Free Republic

Democracy stinks. History is littered with short-live democracies that cratered between the bloodlettings of factions going at each other’s throats. Our Framers were well aware of their shortcomings from the lessons of history and their personal experiences since 1776. Popular election, the democratic element in the Framers’ Constitution, was limited to the House of Representatives. This satisfied the Declaration’s maxim that consent of the governed serves as the just basis of government. In Article II, the sovereign people assigned their Natural Right to elect their chief executive to another body, their state legislatures. As discussed in a recent blog post...

Judging from the outcome of recent federal court cases involving Voter ID, one could be forgiven for believing two things. First, there is an unqualified right to vote. Second, the more voting by more people on more matters, the better. Voting itself would appear to be an unalienable right. Ever expanding democracy has long been the Progressive’s means to their fuzzy, yet dangerous social justice ends. Our national experience has shown that the explosion of the democratic element since the direct election of senators, voting by women, repeal of Jim Crow, abolition of poll taxes, lowering the voting age to...

It’s real simple. For months the House Judiciary Committee has been gathering what amounts to an official list of applying states for an Article V Convention call. As of August 20, 2016, the committee’s official list shows 29 applying states. As we explain elsewhere so-called rescissions do not count as no provision in the Constitution allows states to rescind applications. Further, federal law prohibits removal of federal records by federal officials. Therefore the committee has already collected sufficient applications to cause a convention call. Indeed the full public record of state applications shows the states have submitted sufficient applications to...

More than sixty state legislators representing thirty states recently concluded three years of work on suggested rules for an Article V convention, which can be viewed at the Assembly of State Legislatures (ASL) website. Meeting at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, the participating state lawmakers debated, amended and voted to approve a draft that addresses all facets of the rules needed to hold a state-led convention for proposing amendments to the U.S. Constitution. These men and women are to be congratulated for their efforts. If accepted and actually followed by the convention, the rules will provide an orderly process...

The American republic is on its knees. No methodical and orderly process like that in Article V can keep up with the pace of unconstitutional executive branch and scotus derived amendments to the Constitution. What is to be done? Apply for a Convention of States for one purpose? Events are moving far too fast to be limited by artificial bounds imposed on Article V that serve to delay a state convention. While Washington disregards the supreme law of the land, we are expected to follow it to the letter. How many decades must go by before the sovereign people respond...

As outlined in posts here and here, the electoral system of Article II was designed to produce presidents of the George Washington caliber, and not that of Barack Obama and possibly Hillary Clinton. The Framers strove to make the president’s fidelity to the Constitution coincident with his personal interest: enduring fame. The men to become the Framers’ president had already made their mark in their professions, communities and states. All that remained was to earn the respect and admiration of the entire nation and . . . history. The Framers’ president was above faction. Not only did he not owe...

The trend toward reform of western governing systems through federalism may be catching on. In view of the oh-so-close decision by Scotland in 2014 to remain in the United Kingdom (UK), and last month’s decision by England to exit the European Union, a constitutional reform movement in England hopes to head off possible dissolution of the UK! The Constitution Reform Group (CRG) is a committee initiated by academics and politicians whose immediate purpose is to blunt continuing efforts by the Scottish National Party (SNP) to exit the UK, and to ultimately pass a new “settlement” that preserves the union. Like...

My last post touched on the religious, societal and political upheavals endured by 17th century England. The outcome was twofold: an English Bill of Rights crafted and ratified by a non-parliamentary convention, and the end of the Stuart line of kings. Members of parliament alternatively served as both political representatives and delegates of the sovereign people. To this day, as evidenced by the recent Brexit referendum, the British system does not differentiate very well between the electoral and sovereign capacities of the people. While war and religious turmoil preoccupied the mother country, her colonies on the North American continent fought...

In my last post, Professor Randy Barnett described the Left’s conception of We The People as a collective, a single mass that expresses its sovereign will through congress. Here, first comes government, then come rights. Rights are what We The People collective say they are. The Republican Constitution. On the other hand, We The People of a Republican Constitution are composed of sovereign individuals. The people we send to government are fellow citizens and servants who exercise limited, enumerated, and “just” powers. Their purpose isn’t to reflect majoritarian will, but rather to secure the unalienable rights we all possess. A...

From the 1776 Maryland Declaration of Rights and the 1783 New Hampshire Bill of Rights we are reminded of the proper American attitude toward a government hostile to freedom: The doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind. In a recent post to her Eagle Forum website, the highly respected and admired Phyllis Schlafly unfortunately resorted to a lot of snark and little reason in her decades’ old opposition to an Article V convention of the states to reclaim free government. Beginning with her title, “Failed Republicans Want...

Full title. HISTORIC MILESTONE: Petition signatures received from 100% of state house legislative districts in U.S. Supporters of the Convention of States Project from every state house legislative district in the United States have signed their name to the Convention of States petition, achieving an historic milestone for the Project. The petition calls for an Article V Convention of States for the limited purpose of proposing constitutional amendments that restrict the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, propose fiscal restraints, and impose term limits on federal officials. In less than three years, the COS Project has achieved this historic...

The hard work of volunteers and supporters like you is making all the difference, and I'm thrilled to report yet another major victory. Yesterday afternoon, the Louisiana state legislature became the eighth state in history to pass the Convention of States resolution! For too long the “elite” in D.C. have acted with impunity, disregarding the will of We the People and crushing state sovereignty. Now the people of Louisiana have joined with Florida, Georgia, Alaska, Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, and Oklahoma in this historic fight to restore the rightful authority of the people and the states.

Our Declaration of Independence was not only illegal, it was an act of treason. Like today, most men in 1787 worldwide equated that which is legal with justice. Who could argue against the idea that justice is joined with statutory law? Equate the legal with the just, and the law can be whatever presidents for life, oligarchs, or a majority say it is. Mankind can be fragmented into a welter of nations, each with its own morality. Might makes right. Justice is rendered relative among the nations of the world. Since there is no single standard of justice, all standards...

Today, Louisiana moved one step closer to joining the call of other states to reign in Washington D.C. The Senate passed the Convention of States resolution, SCR52, by a final vote of 29-6. Here is the roll call vote. I want to personally thank ALL of the volunteers for doing YOUR PART. Today's vote is proof that your phone calls and emails the last few weeks worked. I also want to thank members of the Louisiana grassroots leadership for their outstanding effort on this. We have some of the best grassroots leaders in the country. Without them, this wouldn't have...

As colonists, we were proud to be English subjects, the freest people in the world. Our revolution was against Crown corruption of a wonderful system that was seeping from England into her North American colonies which threatened our rights as Englishmen. As American patriots shake their heads in disbelief at the possible return of a thoroughly corrupt, felonious, treasonous Hillary Clinton to the White House, I recently happened upon a 1787 piece which extolled the anti-corruption features of the Constitution. Just four days after the close of the Federal Convention, and over a month before Alexander Hamilton published the first...

As touched upon in Part I, and against the backdrop of an orchestrated South Sea Bubble, subsequent economic crash, and unpunished stock-jobbers, Cato interwove Lockean concepts regarding the laws of nature, civil society, and high crimes which were found some fifty and sixty years later in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. What follows are illustrative of the thought train of two foundational truths, from Locke to Cato to our Declaration of Independence, which culminated in the free government design of our Constitution. The Purpose of Government. John Locke: Civil Society comes into being when every individual has resigned up...

A government designed to secure our unalienable rights has become something of a black-hole that devours liberty. In the sum total of our three national branches, fewer than 1,500 (One president, 435 congressmen, 100 senators, and about 875 Article III judges) men and women push around over 320 million citizens without restraint or fear for their personal safety. What is to be done? If we weigh the potential benefit, meaning the restoration of our republic, against the remote disadvantages of an amendments convention, there is little reason to avoid one. Some prominent conservatives have expressed concern over the possibility of...

Thomas Jefferson famously adapted key passages of John Locke’s Second Treatise in his draft Declaration of Independence. An 18th century gentleman could hardly regard himself as learned without the ability to quote a few Lockean passages from memory. Yet, what of the average colonial? Books were expensive imports. How were the yeomanry educated well enough in Lockean concepts to readily understand and accept this radical document, the Declaration of Independence? Through newspapers. Like modern Americans, our colonial forebears were also political junkies. Freewheeling editorials, letters to the editor that criticized parliamentary and colonial governments were standing features of public life....

Free Government is that happy condition wherein government respects and protects the unalienable, Natural Rights of the nation, and makes no law without its consent. Under this simple guidance, government is twice limited: by its end, which any of us would have a right to pursue were there no government at all, and by its means, which require our consent. Yes, the presidential campaign season is entertaining. But if the practical extent of our God-given freedom depends on the election of either Bernie, The Beast or Donald Trump, it follows that actual free government is as real and enduring as...

Presidential politics is a fickle business. On the heels of a decisive victory in Wisconsin, Ted Cruz lost his next major contest in Indiana, prompting the Texas Senator to suspend his campaign. As when any candidate drops out of the race, Cruz’s decision left thousands of Americans concerned for the future of their country. Those who believed Cruz was the election’s only true conservative (or had the best shot of beating Hillary Clinton) are now wondering what the country will look like under the next president. They see their nation slipping away, and they feel powerless to stop it. And...