Free Republic

Let’s step back for a moment from the depressing media-generated noise and nonsense surrounding this presidential election season. Forget that a crime family might be installed in the highest reaches of power. Instead, let us take refuge and solace in an uplifting first principle of our Declaration and Constitution. An occasional criticism of Thomas Jefferson’s edited Declaration of Independence is the substitution of ‘pursuit of happiness’ for that of ‘property.’ Both are Lockean terms well-suited for our Lockean Declaration. While we may never know precisely why this was done, the pursuit of happiness conceptually encompasses a wider universe of unalienable...

On November 8th, the last ballots will be cast for Representatives, Senators and a President. At the risk of betraying my age, I recall when nearly all voting was done on election day, and local newspapers and TV devoted as much time to reps and senators as they did to presidential campaigns. Election coverage shared space with other important national and world news. No more. Reps and senators get comparatively little press exposure. World news, to the extent that it is noticed at all, is colored to cause the least embarrassment possible to Obama. Most news from all sources is...

We roll our eyes today in disbelief of odd, ancient, pagan practices involving animal sacrifice, various gods, and oracles. Yet the Greek mythology developed around such practices shaped early western civilization. Decades ago, as a tourist in Greece, I visited the site of the Oracle of Delphi. Over some twelve hundred years, Delphic oracles gave governing advice to kings and statesmen. While under the influence of hallucinogens, oracular advice took the form of gibberish, which priests subsequently interpreted for the supplicants. Lycurgus famously designed the government of Sparta around what he learned at Delphi. I draw an only slightly tongue-in-cheek...

GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump announced on Tuesday his intention to push for a constitutional amendment setting term limits for members of both chambers of Congress. Speaking to a crowd at a campaign rally in Colorado Springs, Trump spoke about his desire to “break the cycle of corruption” in Washington, D.C. if he elected president. The GOP nominee told the crowd it was time to “drain the swamp” of special interests. He recited portions of his newly unveiled ethics reform proposals and then told the crowd another major announcement which is part of his plan. “If I am elected president,...

The ideals of our revolutionary era were heavily influenced by the Enlightenment soldier, politician, ambassador, polemicist Algernon Sidney (1623-1683) and the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). They wrote their best works at the height of Stuart tyranny. Sidney’s manuscript of Discourses Concerning Government cost him his head in 1683. Locke chose to keep his head down, fled to the Netherlands, and delayed release of his Two Treatises of Government until 1690. Even then, in fear of Stuart return after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, he did not acknowledge his authorship until two weeks before his death. What is less well-known is...

Over the course of my three years in support of an Article V State Convention to propose amendments, a regular fear expressed by Article V opponents is that the convention will conduct itself in the same Animal House atmosphere of our sorry US Congress. While no one can predict the future of such things with certainty, recent experience points to a different place, one where ladies and gentlemen firmly, yet decorously, stood to express the will of the state legislatures that commissioned them to restore the American republic. I wouldn’t have bothered with this post had not 137 commissioners from...

Check the date, December 2015.I've never heard THIS angle before

(cont. from part I) If the 14th Amendment demands adherence to one-man-one-vote, the electoral college and US Senate operate in clear violation. Why didn’t scotus demand US Senate membership according to population? Because, unlike amending the constitutions of fifty defenseless states, the US Congress has the power to visit unremitting hell on a Supreme Court that pulled such a stunt. From the decision, “The superficial resemblance between one of the Alabama apportionment plans and the legislative representation scheme of the Federal Congress affords no proper basis for sustaining that plan since the historical circumstances which gave rise to the congressional...

Regardless of the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, our republic needs a powerful redress against the unconstitutional usurpation of power by the federal government and particularly by the Supreme Court and the president. Restoring federalism is the answer to every significant problem in our republic because federalism produces the marketplace of governments that reward states with honest, efficient, and unobtrusive and which drives wealth and voters out of leftist nanny states. While Republicans at the federal level ought to embrace and to push this agenda, the narcotic of federal government power and printing presses makes it hard for any...

Number IV of a four-part series. In response to executive abuses by King George III, our early state constitutions were overly democratic and featured legislatures that casually breached the inadequate walls that separated them from the judicial and executive branches. From a review of pertinent numbers of The Federalist in the second and third squibs, it is evident that the 1787 US Constitution was written with eye toward better defining and checking the legislative power. That Constitution has been justly and unjustly amended many times over the course of the past century such that today, the executive and judicial branches...

I’m perplexed that Article V opponents have not, from time to time, embraced Federalist Numbers 49 & 50. Taken together in isolation from 48 and 51, a superficial read of 49 and 50 might lead one to conclude that James Madison actually opposed, for most situations, Article V state amendment conventions. Number 49. Occasional Conventions. Beginning once again with Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, Madison gives due credit to Jefferson’s brilliance; he then politely disagrees with Jefferson on the proper remedy to a stronger branch’s encroachment of a weaker branch. Encroachment, or the assumption of a power of...

Fiscal Restraints Proposal 1: SECTION 1. The public debt shall not be increased except upon a recorded vote of two-thirds of each house of Congress, and only for a period not to exceed one year. SECTION 2. No state or any subdivision thereof shall be compelled or coerced by Congress or the President to appropriate money. SECTION 3. The provisions of the first section of this amendment shall take effect 3 years after ratification. Federal Legislative & Executive Jurisdiction Proposal 1: SECTION 1. The power of Congress to regulate commerce among the several states shall be limited to the regulation...

As Mark Levin explained in Chapter One, he undertook his project not because he believed the “Constitution, as originally structured, is outdated and outmoded, thereby requiring modernization through amendments, but because of the opposite – that is, the necessity and urgency of restoring constitutional republicanism and preserving the civil society . . . “ In this squib, we’ll examine the observations of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton as they apply to keeping, and if necessary, restoring constitutional republicanism. Number 33. Laws Judged Against the Constitution. What if the new government overstepped its authority through the exercise of a power reserved...

Three state legislators from every state in the nation have been invited to this Simulated Convention, forming a first-of-its kind network of state representatives working to call a Convention of States for the purpose of limiting the power of the federal government. Article V empowers state legislators to be the ultimate check on the abuses of Washington, D.C. This Simulated Convention will educate and empower them with a vision as to how they can use an Article V Convention of States to restore liberty and return the power to the states and the people. Our nation has drifted far from...

When the time arrived to put independence into writing, our Founders turned to John Locke (1632-1704). Given the simplicity of Locke’s fundamentals, and the exposure he received as 18th century events cascaded into our Revolution, one doesn’t need a PhD in philosophy to grasp the elements of his theory. America 2016 would do well to embrace the precepts of the man who so influenced our revolutionary era, for within his framework is the salvation of the American experiment in free government. In his Two Treatises of Government, Locke starts from a standpoint not questioned seriously until recent decades: “When men...

Why do we have a government? What is its purpose? Our founding documents give us the reasons in plain English: to secure the unalienable rights of "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" (the Declaration of Independence) and "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" (the preamble to the Constitution of the United States). In other words, our government exists to secure the liberty of its citizens. There is a reason why the word "Liberty" appears...

America 2016 is in a bad place. Our once republic of laws, in which carefully designed institutions served the noble ends enumerated in the Preamble to the Constitution, has been rendered into something resembling a criminal enterprise in which rulers serve their ambition and avarice while the nation suffers. What to do? While over the course of this blog I have rarely approached extra-constitutional means to restore free government, recent events demand a look at all options. What prompts my reevaluation are Hillary’s get-out-jail-free card from the FBI, and the administration’s ongoing efforts to silence, if not criminalize, political opposition....

Through a series of lessons arranged in three Books, the thrust of Niccolo’ Machiavelli‘s Discourses on Livy deals with how nations in general, and republics in particular, can design, keep, and if necessary, restore free-government. The media for this exercise are the experiences, trials, successes and failures of the Roman Republic as related by Titus Livius (59BC – 17AD). J.G.A. Pocock, an historian at Washington University in St. Louis Missouri, coined the term “Machiavellian Moment” to identify the commencement of clear thinking in which civil society realizes that unless it takes corrective action, the corruption into which the nation has...

As I recall from Gibbon, the Western Roman Empire went out with more of a whimper than a bang. By the time of Alaric and his Visigoths in 410 AD, Rome was so corrupt and weak there was little to stand in his way. In broad strokes it is fair to say that Roman society declined simultaneously with government. Long before the fall, Roman republican citizenship was a precious possession, a jewel of unsurpassed value. As such it was held closely and kept in short supply, for among other privileges, the Roman citizen wasn’t taxed. He was exempt from the...

Near the core of John Birch Society opposition to an Article V Convention of the States is mistrust of the American people. Dig further and one cannot avoid the conclusion that JBS opposes the essence of republicanism, the right of all peoples to determine the structure and boundaries of their government. While JBS has no apparent problem with the exercise of the people’s electoral capacity at polling places every two years, they curiously stand athwart the exercise of the people’s sovereign capacity via their states to frame their government. This isn’t to say JBS doesn’t support amending the Constitution –...