Free Republic

Men naturally seek to better their conditions and protect what is theirs, among which is their country. I’m continually surprised that so many do not take a look at history, ours and that of other past republics, for clues to help reverse the despotism that is America 2016. Long-lived republics such as Rome and a few Greek city-states fell on hard political times in which freedom was threatened, yet they bounced back from the brink of ruin. No republic, including ours, just coasted along for hundreds of years on their original governing structures. When liberty was threatened, republican men went...

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 –...

A visitor to America, say a modern Alexis de Tocqueville, might conclude that the American form of government is despotic. Considering we have presidential elections every four years, our imaginary visitor could further refine his observations and determine America 2016 to be an elective despotism. And why not? Obama’s speeches ooze with “I” and “me.” His cabinet secretaries and party have demonstrated loyalty to his person and not the Constitution. Notwithstanding his oath of office, which is a solemn promise to see that the laws be faithfully executed, he pledged to fundamentally transform America. These are mutually exclusive, and we...

At least two historic American statesmen attempted to insert the guarantee of internal police power to the states in both the Constitution and Articles of Confederation. Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman to the Federal Convention tried several times to prevent federal interference with any state’s “Internal Police.” On his final attempt, the motion failed bigtime by an 8-3 vote. What is Internal Police, why was its retention by the states not made explicit at the convention, and what effect could such a clause have had on American governance two hundred years later? Under Internal Police, a government has the power to...

While political parties ideally represent the common interests of their members, a contradiction has developed within the GOP over the past twenty years. Leadership and rank-and-file members work toward irreconcilable ends: the retention of power, wealth and status at any cost on the one hand, and change that restores economic prosperity and social cohesion on the other. For years, GOP leadership worked handily with democrat leaders Obama, Pelosi, Reid. Behind closed doors, this common senior leadership develops many thousand page omnibus spending bills. In turn, these assaults on the traditional appropriations process are presented to a membership that is cajoled...

If memory serves, I recall an entertaining essay or chapter from perhaps a Stephen Hawking book from a couple of decades ago. Being designed for the mathematically challenged, it sought to introduce his thoughts on the nature of the universe without intimidating the reader. The essay involved a thought experiment where people lived in two dimensions. A people with no height navigated in an X-Y coordinate system-on-a-sheet-of-paper sort of world. It was all they knew. Hawking wondered of the people’s reaction if a third dimension, the Z, was introduced. In any event, he was certain that a surprised people would...

Beginning with “We the People,” the Constitution is a compact, an agreement among equals, the people of the American civil society. The events of 1787-1788 could have been scripted straight out of John Locke’s Second Treatise. A preexisting civil society came to the conclusion that its current form of government was inadequate to secure its unalienable rights, which, as per the Declaration (also a Lockean document), is the broad purpose of government. Through state sponsored conventions, special delegations of the sovereign people debated the pro/con of establishing a new government. Just as Locke described the steps that men, emerging from...

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...

For several decades, conservatives have lamented the growth of the administrative state, aka the fourth branch of government. Created by congress, directed by the president, and armed with semi-despotic powers, these administrative agencies, by the number of regulations they issue, are the real lawmakers in the once American republic. On paper, the fourth branch is accountable to the reps of the people, the House and Senate of the United States. Liberals love the fourth branch, for while these agencies are legally subject to congressional oversight, they are extensions of the will of the president and are, as a practical matter,...

In this letter dated July 22nd 1721, Cato explained that the world is regularly lead into mistakes by people who profit from them. If the people were properly apprised of the truth, no one would live in slavery. There are lessons here for early 21st century America. In most nations there is neither the light of truth nor liberty. Where they exist, they are inseparable. Destroy one and the other follows. In these nations we find tyranny and deception, ignorance and slavery joined together, such that “Wherever truth is dangerous, liberty is precarious.” Among sciences, Cato regards political science as...

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...

I don’t know how I managed for so long to put off reading Allan Bloom’s 1986 The Closing of the American Mind.. I’m only through the Preface and Introduction, and the condition of American higher education he described thirty years ago is chilling. I might not read any further. The young people of that era are now the heads of various university departments and occupy high positions in government including the presidency. Today, the students of Bloom’s book coddle all the dangerous nonsense we’ve recently seen in the form of moral relativism, Black Lives Matter, White Privilege, LGBT baloney, and...

As Donald Trump and Ted Cruz battle for first place in Indiana’s heated presidential primary, many don’t realize that the Indiana state legislature has already taken steps to ensure freedom and prosperity for generations to come. Earlier this year, The Hoosier State voted to pass the Convention of States resolution, which calls for an Article V Amendments Convention for the purpose of limiting the size, scope, and jurisdiction of the federal government. Presidential contenders can talk about shrinking government and eliminating the debt, but only a Convention of States can actually reverse 100 years of activist Supreme Court decisions and...

There is a parallel conservatism shared by the framing era Anti-Federalists and today’s Article V opponents. Conservativism in this sense is the tendency to hold on to what is known and to resist change. We take it for granted, but thirteen heterogeneous societies joining in common defense was not inevitable. By 1787, both Federalists and Anti-Federalists foresaw approaching dissolution of the union under the Articles of Confederation (AC). A decade of experience with state constitutions had revealed their defects or weaknesses, and induced among many Americans an inclination toward change. Either the independent republics must join in a more perfect...

From yesterday’s post regarding thoroughly corrupted republics, Machiavelli* found that even when a few wise laws are passed, corrupt institutions in society and government will turn the law away from their intended, good purposes. To possibly recover, one of two things must happen. Either prudent men along the way step in to introduce reforms as incremental corruption is detected, or a large single stroke of reform is necessary when the debasement of society and government is evident to all. Since the republic in his discussion is already thoroughly corrupt, it would appear that the first of his possible solutions has...

Can free government be reestablished in a corrupt republic? Is there enough virtue remaining in America 2016 for renewal? For insight, I can’t help but return to a favorite read, Niccolò Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy.* In this discussion, Machiavelli assumed the republic in question was extremely corrupt, due to either a lack of laws or institutions sufficient to check universal corruption. While he doesn’t explain exactly what he means by institutions, it is clear from context here and the rest of his work that the term encompasses the totality of society and government. In modern parlance, institutions include academe, government,...