Free Republic

Subtitle: Federalism Thwarts Consolidated Government. Federalism describes the vertical division of power between the national and state governments. When Constitutional government is limited to its enumerated powers by a federal senate, the states are free to develop and retain their uniqueness, to keep their largely homogenous interests, habits, and mores. This is diversity. THIS is how republican government is sustained across a vast continent. Federalism keeps consolidation at bay, and makes diversity a reality! However, overnight, the Seventeenth Amendment transformed a stable, federal republic into a wild and unstable democratic form. Being unanchored by senators formerly loyal to the Ninth...

Can an extensive nation keep free government, promote diversity, and avoid centralization? In 1787-1788, the Anti-Federalists didn’t think so, and the Federalists couldn’t be sure. Charles de Montesquieu (1689 – 1755) wrote in The Spirit of the Laws, “It is natural for a republic to have only a small territory; otherwise it cannot long subsist. In an extensive republic, the public good is sacrificed to a thousand private views.” Only in small republics, ideally of the Greek city-state size, are private interests and abuses minimized, and the general welfare of the public is better understood and within the reach of...

Hillary Clinton ignited a firestorm a few months ago when she publicly called half of Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables.” Hillary’s saggy speech was on September 9th, and is worth watching again, both for her hubris, and for the reminder of what our nation and the world avoided. Recognizing a hanging curveball when they saw one, Team Trump jumped at the opportunity, and hit a grand slam, Deplorables Unite (Do you hear the people sing) one week later. ‘Welcome to all of you deplorables!’ Trump boomed as thousands screamed ‘Trump! Trump! Trump!’ and ‘We love you!’ Trumpsters embraced the...

A quick blurb. It is flashing red siren alert time for the Convention of States movement. Hopefully everyone who is signed up with COS received an email to contact six Nebraska senators who are filibustering LR6, the Convention of States Resolution. Should the single house legislature pass this resolution, Nebraska will be the eleventh state to apply for an Article V convention. For what it is worth, below is my email to these senators: Senator Lydia Brasch: lbrasch@leg.ne.gov Senator Matt Hansen: mhansen@leg.ne.gov Senator Tony Vargas: tvargas@leg.ne.gov Senator Bob Krist: bkrist@leg.ne.gov Senator Sue Crawford: scrawford@leg.ne.gov Senator Adam Morfeld: amorfeld@leg.ne.gov Dear Senator,...

In Part I, we found that nearly eight hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ, Lycurgus toured the various governments of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Combining their best features, he established a republican governing form in Sparta that lasted almost six hundred years. Such was the admiration of our Founding generation, their speeches and writings in the 1776-1788 period were peppered with references to Lycurgus and lessons to be drawn from the ancient Greeks. Where Lycurgus made an actual tour of contemporary governments, James Madison and John Adams took literary tours of dozens of governments as related by the...

Our once Free Republic continues to reel from a one hundred and four-year-old mistake: the 17th Amendment. Pardon me if I don’t celebrate tomorrow’s anniversary. Republican theory demands the consent of the governed. From ancient Greece, republican Rome, Saxon Germany, and the English kingdom from which we declared our Independence, the component members of their societies had a place at the lawmaking table. Greek ecclesia, Roman tribunes and senators, Saxon Micklegemots, English commons, lords and king, encompassed the totality of their societies. By this, the consent of the governed was present in every law. Unlike simpler Greek or Saxon societies...

From a Renaissance fresco, “Take Rome as your example if you wish to rule a thousand years; follow the common good, and not selfish ends; and give just counsel like these men.” The Roman republic lasted several hundred years because it kept corruption of its institutions at bay. Its fall into empire and despotism began when the tribunate succumbed to corruption and no longer served to check the consuls. Once the senate was tamed through threats and promises of enrichment at public expense, there was no turning back. It happened quickly. Sulla marched on Rome in 82 BC and Julius...

Subtitle: Part I Niccolo’ Machiavelli. The Roman historian Titus Livius (59BC – 17AD), better known as Livy, wrote, “History is full of fine things to take as models, and base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.” The thread than connects the three Books and dozens of chapters in Niccolo’ Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy is his continual comparison of the ideal to the corrupt. By corrupt is not meant so much the embezzler of public funds, who, in well-designed republican Rome posed little threat to freedom, but more importantly the inevitable assaults, and high crimes on free institutions, which, over...

Where there is government there is corruption. Corruption is a broad term. Perhaps in its simplest meaning it is just a departure from an original design. Various federal statutes set forth punishment for felony corruption in government, such as embezzlement or trading influence for money. Another category of corruption are high crimes. High crimes assault our governing form, our Constitution. While high crimes are not defined in the Constitution, we know the punishment for them is limited to removal from office. In well-ordered government, institutions are strong enough to deter most, and punish nearly all who steal money, trade official...

In earlier posts we learned the legal and political sovereign over colonial America was the King-in-Parliament. After independence, both sovereignties relocated to the new state legislatures. From Part IV, the Constitution put the Declaration’s recognition of legal sovereignty in the people into practice. Peaceful Revolution. Man is incapable of creating a perfect institution, suitable for all times. Through Article V, the decay and eventual death that typifies republics was no longer inevitable. The Constitution never pretended to perfection or to the exclusion of future improvements. On the contrary, the healing principle in Article V enables the legal sovereign to return...

The Framing generation bequeathed a brilliant governing form to posterity. Perhaps its most notable feature is the separation of powers. Far less well-known, yet just as important, is what the Framers did with legal and political sovereignty. To review from previous posts: • The legal sovereign has unlimited, absolute, and supreme law-making power. The Constitution is the supreme law-making expression of the legal sovereign. • The political sovereign is the single person or body that writes statutes. As per Article I § 1, Congress is America’s political sovereign; it is responsible for crafting statutes necessary and proper to implement enumerated...

Subtitle: Sovereignty on the Move. Sovereignty is absolute. Notwithstanding the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God, a person or body is the legal sovereign when he or it has unlimited law-making power, when there is no person or body superior to him or it. During America’s colonial period, a single body, the King-in-Parliament (or equivalently, Parliament) was the legal sovereign. As legal sovereign, and being unencumbered by a written constitution, nothing limits the earthly, supreme lawmaking power of Parliament. Parliament can amend its unwritten constitution as it sees fit, and no Parliament is bound by a previous Parliament. By the...

The Declaration of Independence did not answer the question of American sovereignty very well. Despite the recognized right of the people to alter or abolish their form of government, the question of sovereignty continued to be an important theoretical question of politics throughout the following decade. Some held that legal and political sovereignty devolved to Congress. Others believed it belonged to the mass of the people. Unlike today, the concept of special conventions of the people as legal sovereign hardly existed in the early 1770s. Instead, the various congresses, and conventions of representatives from the colonies, or any other gatherings...

From a study of the debates at the 1787 Federal Convention and contemporary discussion in the States, our Framers anticipated Article V would be employed far more often than has proved to be the case. A fundamental part of our Constitution is the provision for future changes. Since all earthly creations suffer from decay and corruption, our Constitution is likewise in need of maintenance and repair. Defects accumulate in our governing form. Unless corrected and reversed in the reserved setting of a convention of states, errors and contradictions will accelerate until a divided society erupts in revolution. We must accept...

As President Trump works to undo the outrages of the Pen and Phone President, he will issue executive orders, consult congress, and instruct his cabinet secretaries to reverse the mess their social justice predecessors left behind. The President has enormous power, and while patriots know his power isn’t absolute, too many Americans believe it nearly is, or should be. A person or body is said to have legal sovereignty when he or it has unlimited, absolute law-making power, and when there is no person or body legally superior to him or it. Over a series of posts, I will take...

The State Senate of Tennessee has laid the legislative groundwork for something that hasn't been done in the United States of America since the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia. With a vote of 27-3, the Tennessee Senate has voted to call a "convention of the states" in order to draft and pass an amendment to the Constitution that would require balanced budgets to be passed every year. For those who are little fuzzy on their high school U.S. history knowledge, the Tennessean explains that the U.S. Constitution can be amended in two ways. The first would require a two-thirds...

Subtitle: Just Enforce the Constitution We Have. Article V opponents often ask, “Why amend a Constitution that’s ignored?” The easy retort is, “If amendments make no difference, then an Article V COS can do no harm.” But, the easy retort doesn’t answer the question. First, COS opponents must accept the existence of two Constitutions. While the one we all wish to defend is a short document, only 7,000 words, the de facto constitution, as amended by scotus is some 3,000 pages long. This is the living and breathing playground for social justice judges described in The Constitution Annotated. With this...

Subtitle: Judge Robart vs. the Constitution. In 1922, the historian Carl Becker wrote, “Whenever men become sufficiently dissatisfied with what is, with the existing regime of positive law and custom, they will be found reaching out beyond it for the rational basis of what they conceive it ought to be.” Rush Limbaugh asserted some twenty years ago, that since the drive-by media didn’t make him, they couldn’t, despite their efforts, destroy him. That concept was writ large from the moment of Donald Trump’s nomination. EVERY major social, media, academic, and political institution, including the GOP, opposed his candidacy. As Rush...

The John Birch Society (JBS) can thank itself for this post. A few days ago, the JBS unintentionally put a smile on my face when I attempted to comment on a column at their website. See the saved screenshot below. In response to a piece at The New American (TNA), Wyoming and Arkansas Reject Call for Convention of States Con-Con, I was prevented from posting to the comment section. Since it never went to moderation, the content of my comment was irrelevant. I wondered, how many other COS supporters are banned as well? Hmmm, maybe Mark Meckler, Michael Farris, and...

There’s a tendency among 21st century patriots to assume the foundation of republican free government, conventions of the sovereign people, was known from the moment of independence in 1776. While the essential purpose (security of rights) of any government, expressed so eloquently by Thomas Jefferson, was widely accepted, the actual process to arrive at such government remained elusive. How were thirteen distinct societies to go about replacing their previous monarchal régimes? Let’s look at one, Virginia. Virginia’s Royal Governor, Lord Dunmore, dissolved the House of Burgesses when it passed a resolution on June 1st 1774 declaring a day of fasting...