Free Republic

Once congress receives applications from 2/3 of the states, it is duty bound to call a convention. Over 400 applications have been submitted. Where is the call to convention? Check out Federalist #85. Alexander Hamilton: By the fifth article of the Constitution, the congress will be obliged “on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the states to call a convention for proposing amendments, which shall . . . ” The words of this article are peremptory. Congress SHALL call a convention. Nothing is left to the discretion of Congress. Consequently, all the arguments about the disinclination to...

Yes, the ends justify the means. Nothing but the ends can justify the means. Perhaps better put, the ends justify means proportioned to certain ends.Being born in equality, we are all equally obliged to defend the rights given to us by God. It is for this purpose, the defense of rights, that men form government. Security in our rights is the end. Government is the means. Our Founders drew the following conclusion when government becomes disconnected from, or hostile to, its designed end.“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the People...

Such is the GOP elite’s fear of Trump that some would rather deal with the loathsome and high criminal Hillary Clinton as president. This alone is proof enough of the existence of a single political party, albeit with two wings, left and right. I don’t recall who was the first to use the term “Uniparty,” but it is certainly accurate.Political parties traditionally represent the common interests of their members, and to this end the two wings of the Uniparty have far more in common than differences. Their rhetoric often contrasts, but their mutual interests are on display. Witness the sixth...

It’s easy to amend the Constitution. It’s been done dozens of times since WWII. Send the right case with the right litigants at the right time to an adequately Leftist-leaning Scotus and voila’, amend the Constitution. Pretty slick, eh? Through their silence, this is the end-run around the Constitution that Article V Opponents defend.When did We The People, through Article V, ensconce abortion and homosexual marriage as rights? We The People never empowered the early Administrative State and later the Deep State which threaten our republican existence. Since the 1950s we’ve witnessed the detrimental effects of Christianity’s absence from the...

In view of the increasing failures of national, state, local government from San Jose, CA to Sweden to protect their citizens from thugs, both secular and religious, where do innocent people turn when the institutions designed to serve the community fail to do so, or worse, actually turn against the people?From my last post, John Locke explained in Chapter XIX of his Second Treatise, the legislative power, or, simply the legislative, granted by society to government is the essence of republicanism. When any force, from outside or within, alters the legislative, government is dissolved. Locke writes:“When the legislative or executive...

To bookend Benjamin Franklin’s famous remark at the close of the Federal Convention in September 1787, the unique republican design of Franklin and his fellow Framers ended on January 6th 2021. It didn’t fall to external forces; it fell instead to the usual republican disease of internal conflict incited by those who corrupt free governing institutions for personal gain. January 6th marked the end, the final soiling, when Congress accepted obviously fraudulent and unconstitutional electoral votes. The Party is in charge, but it knows that we know they stole the election. So fearful were they of Trump supporters dominating the...

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...

The great reset or how to Make America Even Greater Why do people have Governments at all? Clearly the rule of law is essential to Civilization and Governments are what make those laws possible. If you happen to like Civilization and its benefits you have to put up with some entity that makes peaceful commerce possible. It’s when the law is used to protect criminals instead of protecting you from them that Governments lose their reason for existing. Socialism is just another name for legalized theft and that is exactly the direction America is heading right now . With...

North Dakota has joined 26 other states in passing a resolution calling for a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution, though some Republican lawmakers feel it doesn’t go far enough to rein in Congress and other branches of the federal government. The state Senate passed a resolution Tuesday asking Congress to call a convention for the sole purpose of proposing an amendment requiring a balanced federal budget. “If we want fiscal discipline in Washington, D.C., it has to come from the states. We have to be bold in our approach to them,” said Sen. Dick Dever, R-Bismarck, a sponsor...

Fascinating discussion between Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) following HBO's "The Swamp" (I didn't see it). Gaetz & Buck want a Convention of the states to introduce federal term limits and a balanced budget amendment. They also discuss a range of other topics regarding Congress and how things are done. Click Excerpt Link then play the video (discussion starts about 5 mins in)...

By now you've heard about this week's decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court. Conservative Review's Daniel Horowitz sums them up well in a piece entitled, "Conservatives get massacred by fake 'conservative' SCOTUS": Within 35 minutes today at 10 a.m. Eastern, what some thought was the most conservative Supreme Court of all time concocted a fundamental right to transgenderism in the context of labor law, erased the Second Amendment, and interfered with a state death penalty case, but declined to interfere with a California law that criminalizes law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration agents. Taken in totality, the “conservative” legal movement,...

The ads on Facebook sounded populist and passionate: "The people are rising up against these insane shutdowns," they said. "We're fighting back to demand that our elected officials reopen America." But the posts, funded by an initiative called "Convention of States," were not the product of a grass-roots uprising alone. Instead, they represented one salvo in a wide-ranging and well-financed conservative campaign to undermine restrictions that medical experts say are necessary to contain the coronavirus - but that protesters call overkill and whose economic fallout could damage President Trump's political prospects. A network of right-leaning individuals and groups, aided by...

Use it or lose it. Article V opponents believe America is too corrupt to be trusted with a Convention of the States. They believe We The People fulfilled Ben Franklin’s fears and are no longer fit for self-government, which if true, means we don’t have any business voting either. Nonsense. Thanks to our collective failure to demand Article V Conventions of the States when necessary, We The People slowly, over decades, relinquished our sovereign authority to Scotus. I challenge anyone to explain the practical limits of the Supreme Court of the United States. On paper, our system provides mutual checks,...

Convention of States Almost everyone knows that our federal government is on a dangerous course. The unsustainable debt combined with crushing regulations on states and businesses is a recipe for disaster. What is less known is that the Founders gave state legislatures the power to act as a final check on abuses of power by Washington, DC. Article V of the U.S. Constitution authorizes the state legislatures to call a convention for proposing needed amendments to the Constitution. This process does not require the consent of the federal government in Washington, DC. The Convention of States Project; a national effort...

Subtitle: The Matter of the Mississippi River. A not inconsequential percentage of Article V opponents, like those in the John Birch Society, identify as Anti-Federalists. They question the 1780s need for the vigorous government of our Constitution. Those familiar with the era know of Shays’ Rebellion. According to modern Anti-Federalists, Shays’ was the pretext for nationalists like George Washington and James Madison to justify the 1787 Philadelphia Convention. There were other problems facing the infant United States to which the Articles of Confederation proved inadequate. For instance, most of the great European and New World ports were closed to American...

It’s easy to amend the Constitution. It’s been done dozens of times since WWII. Send the right case with the right litigants at the right time to an adequately Leftist-leaning Scotus and voila’, amend the Constitution. Pretty slick, eh? Through their silence, this is the end-run around the Constitution that Article V Opponents defend. When did We The People, through Article V, ensconce abortion and homosexual marriage as rights? We The People never empowered the early Administrative State and later the Deep State which threaten our republican existence. Since the 1950s we’ve witnessed the detrimental effects of Christianity’s absence from...

Our Founders’ textbook to revolution was Algernon Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government. Alongside John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, these famous works were refutations of another influential 17th century book, Patriarcha by Sir Robert Filmer. In Patriarcha, Filmer invoked the Bible to defend the English monarchs’ divine right to rule. Among his arguments, he painted dire consequences to the established order if the people ever attempted to limit kingly prerogatives. In the background to these works was the 1649 execution of King Charles I. Monarchists could point to the subsequent short-lived English commonwealth, a volatile republic with a written constitution and...

A book by George C. Edwards III, 2004. Democracy is always an easy sell. If you admire democracy, if you feel that America is or should be a democracy, you’ll enjoy this book. If the 2000 election angered you not because Al Gore sought to extend recounts until Florida “got it right,” but instead because he won half a million more votes nationwide than George Bush and still lost, then this book is for you. Purpose of the Electoral College. However, if you believe the Framers’ system served a distinct and noble purpose, that of providing an endless succession of...

A book by George C. Edwards III, 2004. Criticism of the status quo is easy. What is harder is to create a better alternative. I confess to having little patience with those who fault the 1787 Framers for the condition of our government in 2019. They didn’t write a Bible. They didn’t hand down immutable Commandments. Their Constitution, one that’s consistent with republican principles unique to the American experience, is infinitely amendable. Don’t like it? Amend it. But one must be aware of what one is doing. Nearly all of the twenty-seven amendments are wise and contribute to the lofty...

Why do patriots love their country? Like love of oneself and family, love of country is a natural emotion. From a rational standpoint, what is not to like and love about the greatest force for good, the US, in world history? I find pride in American citizenship. I am not the subject of a king, nor a slave in an islamic or authoritarian hell-hole, nor a proletarian ruled through fear by communist party thugs. To be a citizen is to be equal before law of our own making, not through direct democracy, but by representatives, our agents who craft law...