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (respectively), in Madison’s 1800 Report, in the several famous speeches by John C. Calhoun, and in the Ordinances of Secession.

It is critical that education by the Tenth Amendment Movement emphasize this compact nature of the Constitution and destroy the constitutional myth espoused by Lincoln to subjugate and consolidate forever the States because only then do certain remedies apply – such as nullification, interposition, and even secession itself.

The Constitution’s text and history before the War of 1861 did NOT change as a result of the surrender at Appomattox. Contracts do not textually change by the use of brute force; contracts change ONLY by the agreement of the parties. The Constitution was still a “constitution between the States” after the war as it was before. It remains so now.

Years ago, it would have been very rare to find folks who supported such critical doctrines such as Nullification and Interposition.  Even talk of States’ Rights seemed to be unpopular.  Which state would even think of daring to question the federal government?  But over the years, as the federal government has become exceedingly ambitious, arrogant, tyrannical, corrupt, reckless, and out of touch with the American people, I’ve seen things change. I’ve watched in seminars how voices of skepticism turned to support. Instead of people telling me such remedies were illegitimate, unconstitutional, and dangerous, all of a sudden, they started asking how to approach their legislators about using them against the federal government.  States are looking to nullification and interposition to finally define boundaries.  States are passing nullification measures on a wide range of issues – Obamacare, federal gun control, hemp, medical marijuana.

I hope that if you believe in the importance of this movement, as I believe, you will get involved, help educate others, and help elect like-minded representatives to your State legislature.  Whether individual freedom will be secured for “generations to come and millions yet unborn” will depend upon how the States choose to value the Tenth Amendment.  And the path that each State takes can be determined through the voice of its people.

How can you get involved?  Contact the Tenth Amendment Center, through its website.  If you have a chapter in your state, contact any of its members.  If you don’t have a chapter, either volunteer to start one or help recruit someone with the necessary time and skills to organize and run it. If you belong to an organization, such as the Tea Party or any other community organization, request that speakers be invited to talk about the Tenth Amendment, Nullification, Interposition, Judicial Activism, the Constitution and Original Intent, and other such topics.

Educate, educate, educate. The most important thing you can do is become educated!  You will find educational articles and updates on my blogsite (www.forloveofgodandcountry.com), on the Tenth Amendment Center website (http://tenthamendmentcenter.com/), and on the Abbeville Institute website (http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/)

Finally, follow my blogsite – Tenth Amendment Keepers (https://tenthamendmentkeepers.wordpress.com) and the Facebook site of the same name.

Together, we must Keep the Tenth Amendment relevant.

by Diane Rufino (citing Donald Livingston in his book Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century), July 26, 2016

The purpose of this article is three-fold:  First, I want to be provocative and get readers thinking.  Second, I wish to educate the reader on our founding principles. And third, I hope to encourage the reader to read the book Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century, written in part and edited by Donald Livingston, founder and president of the Abbeville Institute.  I enjoyed the book immensely and wanted very much to help get the word out.

I think the best way to encourage one to read the book Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century is to hook him or her using one of the more thought-provoking themes of the book. And so, this article is composed in great part using selected portions from one of the chapters in that book which I found most interesting – “American Republicanism,” authored by Livingston), with a discussion of nullification, interposition, secession, and federalism by myself.  Credit, of course, goes first and foremost to Professor Livingston.

Article IV of the US Constitution guarantees to every State in the Union “a Republican form of government.”  It is known as the “Guarantee Clause.”  It has not been widely interpreted, but constitutional scholars think it ensures that each State be run as a representative democracy or a dictatorship, preventing any initiative to change a State constitution to provide such.  The Supreme Court has essentially acknowledged that it doesn’t have the slightest idea what it means, has been reluctant to specify exactly what a “republican form of government” means and has left the clause devoid of meaning.  Historically, however, republics have had distinct characteristics, namely that its citizens make the laws they are to live under, that there is a Rule of Law, and that the republic itself be relatively small with respect to population and territory, to ensure that representation is meaningful.

The American system of 1789 was not a republic. It was a federation of republics – each state itself a republic – but the Union itself was not a republic. “A federation of republics is not itself a republic, any more than a federation of country clubs is not in and of itself a country club.” Under the Constitution of 1787, the central government could rule over individuals but only under the powers delegated to it by the sovereign States. All other powers of sovereignty belong to the States, expressly reserved through the Tenth Amendment, by the natural law of sovereignty, and contractually by force of the compact theory characterizing the Constitution. Given this framework, the final safeguard for a truly republican form of government for the people in America was, and could only be, some form of lawful resistance to the concentration of coercion in the federal government, which includes state interposition, nullification, or secession. These remedies are included in the “reserved powers” belonging to the States.

Nullification is a legal theory that holds that a State has the right to nullify, or invalidate, any federal law which that State has deemed unconstitutional. If the authority for the federal government only comes from the highly-contested and debated powers that the States agreed to delegate from their reservoir of sovereign powers, as listed in the Constitution, any federal law, policy, action, or court decision that exceeds such grants of power is “null and void” and lacks enforcement power. Since the federal government will always seek to support and enforce its laws and actions, it must be the States, as the parties to the Constitution and the ones which suffer the usurpation of powers with each unconstitutional action, which must rightfully declare “unconstitutionality” and prevent them from being enforced on a free people. Because the right of nullification is not prohibited by the Constitution (nor is it even addressed), it is reserved by the States under the Tenth Amendment.

Interposition is another claimed right belonging to the States. Interposition is the right of a State to oppose actions of the federal government that the state deems unconstitutional by in order to prevent their enforcement.  The very definition of a tyrannical government is one that imposes unconstitutional actions on its citizens. Tyranny is arbitrary rule. Interposition is the actual action, whether legislative or otherwise, to prevent an unconstitutional federal law or action from being enforced on its people. The most effective remedy against unconstitutional federal action, as emphasized by both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, is nullification together with interposition. Interposition finds its roots in the Supremacy Clause.  While the Constitution and the laws made in pursuance are considered the supreme law of the land, laws (and other actions) not grounded in rightful or legitimate Constitutional powers are not supreme and the States are well within their powers to prevent such usurpation of government power belonging to their sphere of authority.

Secession, like nullification and interposition, is not prohibited by the Constitution (or even addressed), and hence, is a reserved right of the States.

Nullification and interposition were invoked in 1798 by Kentucky and Virginia to identify the Alien & Sedition Acts as unconstitutional and to prevent citizens of those states from being imprisoned essentially for their exercise of free speech and press. Secession was threated in 1815 by Massachusetts after it characterized Jefferson’s embargo against Great Britain and his Louisiana Purchase and then Madison’s War of 1812 as a history of abuses against the North, with an intent to further the interests of the South. All three States’ Rights’ remedies were regularly invoked in the antebellum period, in every section of the Union, to assert State sovereignty and to constrain the central government. As of 1860, the central government was out of debt and imposed no inland taxes. It existed simply off a tariff on imports and land sales. The Supreme Court was tightly constrained in its exercise of judicial review. It challenged the constitutionality of acts of Congress only twice – in Marbury v. Madison (the Judiciary Act of 1789) and the Dred Scott decision (the right of a slave to challenge his status in a non-slave state when brought there by his master). States and localities in almost all States in the North refused to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act (nullification), either by statue or by civil acts of disobedience, and most strikingly, the Wisconsin legislature and the State Supreme Court in 1854 and 1859 outright challenged the constitutionality of the Act (citing coercion of the states and state officials). South Carolina nullified the Tariff of 1828, citing the improper nature of the tariff, changing it from an ordinary tariff (for revenue collection for the government) to a protectionist tariff (to provide direct funding of “improvements” for the North, as well as other enormous benefits), and claiming it was nothing more than a federal scheme to directly enrich the North at the great expense of the South.

Today, it is taught and it is believed that the “checks and balances” in the American system are only those between the president, Congress, and the Supreme Court. We know about the veto procedure, the ratification process for treaties, appointments (including federal court justices) and judicial review (this last check is not in the constitution actually but a creature of the Supreme Court itself!)  The purpose of our Separation of Powers and our series of checks and balances is to prevent the consolidation of power in any one branch of government and any one group of representatives.  But only a very limited number of Americans understand and appreciate that the greatest check on the consolidation of power comes from the unique design feature of our government established by the States and our Founding Fathers in the conventions and debates creating the Constitution – and that is Federalism.  Federalism is idea that real power is shared by the members of the “federation,” which are the States, with the creature they created (the federal government), which is the reservoir of powers expressly delegated to it by the US Constitution.  Federalism is a “sharing” or “division” of power among sovereigns in order to prevent concentration and tyranny.  The idea is that the government, as a sovereign with very limited and expressly delegated powers, and the States, as sovereigns retaining all other powers of government, will jealously guard their sphere of power and will watch, ever-so-vigilantly, the actions of one another.  What more effective check on government power could there be !!  Sovereign versus sovereign, which is what the term “dual sovereignty” refers to.  Or, as I like to refer to this design feature: “Titan versus Titan” (a reference to Greek mythology).  Alexander Hamilton, in a speech to the New York Ratifying Convention on June 17, 1788, explained it this way: “This balance between the National and State governments ought to be dwelt on with peculiar attention, as it is of the utmost importance. It forms a double security to the people. If one encroaches on their rights they will find a powerful protection in the other. Indeed, they will both be prevented from overpassing their constitutional limits by a certain rivalship, which will ever subsist between them.”

Sadly, this most effective check on consolidation of power in DC has been effectively eroded – mainly at the hands of the US Supreme Court.  The checks from the States on central authority in the form of nullification, interposition, and secession have now been ruled out.  And this is just another way of saying that the federal government can define the limits of its own powers. And that is what the American colonists and ratifiers of the Constitution drafted in Philadelphia in 1787 meant by “absolute monarchy.”

Ask yourself this:  Which branch of government ruled out the essential and natural remedies of nullification, interposition, and secession?  The answer is the US Supreme Court, supporting the ambitious plans of the federal government and improperly relying on Marbury v. Madison (1803) and the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution for authority. For a State to treat its decisions with less than full support would bring the full resources of the federal government into its backyard. It’s happened before. Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Rather than interpreting the Constitution, which pretty much is its sole task, the Supreme Court has redefined a new political and government system, one that is quite different from the one entrusted to us by our framers and founders.

When authority taken by the federal government falls outside of the enumerated powers, it makes no sense to ask the federal government to rule on whether the federal government has the power or not. The States, the ones which debated and ratified the Constitution for THEIR benefit, have no umpire on the bench.  As historian Tom Woods points out, if the federal government is allowed to hold a monopoly on determining the extent of its own powers, we have no right to be surprised when it keeps discovering new ones.

So, it is no surprise that the Supreme Court consistently and steadily handed down decision after decision to strip the States’ of their natural remedies against the Titan seeking to subjugate them – the federal government. Again, the Supreme Court is itself a branch of the very government that seeks to benefit from the consolidation of power it wants by weakening the States.  What better way to get the States to calm down and get in line?

Thomas Jefferson was skeptical of the federal judiciary and warned that they had the greatest potential to undermine republican government. In 1823, he wrote: “At the establishment of our Constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions nevertheless become law by precedent, sapping by little and little the foundations of the Constitution and working its change by construction before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life if secured against all liability to account.”

If you believe, as most Americans seem to believe (because of government indoctrination), that States no longer have the rights of nullification, interposition, and secession because of the action of one man, a virtual dictator, Abraham Lincoln, then you must reconcile the fact that no State any longer enjoys a republican form of government, as guaranteed in Article IV. That is, they no longer enjoy a republican form of government under any historical understanding of what such a government is nor under the vision of our founders. That notion has now decayed into a legal fiction.

But if the States are not republics, what are they?  Donald Livingston argues that the answer was given by Alexis de Tocqueville in his assessment of the French Revolution. According to de Tocqueville, the French revolution was intended to overturn the monarchy and return power to the people by creating a republic but in reality, it fundamentally changed nothing. The coercive government of the monarchy was simply replaced by a different type of coercive government.  The monopoly over government and land created by Kings (Divine Right of Kings) is a doctrine that embodies two bodies of the king. This duality is symbolized by this famous phrase: “The King is dead! Long live the King!” The first body of the king was the flesh and blood; the mortal body.  The second body was the monopoly, or the artificial corporation, established by birth-right and familial ties. Both bodies are coercive in nature since they are not “of the people” and can never truly represent them. When de Tocqueville said that the French Revolution fundamentally changed nothing, he meant that all that it did was kill the first body of the king. It left the second body of the king intact, merely changing its name from the “Crown” to the “Republic.” The revolution merely replaced the person of the king with a fictitious “nation-person.” In other words, what was created after the French Revolution was an absolute monarchy without the monarch; a regime that had all the major defects of a monarchy but none of the benefits. The post-French Revolution era of “republics” would increase government centralization beyond the wildest dream of any monarch. The German economist, Hans Hoppe, estimates that before the mid-nineteenth century, monarchs, as bad as they might have been, were never able to extract more than 5-8 percent of the gross national product (GNP) from the people, whereas “republics” have been able to exploit over 60 percent.

In his war to prevent Southern independence, Lincoln and the perversely-named “Republican” Party destroyed the two American institutions that had made true republicanism possible in a region on our continental scale – State nullification and secession. Without these rights, there can be no practical check to centralization and oppression of government, and hence, no practical way to ensure that the People of the several States are guaranteed a republican form of government.

Is it possible to have an exceedingly large republic, such as the size of our current-day United States?  British philosopher David Hume once considered the question of a large republic. He proposed the first model of a large republic in his essay “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,” which was published in 1792.  Hume’s model did not physically seek to divide territory up physically into individual sovereigns but rather to decentralize government power so as to preserve the human scale demanded of republican self-government. The question is whether this can realistically be done.

Hume agrees with the republican tradition that “a small commonwealth is the happiest government in the world within itself.” But Hume’s model of a large republic, in contrast to the historically small republic, would be to order the large republic in such a way as to have all the advantages of a little republic. The question is whether Hume’s model is translatable to the real world: Can the size of a republic be expanded without destroying those values unique to republican government (self-government and the rule of law) that require a human scale.

Hume’s idea of a large republic is something of the size of Great Britain or France. (Remember his essay was written in 1792!)  As a comparison, Great Britain is approximately equivalent in size to Wyoming and France is approximately equivalent in size to Texas. In Hume’s model, the republic is divided into 100 small republics, but with a national capital. Each of these small republics is then divided into 100 parishes. The members of each parish meet annually to elect 1 representative. This yields 100 representatives in each small republic’s legislature. The legislature selects from among its members 10 magistrates to exercise the executive and judicial functions of the republic and 1 senator to represent the republic in the national capital. That yields 100 senators, from among which 10 are chosen to serve as the national executive and judiciary.

Laws would be proposed by the national senate and passed down to the provincial republics or ratification. Each republic has one vote regardless of population, and the majority rules. To free the provincial legislature from having to vote on every trivial law, a bill can be sent instead to the ten provincial magistrates in each republic for ratification.

How does Hume’s large republic compare to the “highly-centralized regime” that the United States has become today?  Hume’s republic has 100 senators in the national capital representing the individual States, as we do. But the legislative body representing the nation of individuals is located in the several capitals of the provincial republics. This provides three essential advantages.  First, it provides a better and more republican ratio of representation to population. Hume’s republic is the size of Britain, which in his time had some 9 million people; yet his regionally dispersed legislature jointly yields 10,000 representatives.  [100 x 100].  By contrast, the United States has 305 million people, which is 34 times as many inhabitants. Its representative body contains not 10,000 representatives but only 435 representatives – a number that Congress capped by law in 1911.  Hume’s large republic provides a ratio of 1 representative for every 900 people, and so it is of a republican scale.  This is very important !!  The United States’ system provides 1 representative for every 700,000 people, which is not even remotely within a republican scale.

And if you are thinking that this unrepublican character of the United States can be remedied by abolishing the law setting the cap at 435 and increasing the number of representatives in the US House, you will need to understand that judging by the size of legislatures around the world, 435 is just about the right size for a lawmaking body. Everything in nature has a proper size for optimum functionality. A cell can only grow to a certain size (a certain volume-to-cell-surface ratio) so that it can absorb nutrients, eliminate waste, and respire most efficiently. A jury of 12 is perfectly suited to determine the facts of a case; a jury of 120 would be dysfunctional.  When the first US Congress met in New York in 1789, there were 65 representatives. There was 1 representative for every 60,000 people. James Madison thought that was an inadequate ratio to adequately represent the people in a republic. When the number of representatives was capped at 435 in 1911, the population in the United States was 93,863,000. That means that there was 1 representative for every 215,777 inhabitants. If we were to use the same ratio that was used in 1789 – 1: 60,000 – there would be over 5,000 members in the House of Representatives. This would be impossibly large for a lawmaking body. Size does matter.

So, if the number of representatives in Washington DC cannot be increased as the population increases, then we have clearly reached the point where talk of republican self-government is utterly meaningless.  We are merely a republican in name only. In the not too distant future, the population of the United States will reach 435 million. This would yield one representative for every million persons.  Who could honestly believe a regime under this system could be described as a republic?

The point is that a country can literally become too large for self-government.  It becomes unresponsive to the people because its representatives cannot possibly represent the interests of all its constituents.

If the United States has indeed reached the point of political obesity, then the only remedy would be to downsize. The United States will need to be downsized either through peaceful secession movements or through a division into a number of federative units forming a voluntary commonwealth of American federations – an idea that Thomas Jefferson was fond of.

For the moment, let’s put peaceful secession aside (which would divide the Union into distinct territorial jurisdictions or would create individual, independent sovereigns).  Suppose that the United States adopts such a model as Hume’s large republic. This would require abolishing the House of Representatives in Washington DC (Yay!) and transforming the State legislatures into a joint national legislature. The Senate would propose legislation to be ratified by a majority of the States, each State having one vote.

Consider trying to enact the unpopular legislation passed in 2009 and then 2010 under such a model. Of course, I’m referring to the Bailout bills and the stimulus packages of 2009 and then the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (or grossly referred to simply as the “Affordable Care Act’; or aptly named “Obamacare”) of 2010. A strong majority of Americans opposed the bailouts for the monster banks whose corrupt and inept policies caused the financial meltdown in 2009, the economic stimulus packages that they knew wouldn’t work, and Barack Obama’s healthcare plan of some two thousand pages, rushed through after secret meetings and secret deals and with publicly-acknowledged privileges given to some states and not others, and admissions by its leading supporters (Democrats) that they hadn’t even read it.  To this should be added that many believe that Congress has no constitutional authority to bailout businesses, let alone arbitrarily choosing which ones to provide federal aid, nor to impose a national healthcare plan, regardless whether it is good or not and whether or not it would help certain citizens out. Now, had these bills been sent down to the State legislatures for debate and ratification, as required by Hume’s large republic model, their defeat would have been so certain that they probably would never have even been proposed in the first place.

The second advantage presented by Hume’s model is that by dispersing the national legislature among the provincial republics (the smaller republics), he has eliminated the corruption that inevitably comes from putting the House of Representatives and the Senate in the same place. The number of representatives in Washington is 435 in the House, and 100 in the Senate– for a grand total of 535 lawmakers. A majority of this number is only 269. This small number rules 305 million people. And the majority can be even less, since both houses can lawfully operate, and they often do, with a mere quorum. A quorum majority of both houses of Congress is only 135 !!

Consider also that the US Supreme Court, centered in DC, a branch of the federal government, with justices who are appointed according to political and ideological lines – and not for proven understanding and adherence to the Constitution – has usurped the traditional “police powers” of the States, which it exercises for the health, safety (including law enforcement), welfare, education, religion, and morality of its citizens. The police powers exercised by each individual State for the benefit of its own people is the very essence of republican life. Nine unelected Supreme Court justices with life tenure – by only a vote of 5-to-4 – make major social policy for 305 million people. Political issues that are reserved to the States, such as abortion, marriage, and voter integrity laws, have been taken out of the policy arena and magically transformed into “constitutional rights.” This means, in effect, that the Court can rewrite the Constitution at will, entirely by-passing the process specifically provided for in Article V (ratification of any alteration/amendment of the Constitution by a ratification by three-fourths of the States).  Again, to think that five members of a high court can usurp lawmaking authority from the legislature (popularly-elected), can usurp powers from the States, and can transform the meaning and intent of the Constitution from the bench rather than the lawful process specifically put in place for the People themselves to define the limits of their government and we are still a republic is ludicrous.

Dispersing the legislatures among provinces would not necessarily get rid of government corruption, which is one of the biggest problems with a consolidated government. However, it would not exist on the same scale and of the same intensity that we see in DC today. Hume’s national legislature sits jointly in the 100 provincial capitals.  That means that a lobbying interest must deploy a much greater number of lobbyists and over greater distances. In addition, it would be much more difficult for representatives to coordinate with each other to buy and sell votes, as is routinely done in Congress today. With such a large republic, representatives would be more cautious and frugal in spending taxpayer money. After all, the 10,000 dispersed representatives who live in the same neighborhood with their constituents would have to look them in the eye and would have to answer to them.

Third, Hume provides a number of checks to prevent a faction from dominating the whole. If the senate rejects a proposed law, only 10 senators out of 100 are needed to veto that decision and forward the bill to the republics for consideration. Laws thought to be trivial can be sent from the senate to the ten magistrates of the republic for ratification instead of calling on the whole legislature. But only 5 out of 100 provincial representatives are needed to veto this and call for a vote of their legislature. Each (small) republic can veto legislation of another republic and force a vote on the matter by all the republics.

Should the United States be divided up into provincial republics – into a “federation of republics” – in order to provide a true republican form of government to its people?  Thomas Jefferson thought so.  George Kennan, esteemed historian and American diplomat (crafted the US policy of containment with respect to the Soviet Union) also thought so. In his autobiography, Around the Cragged Hill, Kennan argued that the United States has become simply too large for the purposes of self-government. As he argued, the central government can rule 305 million people only by imposing one-size-fits-all rules that necessarily result in a “diminished sensitivity of its laws and regulations to the particular needs, traditions, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and the like of individual localities and communities.”  Kennan passed away in 2005.  That the lives, property, income, and fortunes of 305 million Americans should be the playthings of an oligarchy in Washington that can act by a majority in Congress of only 269 (and 135 if acting by a quorum) and that the essence of republican life – religion, morals, education, marriage, voting rights, law enforcement, and social welfare – should be decided by nine unelected Supreme Court justices is something no free, liberty-minded people should tolerate.

Of course, there is the other option – secession and the formation of individual republics, not held together in federation form. It is said that secession should and must be ruled out because it causes war and it will necessarily involve bloodshed.  But that is not necessarily true. Of course it will depend on the ambitions of the administration in Washington DC, in particular, the president.  We would hope that we should never again suffer the likes of another Abraham Lincoln. But there are many examples of states that have seceded peacefully, including a number of Baltic states from the former Soviet Union. Norway peacefully seceded from Sweden in 1905 and Singapore did so from the Malaysian federation in 1965.  Eventually, if things don’t change and freedom’s flame is close to being extinguished, secession may be the remedy to save the American experiment. Additionally, it may be the only way to save the US Constitution – by putting it in the hands of a people who will take care of it and be much more vigilante with its limited powers and its checks and balances than Americans have been.  When 11 Southern States seceded from the Union in 1860-61 and formed the Confederate States of the American, they, as a Union, established a new constitution. This would be the third constitution that Americans made for themselves, and in most respects, it was far superior to the one of 1787 – they backed out of.  It included several provisions which would have made it much more difficult for the central government to concentrate and usurp power. Had Lincoln respected the States’ right of self-determination (as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence), we would have had the unique opportunity to compare, side-by-side, how each Union of States (North or South) fared under their constitutions.  The point is that secession gave the People (acting in State conventions) the opportunity to correct the defects in the Constitution that caused them to be oppressed by government. The question will be: when that time comes (and maybe it is already here), will we have the Will to Secede!!  Already, between 19-34% of Americans (ranked by State), now believe we would be better if States peacefully left the Union.

Donald Livingston closes his discussion of “American Republicanism” with this summary: “When a healthy cell grows too large, it divides into two cells. It is the cancerous cell that no longer knows how to stop growing. That artificial corporation, created by the individual States over two centuries ago, called the “United States” has, over time, metastasized into a cancerous growth on a federation of continental scale, sucking republican vitality out of States and local communities. The natural chemotherapy for this peculiar condition is and can only be some revived form of State interposition, nullification, or secession. If these are rejected out of hand as heresies (as our nationalist historians have taught since the late nineteenth century), then we can no longer, in good faith, describe ourselves as enjoying a republican style of government.

Map showing American regions and percentage in each willing to peacefully secede from the United States.

Again, I encourage everyone to read the entire book – Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century.  Aside from Donald Livingston, accomplished authors and academics Kent Masterson Brown, Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo, Dr. Marshall DeRosa, Yuri Maltsev, and Rob Williams also contributed chapters.

References:

Donald Livingston, ed., Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century, Pelican Publishing Company, 2013.

Poll:  One in Four of Americans Want Their State to Secede, but Why?  –   http://blogs.reuters.com/jamesrgaines/2014/09/19/one-in-four-americans-want-their-state-to-secede-from-the-u-s-but-why/

Poll: A Quarter of Americans Want Their State to Secede –   http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/poll-seccession

Poll:  One in Four of Americans Want Their State to Secede –   http://dailycaller.com/2014/09/19/poll-one-in-four-americans-want-their-state-to-secede/

by Diane Rufino, Aug. 4, 2016

This week, I re-read a fabulously detailed biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, by Eric Metaxas. The book is titled BONHOEFFER. And I recommend it highly.

We talk about our precious rights and our great blessing to be living in a free country. But those of us who have enjoyed brighter, freer days often complain and warn others about the “changes” taking place in our country today. We are often laughed at and criticized as being alarmist and radical. We’re obviously not the ones who the new generation of Americans want to listen to. And so they write us off and demonize us and call us names. We highlight the encroaching progressive government mentality and its dangerous notion that individual rights and liberties must be reigned in or even surrendered so that it can best govern for the whole of society. Government knows best, our young generation believes. They naively believe it has their beat intentions in mind. When we warn of the parade of horribles that can happen once we allow the government to go down that road, they seem to prefer the temporary sense of security over the long-term security of freedom. When we ask them how will they know when their essential rights are violated by government, they have no answer. That’s because they haven’t lived in freer times, they don’t know our history, they don’t read the right stuff, and they haven’t bothered to care about the countries whose people have lost their freedom and who have been subjugated and even sacrificed at the alter of political expedience. This book, “Bonhoeffer,” details the rise of the Third Reich and its reign of terror over the German people.

If people think that they can identify evil and stop it in plenty of time before it can ever take hold in this country, they may want to have a conversation with any elderly person who lived in Europe during World War II.  I would suspect that the ordinary German citizen in January 1933 would have felt he had nothing to fear from his government. After all, the government was defined and limited by a written constitution – the Weimar Constitution. The constitution established a democratic parliamentary republic governed by a president and parliament and included, among other provisions:

• Section 1, which established the German Reich (“reich” meaning “regime” or “empire”) as a republic whose power derived from the people (“The power of the state emanates from the people”), and which established a system of dual sovereignty (“With the exceptions of the subjects for which the Reich government has exclusive jurisdiction, the German states can govern their respective territories as they see fit”)
• Section II, which provided that the national parliament (Reichstag) would be composed of representatives elected by the German people by an equal and secret ballot open to all Germans aged 20 or older and that elections would be governed by proportional representation principles.
• “The rights of the individual are inviolable. Individual liberties may be limited or deprived only on the basis of law”
• “Censorship is prohibited”

In Germany, the stage would be set for a demagogue to emerge at the close of World War I. The victorious Allied Powers split up the Central Powers, but reserved the harshest of punishments for Germany, which they considered to be the principal instigator. The Treaty of Versailles (1919) forced Germany to concede territories to neighboring countries, established Danzig (with its large ethnically German population; today called Gdansk), demanded the demilitarization and occupation of the Rhineland, prohibited the build-up of an army and an air force, and established special status for the Saarland (under French control). But the most humiliating portion of the treaty for Germany was the “War Guilt Clause,” which forced the German nation to accept complete responsibility for initiating World War I. As such Germany was liable for all material damages, and France, for one, insisted on imposing enormous reparation payments. In fact, when Germany fell into economic hardship and couldn’t make the payments, France occupied the Rhineland, a highly industrialized region. The great loss of life combined with the extremely harsh and humiliating sanctions left Germany bitter.

Amidst political turmoil and internal stability from the Communists, Socialists (Social Democrats), Union workers, and German nationalists, Hitler would find his voice and perfect his rhetoric. On January 30, 1933, after the Nazi party achieved political gain, Germany President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor. It was the beginning of the Third Reich. Immediately, Hitler hatched a scheme to consolidate his power while vilifying his political enemies. Only one month after he took office, he had the Reichstag (German Congress) set on fire and then he blamed it on the Communists. He demanded “emergency” powers to “deal with the threat from the communists.” And in just a few weeks, in March, the Reichstag gave him what he wanted. The Enabling Act of 1933 (“Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich”) was passed which amended the German constitution and which allowed Hitler and his cabinet (you know, all the war criminals convicted at the Nuremberg Trials) to pass legislation without the Reichstag and to suspend the civil liberties of the German people. The next month, in April, Hitler would pass the first of almost 400 anti-semitic decrees to target Jews and segregate them out of the Aryan population and out of public life. The first decree forbid Jews from participating in civil service and limited the number of Jewish students in schools and universities. (By 1935, the decrees would begin to indicate Hitler’s ultimate plan for the Jews).

Hitler, of course, ruled by fear and intimidation. He created the SS (which were originally his bodyguards but then became his his terror organization) and the SA (the storm troopers, or “brown-shirts”) which spied on citizens, kept the people in line, and rooted out political dissidents. Concentration camps were set up immediately, first for political prisoners and then, of course, for the undesirables.

By the end of 1933, Hitler co-opted the Church, made it an arm of the State, and infused it with policies directed from Hitler himself. There was already talk of euthanasia for the mental defects and disabled, which Hitler termed “useless eaters.” Within a year or so, the SA would come for them and they would be killed. By the end of 1934 and especially 1935 (the Nuremberg Laws), Hitler began to focus on ethnic cleansing “for the protection of German blood and German honor and to safeguard the future of the German nation.” At first the scheme focused on intimidation, expulsion, confiscation of wealth and property, and encouragement to emigrate (with many countries not willing in accepting them). When World War II began in 1939, Hitler had the Jews rounded up and located in ghettos. By 1941, Hitler’s right-hand man Reinhard Heydrich, an SS official (second only to Himmler), was told to “come up with a new plan for the removal of the Jews.” Heydrich, the man known as the architect of the Holocaust, came up with the “Final Solution.” Within a span of only 6-7 years, an ambitious sick-minded leader was able to dupe a nation of smart people, defy a nation’s constitution, consolidate power, establish a regime of fear and intimidation, and torture and kill 11 million people.

While the book gives an excellent account of the rise of the Third Reich and the details of how Hitler was able to seduce and then terrorize the German people, the main focus is on the man, the personality, the mind, and the teachings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was an outspoken pastor and a key figure in the resistance to Hitler and his Nazi regime.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, because of his understanding of the Gospel, came to ask two questions: (1) What is the “Church”? That is, what is its role? And (2) How does one earn grace? That is, how does a Christian earn the grace of God – the favor of God, as manifested in the the bestowal of blessings and then eternal life? To the first question, he reasoned that the Church, first and foremost must remain true to the Word of God, as told through the Holy Spirit. To the second question, Bonhoeffer compared “cheap grace” and “costly grace.” As he explained: “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘Ye were bought at a price’, and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”

Answering the questions as he did would set Bonhoeffer on a course that would defy the mustached ruler himself, Adolf Hitler, and would define him as a heroic figure and as a martyr. He initiated the movement (1933-1934) to oppose Hitler’s efforts to nazify the German Protestant Church. He encouraged other pastors to break from the church and to establish the Confessing Church (confesses the word of God), which was free from state control and free from the “Aryan Paragraph” (anti-semitic decrees). Then, believing it was his duty (“costly grace”) as a Christian, he willingly took part in the plot to assassinate Hitler. In the face of evil, knowing what Hitler had in mind for the Jews, he believed his faith required him to act. “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” For his part in the assassination attempt, he was sent to a military prison, then transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp, and then finally to the Flossenbürg concentration camp. On the morning of April 9, 1945, he was led out to the court yard where he was hung along with other conspirators. Two weeks later, the camp would be liberated by US forces and within the month, Germany would surrender to the Allies.

READ THIS BOOK!

by Diane Rufino

Fifteen years ago, the United States suffered the horror of savage attacks on American civilians and on government officials working at the Pentagon.  Kevin Cosgrove, a business executive trapped on the 105th floor of the South Tower anguished just moments before it collapsed: “We’re young men; we’re not ready to die.”  

Today, we remember that 3000 men and women were not ready to die. Some were murdered, some took their own lives because the alternative horror facing them was far worse, and some willingly laid down their lives. 

by  Diane Rufino, September 11, 2016

Today we remember the terror and the horror that struck NYC, the Pentagon, and the innocent souls on board the doomed planes and in the buildings. 9/11 will always be the day the defines evil incarnate – it will remind me of the worst in humans and remind me of what the Devil wants of us and can do to us. It will also be the day that reminds me of a person’s capacity for service, compassion, duty, loyalty, and brotherly love. Christian love – the love that recognizes the suffering and helplessness in others and the compulsion to sacrifice of oneself to help. So many innocent souls were lost – brutally murdered, tortured in mind and body. And so many ran to their rescue, knowing they themselves might not make it.

by Diane Rufino, October 8, 2016

The liberal media makes me sick. Eleven years ago, Donald Trump engaged in some locker room talk about women. Eleven years ago!! And all the liberal media could talk about last night and today is about how unqualified this makes him to serve as president and he should bow out of the race. Is this a bunch of bullshit or what? By what perceived authority does it dare make this suggestion? How does it have the audacity to pass judgement on Trump when it has allowed every scandal, every allegation, and every accusation roll off of Hillary Clinton as if she was made of teflon? The dishonest liberal media is not only off its rocker but it has clearly overstepped its bounds. The roots of the corruption in government are grounded in the dishonest media.

Sixteen years ago, Hillary Clinton called women who had sexually assaulted by her husband, been forced to make acquaintance with his little willy, and been demeaned by his unwanted advances, kisses, touches, etc all kinds of horrible names — trailer trash, bimbos, looney tunes, and more. She threatened, smeared, and targeted all the women who came forward to bolster the accusation of Paula Jones that her husband had a tendency to sexually harass and violate women. Bill Clinton – President Clinton – treated woman as mere sex objects. These women who came forward had been harmed, demeaned, intimidated by a man and then again by a woman – a woman with great political and government power. Linda Tripp, a woman who came forward with evidence to support Monica Lewinsky’s involvement with President Clinton was hit especially hard. She was ridiculed so badly by Bill and Hillary as being an unattractive woman that her face became a laughing stock by the media. It was deplorable how she was treated and how badly she suffered for coming forward. She ended up going under the knife to change her appearance.

Where is the liberal media on this? I mean, eleven years isn’t much different from sixteen years. Unlike Donald Trump, Hillary’s conduct sunk so much deeper after those years rescuing her husband from the likes of “bimbos.” Her ethics, morality, integrity, trustworthiness, candor, duty to country, her finances, her ability to follow the laws duly enacted by the government, and her ability to discern right from wrong have eroded year after year until she has become what she is today — a serial liar, a compulsive opportunist, and a career criminal who has been lucky enough to elude prosecution only because of her political connections.

Donald Trump should turn the tables on the liberal media. He should insist that the media cease its reporting until after the election because of its serious violations of journalistic integrity and its abuse of the First Amendment protections it is afforded. The liberal media is sickening. It continues to PRETEND it is the custodian of “serious journalism” while it constantly erodes any modicum of standards that the people once had believed it held themselves to. The days of honest and respectful journalism are gone. The important role the media once held in society – to investigate and report the news in an even-handed and unbiased fashion in order that the American people can use their own minds to form an opinion and a position – is gone. Now, the liberal media merely spews the poison from the progressive elites in government and from the Democratic party. It so badly wants to go from being an outlet of information to the voice of indoctrination. There once was a time when it was assumed that the American people had the good sense to think for themselves. Today’s liberal media thinks otherwise. It knows that most Americans don’t want to think for themselves, at this point are incapable of it, and are content enough just to hear talking points.

The day Americans want to think for themselves… the day they want a better existence than they’ve been used to these past several years… the day they want to live a dignified and honorable life by working an honest job to support themselves and raise their families… the day they believe that government has no rightful position or right to dictate and mandate the details of their lives, their businesses, and their property…. and the day they put personal interests aside for the greater good of the country and the future of their children in order that they can live safe, prosperous, and without the unfair inheritance of a national debt they didn’t help create will be the day that the United States begins to heal itself and gets back on the path of good health and prosperity.

And so the issue isn’t the locker-room antics of a hormonal man eleven years earlier. The greater issue is the compulsive and relentless bias of the liberal media who cares more about a political agenda than the well-being of the American people. If only the media did, in fact, cease its indoctrination and its relentless shenanigans to assure a Crooked Hillary victory on election day, every voter might actually “snap out of” the spell that they’ve been under and once and for all take stock of their lives, their status, their hopes, their unrealized dreams, and their sufferings and dare to look at this presidential election for what it is REALLY all about – about the chance to change course in the United States and return the country to the people. It is the first chance in a very very long time when the power to exercise our God-given rights to live secure and free can be wrangled from government. It is NOT about the flaws of a very mortal man.

My fellow Americans, USE YOUR HEADS. Love your country. Love your children. They both deserve better than Hillary Clinton. We should all be afraid of her designs for government, the back-door promises she has made donors to her campaign (including to the Clinton Foundation), her appointments to the Supreme Court, and her control over our lives and destiny. She may have avoided consequences of her actions but as president she’ll make sure that we don’t.

Diane Rufino