Americans have been dipping into the history of the Founding Era for clues as to how to get our country out of its current mess.

Here’s an instructive story:

In 1783, the Constitution had not yet been written, and Congress was operating under the Articles of Confederation. Congress had no ability to enforce its laws, no power to tax, and could not even meet its obligations to the newly-victorious Continental Army.

Debts kept mounting up. In one humiliating incident, Congress felt compelled to flee from Philadelphia when armed troops demanding their back pay physically surrounded the congressional meeting-place at Independence Hall.

Congress re-convened in Princeton, New Jersey. Once there, the delegates started to talk about how it would be a great idea to have a national capital in a district of its own. But Congress couldn’t agree on where the capital district would be located.

Votes were taken on locations in each of the thirteen states, and they were all voted down. More importantly, Congress was completely broke — it simply had no money to build a capital.

Faced with a crisis, some of the delegates had an idea. If the idea of having one national capital wasn’t feasible, then they would propose building TWO national capitals – one on the Delaware River, and one on the Potomac. And that’s just what Congress voted to do!

The lesson for today: The biggest domestic national crisis, almost every impartial observer agrees, consists of the massive and unfunded entitlement programs sweeping the federal government toward default and bankruptcy.

The second biggest problem is health care costs — rising crazily because the government has replaced the traditional doctor-patient relationship with huge bureaucracies of “third party payers” ( government agencies and insurance companies).

The obvious cure for both problems is to find ways to disengage government and return these services to the free market. But both of those solutions are off the congressional agenda. Instead, a majority in Congress wants expansion of entitlements and third-party payments.

Politicians haven’t changed much.

What finally cured the problems of the 1780s was a new Constitution that restructured Congress and clearly defined its powers. It’s becoming more and more clear that it is also going to take some fundamental change to deal with modern congressional irresponsibility — probably a constitutional amendment or two.

Rob Natelson is a constitutional law professor at the University of Montana, and runner-up in the 2000 “open primary” for Governor of Montana. His opinions are his own, and should not be attributed to any other person or institution.

We’ve come a long way baby, in 233 years!  The elite are still controlling our money, the corrupt, in and out of government, are still making billion (or is it trillion) dollar deals with the devil and the Congress and the President are trying to strip us of our freedom and sell America’s sovereignty to the third world, along with giving away our national wealth and resources.  Other than that, not much has changed.  In fact, we continue to repeat the same mistakes, over and over and over again, to the detriment of all Americans and to the destruction of our freedom and sovereignty.

President Andrew Jackson (1829 to 1837) knew what the central banks were doing and he closed them, paid off the national debt and returned the monetary system to gold and silver coins.  He said about the central banks:

“The paper-money system and its natural associations—monopoly and exclusive privileges—have already struck their roots too deep in the soil, and it will require all your efforts to check its further growth and to eradicate the evil.”

Jackson also said, while throwing the bankers out of the oval office:

“… You are a den of vipers and thieves.  I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the Eternal God, I will rout you out,” and he did.

Jackson called paper money “rag money”.  He was right then and he is still right now.

Thomas Jefferson said to John Taylor in 1816 that: “I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies…”.

President James Madison (1809 to 1817) said: “History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.”

These men knew what they were talking about.

In the end, it only took the money changers and the power brokers 81 years to undue the actions of Andrew Jackson and get their way again, by convincing the U. S. Congress and President Wilson that we needed another central bank, euphemistically called the Federal Reserve, which isn’t federal and it doesn’t have any reserves.

Congressman Louis T. McFadden (Rep. PA – June 1932) said of the Federal Reserve:  “The Federal Reserve banks are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen.There is not a man within the sound of my voice who does not know that this nation is run by the International Bankers.” McFadden also blamed the Great Depression on the Federal Reserve.  McFadden was right then and he is still right today.

The Federal Reserve, with the help of many socialist presidents and Congresses since 1913, have turned a once prosperous and wealthy nation, into a debtor nation by corrupting the phrase in the pre-amble of the U. S. constitution where it states: ”….. and promote the general welfare“.  As a result, every dollar we spend now represents debt and does not equal a fair measure of goods and services, as it should.  You would need $21.60 in 2007 to equal what a dollar was worth in 1913, prior to the establishment of the Federal Reserve.  Since 2000, the value of the dollar, thus each American’s buying power, has eroded by over 20%.

Socialist politicians in our government, for almost 100 years, for the purposes of remaining in power by exploiting the weakness in individuals who were looking for a free handout, worked in conjunction with the Federal Reserve to expand the money supply (debt) to pay for the handouts.  Not only was the public treasury pillaged for purely political reasons (that should be treason), but the American taxpayer also picked up the tab for the interest paid to the Federal Reserve and other countries for the loans and the hidden cost of inflation because of diluting the number of dollars in circulation.  This evil is still going on today, but the numbers are escalating exponentially.

The estimated liability for actual government debt and unfunded entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security) for every man, woman and child in America, is estimated to be almost $350,000.  The Social Security unfunded liability is just shy of $14 Trillion.  Medicare’s unfunded liability is over $73 Trillion.  Both numbers are rising rapidly.

In light of the nation’s current financial black hole, which we are being dragged into by the sheer gravity of it, along with the failure of most government social programs, for the government to even be contemplating, much less debating the implementation of nationalized health care and cap and trade legislation, is not only fool hardy and grossly negligent, it is outright treason.

But as long as there are corrupt politicians who will exploit the weakness in humans for their votes and conspire with special interest groups, giant, international corporations and the Federal Reserve to create money out of thin air to pay for unconstitutional welfare and environmental protection programs, America’s airplane is on fire and is in a crash dive to the deadly sea of national bankruptcy, while Americans are headed for perpetual indentured servitude.

No!  Americans are already indentured (slaves) to America’s rising debt and the relief can only come from patriotic Americans who will bring this madness to an abrupt halt, first peacefully and if that doesn’t work, by any other means.

We claimed freedom from tyranny once before and if necessary, we can and will do it again.  We cannot let the bastards win, or the Revolution from which America was born and all the lives that were sacrificed since then to maintain our freedom, will have been for naught.

It is high time that free Americans everywhere, repeat the words of President Andrew Jackson, to the politicians of Washington DC and to those politicians elsewhere in state and local governments, “… You are a den of vipers and thieves.  We intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the Eternal God, we will rout you out,” and then do it.

President Jackson also said,  “it will require all your efforts to check its further growth and to eradicate the evil”, and indeed it WILL take the efforts of millions of Americans to “eradicate this evil.”

Ron Ewart [send him email] is President of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF RURAL LANDOWNERS, an organization dedicated to re-establish, preserve, protect and defend property rights.