Most articles that seek to demonize the Tenth Amendment movement are so rife with logical and intellectual fallacies that even responding to them is a waste of time. However, in the case of Dan Casey, blogger for the Roanoke Times, an exception must be made.

For starters, Casey is writing in my (and Thomas Jefferson’s) home state of Virginia, and his piece, “The Whole Tenth Amendment Business is Dumb and Crazy” actually links to the Virginia Tenth Amendment Center, which I helped to found.

But, more importantly, in his article, Casey attempts to smear the brilliant men who wrote the U.S. Constitution by claiming the document doesn’t mean what they explicitly said it meant.

As James Madison might have said, there is a host of proofs that Dan Casey is dead wrong.

Like so many others before him, Casey leads his attack with a flaccid attempt to discredit the “Tenthers” (as he pejoratively calls them) by linking constitutionalism with support for slavery.

Of course, this completely obscures actions by Tenthers of an earlier era, who used the 10th Amendment as the prime justification for the “States Rights” argument that itself was a smokescreen for the real cause of the Civil War — the South’s insistence on preserving slavery.

Behold straw man number one: The Tenth Amendment is code for racism. Casey is either ignorant of the fact that many Northern states used the Tenth Amendment as a justification for undermining slavery long before 1861, through their refusal to enforce the Fugitive Slave Acts, or he has chosen to ignore that inconvenient part of history. 

Either way, it doesn’t matter. Historical accuracy is not Casey’s goal. He merely intends to color his readers’ perception of Tenthers by linking them, however spuriously, with Southern slaveholders. To acknowledge the truth about the history of states’ rights in the North might disrupt his narrative of unquestioning obsequiousness to centralized power.

Casey continues:

But apart from aligning themselves with slaveholders, there’s another more fundamental flaw in the whole modern Tenther argument. In a nutshell, it’s this: Their interpretation is based on a single sentence in the Constitution, rather than on the document as a whole.

In fact, the larger document directly contradicts the Tenthers’ argument.  That’s right — words the founding fathers quite deliberately wrote into the Constitution clearly and effectively rebut the Tenthers’ faulty reasoning.

It’s hard to imagine where Casey got this impression, considering that James Madison himself described the document he helped to write by saying

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite.

Thomas Jefferson also knew the Tenth Amendment was more than just “a single sentence.” He called it the Constitution’s foundation: 

I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: All powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.

It really cannot be any clearer than that. The self-serving opinions of Dan Casey and myriad federal judges notwithstanding, if the people and the states didn’t explicitly surrender a power in the Constitution, then they still retain it. Whether or not they choose to exercise it is another story.

But if federal power is limited to what is enumerated in the Constitution, Casey asks, why do we need a Bill of Rights at all?

The problem for the Tenthers here is that the First Amendment has nothing to do with what Congress can do. It’s all about what Congress can’t do.

And this is where the Tenthers’ entire argument falls apart. Because under Tenther-logic, unless the Constitution permitted the feds to establish religion, or abridge freedom of speech and so on, then the feds would automatically be prohibited from doing it.

Obviously, the founding fathers themselves did not believe that, or they never would have felt the need to write the First Amendment in the first place.

Here Casey has a point, although not the one he thinks. He is right, the feds are automatically prohibited from doing any of the things he lists, just as they are prohibited from requiring every American to buy health insurance, based on the fact that those powers are not delegated under Article 1 Section 8.  

But, more importantly, many of the founders themselves argued against the Bill of Rights for the same reason as Casey: It should not be necessary. 

Alexander Hamilton said

…bills of rights… are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. …For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? 

If there is any argument to be made against the Tenth Amendment, it is Hamilton, not Casey, who has made it.

The Bill of Rights should never have been needed. Every one of the first 10 Amendments is essentially legally redundant based on the text of the Constitution itself.

But, over time, activist judges and complicit politicians have turned the entire document on its head, until the only rights left to the people are those explicitly granted, while the only powers not yet claimed by government are those explicitly prohibited.

Yet Casey calls Tenthers, who only want the Constitution’s clear language enforced, ”intellectual boobs who can’t be bothered to think for themselves.” Apparently, thinking for oneself means ignoring the purpose of our founding documents, and gratefully acquiescing to federal tyranny.

Those of us who demand liberty are feared and ridiculed by weak minded men like Dan Casey who consider themselves intelligent, but are really nothing more than errand boys for the State.

As Samuel Adams once said

If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

If the current version of the US Constitution, as construed and applied by the federal government (in every branch) over the past 220 years, were reduced to writing in the form of a new constitution (the original language and meaning of the US Constitution notwithstanding), would the people of the states, as they existed in 1787, ratify the constitution? I think you would have to be utterly void of understanding of the principles of a constitutional federal republic and void of the history of our country and forefathers to state that such a constitution would be ratified today. This does not even take into consideration whether the states today would ratify the constitution of 2010–though there would likely be several states that would choose to be bound to the tyrannical national system existing today, but most certainly not all would.

Through various ways and means, the constitution as applied in 2010 literally contradicts not only the limitations placed upon the federal government, but also the retained powers of the sovereign states and the very character and nature of the union in 1787. So, what does this mean for the posterity of those people in 1787? It means that we are living under the force of a constitution which we did not ratify or consent to. Put differently, we are living in slavery, for the very definition of slavery is a people living under the force of government against their will.

It is quite clear from the plain meaning of the US Constitution that it was ratified with certain principles and understandings at that time to protect usurpations of the federal government over the states and the people respectively. The states sent delegates to the constitutional convention from May to September 1787 to address and remedy the flaws of the Articles of Confederation. For five months those men debated, articulated and prayed over the formation of the constitution. After the proposed constitution was sent to each state for consideration, each state convened in their own conventions to discuss the principles of free government as it related to the proposed constitution and whether that state should ratify it. For each state that ratified the constitution, they expressly stated that their ratification was to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our POSTERITY.”

One thing is certain: those involved in the ratification of the US Constitution expected that its principles and meanings be followed by their posterity, for without its fixed meaning, the “security” of the constitution would be seriously compromised. Indeed, how can a constitution secure the blessings of liberty for posterity when the meanings and applications of the constitution change by the opinion of 9 non-elected, President-appointed, life-term judges, who are connected to and dependent upon the very system of government the constitution was intended to limit? Talk about a conflict of interest.

If our forefathers who ratified the US Constitution intended to secure the blessings of liberty for their posterity but believed that its meaning, application and limits would change over time, then the US Constitution (as applied today) falls severely short of securing the blessings of liberty for their posterity. Are the people of fifty states in 2010 bound by principles and applications that contradict those believed in 1787, especially when we have not ratified the constitution as it is forced upon us today? America’s history proves that even a written constitution does not adequately protect the freedoms of a people. James Madison admits this much in Federalist Paper 49 before the ratification of the constitution:

“Will it be sufficient to mark, with precision, the boundaries of these [federal] departments, in the constitution of the government, and to trust to these parchment [constitutional] barriers against the encroaching spirit of power?…[E]XPERIENCE ASSURES US, THAT THE EFFICACY OF THE PROVISION HAS BEEN GREATLY OVERRATED; and that some more adequate defense is indispensably necessary for the more feeble, against the more powerful, members of the government…The conclusion which I am warranted in drawing from these observations is, that a MERE DEMARCATION ON PARCHMENT OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITS OF THE SEVERAL DEPARTMENTS, IS NOT A SUFFICIENT GUARD AGAINST THOSE ENCROACHMENTS WHICH LEAD TO A TYRANNICAL CONCENTRATION OF ALL THE POWERS OF GOVERNMENT IN THE SAME HANDS.” (Emphasis added).

Was Madison right on or what! Madison could not be clearer: limiting the federal government by a mere piece of paper does nothing to protect freedom. What effect do words have when their intended meaning and their forming principles are not complied with? As the Federal Supreme Court repeatedly said in its earlier opinions, “Let the nature and objects of our Union be considered; let the great fundamental principles on which the fabric stands be examined.” Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 264, 423 (1821). Indeed, something more the words is necessary to protect freedom.

Unfortunately, there are some (though I cannot judge their intentions necessarily) in the US who argue that the only lawful means by which the people of the states may redress federal grievances is through the (1) election, (2) judicial or (3) amendment processes. They argue as a basis for their position that whatever the federal government passes (through Congress), executes (through the President) and upholds (through the courts) is the “Supreme Law of the Land” and that the states are thus required by the US Constitution to submit to those laws, even if it is admitted that those laws are in fact unconstitutional and that those federal powers are exercised at the expense of the retained sovereign powers of the states and the people.

Any studier of political theory knows these advocates believe that the US Constitution places the decision of “what is constitutional” into the sole and exclusive purview of the Federal Supreme Court; that this court has the power to define not only the limits and powers of Congress and the President (not to mention its own powers) but also the power to define the lines of sovereignty of the states who created the federal government by their sovereign powers; that nine unelected, President-appointed, life-term judges possess a power equal to what the ratifiers placed into the hands of at least three-fourths of the states as mandated by the US Constitution. Without getting into the details of the fallacy of this position, which creates a dangerous oligarchic power in the federal court, destroys all principles of a free federal republic, contradicts principles of natural law, ignores the intention of the ratification documents of the states, and reduces the power of state sovereignty to mere state submission, let us consider what James Madison said in the Federalist Papers relative to what ingredients are actually required and necessary in a federal constitutional republic to protect the freedom of the people (note: James Madison was one of the proponents in the constitutional convention who actually proposed that the federal courts have a negative power over state laws contrary to the constitution, which was of course rejected in the convention):

Federalist Paper 51: “TO WHAT expedient, then, shall we finally resort, for maintaining in practice the necessary partition of power among the several departments [of the federal government], as laid down in the Constitution? …It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: [1] by creating a will in the community independent of the majority — that is, of the society itself; [2] BY COMPREHENDING IN THE SOCIETY SO MANY SEPARATE DESCRIPTIONS OF CITIZENS AS WILL RENDER AN UNJUST COMBINATION OF A MAJORITY OF THE WHOLE VERY IMPROBABLE, IF NOT IMPRACTICABLE.

“The first method prevails in all governments possessing an hereditary or self-appointed authority. This, at best, is but a precarious security; because a power independent of the society may as well espouse the unjust views of the major, as the rightful interests of the minor party, and may possibly be turned against both parties. THE SECOND METHOD WILL BE EXEMPLIFIED IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF THE UNITED STATES…[T]HE STABILITY AND INDEPENDENCE OF SOME MEMBER OF THE GOVERNMENT, THE ONLY OTHER SECURITY, MUST BE PROPORTIONATELY INCREASED.” (Emphasis added)

Madison notes that the only way a minority of the people and of the states can be protected against the tyrannical actions of the majority through the federal government is that minority’s stability and independence be maintained and that minority’s stability and independence be proportionally increased with the increase of the majority’s power and influence. Thus, a mathematical equation is created: The Minority’s (e.g. the states) stability and independence increases in direct proportion to the majority’s (e.g. the federal government) attempt to circumvent the minority’s freedom. Madison continues in this line of thought:

Federalist Paper 52: “[The] federal legislature will not only be restrained by its dependence on its people, as other legislative bodies are, BUT THAT IT WILL BE, MOREOVER, WATCHED AND CONTROLLED BY THE SEVERAL COLLATERAL [STATE] LEGISLATURES…With less power, therefore, to abuse, the federal representatives can be less tempted on one side, and will be doubly watched on the other.” (Emphasis added)

Madison, as nationalistic-minded as he was in 1787, cannot escape the principle of states checking federal usurpations because it was so engrained into the conscience of the people and governments. Thomas Jefferson expresses the same principle of check and balance in a federal republic system: “the States should be watchful to note every material usurpation on their rights; denounce them as they occur in the most peremptory terms; to protest against them as wrongs to which our present submission shall be considered, not as acknowledgments or precedents of right, but as a temporary.” Thomas Jefferson and John P. Foley, ed., The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia, A Comprehensive Collection of the Views of Thomas Jefferson, (New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1900), 133.

This application of state sovereignty was explained by James Madison in Federalist Paper 39, when he states, “[T]he [state] authorities form distinct and independent portions of the supremacy, no more subject, within their respective spheres, to the [federal] authority, than the [federal] authority is subject to them, within its own sphere.” Nothing can be more provable in American jurisprudence: sovereignty necessarily carries with it the power to defend it. Yet, even today, after seeing the usurpations of the federal government for more than 150 years, there are still those who would deny the states their power to defend sovereignty and thus the freedom of their citizens.

This can mean only one thing: these people prefer a national system of government (as certain of our founders did and as did the Tories) over a federal system of government. That may be their choice, but did our ratifiers create a national system, whereby the states gave up their right to defend their powers? The answer is most certainly, No. The evidence expressed even by those who advocated for a national government (e.g. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton) in the Federalist Papers, not to mention the vast array of freedom documents forming our country, confirms this. Yet, constitutional (de)construction, through federal courts, supposedly has created the very form of government that our ratifiers rejected.

A decision must be made in 2010: Are states politically and legally incapable of governing themselves within their borders, or do they have the power and right to defend their sovereignty retained? Are the states subject to the tyrannical definitions and lines drawn by the federal government’s court as sole arbiter, or do they have the power to judge for themselves and defend their powers given to them by the people of that state? Are the states bound to live under a constitution that applies to them contrarily to the constitution ratified in 1787, or do they have the natural law and constitutional right to be governed by the principles of a free republic without interference from other government bodies and to perpetuate those principles for them and their posterity?

There is no neutral ground on this issue.

Those who advocate that the states MUST pass constitutional amendments to correct federal usurpations do not understand the first thing about living in freedom in a federal constitutional republic. Why should we–the non-aggressors–have to go through the arduous process of getting three-fourths of the states to correct federal abuses, when the federal government does not have the power or authority to act the way it does in the first place and are contradicting the limits we have already placed upon them? This line of thinking says, the federal government’s usurpations are valid and effective until the States pass a constitutional amendment stating otherwise. This effectively eliminates the usefulness of a written constitution, delegating only special and limited powers to a government, just as Madison explained.

How about this instead: a state can protect its own borders and powers by resisting and arresting federal tyranny, and if three-fourths of the states do not believe that state is correct in its defense of its powers, then let them pass a constitutional amendment limiting the states’ sovereignty in this regard. Giving the federal government (which our founders admitted and acknowledged would and should not comprise the vast majority of powers over the lives of the people) preference of sovereignty over the states contradicts the very structure and nature of our union in 1787, whereby the states possessed defendable concurrent power with the federal government–states who won their complete and absolute independence through a bloody and arduous seven years war, through the infinite pains and labors of millions and the lives of thousands of men, women and children. Any person or government that would have these states give up their powers and rights, when these states did not do so, commits treason against those states.

Freedom for a Change

Tim Baldwin is an attorney who received his Juris Doctor degree from Cumberland School of Law at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. He is a former felony prosecutor for the Florida State Attorney’s Office and now owns his own private law practice. He is author of a soon-to-be-published new book, entitled FREEDOM FOR A CHANGE. Tim is also one of America’s foremost defenders of State sovereignty. See his website.

Copyright (c) Timothy Baldwin, 2010.

The Third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that “no Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

Obviously, the Third Amendment has little relevance today. But what is relevant for us today is the mindset that underlay the passage of that amendment – a mindset of deep antipathy toward militarism and standing armies. Our ancestors’ fierce opposition to a powerful military force was consistent with their overall philosophy that guided the formation of the Constitution and the passage of the Bill of Rights.

While the Framers understood the need for a federal government, what concerned them was the possibility that such a government would become a worse menace than no government at all. Their recent experience with the British government – which of course had been their government and against which they had taken up arms – had reinforced what they had learned through their study of history: that the biggest threat to the freedom and well-being of a people was their own government.

Thus, after several years operating under the Articles of Confederation, the challenge the Framers faced was how to bring a federal government into existence that would be sufficiently powerful to protect their rights and liberties but that would not also become omnipotent and tyrannical.

Their solution was the Constitution, a document that would call the federal government into existence but limit its powers to those expressly enumerated in the document itself. Thus, a close examination of the Constitution shows that the powers of the U.S. government originate in it. The idea was that if a power wasn’t enumerated, federal officials were precluded from exercising it.

Even that, however, was not good enough for our American ancestors. They wanted an express restriction on the abridgement of what had become historically recognized as fundamental and inherent rights of the people. In other words, they wanted what could be considered an express insurance policy for the protection of their rights. While government officials could not lawfully exercise powers that were not enumerated in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights would make the point even more emphatically that federal officials had no authority to abridge the fundamental rights of the people.

The Constitution provided other measures to protect against the rise of omnipotent and tyrannical government. One was the division of government into three separate branches, with the aim of establishing a system of “checks and balances” that would prevent the rise of powerful centralized government. Another was the Second Amendment, which ensured that the people would retain the means of resisting tyranny or even violently overthrowing a tyrannical government should the need arise.

Given their view that the federal government they were bringing into existence constituted the biggest threat to their freedom and well-being, constantly on the minds of our ancestors was the primary means by which governments had historically subjected their people to tyranny – through the use of the government’s military forces. That is the primary reason for the deep antipathy that the Founders had for an enormous standing military force in their midst. They understood fully that if such a force existed, their own government would possess the primary means by which governments have always imposed tyranny on their own people.

Using armies for tyranny

Historically, governments had misused standing armies in two ways, both of which ultimately subjected the citizenry to tyranny. One was to engage in faraway wars, which inevitably entailed enormous expenditures, enabling the government to place ever-increasing tax burdens on the people. Such wars also inevitably entailed “patriotic” calls for blind allegiance to the government so long as the war was being waged. Consider, for example, the immortal words of James Madison, who is commonly referred to as “the father of the Constitution”:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people…. [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and … degeneracy of manners and of morals…. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

The second way to use a standing army to impose tyranny was the direct one – the use of troops to establish order and obedience among the citizenry. Ordinarily, if a government has no huge standing army at its disposal, many people will choose to violate immoral laws that always come with a tyrannical regime; that is, they engage in what is commonly known as “civil disobedience” – the disobedience to immoral laws. But as the Chinese people discovered at Tiananmen Square, when the government has a standing army to enforce its will, civil disobedience becomes much more problematic.

Consider again the words of Madison:

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

The idea is that governments use their armies to produce the enemies, then scare the people with cries that the barbarians are at the gates, and then claim that war is necessary to put down the barbarians. With all this, needless to say, comes increased governmental power over the people.

Sound familiar?

The Founding Fathers

Here is how Henry St. George Tucker put it in Blackstone’s 1768 Commentaries on the Laws of England:

Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.

Virginian Patrick Henry pointed out the difficulty associated with violent resistance to tyranny when a standing army is enforcing the orders of the government:

A standing army we shall have, also, to execute the execrable commands of tyranny; and how are you to punish them? Will you order them to be punished? Who shall obey these orders? Will your mace-bearer be a match for a disciplined regiment?

When the Commonwealth of Virginia ratified the Constitution in 1788, its concern over standing armies mirrored that of Patrick Henry:

… that standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.

Virginia’s concern was expressed by North Carolina, which stated in its Declaration of Rights in 1776,

that the people have a Right to bear Arms for the Defence of the State, and as Standing Armies in Time of Peace are dangerous to Liberty, they ought not to be kept up, and that the military should be kept under strict Subordination to, and governed by the Civil Power.

The Pennsylvania Convention repeated that principle:

… as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military shall be kept under strict subordination to and be governed by the civil power.

The U.S. State Department’s own website describes the convictions of the Founding Fathers regarding standing armies:

Wrenching memories of the Old World lingered in the 13 original English colonies along the eastern seaboard of North America, giving rise to deep opposition to the maintenance of a standing army in time of peace. All too often the standing armies of Europe were regarded as, at best, a rationale for imposing high taxes, and, at worst, a means to control the civilian population and extort its wealth.

In fact, as Roy G. Weatherup pointed out in his excellent article, “Standing Armies and Armed Citizens: A Historical Analysis of the Second Amendment,” the abuses of their government’s standing army was one of the primary reasons that the British colonists took up arms against that army in 1776:

[The Declaration of Independence] listed the colonists’ grievances, including the presence of standing armies, subordination of civil to military power, use of foreign mercenary soldiers, quartering of troops, and the use of the royal prerogative to suspend laws and charters. All of these legal actions resulted from reliance on standing armies in place of the militia.

Moreover, as William S. Fields and David T. Hardy point out in their excellent article, “The Third Amendment and the Issue of the Maintenance of Standing Armies: A Legal History,” the deep antipathy that the Founders had toward standing armies followed a long tradition among the British people of opposing the standing armies of their king:

The experience of the early Middle Ages had instilled in the English people a deep aversion to the professional army, which they came to associate with oppressive taxes, and physical abuses of their persons and property (and corresponding fondness for their traditional institution the militia). This development was to have a profound effect on the development of civil rights in both England and the American colonies…. During the seventeenth century, problems associated with the involuntary quartering of soldiers and the maintenance of standing armies became crucial issues propelling the English nation toward civil war.

Did the antipathy against standing armies mean that our ancestors were pacifists? On the contrary! After all, don’t forget that they had only recently won a violent war against their own government and its enormous and powerful standing army.

In their minds, the military bedrock of a free society lay not in an enormous standing army but rather in the concept of the citizen-soldier – the person in ordinary life in civil society who is well-armed and well-trained in the use of weapons and who is always ready in times of deepest peril to come to the aid of his country – but only to defend against invasion and not to go overseas to wage wars of aggression or wars of “liberation.” As John Quincy Adams put it in his July 4, 1821, address to Congress, America “does not go abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”

U.S. foreign policy

Are the ideas and principles of the Founding Fathers relevant today? They couldn’t be more relevant. Many decades ago, President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about the growing power of the military-industrial complex in American life. Unfortunately, the American people failed to heed his warning. The result has been an ever-growing military cancer that is bringing death, ruin, shame, and economic disaster to our nation – just as our Founding Fathers said it would.

More and more people are finally recognizing that the anger and hatred that foreigners have for the United States is rooted in morally bankrupt, deadly, and destructive foreign policies – policies that have been enforced by America’s enormous standing military force. The resulting blow-back in terms of terrorist attacks, such as those on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001, have been used as the excuse for waging more wars thousands of miles away, and those wars have produced even more anger and hatred, with the concomitant threat of even more terrorist counter-responses. All that, in turn, has provided the excuse for more foreign interventions, ever-increasing military budgets, consolidation of power, increasing taxes, and massive infringements on the civil liberties of the American people.

It is not a coincidence that the president’s indefinite detention and punishment of American citizens for suspected terrorist crimes without according them due process, habeas corpus, right to counsel, jury trials, freedom of speech, or other fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are being enforced by the standing army that our ancestors warned us against. And make no mistake about it: Given orders of their commander in chief, especially in a “national security crisis,” to establish “order” in America, U.S. soldiers will do the same thing that soldiers throughout history have done – they will obey the orders given to them. Just ask the survivors of the massacre at the Branch Davidian compound at Waco or the victims of rape and sex abuse at Abu Graib prison in Iraq or Jose Padilla, an American citizen who was denied due process, habeas corpus, and other rights accorded by the U.S. Constitution.

In determining the future direction of our nation, the choice is clear: Do we continue down the road of empire, standing armies, foreign wars and occupations, and sanctions and embargoes, along with the taxes, regulations, and loss of liberty that inevitably come with them? Do we continue a foreign policy, enforced by the U.S. military, that engenders ever-increasing anger and hatred among the people of the world, which then engenders violent “blowback” against Americans, which is in turn used to justify more of the same policies?

Or do we change direction and move our nation in the direction of the vision of our Founding Fathers – toward liberty and the restoration of a republic to our nation – toward a society in which the government is limited to protecting the nation from invasion and barred from invading or attacking foreign nations – a world in which the United States is once again the model society for freedom, prosperity, peace, and harmony – a nation in which the Statue of Liberty once again becomes a shining beacon for those striving to escape the tyranny and oppression of their own governments?

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Copyright © 2004 Future of Freedom Foundation

There’s plenty of federal holidays for Americans to celebrate.  On July 4th, there’s independence from King George’s England.  On the first Monday in September, a holiday was dedicated to the “social and economic achievements of American workers.”  Other days throughout the year celebrate autumn harvest, soldiers who died in the civil war and even a person who sailed to this continent nearly three centuries before the country was “founded.”

When there’s no federally-sanctioned holiday to call upon, protesters and activists across the political spectrum often pick “important” dates to schedule events to bring attention to their cause.  We’ve seen protests on Tax Day, Independence Day, May Day, Earth Day, and more.  And, just last week, we saw great importance placed on a day that doesn’t even have a letter in its name, 9/12.

But nowhere to be found on these great lists of “federal holidays” or “protest days” is a celebration of the document that defined the principles of liberty that this country was supposedly founded upon – the Constitution.

LIMITING POWER

The Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787, and every year that date passes by with hardly a sound.  Sure, now that it’s considered a day of “federal observance” you’ll find government schools around the country including it in their lesson plans.  But these discussions generally focus on “Constitution Trivia” instead of what’s really important. While it may be good to educate our young on how many years a Senator serves, or how Supreme Court justices are appointed, it’s not enough.  Seriously lacking in the public discourse is the actual purpose of the Constitution – its underlying principles.

When the Constitution was being considered for ratification, there was strong opposition from famous American figures that included George Mason and Patrick Henry. One major reason for this was a fear of too much power.  The founding generation spent their lives toiling under a tyranny – a government without limits.  But, when the Constitution was written, it was done to codify in law that the powers of government would be limited to those which had been delegated to it.  The entire system was created under the principle of popular sovereignty – that ‘We the People of the Several States’ created the government, and all powers not delegated to it, were retained.

But that’s not something you’re likely to hear from politicians in Washington DC, political pundits, schools, or just about anywhere else.  It’s generally not in their interest, either.  If politicians and their backers were promoting such crazy ideas as “originalism” and “limited government” they’d never be able to convince you that they have the power to tell you what kind of health care plan you’ll be getting, how big your toilet can be, what kind of plants you’re allowed to grow, where you’re allowed to exercise your “right” to free speech, whom you can buy and sell from, and even when you must send your children to die for them.

MORE OF THE SAME

Throughout history, even kings and queens have often failed to survive such acts of hubris; but, in “free” America, the major parties that produce all the presidents continue to receive approval through tens of millions of votes.  And where has that gotten people?

Well, let’s take a look at some major issues.

If you were opposed to war in the Bush administration, you’ve still got the same wars and threats of wars under Obama.

If you were opposed to national health care under Clinton, you got a massive expansion of government health care under George Bush, which laid the groundwork for an even bigger expansion under Obama.

If you didn’t like the federal government passing the Patriot Act without even reading it, you’re still getting the same failure to read today.

On the other hand, if you liked the Bush bailouts, you’ve gotta love the ones that Obama has given you!

No matter what side of the political aisle you sit on, the federal government is not your friend.  It’s not a friend to the Constitution, and it’s certainly no friend to your liberty.  For years and years…and years, people have yelled “vote the bums out!”  “Call Congress now!”  “March on DC!”  But, in the long run, little to none of this actually works.

If you oppose this national health care plan, they’ll give you that one.  If you oppose one war, you’ll get another one. If you oppose today’s bailout, they’ll find a different one tomorrow.  Decade in and decade out, the government keeps growing, and your liberty keeps shrinking.  And it doesn’t matter if the person in charge is named Obama, or Bush, or Reagan, or Clinton.

The bottom line?  Looking to the federal government – whether it’s though elections, or protests, or lawsuits, or rallies – is a failed strategy.   So how about trying something new?

A DIFFERENT PATH: NULLIFICATION

This year, for example, seven states have passed sovereignty resolutions under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. Two states passed laws nullifying some federal firearms regulations. Three states are considering constitutional amendments allowing residents to effectively opt-out of any future national health care plan. And, thirteen states now have Medical Marijuana laws in direct opposition to federal laws.

In Jeffersonian-speak, this all falls under the banner of “nullification.”  When a state ‘nullifies’ a federal law, it is proclaiming that the law in question is void and inoperative, or ‘non-effective,’ within the boundaries of that state; or, in other words, not a law as far as that state is concerned.

While some in government and the media would like to paint this essential tool for resisting federal tyranny as solely aligned with the South in the War Between the States – and nothing more, they’re missing some essential history.  It’s been used in efforts to advance free speech, help runaway slaves, resist high taxes and more.

And recently, the Bush-Era Real ID Act is now virtually dead in the water, not due to elections or rallies, or calls to Congress.  In the past two years, approximately two dozen states simply refused to implement the law.  The result?  It’s effectively null and void.  While the Obama administration would like to revive it under a different name, the reality is still there – with massive state-level resistance, the federal government can be pushed back inside its constitutional box.  Issue by issue, law by law, the best way to change the federal government is by ignoring it.

Even better, this is no single-issue movement.  Legislators in over 20 states are considering legislation to nullify some federal gun laws, and another 10 are looking at ways to nullify national health care.  15 states are weighing legislation or ballot initiatives that could turn them into medical marijuana states by next year, and activists in over a dozen states have been pushing for legislation that would require their governors to bring national guard troops home from Iraq and elsewhere.

Over the years, wise men and women warned us that the Constitution would never enforce itself.  I believe it’s time for people to recognize this as fact, and bring that enforcement closer to home.

So whether you’re on the left, or on the right, or even somewhere in the middle, the path to freedom, the path to your political goals lies not in Washington D.C.  Instead, it lies in Madison, and Jefferson (City)…and other state capitols around the country.

So this Constitution Day take a new pledge.  Ignore and nullify the federal government.  It’s as worthless as it is dangerous.

Michael Boldin [send him email] is the founder of the Tenth Amendment Center.

NOTE:  If you get a chance, check out my Constitution Day interview with Lou Dobbs – click here

Jefferson once wrote, “When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.” To resist this centralizing trend, the sage of Monticello was convinced, the states needed some kind of corporate defense mechanism.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Keynote speech at the Ohio Rally for State Sovereignty, August 1, 2009.

[audio:http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Andrew-Napolitano-080109.mp3]

Video: Part 1, Part 2

Let me set down a couple of fervent beliefs that animate everything I do and everything I say.

I believe that God created heaven and earth and every single individual on the planet.

I believe that the God who gave us life gave us liberty and that freedom is our birthright.

I believe that the States created the federal government and not the other way around.  And that the power that the States gave to the Federal Government – they can take back.

When we were colonists, and the King and the Parliament needed money from us, and they always seemed to need money, they devised ingenious ways to tax us.  One of them was called the Stamp Act. The Parliament decreed that every piece of paper that the Colonists had in their homes; every book, every document, every deed, every lease, every pamphlet, every poster to be nailed to a tree had to have the King’s stamp on it.  You think going to a Post Office is bad?  You had to go to a British Government office and buy a stamp with the King’s picture.

Question.  How did the King know that his picture was on every piece of paper in your house?  The Parliament enacted a hateful piece of legislation called the Writs of Assistance Act which let the king’s soldiers write their own search warrants, and bang down any door they chose to look for the stamps or anything else that they were looking for.

It was the last straw.

We fought a revolution.  We won the revolution. We wrote the Constitution. The constitution doesn’t grant power, it keeps the government off our backs.

When they were debating the Constitution in the Summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, there were two great arguments – one by the Jefferson and Madison crowd and one by the Adams and Hamilton crowd.  Jefferson argued, though he wasn’t physically there in Philly, as he did in the Declaration of Independence that our rights are ours by virtue of our humanity.  That as God is perfectly free, and we are created in his image and likeness, we too are perfectly free.  The big government crowd – yes they had them even in those days – argued that you can’t have freedom without government, and that government gives us our rights, and therefore, that government can take them away. This is not an academic argument. Jefferson and the natural law argument prevailed because the Constitution was written to keep the government from interfering with our natural rights.

And so, your right to think as you wish, to say what you think, to publish what you say, to travel where you want, to worship as you see fit, to keep and bear arms to defend yourself against a tyranny.  And, after the right to life, the greatest and most uniquely American of rights – and I say this in front of the seat of the government – is the right to be left alone.

We wrote a Constitution to ensure that the government would never interfere with these rights.  Think about it – if rights come from the government, then the government, by ordinary legislation, or presidential decree can take them away.  But if the rights come from our humanity, then unless we violate someone else’s natural rights, the government cannot take our rights away.

This is not just a democrat, upper case D, or a republican, upper case R, problem.  It’s a problem with government today.  There’s a republican version of big government just as assaultive to our liberties as there’s a democrat version of big government.

We fought a revolution because British soldiers could knock on our doors and demand that we house them, and demand that we turn over property to them because they could write their own search warrants.  In the Patriot Act, the most hateful piece of legislation since the Alien and Sedition Acts, a republican congress and a republican president authorized federal agents to do the unthinkable – to write their own search warrants. And the republican administration didn’t even let members of the House of Representatives read the Patriot Act before they voted on it.

Why should the government be able to spy on us?  We should be able to spy on them!

When some judge is rationalizing away our liberty, or some congressman is plotting to take away your freedom or your tax dollars, we should know what they do every minute that they do it.

I was speaking to a group of congressman from a neighboring state – I won’t tell you which state it was, but they don’t play football there – and they came up to me and said “this is the first time we have heard that the Patriot Act allows federal agents to write their own search warrants.”  Remember, in the Constitution, we put in the 4th Amendment, the right to be left alone, to make sure that if the government had a target, no matter how guilty the target, no matter how widespread is the belief in the guilt of the target, no matter how dangerous is the target, the government has to go through a neutral judge with a search warrant before it can get to that target.  These members of Congress said, “we didn’t know that the Patriot Act allowed the government to bypass the courts and write any search warrant they wanted.”  Then I asked them a question I knew the answer to already – did you read the Patriot Act before you voted on it?  The answer – no.  What were you voting on?  A summary we received.  Let me guess who wrote the summary – some lawyers in the justice department, right?  Of course.

Would you hire anybody to run your business that committed you to a violation of the very reason you’re in business if they didn’t even the document by which they were making that committment?  Of course  not.

The camera is the new gun.  There’s nothing that government dislikes more than the light of day, and cameras recording what the government is doing, whether it’s on a street corner, or in there, or in Washington D.C., we have the right to know everything that they do and why they do it, and when they do it, and how they are taking our freedoms.

I have another one of my basic core beliefs.  The individual has an immortal soul.  Every individual is greater than any government.

Your government is based on fear and force.  You don’t have to take my word on it.  The 2nd president on the United States, John Adams, said “Of course the government is based on fear.”  And the first president, George Washington, said “Government is not reason, it is force.”  I think they knew what they were talking about.

Now fast-forward to modern times.  Whenever the government wants something, it scares us.  During the civil war, Lincoln tried civilians in this state where no battles occured, by military tribunal.  After he died the supreme court invalidated everything the military tribunals did.  During the first world war, the Wilson administration locked up 2000 people called anarchists – same thing as enemy combatants.  No trial, no charge, just jail for the duration of the war.  In world war II, FDR locked up 150,000 Japanese Americans, people born in the United States, who got no trial and had no charges, and when the war was over were given $25 and told to go home.

Today we have federal agents.  You know I get in arguments with my friends at Fox News, and one of them, I don’t have to tell you who it is, but is truly the most irascible person there.  And he said to me, you know you have a problem with Guantanamo Bay, and you have a problem with the Patriot Act, what will you do if I get sent to Guantanamo Bay, will you visit me?  And I say, Bill – no, because they’ll probably keep me there as well.

Government likes to say that it’s taking an oath to uphold the Constitution.  In the years that I was on the bench, it seemed that every time government lawyers were in my courtroom, if the government was prosecuting someone who was legitimately guilty or whether it was a mistake, or whether somebody was suing the government because government contractors or government doctors, or government workers made a mistake – the government doesn’t come in to the courtroom to enforce the constitution, it comes into the courtroom to evade and avoid it.  That, ladies and gentlemen, must be stopped.

This is a great moment in our history.  A crowd of this magnitude on a beautiful day, in the boiling sun, in the most middle-American of great middle-American states…comes together not because the president is a democrat, not because his predecessor was a republican, not because a war is just or unjust, not because the Fed is stealing or printing – you’re here because you believe in human freedom.

It is the essence of our existence that we should be free.  But remember this: the government hates freedom.  It is an obstacle to every one of their designs.  Whenever they write laws, whenever they take your tax dollars, whenever they regulate your private behavior, whenever they tell you how to spend your money, whenever they tell you what medicines to take, whenever they tell you what food to eat, whenever they tell you with who you may or must associate, they are taking away your freedom and they love to get away with it.  And they cannot get away with it any longer.

In the long history of the world, very few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its maximum hour of danger. This is that moment and you are that generation!  Now is the time to defend our freedoms.

Jefferson was no saint but he was the greatest of our American presidents.  He believed that the individual was greater than the state.  He believed that the states were greater than the federal government.  And when he wrote that our rights come from our creator, and that our rights are inalienable, he forever wed the notion of natural rights to the American experience and the American experiment.  We must be vigilant about every right that the government wants to take away from us.

You’ve heard the president say, present president and his predecessor, “my first job is to keep you safe.”  He’s wrong!  His first job is to keep us free.  It is his only job to keep us free.

Shortly before he died, Jefferson lamented, that in his view of the world that is was in the natural order of things for government to grow and freedom to be diminished; how ardently he wish that that wouldn’t happen. And in order to prevent it from happening he had a very simple remedy, “When the people fear the government, that is tyranny.  When the government fears the people, that is liberty!”

Andrew P. Napolitano [send him mail], who was on the bench of the Superior Court of New Jersey between 1987 and 1995, is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel. His newest book is Dred Scott’s Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America, (Nelson, 2009) His previous books are A Nation of Sheep, The Constitution in Exile and Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws.

Copyright © 2009 Andrew P. Napolitano

From Chuck Baldwin: My son, Tim, writes today’s column. He is an attorney who received his Juris Doctor degree from Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama. He is a former prosecutor for the Florida State Attorney’s Office and now owns his own private law practice. He is married to the former Miss Jennifer Hanssen.

Let’s be honest, America is facing the same legal, moral and ethical questions that our Founding generation did, especially regarding the issue of “Who Is Sovereign in the United States.” For our Founders, they fought, bled and died on the principles that no man or government has the right to rule over others contrary to their agreement (i.e. compact, constitution) and contrary to the principles of natural law as revealed in the Creation of God; that all men are born in nature with the power to govern themselves; and that no Sovereign government, established lawfully by the consent of we the people, can be usurped and controlled by any other entity. Thus, today in America, the question once again comes down to “Who is Sovereign in the United States?”

Today, there are 3 basic options for “Who is Sovereign in the United States”: (1) the Federal government, (2) the State governments or (3) We the People. I feel confident in stating that most contemporary Americans believe that the answer to this critical question is the Federal government–especially as it concerns any practical effect on the power of and over government. For years, Americans have been brainwashed though public education, major media networks and politicians that ALL federal laws are the “supreme law of the land” and that no state law or action to the contrary is valid, citing Article 6, paragraph 2 of the US Constitution as their “irrefutable” proof. Of course they are completely wrong: American ideology and legal fact states that sovereignty rests with “we the people.” However, the question must be more narrowly defined.

That is, does the sovereign power of we the people rest with all the people in the nation as one body, or does the power rest with the people THROUGH the respective States? The answer to this question cannot be overstated, because if the sovereign power rests with we the people collectively as one body, then the States have absolutely no power and at the ratification of the US Constitution, the States lost all powers originally granted to them by their respective sovereigns (the people of that State). To the contrary, if Sovereignty rests within or through their respective States, then the States conversely have more power than what is being admitted today by the “Centralists” of our day.

Through an honest study of the history and the context of the Articles of Confederation, the US Constitution, the Constitutional Convention and subsequent Ratification debates, the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, the rulings of subsequent US Supreme Court Rulings and the writings of political philosophers and statesmen of the 1700s and 1800s, the conclusion is undeniable and clear: We the People are the Sovereigns of the States respectively and of the States United through our respective States.

Thus, the issue is not who is Sovereign, because we know that We the People are sovereign in the US and that the Sovereigns of each State have never ceded to the Federal government any power not expressly granted to it by the Compact (the US Constitution). But rather, the issue is one of JURISDICTION: in other words, who has the power to act on behalf of and in compliance with the Sovereign? The issue of jurisdiction is so important because it acknowledges that since the Sovereign has “paramount authority” in government, any powers that are granted from the Sovereign to government are to remain within that grant of authority. Put another way, the States can no more grant authority to the Federal government against the will of the Sovereign–the people–than the Executive branch of the Federal government can give to the Judiciary branch the powers that we the people granted to it alone. To deny that such a grant exists or conversely to ignore the limitations placed on the governments by the Sovereign is to suggest that tyranny is a lawful act and that it must be complied with. America’s founders would have considered such a political theory to be treasonous. Do we the people think so seriously of the matter? According to recent events, the answer to this question will likely be answered sooner than later.

As some of you may know, several states have and are passing legislation regarding the independence and sovereignty of the people of their respective states. More specifically, the states of Tennessee and Montana have passed “Firearms Freedom Acts,” which have become law and which reaffirm their Sovereignty under the 10th Amendment of the US Constitution. This law states that any firearms that are made, sold and bought in that state are NOT subject to the Federal regulations of firearms, because they are inherently internal affairs, which exempt them from the commerce clause of the US Constitution.

As you would imagine, the Federal government, through its agency, the Department of Justice, did not take too kindly to Tennessee’s assertion of jurisdiction over this matter and position that the federal laws did not apply to the subject matter at hand. This federal opposition has become known through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), whereby they informed the firearms licensees in an “open letter” in Tennessee that the recently enacted law (Firearms Freedom Act) does not apply and is void and that they (the firearms licensees) must still obey and submit to the federal laws, regardless of the State’s statute. (See here)

This ATF response tells us the following about the federal government’s ideology of Sovereignty: (1) the federal government does not recognize the lawful and independent jurisdiction of the Sovereigns of Tennessee to operate their internal affairs as they deem proper and fitting; (2) the Sovereigns of Tennessee do not possess lawful jurisdiction to govern themselves through constitutional means; (3) the federal government has the power and authority to control the internal affairs of all States, as they deem fit. Bottom line, the Federal government is Sovereign. With their theory in mind, however, what commodity, what relationship, what contract, what service, or what molecule in this entire country would not be subject to their control and power?

This issue is the very same reason why the Colonists declared their independence from Great Britain in 1776 and why Great Britain declared the Colonies to be in a state of rebellion against the government. The conflict was in fact the application of their Constitution: whether it be a “living” constitution or whether it be “fundamental laws” based upon the intent and will of the people. The fact is, it was the Great-Britain-view of their constitution verses the American-view of their constitution that caused the conflict between the crown and the colonies. One historian summarizes the conflict this way:

“The contrast cannot be too strongly insisted upon. [The colonists], on the one hand, believed that the British Constitution was fixed by ‘the law of God and nature,’ and founded in the principles of law and reason so that Parliament could not alter it, but [Great Britain believed] that ‘the constitution of this country has been always in a moving state, either gaining or losing something,’ and ‘there are things even in Magna Charta which are not constitutional now’ and others which an act of Parliament might change. Between two such conceptions of the powers of government compromise was difficult to attain . . . Such differences in ideals were as important causes of a breaking-up of the empire [of Great Britain] as more concrete matters like oppressive taxation.” (Claude Halstead Van Tyne, The Causes of the War of Independence, Volume 1, [University of Michigan, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1922], 235, 237).

Indeed, the issues of taxation during the 1760s and 1770s were only fruits of the underlying issue, and that is, who is Sovereign in America. According to Great Britain, the government had the power to impose its will on the people of America despite the will of the colonies and despite the natural laws governing the compact between the English people and their government. In other words, the government believed that their constitution was “living,” giving the government power to impose its will on the people, without the people’s consent. The colonists, however, saw the matter to be a usurpation of their God-given right to be governed by their consent and in compliance with their constitution. The end result: the Sovereigns in each colony seceded from the empire of Great Britain because of Great Britain’s refusal to follow their constitution.

Do Sovereigns throughout our States United not see the significance of the issue we are facing today? Are we so blind to history that we cannot compare this scenario to the very scenarios that led to the American Revolution? Are we so ignorant as to the intents and purposes of the US Constitution? Consider that the “supreme laws of the land” were never meant to be carte blanche powers of the Federal government, but instead federal laws were expressly limited by the terms of the compact between and for the States, found in the Constitution. This concept of “supreme law of the land” was expressed by a founding father, whom many would consider to be a “centralist” in belief, Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist Paper #27:

“[T]hat the laws of the Confederacy [meaning, the United States of America--yes, even Hamilton, along with many other founders, such as George Washington, called the US Constitution a Confederacy, because they knew that the nature and character of the compact of the US Constitution did not change from the Articles of Confederation] as to the ENUMERATED and LEGITIMATE objects of its jurisdiction, will become the SUPREME LAW of the land, to the observance . . . in each State, will be bound by the sanctity of an oath. Thus the legislatures, courts, and magistrates, of the respective members, will be incorporated into the operation of the national government AS FAR AS ITS JUST AND CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY EXTENDS.”

Hamilton’s legal position concerning the limited power of the federal government and the “supreme law of the land” was the consensus of the founders, the States and we the people. Nowhere in America’s founding was there the notion that the supreme laws of the land were anything contrary to the compact FOR the States. The supreme laws of the land are simply those “fundamental laws” that we the people have created and imposed upon the government to follow and uphold.

Of course, the question has been raised over the past 150 years of “who has the power to determine whether or not the Federal government has usurped their constitutional authority?” The popular answer is (wrongfully), the US Supreme Court. God forbid that the Sovereigns of each State must wait and rely on 9 federal judges to make rulings of this nature before a State would have any legal rights or justification to act in accordance with the will of their Sovereigns. Indeed, the ATF interpreted the Constitution unilaterally without the opinion of the US Supreme Court and without opinion or order denied the constitutionality of Tennessee’s Firearms Freedom Act. The Sovereigns in each state have the same power, and the historical and legal evidence is plentiful. Consider Thomas Jefferson’s position:

“[T]he States should be watchful to note every material usurpation on their rights; denounce them as they occur in the most peremptory terms; to protest against them as wrongs to which our present submission shall be considered, not as acknowledgments or precedents of right, but as a temporary yielding to the lesser evil, until their accumulation shall overweigh that of separation.” (Thomas Jefferson and John P. Foley, ed., The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia, A Comprehensive Collection of the Views of Thomas Jefferson, [New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1900], 133)

I will not attempt to persuade the reader at this point on the fallacious position that only the US Supreme Court can make a determination of constitutional actions. However, for those who would argue that the US Supreme Court is in fact the only legal means by which a State can say “no” to the federal government, then I believe that such a person has reached the point of voluntary slavery, and such a person is dangerous to the concepts of federalism, American-sovereignty, and constitutional limits and freedom, as expressed by thousands of the most influential men in our history. And such a person has accepted only those political means of redress whereby the Sovereigns of each State drudge through the treacherous mud of tyranny and get absolutely nowhere.

What we are seeing today, and have seen for over 100 years in America, is the usurpation of the federal government over Sovereignty–we the people–and over Jurisdiction–the States. While this article cannot begin to expound in depth the true character and nature of the US Constitution, a study of history reveals that the US Constitution was an agreement between the Sovereigns of each State whereby they acceded to give up only certain parts of their power for the “more perfect union” of the people within those States. As with any sovereign people or government, accession may be limited to whatever means and ways necessary to protect the freedom of that society. This is in fact what the Colonists did in 1776 when declaring independence from Great Britain, what the States did in 1781 when ratifying the Articles of Confederation, and what the States did in 1787 when ratifying the US Constitution. It was the Sovereigns, through their respective States, who declared their natural rights under God, who secured their natural rights through independence from governments and who expressed that any act outside of their consent is tyranny.

When this recognition resounds in the hearts and minds of the people, as our Declaration of Independence states, “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” Do you really think after only 11 years from the signing of the Declaration of Independence that those same people who risked everything for independence from those “living-constitutionalists” in Great Britain and who believed in the principles seen in the Articles of Confederation would have completely renounced their understanding of a Confederacy and Federalism and would have resigned the same and delegated all of their powers that they fought and died to secure for each State and for their citizens? If you think so silly a notion, you severely impose injustice upon the intelligence and intentions of our founders.

However, the record is clear that the Sovereigns of each State never ceded to the federal government powers not expressly vested to it and never waived the ability to reclaim that power through their proper channels–the States–the same channels by which the US Constitution was ratified. Consider the Sovereigns’ voice in the State of Virginia in 1787:

“We the delegates of the people of Virginia . . . Do, in the name and in behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known, that the powers granted under the constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby, remains with them and at their will; that therefore no right, of any denomination, can be cancelled, abridged, restrained or modified by the congress, by the senate or house of representatives acting in any capacity, by the president or any department, or officer of the United States, EXCEPT IN THOSE INSTANCES IN WHICH POWER IS GIVEN BY THE CONSTITUTION FOR THOSE PURPOSES.” (Emphasis added.)

However, the Federal government today does not recognize the Sovereignty in the people of the respective states; it does not recognize the respective States’ jurisdiction over all matters not expressly delegated to the federal government; and it does not seem to acknowledge State Sovereignty under the 10th amendment of the US Constitution. Given their evident intent and purposes to continually grow in power and to continually oppress and suppress the sovereignty of we the people, against our respective states, the question becomes, how will they be made to understand this? It is of course up to the Sovereigns in each state to answer this question. And we see the answers arriving through State laws such as the Firearms Freedom Act.

The time has come in America where to be free necessarily means to resist status quo and federal usurpation and to actively change the course and philosophy being shoved down our throats. There really is no middle ground any more. This is not a matter of politics anymore. This is not a matter of Republican and Democrat. This is a matter of FREEDOM, as much so as were the matters of 1775 and 1776. It is staring you in the face, daring you to make a move. May we never be guilty of causing, whether by our apathy, indifference, laziness or comfort, this nation to lose the freedoms that our founders attempted to secure with infinite pains and labors. We the people must once again reassert our Sovereignty in this country and the States must recognize and act upon their God-ordained role as Freedom protectors and tyranny resisters.

© 2009 Chuck Baldwin – All Rights Reserved

Thomas J. DiLorenzo, published author and senior fellow at the Mises Institute, discusses the principle of nullification as a devolution of power away from the central government into the hands of the state or the people, Thomas Jefferson and the Kentucky Resolves as resistance to the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, ways nullification was put into practice all across the Union in the early days of the Republic, Andrew Jackson and resistance to the bank of the United States, the “Tariff of Abominations,” nullification of the fugitive slave act,  the slander of racism that proponents of big government often throw out at supporters of decentralization, secession as the ultimate brake on government,  the power and control of the IRS and the Federal Reserve, the Second Vermont Republic, and the progression of dictatorial powers through the Bush and Obama administrations.

Mentioned in this Show:

Hamilton’s Curse

Nullification, A Constitutional History

The Real Lincoln

How Capitalism Saved America

Mises.org

LewRockwell.com

Kentucky Resolutions

Virginia Resolution

Second Vermont Republic

Free State Project

As a Democratic-Republican he was selected as the fifth Vice President of the United States of America, serving under James Madison, from March 4, 1813 until his death.  He was the first Vice President not to run for President of the United States.

The following are excerpts from “Observations On the New Constitution, and On the Federal and State Conventions,” written by Gerry in 1788.

On patriotism and the power of the People
by Elbridge Gerry

When patriotism is discountenanced and publick virtue becomes the ridicule of the sycophant—when every man of liberality, firmness and penetration who cannot lick the hand stretched out to oppress, is deemed an enemy to the State—then is the gulph of despotism set open, and the grades to slavery, though rapid, are scarce perceptible

Self defence is a primary law of nature, which no subsequent law of society can abolish; this primæval principle, the immediate gift of the Creator, obliges every one to remonstrate against the strides of ambition, and a wanton lust of domination, and to resist the first approaches of tyranny, which at this day threaten to sweep away the rights for which the brave sons of America have fought with an heroism scarcely paralleled even in ancient republicks.

It may be repeated, they have purchased it with their blood, and have gloried in their independence with a dignity of spirit, which has made them the admiration of philosophy, the pride of America, and the wonder of Europe.

On these shores freedom has planted her standard, diped in the purple tide that flowed from the veins of her martyred heroes; and here every uncorrupted American yet hopes to see it supported by the vigour, the justice, the wisdom and unanimity of the people, in spite of the deep-laid plots, the secret intrigues, or the bold effrontery of those interested and avaricious adventurers for place, who intoxicated with the ideas of distinction and preferment have prostrated every worthy principle beneath the shrine of ambition.

Yet these are the men who tell us republicanism is dwindled into theory—that we are incapable of enjoying our liberties—and that we must have a master.

All writers on government agree, and the feelings of the human mind witness the truth of these political axioms, that man is born free and possessed of certain unalienable rights—that government is instituted for the protection, safety and happiness of the people, and not for the profit, honour, or private interest of any man, family, or class of men

That the origin of all power is in the people, and that they have an incontestible right to check the creatures of their own creation, vested with certain powers to guard the life, liberty and property of the community.

And if certain selected bodies of men, deputed on these principles, determine contrary to the wishes and expectations of their constituents, the people have an undoubted right to reject their decisions, to call for a revision of their conduct, to depute others in their room, or if they think proper, to demand further time for deliberation on matters of the greatest moment: it therefore is an unwarrantable stretch of authority or influence, if any methods are taken to preclude this peaceful and reasonable mode of enquiry and decision.

And it is with inexpressible anxiety, that many of the best friends of the Union of the States—to the peaceable and equal participation of the rights of nature, and to the glory and dignity of this country, behold the insiduous arts, and the strenuous efforts of the partisans of arbitrary power, by their vague definitions of the best established truths, endeavoring to envelope the mind in darkness the concomitant of slavery, and to lock the strong chains of domestic despotism on a country, which by the most glorious and successful struggles is but newly emancipated from the spectre of foreign dominion.

In 1819 U.S. Supreme Court decision “McCullough v. Maryland,” Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, “An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.”

Today, 190 years later, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell has called for a 16 percent increase in the Personal Income Tax, saying, “The simple truth is we have no good choices. There are no shortcuts out of this crisis, no magic bullets, no painless path out of this morass. We can do the easy thing for the moment or the right thing for Pennsylvania’s future. The fairest plan is to spread the pain across the board, and let our economic recovery begin.”

I disagree higher taxes are good for Pennsylvania’s future or economic recovery and believe we have additional choices other than raising taxes.

Our nation was founded because Americans were upset about taxes.  The colonists were angry their government spent their money without giving them a say.  Patrick Henry gave the rallying cry, “no taxation without representation.”

What would our Founding Fathers feel about our nation today?   While we have taxation with representation, we certainly are taxed…a lot. The federal government spends trillions (and incurs trillions in additional debt) and states spend billions; despite which level of government (federal, state, county, municipal, or school district) spending you refer to, it is all taxpayer money – your money.

Regardless if you advocate for larger government or smaller government, one thing is certain – government is getting bigger and the private sector is getting smaller, particularly in Pennsylvania.  This certainly was not the vision of Founding Fathers like Thomas Paine, who said, “that government is best which governs least.”

Governor Rendell said his proposed tax increase will “only” cost taxpayers a few dollars each week.  He also said the burden will not fall upon those least able to pay, and insists the increase will be “temporary” (hopefully, more temporary than the Johnstown Flood Tax of 1936).

How we spend the people’s money – your money – does matter.  Taxes should always be the last resort – especially during troubled economic times. People are hurting, jobs are being lost, and the future is uncertain.  Government is the only entity that seems to grow and ask for more when money is tight.

We should not – and we cannot – forget the principles on which our nation was founded:  fair taxes, transparency in the expenditure of those dollars, and recognition that those who pay the bills should not be expected to pay more.  It’s your money.  Government needs to live within its means and not expect any more from you when they don’t.

Mike Folmer [send him email] of Lebanon, Pennsylvania is a Pennsylvania State Senator who represents the 48th Senate district, which includes all of Lebanon County and portions of Berks, Chester, Dauphin and Lancaster Counties.