On May 1, 2010, President Obama delivered the commencement speech to the Class of 2010 at my alma mater, the University of Michigan.  In the address, the President noted Thomas Jefferson’s statement that “with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times,” and extrapolated it into a defense of robust government activity and intervention in almost every area of our lives:

our government must keep pace with the times.  When America expanded from a few colonies to an entire continent, and we needed a way to reach the Pacific, our government helped build the railroads.  When we transitioned from an economy based on farms to one based on factories, and workers needed new skills and training, our nation set up a system of public high schools.  When the markets crashed during the Depression and people lost their life savings, our government put in place a set of rules and safeguards to make sure that such a crisis never happened again, and then put a safety net in place to make sure that our elders would never be impoverished the way they had been.  And because our markets and financial systems have evolved since then, we’re now putting in place new rules and safeguards to protect the American people.

The President, in other words, used Thomas Jefferson as a springboard to advocate for government power.  I suspect that there is little in the world more full of irony than a defense of big government using the mantle of Jefferson.  What would Jefferson have thought about the federal government building the railroads, regulating public education, dominating the financial system, and involving itself in health care?

First, let us address the quote that the President used as the commencement of his ideas: “with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.”  The quote is taken from a July 12, 1810 letter from Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval and is inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial. 

But what was Jefferson actually saying?  This was not, as President Obama claimed, a statement in defense of activist government.  Rather, it is a statement evidencing one of Jefferson’s lesser-known and more radical ideas – the concept of “generational tyranny.”  Jefferson believed that, just as one nation has no right to impose law or regulation on another, so one generation has no right to impose law on generations to follow:

That our Creator made the earth for the use of the living and not of the dead; that those who exist not can have no use nor right in it, no authority or power over it; that one generation of men cannot foreclose or burthen its use to another, which comes to it in its own right and by the same divine beneficence; that a preceding generation cannot bind a succeeding one by its laws or contracts; these deriving their obligation from the will of the existing majority, and that majority being removed by death, another comes in its place with a will equally free to make its own laws and contracts; these are axioms so self-evident that no explanation can make them plainer; for he is not to be reasoned with who says that non-existence can control existence, or that nothing can move something.

Letter to Thomas Earle, 1823.  Far from Jefferson’s comment about institutions keeping pace with the times reflecting faith in big government as the President stated, it actually reflects just the opposite.  Jefferson, for example, would not have believed that the Depression-era financial regulations could justifiably be imposed on the current generation.  He would have been opposed to any federal regulatory structure that persisted over generations as the outdated vestiges of long gone majorities which have no place in today’s society.

President Obama then went on to express exasperation at those who believe “that all of government is inherently bad.”  Based on this comment, Jefferson must provoke much exasperation from the President.  Jefferson valued resistance to government authority above almost all else.  In a 1787 letter to Abigail Adams, he remarked “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive.  It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.  I like a little rebellion now and then.  It is like a storm in the atmosphere.” 

In fact, Jefferson thought that anti-government rebellion should be contemplated as often as once every twenty years: “God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion [as the American Revolution].”  Letter to William S. Smith, 1787.  Rebellion is described by Jefferson as “medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”  And almost everyone is aware of one of Jefferson’s most famous quotes:

What signify a few lives lost in a Century or Two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Let’s call a spade a spade: Jefferson was radically anti-government.

Jefferson’s anti-government ideas had one primary focal point: the federal government. If Jefferson were alive today, he would certainly be a regular contributor to the Tenth Amendment Center, for he considered the Tenth Amendment to be the focus and the foundation of the entire Constitutional structure. In opposing Alexander Hamilton’s plan to establish a National Bank in 1791, Jefferson noted:

I consider the foundation of the [Federal] Constitution as laid on this ground: That “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.” [10th Amendment]  To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.

Virginia's American Revolution

Thomas Jefferson is an American hero who spoke truth to power and was unafraid to say exactly what he thought, no matter how radical or crazy his ideas seemed.  His legacy should never be used – especially by the President of the United States – to support the principles of government intrusion and activism that he so deeply abhorred.

Jefferson “swor[e] upon the altar of God, eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”  It is unfortunate that many Americans are not so hostile.  If they were, “liberty” today might mean more than a word on a coin.

Andy Quesnelle spent most of his early childhood in Cincinnati, Ohio and moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1992. He has lived in Pittsburgh ever since, except for the 7-year period during which he was in college and law school. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 2003 with a B.A. in History and Political Science. His primary areas of concentration were Colonial American History, 20th Century U.S. History, and American politics and government. He received his J.D. from Villanova University School of Law in 2006. Since then, he has practiced as a labor and employment attorney, representing management and employers, in Pittsburgh. He has always been a very strong advocate of states’ rights and decentralized government. He believes that Thomas Jefferson was absolutely right — government power is not to be trusted, and the more centralized government power becomes, the less it is to be trusted.

Author’s Update, May 15, 2010:

In my most recent article, “Hijacking Thomas Jefferson,” I explained why President Obama’s invocation of Thomas Jefferson to support government intrusion and intervention is unsupportable. My intention was to illustrate Jefferson’s thinking on these issues, which was the most radical of the Founders and was obviously colored by his unique experiences and the time in which he lived. I do not think that Jefferson’s literal views as to resistance to government are well-suited to our experiences and the time in which we live.

Thus, at the end of my article, I stated that if more Americans were “hostile” to “tyranny,” liberty might mean more than a word on a coin. The hostility to which I refer should be understood in the context of our times, not Jefferson’s. What I mean by this is that Americans should express their hostility to big government through persuasion, argument and the ballot box, not through literal armed rebellion as Jefferson spoke of. Indeed, one of the cornerstones of our country is that we all have the right and the means to use persuasion and argument to facilitate the victory of our points of view. This is what it means to be American.

Jefferson was, as I said, an American hero. He was an American hero because he helped establish liberty for all of us using means appropriate for his circumstances and times. American heroes today are those who use means appropriate for our times — argument, persuasion, campaigning and election — to advance their ideas.

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Lew Rockwell interviews Tom Woods, on his new book, Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century. Thanks to the internet, Americans can learn about such forbidden ideas as the Principles of 1798, when Jefferson and Madison laid out the idea that to give the central government the sole ability to interpret the constitution was the path to tyranny, and that the states have the right and the duty to oppose tyrannical actions by the feds.

Regimists try to demonize the idea of nullification, as they attempt to demonize all ideas that undermine centralized power, but that is not scaring libertarians, Tea Party people, and other dissidents. Nullification, decentralization, self-government, self-determination, even secession: the time of these un-PC ideas is here, and the Woods book may be the handbook of the revolution.

Websites:
http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/ *includes a legislative tracking page
http://www.werefuse.com/ *declares the national health care law Unconstitutional
http://www.thomasewoods.com/ *Tom’s personal web page
http://www.lewrockwell.com/ * all the best of the articles here

Cross-posted from the Lew Rockwell show

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal carried a story entitled “Obama Steps Up Confrontation.” It said in part, “On Thursday, the president challenged Republicans who planned to campaign on repealing his health-care bill with, ‘Go for it.’ Two days later, he made 15 senior appointments without Senate consent, including a union lawyer whose nomination had been blocked by a filibuster.

“At a bill-signing event Tuesday, he is set to laud passage of higher-education legislation that was approved despite Republican objections through a parliamentary maneuver that neutralized the party’s filibuster threat.”

Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) called Obama’s decision to federalize most student loans “really brazen” and “the most underreported, biggest Washington takeover in history.”

See the WSJ report at:

http://tinyurl.com/wsj-obama-confronts

If history teaches us anything, it teaches us that power always craves more power. And there are only 2 ways to check power: internally, through self-discipline and humility; or externally, through equally determined and equipped counterforces.

Americans should thank God that George Washington was our first President, because no one exemplified self-discipline and humility more than he did. After having led the colonies to perhaps the most miraculous revolution in world history, Washington was universally adored and even idolized. There were many that even attempted to make Washington America’s king. He flatly refused this proposal, of course. (Compare Washington’s character and humility to former President G.W. Bush, who, on this subject, said, “If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.”)

The concept of an American monarch may seem foreign to us today, but remember that a monarchy was the only form of government the colonists had ever known. And there can be no doubt that a monarchy (or some form of it) has been the single most popular form of central government that the nations of the world have utilized. But remember, too, the theme of America’s War for Independence was “No King But Jesus.” And no one believed that more than General George Washington did.

Like most of America’s founders, Washington distrusted government in general and despised big government in particular–even though people were willing to make him government’s imperial ruler. Listen to the Father of our Country:

“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a man of George Washington’s caliber in the White House for many a moon. Instead of distrusting and limiting the central government, the vast majority of modern Presidents have completely ignored the constitutional role of the Presidency, and have sought to expand the authority of the executive branch of the federal government to proportions never allowed in the Constitution or envisioned by its creators. And Barack Obama is following the example of his predecessors by continuing this malevolent model (with increased rapidity, I might add). The above-mentioned stories are just the latest examples of what is fast becoming an imperial Presidency. It seems that every day another example of executive arrogance and usurpation of power takes place.

Given the lack of genuine humility and character of America’s President–and the unwillingness of Congress and the Supreme Court to restrain his unconstitutional propensities–it is left to the states and the People to hold this would-be king in check.

And here is another reason to be thankful for America’s founders: they recognized the ultimate role of the states in safeguarding and protecting liberty. As James Madison said in Federalist 45, “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.”

In Federalist 39 Madison said, “Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution.” (Emphasis in the original.)

If America’s founders desired that a national–or monarchal–government be established in the United States, what was the purpose of the original 13 colonies retaining individual statehood? Why would each State retain its authority as “a sovereign body,” if not to serve as a vanguard against the encroachment upon liberty by the central government?

And never has liberty been more vulnerable to oppression and tyranny than right now! Why? Because ever since 9/11, both political parties in Washington, D.C., have placed America in a state of perpetual war. This fact alone puts the federal government in a position to become America’s oppressor.

In the first place, the Congress of the United States (then controlled by Republicans) abdicated its constitutional obligation to be the sole determiner regarding America’s entrance into war by providing then-President Bush with virtually unlimited and unchecked ability to determine and wage war clearly outside the perimeter of constitutional authority. And since taking over the federal government last year, Democrats in Washington, D.C., have followed suit.

But listen to Madison: “The executive [President] has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.”

Furthermore, the condition of unending, perpetual war only serves the purpose of lessening liberty. To quote Madison again: “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” Madison also declared, “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.” And one more from Madison: “The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.”

One needs to only look around to observe that Madison’s warnings are quickly becoming a reality in these United States.

What all this means is that the American people cannot rely on Washington, D.C., to control itself. We cannot trust Washington politicians and bureaucrats to have the character and self-discipline to honor the Constitution and defend our liberties. If we are to preserve our freedom in this country, it will be up to the body politic in each State to do it. If the Congress and Court in Washington, D.C., will not rein in this burgeoning monarchy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, then the states and People must.

At this point, I do not believe there is any way to avoid it: a showdown between freedom-loving states and the federal government is inevitable. But not only is it inevitable, it is absolutely necessary! The central government in Washington, D.C., is quickly morphing into a monarchy–or at the very least an oligarchy. And neither the Donkeys nor the Elephants inside the Beltway are willing to do anything to stop it. Either the states determine to defend the rights and liberties of the American people now, or we are destined to be governed by DC’s despots. Furthermore, we cannot cede to the US Supreme Court–or to any other federal authority–our independence, and most certainly, those fundamental elements necessary to our very survival. Only the states and the People, respectively, can maintain these bulwarks.

The question is, Will my State raise the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag and sincerely defend my liberties? And the follow-up question is, If my State will not do it, which states will, and what will I do? We have little choice. Either we join with a State that will fight for our liberties and help procure freedom for our posterity, or we follow radical unionists (and globalists) into a modern-day monarchy that is marching America toward oppression and servitude.

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(c) Chuck Baldwin

NOTE TO THE READER:

Chuck Baldwin is a syndicated columnist, radio broadcaster, author, and pastor dedicated to preserving the historic principles upon which America was founded. He was the 2008 Presidential candidate for the Constitution Party. He and his wife, Connie, have been married for 37 years and have 3 children and 7 grandchildren. See Chuck’s complete bio at:
http://chuckbaldwinlive.com/home/?page_id=6

Please visit Chuck’s web site at http://chuckbaldwinlive.com

by Timothy Baldwin

I find it very interesting and disturbing to see how a constitution can be used to trap and enslave the people of the states into a statically fixed and inflexible union, along with an alleged supremacy of federal laws over state sovereignty, when the meaning of that same document can allegedly change over time under the so-called “living constitution” theory. Let us apply first principles to find the truth of the matter. If a constitution’s meaning can change and thus its application and implementation, based upon current variable and assorted conditions, then the union itself must likewise be capable of change, based upon those same considerations.

Have you not noticed, when someone suggests that the sovereigns of a state have the natural and compactual right to peacefully withdraw themselves from the union (which was formed by the states’ ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1787), there are those self-proclaimed constitution-loving scholars and politicians who proudly protest, “No! You cannot do that! It is not allowed by our constitution! Once you voluntarily entered the union, you have waived your right to leave the union!” In the same breath, those same persons will gladly propose that the meaning and application of our constitution can change over time under a “living constitution” so that our laws may reflect the current conditions of society (of course, determined by those other than the affected sovereigns themselves). They admit too much, for this statement is based upon a principle that necessarily destroys the position that the states have no right to dissolve their compact, or alternatively, destroys the living constitution theory.

If a constitution’s meaning and application can change over time based upon current conditions, then that necessarily means the union itself is subject to the same fluctuations as determined by the sovereigns that unilaterally became a part of that union. If the goal of a constitution’s force is supposedly to secure freedom, and in the name of that goal, those living-constitutionalists propose that a constitution changes over time, then it necessarily follows by principle of constitutional construction that those states who originally bound themselves to its force can relieve themselves of that force where the circumstances justify its dissolution. Put differently, where the circumstances of their ratification have changed to the point that freedom is best protected by their removal from the union, then removal it is as they choose. But I guess living-constitutionalists would deny the states this right because it would deny ultimate power to the almighty union/federal government–their political god.

See, you cannot have it both ways: that is, the character and nature of the constitution changes over time, but the force holding those who voluntary entered the union never changes. The constitution provides both the meaning of government limitations and the terms of union. If the meaning can change, then so can the union. If you argue otherwise, please explain how a party to a compact (i.e. constitution) who entered the union upon certain guarantees, promises, protections and limitations is forever bound to that union (by force) when those guarantees, promises, protections and limitations are removed and replaced with meanings and applications contrary and different from those originally promised to be true. This is called “bait and switch” which is considered criminal and illegal in any contract scenario throughout the states in America. Do you think this principle applies less to the most fundamental law in society: that is, in constitutions? George Washington did not think so:

“The Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all.” George Washington and William T. Peck, ed., Washington’s Farewell Address and Webster’s Bunker Hill Orations, (New York: Macmillan Co., original from Harvard University, 1919), 12.

Of course, tyranny’s way is to not to change a constitution by the explicit and authentic acts of the people who created the constitution (which of course requires debate, consent and ratification), but by oligarchic methods of court decisions, government precedent and fraud.

As I have noted before, the “living constitution” idea was the catalyst to America’s War for Independence. It is in fact the trap that would-be tyrants who creep up in republics use to trap and enslave unsuspecting (and of course, ignorant) people in what would otherwise be a free country based upon free principles in a constitution. It is in fact the snare that has been used against the states of America for generations and it is still used today as an extremely useful method for entrapment of sovereign states. The end result: governing the un-consented: tyranny.

Today marks a distinct point in America’s history where the sovereign states of America have to make a decision about what principles they will submit to: the principles of freedom or the principles of slavery. Decisions are being made in this arena today, and will continue to be made as tyranny’s grip squeezes tighter and firmer around our necks. Some will choose freedom. Some will choose slavery. Some may be scared about what this may mean (not giving credibility to such feelings, but only observing them). It may mean economic struggles and political battles. It may mean inconvenience and more responsibility. It may mean political involvement and actually choosing a side. It may mean pains and labors and re-education. But I must ask: is the price of freedom too high? For our founders, they proved what Patrick Henry eloquently stated:

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”

Indeed, America’s founders did not believe the price of freedom was too high–at least with the assumption that their posterity would contribute their minds, hearts and bodies to maintaining that freedom. After having experienced all the hardships of securing freedom for these states in America, John Adams says to his posterity:

“Posterity, you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that ever I took half the pains to preserve it.” John Adams, Abigail Adams, and Charles Francis Adams, Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail Adams, During the Revolution: With a Memoir of Mrs. Adams, (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1876), 265.

Perhaps John Adams has already repented.

Ultimately, matters of political and societal freedom are determined by those sovereign body-politics that have the power to make and un-make constitutions. The ultimate matter of which states will live in freedom is determined by the body-politic of that state: the people, who comprise the sovereign element of the state. Where lines are crossed, the sovereigns must decide for itself the recourse it will take to redress the usurpation. This is no new concept. James Madison notes the dangers in political battles whereby the federal government usurps power from the states as perpetrated by Congress and the President and confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court decisions. He says in Federalist Paper 39:

“[The United States Supreme Court decisions are] to be impartially made, according to the rules of the Constitution[, which] is clearly essential to prevent an appeal to the sword and a dissolution of the compact.”

Madison recognized that when the federal government usurps its powers IN THE NAME OF the constitution, this puts the states in a natural position to defend their freedom and their powers. It forces the states to revert back to pre-U.S. Constitution status and to recall those powers once given. As a parenthetical note, Madison also recognized that an appeal to the sword is not necessarily the same thing as dissolution of the compact. It is only when union is forced by tyrants that an appeal to the sword is necessary in self-defense. Otherwise, dissolution of compacts should be peaceful.

Freedom for a Change

People of the states, it is time to wake up to our political realities. It is time to that we know the traps that have been laid before us. We must be astute statesmen and stateswomen, who know the principles of freedom, who know the nature and character of our union, who know when we are being taken for the gullible servants we have become. It is time that we not fall victim to tyranny’s trap. The States of America must once again look to the principles of freedom and into our own borders and sovereignty for political and societal freedom!

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, 2009.

Our Constitution is dead. Rigor mortis set in a long time ago. Peculiar enough, many Americans who claim to love our constitution believe it is alive and well with hot red blood running through its vein. Plainly put: they are naïve, deceived or ignorant. Those who killed the constitution (and their posterity, with whom we are living today) pick up the dead corpse, move it around like a puppet on strings, put make up on it to make it look pretty, prop it up against a wall to stand on its own, and proclaim and swear an oath to us and God that they will preserve, defend and protect what they know to be dead. Ironically, they accomplish this, in part, through what they term a “living constitution”, which has bled the life’s blood from our constitution. Unfortunately, most Americans fail to see that our political circumstances are very similar and parallel to those which our founders considered to be a line in the sand.

Claude Halstead Van Tyne, in his book, The Causes of the War of Independence, describes the circumstances which caused America’s War for Independence. The cause was not “taxation without representation” per se. It was not “the government is too big” per se. It was not “taxes are too high” per se. It was the concept that government is limited by the principles of freedom found in the laws of Nature and Nature’s God and secured by their constitution; and government actions taken beyond those limitations are to be met with resistance. In Van Tyne’s description of this causation, what is strikingly similar to our current situation is that Great Britain considered their constitution to be “living” and to give Parliament and King George the power, authority and right to essentially act in whatever manner it deemed appropriate. Van Tyne observes,

“The contrast cannot be too strongly insisted upon. Samuel Adams and many of his fellow countrymen, 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 Lord Mansfield and his followers, on the other hand, asserted rightly 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.” The Causes of the War of Independence, Volume 1, (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1922), 235, 237.

Great Britain’s political ideology is the same ideology that 99% of our federal politicians demonstrate today! This is just what Congressman Henry Hyde (R) expressed in 2006, when he responded to Congressman Ron Paul’s claim that Congress must declare war before G.W. Bush can constitutionally launch (what is now) an eight year and growing war half way across the world, sending hundreds of thousands of American soldiers to risk their lives and die and spending hundreds of billions of tax payer monies to support the same. Hyde says, “There are things in the Constitution that have been overtaken by events, by time. Declaration of war is one of them. There are things no longer relevant to a modern society.” James T. Bennett, Homeland Security Scams, (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2006), 133. Did the vast majority of Congressmen (Republican and Democrat, House and Senate) believe the same as Hyde? We know they did because they continued to shirk and even ignore their constitutional obligation to declare war, while funding the same with our money and with our lives–all contrary to the constitution, to the lessons of human history and to the principles of self-government and limited government.

Many thousands of persons all across America repeatedly and continually scream the voice of discontent of unconstitutional government. Thousands of books have been written on how the constitution has been ignored, trampled, despised, and even laughed at by those we elect to uphold that very document and the principles founding it. I do not need delineate the (not so “light and transient”) abuses, encroachments, and usurpations upon our constitution. It is a known fact. It is admitted. There is no hiding it. The long train of abuses is evident, established and provable. Our federal government has, through fraud, deceit, force and bribe, converted our once Constitutional Federal Republic into a Despotic National Oligarchy. We now have the same (if not worse) form and type of government that we seceded from in 1776. Yet, many people who claim to love the constitution will criticize those who recommend a different course of action other than voting for a President who will hopefully appoint a “conservative” judge to the supreme court; other than focusing our solutions on Washington D.C.; other than playing political games with those causing and controlling all that we claim to despise; or other than confining our redress to federal courts and two political parties.

Thomas Paine witnessed those during his living-constitution/government-despot days whose only method of redress was to send correspondence and complaint to King George and Parliament, hoping for reclamation of freedom through the very system that was enslaving them. To these plans of action, Thomas Paine says, “There was a time when it was proper, and there is a proper time for it to cease.” Thomas Paine and Mark Philip, ed., Oxford World’s Classics: Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Common Sense and other Political Writings, (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 27. To Thomas Paine, changing the plan of action to resist and arrest tyranny was simply Common Sense. Thankfully, our founders agreed. Thankfully, this change meant truly standing for freedom, natural rights, limited government, self-government, federalism and constitutional government. This change necessarily meant putting off the old man and putting on the new. It necessarily meant burying the dead and quickening the fetus of freedom.

The United States Constitution was formed and framed on certain immutable principles: principles which acknowledge that God is the Source of all rights; the Definer of all authority; the Judge of all actions and laws; the Giver of life, property and pursuit of happiness. Those principles never die. They live forever. However, as our founders expressed in the Declaration of Independence, governments can become destructive to these ends. Indeed, they can. Understand: Great Britain’s history was similar to America’s. It contained men and women of principle and courage who were catalysts to providing freedom throughout Europe. Europe indeed is the home of the forefathers which our founders studied and adored. Great Britain’s constitution was formed and framed upon the principles expounded upon by Enlightenment philosophers, jurists, lawyers, judges, and theologians. Yet, their constitution died–not because of natural causes, but because those who were constrained by it killed it.

History proves this: not even a (free) constitution can secure freedom where the principles of it are abandoned and the applications of it are ignored. French philosopher Charles Montesquieu (whom our founders relied upon heavily in political thought) confirms this in his book, Spirit of Laws, when he says, “The constitution may happen to be free, and the subject not…It is the disposition only of the laws, and even of the fundamental laws, that constitutes liberty in relation to the constitution.” Charles de Baron Montesquieu and Julian Hawthorne, ed., The Spirit of Laws: The World’s Great Classics, vol. 1 (London: The London Press), 183. How observant he was.

Why is America not free? Is it because we do not have a free constitution? No. Is it because the principles that formed our constitution do not create freedom? No. Is it because Obama is in the White House? No. Is it because Democrats are evil? No. Is it because God was “kicked out” of our public schools? No. Is it because abortion was made “legal”? No. Is it because America engages in unjust wars? No. Is it because America’s presidents have entangled in foreign affairs? No. Those are simply fruits of the root of our dead constitution. Our constitution is dead because our agents, the government, have created a matrix, a system whereby our original constitution and its principles have no application to their power. They are merely bound by their arbitrary discretion–the very definition of tyranny. Even worse, our constitution is dead because the people and the states have consented to its murder.

Like a loved-one who has passed on, I love and miss our constitution (not that it has been alive since I was born in 1979). Yet, while I love the constitution, I love the freedom it was designed to protect much more, and I put freedom and its principles above and beyond the document and words of our constitution. Indeed, the words of the constitution do not create freedom. History and common sense teach us this (which is why America cannot “spread democracy” to the world). Thus, I do not love the words contained in the constitution. Rather, I love the principles of the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God which formed the words. I do not love the three separate branches of the federal government: I love the limits of power and authority they were instituted to secure. I do not love federalism: rather, I love the security it brings to ensure that my children live in freedom.

Thankfully, since principles derived from the laws of God never die, we the people of the states continue to have the power of truth to reestablish and reinstitute forms of government to secure our freedom. Thankfully, we have fifty sovereign and independent states to activate the principles of free government within those political borders, resisting and arresting any attempts from outsiders who would attempt to enslave their citizens. Thankfully, our forefathers bequeathed to us a framework, legacy, heritage, and foundation of hope and freedom. They bequeathed to us truths we hold to be self-evident.

We all have fond memories of our constitution when it was alive and well, but the time has come when we who love the freedom it protected must admit that those who are supposed to be bound by its mandates, principles and limitations have killed it, and they need to be treated like the murderers they are, just as Thomas Paine said about his government: “A common murderer, a highwayman, or a housebreaker, has as good a pretence as he.” Paine and Philip, ed., American Crisis I, 64. These murderers have put us into a place in nature before the constitution was quickened and made alive by the people of the sovereign states of America. See, Locke and Macpherson, ed., Second Treatise of Government, 14–15. We are literally better off not having made alive this document that is literally being used against us, our posterity and our freedom. They are forcing us to consider recalling and retaking all the powers we gave them (as our agents) for the protection of our and our posterity’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness–our natural rights from God. In fact, this is what John Locke confirms about our natural right:

“Absolute arbitrary power, or governing without settled standing laws, can neither of them consist with the ends of society and government, which men would not quit the freedom of the state of nature for, and tie themselves up under, were it not to preserve their lives, liberties and fortunes, and by stated rules of right and property to secure their peace and quiet. It cannot be supposed that they should intend, had they a power so to do, to give to any one, or more, an absolute arbitrary power over their persons and estates, and put a force into the magistrate’s hand to execute his unlimited will arbitrarily upon them. This were to put themselves into a worse condition than the state of nature, wherein they had a liberty to defend their right against the injuries of others, and were upon equal terms of force to maintain it, whether invaded by a single man, or many in combination.” Locke and Macpherson, ed., Second Treatise of Government, 72.

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, 2009.

By now, most readers are familiar with the story of how a Virginia couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, crashed the White House State Dinner last Tuesday evening. President and Mrs. Obama were entertaining Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the first official State Dinner of the new administration. The Salahis were not on the invited guest list, but were still allowed to walk right into the White House. They even had face-to-face conversations with both President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Photographs of the Salahis with the President and Vice President have been published in numerous newspapers and on hundreds of web sites.

I wonder if the American people are thinking this episode through? Think of it: in the post-9/11 world, a world that has invented the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), body scanners, retina readers, the Patriot Act, hundreds of laws and regulations restricting the freedoms and liberties of the American people, thousands of cameras photographing our public movements, and satellite spy devices, a couple can walk right into the White House and meet the President and Vice President without being invited!

Is there something wrong with this picture, or what?

I well remember what I had to go through when I was an invited guest of then-Vice President George H. W. Bush at the White House. My wife and I joined several others for a luncheon with Vice President Bush and his wife, Barbara. Later that day, we were in a crowd of several hundred who got to meet President Ronald Reagan. Needless to say, security was tight.

Upon arriving, we had to show the proper credentials to White House security, along with a photo ID and the personal invitation that had been sent to us ahead of time. I remember how some of the folks who had actually received invitations were denied entrance due to bureaucratic mix-ups or unintentional lapses in proper protocols. And these were people who really did have an invitation to be there. I can tell you this: there was absolutely no way that an uninvited person could have gained access to the White House that day. And remember: that was nearly two decades BEFORE 9/11!

That an uninvited couple could be granted access to the President and Vice President in this day and time is more than a “fluke.” It betrays something much deeper.

For the last 8 years, the American people have been told they must sacrifice certain liberties in order that the federal government might protect them. And for the most part, the American people have been happy to accommodate this incessant intrusion into their personal liberties. They know the feds are monitoring their emails, personal phone conversations, and even their personal letters when received from overseas. They have sat silently as their banking institutions have monitored and reported virtually any and all financial transactions to the federal government. In today’s super-security world, one cannot even cash a check without showing the bank teller his or her driver’s license, which is recorded and made available to the feds. Sometimes, we are even required to provide our thumbprints. Beyond that, even certain service personnel that must come into our homes to provide in-home repair services, home inspections, or general services are often required to report what they see to various law enforcement authorities. All of this is done in the name of “national security.”

All the while, America’s federal buildings today more resemble castles of ancient Europe than they do buildings that house the people’s servants. Concrete barriers along with super-reinforced, “bomb proof” structures remind one of castles of old, with their guard towers and crocodile-filled moats. Today, people must walk through metal-detectors and surrender their pocketknives to even visit their local supervisor of elections office (or just about any other public office, for that matter). Again, this is all done under the rubric of “homeland security.”

In the name of “national security,” veterans who have been accused of some kind of domestic disturbance or who have affirmatively answered an ambiguous question on a VA form regarding whether they have feelings of “anger” or “depression” are having their right to keep and bear arms stripped away. That’s right, in the name of “homeland security,” some of the very men who were entrusted with lethal weapons to fight America’s wars are now being told they are not fit to purchase or possess their own firearms.

Yet, in spite of all of the above, an uninvited couple is allowed to calmly walk right past Secret Service personnel and have personal audiences with the President and Vice President of the United States in what is ostensibly the most heavily-guarded, tightly secured building in the country: the White House.

Furthermore, this story comes on the heels of the mass shooting on what one would think would be a rather secure location: the US Army base at Fort Hood, Texas. And, have we forgotten the fellow who brought a gun into the Capitol Building (the home of the US Congress) in Washington, D.C., a few years ago and killed two police officers?

Dear Reader, ask yourself this question, Do you really think those schmucks in Washington, D.C., actually believe that protecting you and me is more important than protecting American soldiers, US congressmen, and especially the President of the United States? “Are you serious?” (To quote Nancy Pelosi.) The truth is, to the elites in DC, you and I are expendable commodities. In fact, to some of the soulless creatures running things, you and I are worth more dead than alive (but that’s a topic better discussed at a later date).

The point is, all this talk about “national security” is simply a ruse for Big Government elitists to steal our liberties and make slaves out of us. They don’t care about security; all they care about is POWER.

So, the next time you are required to be strip-searched by an airport screener, or to surrender your pocketknife at your local county commissioner’s office, or to show your driver’s license to your bank teller, or to submit to a random police checkpoint; the next time you make a phone call that you know is monitored by a federal agent (and they all are), or drive under a video camera, or visit these castle-esque federal buildings, remember Michaele and Tareq Salahi. And, if you are old enough, remember the time in America when we really were the “land of the free.” And also remember that it’s not security they seek – it’s the abolition of our liberty.

Chuck Baldwin is a radio broadcaster, syndicated columnist, and pastor dedicated to preserving the historic principles upon which America was founded. He was the Constitution Party’s Nominee for president in 2008. Visit his website at www.chuckbaldwinlive.com

Copyright © 2009 Chuck Baldwin

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.

Rep. Diane Watson said, in praising Cuba’s health care system, “You can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met.” W.E.B. Dubois, writing in the National Guardian (1953) said, “Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature. … But also — and this was the highest proof of his greatness — he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate.” Walter Duranty called Stalin “the greatest living statesman . . . a quiet, unobtrusive man.” George Bernard Shaw expressed admiration for Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin.

John Kenneth Galbraith visited Mao’s China and praised Mao and the Chinese economic system. Gunther Stein of the Christian Science Monitor admired Mao Tsetung and declared ecstatically that “the men and women pioneers of Yenan are truly new humans in spirit, thought and action,” and that Yenan itself constituted “a brand new well integrated society, that has never been seen before anywhere.” Michel Oksenberg, President Carter’s China expert, complained that “America (is) doomed to decay until radical, even revolutionary, change fundamentally alters the institutions and values,” and urged us to “borrow ideas and solutions” from China.

Even Harvard’s late Professor John K. Fairbank, by no means the worst tyrant worshipper, believed that America could learn much from the Cultural Revolution, saying, “Americans may find in China’s collective life today an ingredient of personal moral concern for one’s neighbor that has a lesson for us all.” Keep in mind that estimates of the number of Chinese deaths during China’s Cultural Revolution range from 2 to 7 million people. Mao Tsetung was admired by many academics and leftists across our country. Just think back to the campus demonstrations of the ’60s and ’70s when campus radicals, often accompanied by their professors, marched around singing the praises of Mao and waving Mao’s little red book, “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung.” Forty years later some of these campus radicals are tenured professors and administrators at today’s universities and colleges, as well as schoolteachers and principals indoctrinating our youth.

The most authoritative tally of history’s most murderous regimes is in a book by University of Hawaii’s Professor Rudolph J. Rummel, “Death by Government.” Statistics are provided at his website. The Nazis murdered 20 million of their own people and those in nations they captured. Between 1917 and 1987, Stalin and his successors murdered, or were otherwise responsible for the deaths of, 62 million of their own people. Between 1949 and 1987, Mao Tsetung and his successors were responsible for the deaths of 76 million Chinese.

Today’s leftists, socialists and progressives would bristle at the suggestion that their agenda differs little from Nazism. However, there’s little or no distinction between Nazism and socialism. Even the word Nazi is short for National Socialist German Workers Party. The origins of the unspeakable horrors of Nazism, Stalinism and Maoism did not begin in the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s. Those horrors were simply the end result of long evolution of ideas leading to consolidation of power in central government in the quest for “social justice.” It was decent but misguided earlier generations of Germans, like many of today’s Americans, who would have cringed at the thought of genocide, who built the Trojan horse for Hitler to take over.

Few Americans have the stomach or ruthlessness to do what is necessary to make their governmental wishes come true. They are willing to abandon constitutional principles and rule of law so that the nation’s elite, who believe they are morally and intellectually superior to the rest of us, can have the tools to implement “social justice.”

Those tools are massive centralized government power.

It just turns out last century’s notables in acquiring powerful central government, in the name of social justice, were Hitler, Stalin, Mao, but the struggle for social justice isn’t over yet, and other suitors of this dubious distinction are waiting in the wings.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

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

Article 1 in Series, Restoring Freedom: An Entrepreneur’s Perspective

Imagine this… You and I are the founders of a start-up company. Our product is compelling. Our market is broad. We are underfunded, unorganized and unfocused. The press clearly doesn’t care about our efforts. Yet, we think we are going to take on the world. We are going to take on the largest, most powerful and monopolistic competitor possible. But we are not intimidated because the personal rewards of success are unimaginable and unlike our competitor’s offering our product will change the world for the better.

So we are driven, like an innovative capitalist… to sell individual freedom to a world that thinks it prefers servitude.

At this time in history, freedom is once again a revolutionary product. And if we are going to take on our massive federal government and replace the socialism it is offering with true individual freedom, then we had better have a strategic plan that is designed to leverage our strengths to the maximum. We cannot afford to waste any resource and our execution must be almost flawless. Sounds impossible? The odds are truly stacked against us, yes, but the good news in our analogy is that start-up companies take on large companies all the time… and more often than you would expect, they win.

For any revolutionary product (remember freedom is our product), market acceptance goes through a dynamic that involves different types of people, each with different objectives. Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm defined a key strategy for taking a technology product to market with limited resources. Like technology, political messages have an adoption lifecycle. And like technology, political messages experience a chasm where after quick and encouraging gains the movement seems to falter. This is a common dynamic of markets and has a solution, but the solution is not intuitive. In order to understand the solution and how the tenth amendment offers the key to success, we need to have a clear understanding of a major barrier, known as the chasm.

The following graph shows the adoption lifecycle, the dangerous chasm and where it falls. Many movements die at the chasm. Why? The simple answer is that the early message that worked so well to quickly gain support from one segment of the population, offered very little to gain support from other segments, but there is much more to it than that.

In our case, think of the curve as a representation of the American population since that is our target market. We need to consider the desires and needs of the various segments with regards to freedom.

The innovators appreciate things for their own sake; many support the founding fathers and their ideas regarding America and freedom because believe they are right and they respect the ideals. They represent a small but very dedicated segment of our market.

The next group is the early adopters; these are visionary individuals who have the unique ability to match a solution, such as tenth amendment protections, to an opportunity such as regaining freedom. This represents a larger segment of the population, but not nearly enough to make significant political gain. Many of you reading this article are either innovators or early adopters.

This brings us to the early majority. This is the group that we must focus on and any strategy for re-gaining freedom must ultimately be something compelling to this group. You will not find the early majority at tea parties, commenting on blogs or generally debating politics, but many are paying attention. For the most part they currently believe that our country’s current situation is just politics as usual and that it will all get worked out in the end. “America has seen worse” is a common phrase. They are often party-line voters. In general, this group is risk averse and do not share the visionary’s excitement for revolutionary change. But true individual freedom at this point in American history is truly revolutionary change, so if we are going to cross the chasm to freedom then we must commit our resources to reaching the early majority. If we fail in this monumental task then our movement will fall short.

We can ignore the late majority and the laggards. This part of the curve represents a population that simply does not understand individual freedom.

This is where it becomes less intuitive. How can we effectively reach the early majority with our limited resources? You might think that the “Big Tent” strategy would develop the biggest following. It seems logical, if we can just sell our wonderful product of freedom to the most people then we will surely generate a massive unstoppable movement. But hold on… the “big tent” strategy always results in failure. It fails for start-up companies because the massive resources are not available. Even large companies with unlimited resources will fail when the target is not defined, the product is not focused and the message is confused. As proven by recent history, this is actually a fatal strategic mistake for political movements as well. In politics, the result is ceaseless internal debates that miss the big picture (think controversial social issues), a message defined by the press (think tea parties), and virtually zero political excitement (think McCain). It is clear that the current limitation of today’s freedom movement is this lack of strategic focus.

To cross the chasm, we need to implement a focused strategy and we need to do this now. We already have the best product ever known to mankind, individual freedom. But the best product is never a guarantee of success. As discussed, the strategy must be able to present a compelling message that will resonate with the early majority. But equally important is the strategy’s ability to build a powerful political base to work from. So what serves as the best political springboard? State Governments? The Republican Party? The growing Tea Party Movement? A third party? All of the above?

A movement with a foundation based on the tenth amendment has the best chance of returning the power consolidated in Washington to “We the People”. This strategy might seem to fall right into the hands of current state governments but is it really that simple? I don’t think so. In the next articles of this series we will discuss why the tenth amendment is the perfect foundation, who the allies might be, how we can attract the early majority and what tools we will need to make a real difference.

Brian Roberts is the President and a founder of an innovative software company in Texas. He has joined the tenth amendment movement as the meetup organizer of Texas Tenth Amendment Center. Follow Brian on Twitter, bcroberts_99.