Free Republic

Must revolution be violent? Must revolution upend an older society and replace it with a new one? Wouldn’t a 21st century restoration of free American government without resort to violence be revolutionary?Pennsylvania’s Framer James Wilson thought so:This revolution principle--that, the sovereign power residing in the people, they may change their constitution and government whenever they please--is not a principle of discord, rancor, or war: it is a principle of melioration, contentment, and peace. It is a principle not recommended merely by a flattering theory: it is a principle recommended by happy experience. To the testimony of Pennsylvania--to the testimony of...

To most historians of the 17th Century Stuart era, John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government rationalized the Glorious Revolution of 1688. At least one historian, Peter Laslett, disagrees. To Laslett, Locke’s texts were instead a call for revolutions yet to come. Not only did Locke’s philosophy call for our 1776 revolution, it reaches out to us today . . . but with a twist. Where Locke gave little attention to the nuts and bolts of how a community goes about restoring free government after its dissolution, our Framers provided the solution in Article V of their Constitution. Locke didn’t conceptualize...

The Nebraska legislature passed a resolution on Friday calling for an Article V convention of states, making it the 17th state to do so. After considering it for the past year, the unicameral body approved the measure in a 32-11 vote, with six senators abstaining or absent. According to the resolution, the Nebraska legislature seeks to call a convention “limited to proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States that impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office for its officials and for members of...

For the past several years, the Convention of States Project has been gathering concerned citizens from every pocket of the country to urge state legislators to use this long-neglected constitutional “check” on the power of Washington. With Republicans in control of 33 state legislatures and Trump in the White House, now is the time to make this happen. The Project’s model resolution, which has been introduced in 48 states, to date, calls for a meeting of the states to consider, and potentially propose, amendments that would achieve one or more of three objectives Impose fiscal restraints on the federal government,...

In today’s polarized political climate, Americans nervously anticipate U.S. Supreme Court rulings with the same fervor with which they enjoy sports, and with the same goal in mind: namely, to win. But American government is not a game, cautions United States Court of Appeals Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton. By forcing the Supreme Court to make notably divisive, winner-take-all decisions, he argues, we run the risk of politicizing the “crown jewel of American government.” No one at the American founding took the view that the U.S. Supreme Court should resolve the most difficult issues in American government or be the key...

Article V opponents and some proponents view the Article V COS movement through the lens of our national political parties. The time is long past to dislodge oneself from this paradigm. To remain in this mindset is unhelpful at best, and destructive at worst, because the two national parties are one Uniparty incapable of reforming the racket that serves its members so well. Professor Angelo M. Codevilla coined the term, “Uniparty” in 2013. His explosive article nudged many conservatives to accept what they long suspected, that among the top echelons of the two parties there is little difference between their...

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, 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 the...

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 Article VI Placebo There are some bright guys at The John Birch Society (JBS). Since I share their exasperation with Washington DC, I wish they devoted more of their intelligence to study. In particular, they should look both closer at, and beyond, Article VI. The pertinent clauses of Article VI are frustratingly brief. The Constitution, laws pursuant thereof and treaties are the supreme law. Judges and everyone else in the state and federal governments are “bound by oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.” Well, there you go. JBS relies on Article VI to restore Constitutional government. Just send...

When it comes to its talking points, The John Birch Society (JBS) is thick with assertions and thin with evidence and history. For instance, the JBS regards the US Constitution as perfection on earth. This isn’t an exaggeration.1 The JBS simply disregards the Framers’ perception of their work. Right out of the chute in 1788, Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 85 encouraged the remaining states outside the Union to ratify the Constitution and join their fellows in Article V to provide amendments that better secured some basic rights. The Constitution, he wrote, was not “absolute perfection,” but upon the whole, it...

From Ben Shapiro to Mark Levin to Sean Hannity, the Convention of States Project has been endorsed by some of the most trusted names in American politics and media. Today, Dave Rubin added his name to that impressive list. The libertarian political commentator and host of the super-popular BlazeTV show, The Rubin Report, gave his official endorsement of the Convention of States Project over the weekend. Here's what he had to say: “Our political system is definitely broken, and it needs more than elections to fix it. We need to restore the structure of our system of governance. That’s why...

The solution to America’s political discord resides within the American tradition. The answer is right in front of our noses. First, if one thinks as the dimwitted commentariat, that the problem is bickering between the two political parties, the answer is simple. Eliminate the opposition. Destroy one, and the belligerent left standing will rule without discord. One party rule can be peaceful. However, patriotic Americans see the problem in an undivided government in Washington DC rapidly eroding our freedom. Our Framers knew that who one elects is much less important to the larger problem of keeping all power out of...

Should I be charged with a felony, I know that as an American I am presumed innocent. This presumption of innocence means I will remain in possession of my God-given liberty until a jury of my peers finds me guilty, and a judge determines that I shall forfeit an element of my liberty, my freedom to move about in society as I please. In a larger sense encompassing the presumption of innocence, there is the presumption of liberty. Liberty comprises all of the enumerated, unenumerated as well as implied rights and privileges of our Constitution. Until I prove myself unfit...

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 fallen...

In words that ring true today, Hamilton’s first Federalist explained the situation that faced America. The young country was at a crossroads; its very existence was in the balance. The nation was to decide whether society can establish good government through thought and choice, or whether people are forever destined to be ruled by accident and violence. The answer depended on the nation’s response to the crisis. The wrong decision deserved to be considered a misfortune for all of mankind. Then as now, Americans have a choice. Shall we succumb to the course of current events and continue our slide...

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...

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 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 on our behalf. We the People are still...

It should be obvious by now to any thinking American that our country is in the middle of a Communist Revolution. The Chinese Communist Party , our own homegrown Leftists and their Willing Idiots have clearly decided the time was ripe to usher in their Revolution. Donald Trump was the trigger. He had to go so the enemy burned and looted our cities and infected the World with a virus that provided the excuse for mail in voting with its rich opportunities for Voter Fraud. If we can’t vote them out how do we win? The answer is already...

“Civil war,” wrote Algernon Sidney, “is a disease, but tyranny is the death of the state.” The aftermath of war extends beyond physical destruction. Not just PTSD in individuals, but rarely does war leave the combatant societies unaffected. The victors of our 1861-1865 conflict imposed their will on an upended South and subsequently opened their arms and welcomed back the vanquished on condition that they submit post-war constitutions for congressional approval. Big changes. But, upon curing the disease, the division over slavery, the US grew to new heights in prosperity. During the war, and less well-known, government for a time...

Our Founding Fathers predicted it all. They may not have known about vaccine mandates, big tech censorship, or indoctrination in our schools — but they did know THIS: The federal government would one day grow tyrannical.It was inevitable.And when it did, the states would need a constitutional recourse to check the feds’ power, without resorting to a second bloody revolution.That’s why 234 years ago today, they proposed Article V. It gave We the People authority to call a Convention of States to propose amendments that limit the power of the federal government.And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.It takes...