Safeguarding Our Minds

This column appeared in the Laurel Leader Call on May 22, 2012:

“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”  So said Thomas Jefferson, the architect of American liberty and its greatest champion.  Throughout his entire life, he fought every attempt by government to control the lives of the people, in thought, speech, and deed.

Today we should be just as vigilant, whether a form of tyranny originates in Washington, Jackson, or the local schoolhouse.  We must be ever mindful that state and local governments can be just as tyrannical as Washington, DC.

Jeffersonian Solutions for America’s Problems

The United States faces an abundance of problems, a weak economy, an abundance of public expenditures, out of control entitlements, and an over-expansive foreign policy, to name a few. These issues are getting worse, not better, with no end in sight. In recent decades, politicians of nearly every conceivable stripe have offered solutions, all to no avail. The only real solution to America’s woes is a return to Jeffersonian principles.

Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, and D.R. Francis standing on a porch circa 1903. Courtesy of the POTUS Flickr archive.

Since the days of Grover Cleveland, who ended the harsh Panic of 1893 in less than a full term in office, the federal government has used Keynesian economic theory, or intervention, to fight every economic downturn. The results have been less than spectacular. What began as a severe recession in 1929 became the “Great Depression,” the worst economic calamity in American history. Many people will be surprised to learn that the Great Depression came after the government stepped in with its bag of tricks. It did not end until the latter half of the 1940s.

After the Panic of 2008, the government bailed out Wall Street to the tune of $700 billion. In 2009, the Obama administration kicked in another $800 billion in a stimulus designed to jump-start the sagging economy. A total of $1.5 trillion in stimulus money has been apportioned. The economy is still in a state of mild depression with a net job loss during the Obama presidency.

Paternalism’s Foe: Grover Cleveland

Politicians, pundits, and scholars have wrestled over a central question throughout American political and constitutional history:  What role should the government have in the lives of ordinary citizens?

For Jeffersonian Conservatives, such as Grover Cleveland, the government has no business involving itself in areas outside its limited, constitutional role, and should never take a position as a “custodian;” the people should be free to pursue their own dreams without government interference, to rise as high and as far as their God-given talent, abilities, and determination will carry them.  Success or failure depends on the individual.

Some liberals on the other side of the political spectrum believe the government should play a vital role in the lives of the people, from cradle to grave. They believe the lowly masses cannot take care of themselves.  For Democrats, government must step in and take up the role of caretaker.  As Nancy Pelosi said in 2011:  “I view my work in politics as an extension of my role as a mom.”[i]  This progressive viewpoint is known as government paternalism, and has been defined as “a policy or practice of treating or governing people in a fatherly manner, especially by providing for their needs without giving them rights or responsibilities.”[ii]

Teaching Civic Virtue

Today, we have in our society a crisis.  I’m not talking about the debt crisis, though that certainly qualifies, but a crisis in our very attitudes as Americans.  We used to believe in ourselves and in our founding principles but those values have slowly eroded to the point of nonexistence.

George Washington reminded us in his famous Farewell Address in 1796 that “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”

Washington was right but sadly, we seem to have lost the battle over our local schools, particularly the right to teach what we want, especially the Ten Commandments.  We can’t even post them in the halls without out the threat of a lawsuit and a court rebuke.  Though we can fight to win them back, the process will take years, if not decades.

But I think we should look at the immediate problem another way.  Instead of getting in a big, ugly fight over religion, complete with a host of costly federal lawsuits that we are unlikely to win, we should begin the reclamation process by simply teaching civic virtue, that is certain behaviors and attitudes that are essential for the success of any free nation, values that we once possessed in great abundance.

For instance, rather than teach “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” we can simply instruct students in junior high and in high school on the Declaration of Independence and what it really means – “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”  This phrase should be written on the hearts of all Americans.

Rather than have students learn only the Constitution’s preamble, as we all did in junior high, we should have them learn the Bill of Rights and recite those in addition.  Our children need to learn that there are sacred rights enshrined in the Constitution.

We don’t have to teach “Thou Shalt Not Steal,” but the simple fact that you have no right to take what does not belong to you.  Every person in this country is entitled to his or her property and no one, not even the government, has a right to take it from you.  If you steal, there will be legal consequences.  Our nation is one of laws, not men, and the law must be respected.

Kids today should learn that these quintessential American values are the backbone of our great nation.

If they could learn, from an early age, that they have no legal right to harm another person, to take their property, or to deny them any rights, then it might just begin a monumental change in our society.

As my great-grandfather used to say, “Your rights stop at the end of your nose.”  Anything past that point is not yours to take or yours to demand.

Teaching civic virtue could also begin to diminish what has become an “Entitlement Society.”  Many people today believe they are entitled to property that is not theirs.  And I’m not talking about personal theft here, but another form of robbery, government assistance programs.

When the government taxes its productive citizens and gives that money to non-productive citizens, it violates the sacred principles embodied in the Declaration and the values the nation was founded upon, as well as the protections in the Bill of Rights.

Until the New Deal in the 1930s, such government action was always held to be unconstitutional.  The government could not directly take a person’s property, in this case money, without due process, then hand it to the man down the street.  It was not right then and it is not right now.

Sadly many of our unproductive citizens believe they have a right to government aid for the entirety of their lives.  But students should learn that there is very little that the Constitution entitles you to, except your life, your liberty, and your property.  You are not entitled to the life of another, to the liberty of another, or to the property of another.

You are also entitled to the right to pursue happiness.  You do not have the right to demand it.  You are not promised happiness but the right to pursue it, as long as you don’t harm another.

But it remains a sad truth that many Americans do not possess even a basic understanding of these essential values or even a rudimentary knowledge of our governmental system.

Under the headline, “How Dumb Are We?”, Newsweek reported its recent finding from a survey of 1,000 U.S. citizens, in which the magazine asked the participants to take the nation’s official citizenship test.  The results were shocking, that is shockingly bad.

Thirty-eight percent failed the exam outright.  Twenty-nine percent could not name the current vice president.  Seventy-three percent were unable to correctly say why the United States fought the Cold War.  Forty-four percent failed to define the Bill of Rights.  Six percent couldn’t circle Independence Day on a calendar.

Thomas Jefferson would be horrified.  A civilized society, Jefferson believed, could not remain both ignorant and free.  So true.

We must correct this outrageous state of ignorance.  No student should be awarded a high school diploma if they can’t pass a basic citizenship test.

By dumbing down our schools, all for political reasons, we have only hurt ourselves.  And if we don’t get our schools out of the realm of social engineering and turn them back into centers of learning, then we will fail as a nation.  That does not take an Ivy League degree to figure out.

The Evolving View of Government

“The lesson should constantly be enforced,” wrote President Grover Cleveland in 1887, “that though the people support the Government the Government should not support the people.”

Cleveland made this pronouncement as he vetoed the Texas Seed Bill, a small $10,000 appropriation aimed at providing assistance to drought-stricken farmers in the Lone Star State.

The Constitution did not allow the federal government to spend money on public charity, the Jeffersonian Cleveland believed, and if Washington started down the road of paternalism, where would it end?

Such strict construction of the Constitution, a source of pride for true conservatives, drives leftwing scholars and pundits crazy, causing them to denigrate any President who had the temerity to believe in such “outdated” and “old fashioned” thinking.

For Jack Beatty, a senior editor of The Atlantic Monthly, an analyst on NPR, and author of The Age of Betrayal:  The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900, such views raise important questions:

“Why did the people support a government that on principle refused to support them, that wouldn’t spend pennies to save farmers from ruin?” he asked.  “Why return to office politicians like Cleveland, who vetoed three times as many bills in one term as all his predecessors combined?  What had gone wrong with the Republican experiment in positive government for the country to settle for negative government?”

Beatty believes, not in the conservative principles of Thomas Jefferson, but those of the more liberal Abraham Lincoln, a philosophy that is an antithesis to Cleveland’s.  Lincoln had broken the old Jeffersonian mold and provided a new view of the role of government in the every day lives of the people.  He once said, “The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities.”

Which begs another question:  Who decides what the people can or cannot do for themselves?  Or if they can do it good enough to suit the government?

Ultimately the people rejected the Lincoln line of thinking in favor of conservatism, at least for a while.  Nineteenth century Americans, and their early 20^th century brethren, did not believe in an active, or positive, government.  The American Revolution, contrary to Beatty’s thinking, was not about creating an energetic government.  Our forebears held true to the Jeffersonian admonition, “That government is best which governs least.”

The Jeffersonian view carried over into the early 20^th century.

In 1927, the Mississippi River overflowed its banks in one of the worst floods in the nation’s history.  Herbert Hoover, a great engineer and Commerce Secretary under President Calvin Coolidge, traveled to the South to offer his assistance.  But unlike the situation in New Orleans eight decades later with Hurricane Katrina, local people told Hoover to leave.  They did not trust the federal government and did not want out-of-town bureaucrats sticking their noses in local affairs.

People in those days had honor and pride, believing they could handle their own problems.  There were no shouts of “help” from stranded citizens who suffered from the severe flooding, as we saw around the Superdome.  They understood that with government aid also came government rules, regulation, oversight, and control.  Once the government got in, it might be next to impossible to get them out.

It was not until the horrible period of the Great Depression in the 1930s, when the economy nearly imploded, that Americans, for the first time, began to look to government for every day things.  FDR used massive government aid to help people affected by the depression, the first direct assistance in U.S. history.

From that point on, a dependence on government grew within the American people and has continued to increase.

Americans have evolved from a freedom-loving people that looked to themselves for their own livelihood to believing that government has a positive role to play in society.

The Constitution, earlier Americans correctly understood, does not contain any language that allows the government to spend money for public assistance.  It was always held to be unconstitutional to tax one group of citizens and give it to another.

But all that has changed now and the situation is much worse.  It has recently been reported that government handouts equal 35 percent of all wages in the United States.  In 1960 the figure was just 10 percent.  Forty-four million Americans are now on food stamps and fifty million receive Medicaid.  Today, fifty-eight percent of all government spending is on entitlement programs.

But what is even scarier is that it seems as if a majority of Americans believe the federal government should have at least some positive role in the lives of the people.  Many believe the government should take care of its citizens from cradle to grave.  Early Americans would have thought such thinking downright dangerous.

President Cleveland, in the late 19^th century, could foresee a potential threat to limited government if Washington got in the handout business.  He took the opportunity in his second inaugural address to remind the people that the “lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned,” he said.  “Every thoughtful American must realize the importance of checking at its beginning any tendency in public or private station to regard frugality and economy as virtues which we may safely outgrow. The toleration of this idea results in the waste of the people’s money by their chosen servants and encourages prodigality and extravagance in the home life of our countrymen.”

In our time of near-bankruptcy, America would do well to elect a president in the mold of Cleveland, one who will stop the wealth re-distribution scheme in full swing in Washington and return our nation to the ideals and values that made it great.

 

Last Among Equals

President Obama recently announced that his administration would no longer defend the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Whether one agrees with Obama or not on this issue, or with his tactic, it goes to the heart of a far more important and lasting question – which branch of government rightfully has the exclusive authority to interpret the Constitution and the laws of the United States?

Most contend that the power resides with the Supreme Court, even many conservatives.  Kenneth Starr has even referred to the Supreme Court as a “first among equals,” and while I have great respect for him, he is simply wrong in this regard.

Historically, such an opinion has no basis in fact.

The Supreme Court was never designated as the strongest of the three branches.  In fact, until the 1930s, it did not even have its own building, but met in the basement of the Capitol, or where ever Congress allowed them to meet.

This was not by mistake but intentional.  When examining a copy of the original map of the City of Washington, drawn up by its planners, one will find that no Supreme Court building exists.

It is also not an accident that provisions for the Supreme Court were placed in Article 3 of the Constitution, while Congress, intended to be the stronger of the three branches, was mentioned in Article 1, while the Office of the President was established in Article 2.

Furthermore, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 proposed a Council of Revision, a body that also included a supreme tribunal and would be armed with a veto power over all national and state laws.  The Council had the authority to review every law passed throughout the Union and to decide what would be allowed and what would not be.  The convention ultimately rejected the idea.

In a modified version, the proposed power was eventually split.  The Convention created both the Supreme Court, to exercise all judicial powers in cases brought before it, and a President who would take care of executive responsibilities, including the power to veto, or reject, bills passed by Congress.  The Supreme Court was not entrusted with such power.

The Court does not legally possess nearly the power it has usurped today, and does not have an exclusive right to interpret laws and the Constitution.  There is nothing in the entirety of Article 3 of the Constitution that gives federal courts that power.

Chief Justice John Marshall, in the case of Marbury v. Madison in 1803, assumed for the Supreme Court the power of judicial review, that is to make the final decision on the constitutionality of all laws.

The decision angered President Thomas Jefferson, who believed the federal courts, then under Federalist judges, were establishing a judicial tyranny over the rest of the government.

“The Constitution… meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other,” he said.  “But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.”

Jefferson himself was skeptical of the right of the Supreme Court to exercise judicial review.  “The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches.”

Other presidents had similar opinions and took even harsher action when the Court interfered with the responsibilities of the executive.

Andrew Jackson had absolutely no respect for John Marshall or the Supreme Court.  In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act.  Georgia decided to remove the Cherokees within its borders but the Court sided with the Indians.  Jackson reacted angrily.  “Marshall has made his decision,” he said, “now let him enforce it.”  Jackson removed the Indians in defiance of the Court.

Jackson knew what many have forgotten.  “Courts have no law enforcement powers,” he wrote, “that is the prerogative of the executive alone.”

Abraham Lincoln also understood this fact and responded with even more anger when Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that the President had exceeded his constitutional authority in waging war.  Lincoln even went so far as to write out an arrest order to have Taney detained, though the warrant was never acted upon.  President Lincoln simply ignored the Chief Justice and the Court.

Presidents have also used one of their strongest weapons, the veto pen, to rule on the constitutionality of laws.

Under Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution, the President is given the power to veto, or reject, congressional acts.  “Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated….”

Early American Presidents believed they had a duty to determine the constitutionality of federal laws before approving and then acting on them.

In 1817, James Madison vetoed a bill for federal funding of internal improvements, projects such as roads and canals, using constitutional arguments to make his case.

“I am constrained by the insuperable difficulty I feel in reconciling the bill with the Constitution of the United States to return it with that objection to the House of Representatives, in which it originated.

“The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated in the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution,” he continued, “and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers, or that it falls by any just interpretation within the power to make laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution those or other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States.”

James Monroe did likewise in 1822 with his Cumberland Road Bill Veto.

“I am compelled to object to its passage and to return the bill to the House of Representatives, in which it originated, under a conviction that Congress do not possess the power under the Constitution to pass such a law.”

In 1832, Andrew Jackson vetoed the re-chartering of the Bank of the United States in a famous altercation with Congress.

“Having considered it with that solemn regard to the principles of the Constitution which the day was calculated to inspire, and come to the conclusion that it ought not to become a law, I herewith return it to the Senate, in which it originated, with my objections.”

The bank bill, Jackson wrote, is not “compatible with justice, with sound policy, or with the Constitution of our country.”  Congress did not possess the constitutional authority to establish a bank, Jackson believed.

Franklin Pierce rejected a bill for public works in 1854.

“On such an examination of this bill as it has been in my power to make, I recognize in it certain provisions national in their character, and which, if they stood alone, it would be compatible with my convictions of public duty to assent to; but at the same time, it embraces others which are merely local, and not, in my judgment, warranted by any safe or true construction of the Constitution.”

In 1854 President Pierce vetoed another bill that would have provided government funds for the mentally insane.  “I can not find any authority in the Constitution for…public charity,” he told Congress.  “To do so would, in my judgment, be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive of the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.”

Grover Cleveland became the “Veto President” when he set a record of 414 vetoes in his first term alone.  In 1887 President Cleveland rejected a bill to provide seeds for drought-stricken farmers in Texas.  “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution,” he told Congress.

Early Presidents did not believe in the modern notion that Congress should pass any law it chooses, and then allow the courts to sort it out.  Such actions would have been considered a dereliction of duty.

In addition to the President, Congress also has explicit constitutional authority over the Court.  The Constitution vests Congress with “all legislative power,” that is all lawmaking authority.  This is precisely why courts are not allowed to make laws from the bench.

Included in congressional power is the right to set the number of justices on the Supreme Court.

Just as the Civil War was ending in 1865, and the government was considering a plan of Reconstruction in the South, Vice President Andrew Johnson became President after Lincoln’s assassination.  Even though he had remained loyal to the Union, Johnson was still a Southerner and Radical Republicans in the North were suspicious.  When two vacancies occurred on the Supreme Court, and not wanting Johnson to name any replacements, Congress simply removed the two positions.

But later, after Johnson left the White House in 1869, Congress decided to replace the justices for policy and political reasons.

In 1862, to help finance the war against the South, as well as their other spending schemes, Republicans, with the urging of Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, had passed the Legal Tender Act.

This inflationary plan allowed for the creation and circulation of a national currency called Greenbacks, fiat money that did not have the backing of gold, though the Constitution specifically gives Congress the authority to “coin money,” not to print it.  In all, Congress issued more than $450 million in paper dollars during the four-year conflict, producing ample inflation to double the cost of living.  The United States had not seen that level of inflation since the days of the American Revolution with the old, worthless Continental dollar.

In 1870, the United States Supreme Court, in the case of Hepburn v. Griswold, ruled the Legal Tender Act unconstitutional.  The Chief Justice in that case, who sided with the majority, was none other than Salmon P. Chase.  The decision angered Republicans in Congress, who then raised the number of seats on the Court back to its present total of nine.  President Grant then nominated two new Stalwart Republican justices in 1870, in an effort to “pack it,” and the Court reversed itself a year later, in Knox v. Lee, allowing Congress the authority to issue paper currency.

Though the Constitution sets the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction, Congress has the authority to limit the Court’s appellate jurisdiction, a tactic discussed in recent years by congressional Republicans in the hopes of stopping the Court’s attack on traditional American institutions.  Though ridiculed by Democrats as “unconstitutional,” Congress possesses the constitutional power to limit cases the Court can hear, under Article 3, Section 2 of the Constitution:

“In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction.  In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”

Congress has used that power in the past when needed.  As with the issue of the Court’s size, it was tested during the heated days of Reconstruction in the case of Ex Parte McCardle.

In 1869, a Mississippi newspaper owner and former Confederate general, William McCardle, wrote and published a series of editorials criticizing the North and its Reconstruction program.  Acting under the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, which provided for martial law, military commissions and tribunals, and the abolishment of the right of habeas corpus, the Union military commander in McCardle’s district arrested him.  McCardle sued to gain his freedom under the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867, a law passed by Congress that defined, by federal law, the rights under habeas corpus.

The Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Chase, had previously limited federal authority to try civilians in military courts and Radicals in Congress feared that if the Court heard the McCardle case, it might throw out the Reconstruction Acts, which would threaten the entire Reconstruction program.

Congress, acting under Article 3, Section 2 of the Constitution, removed the Court’s jurisdiction in all cases arising under the Habeas Corpus Act by attaching a rider to an appropriations bill.  When the case came before it, the Court upheld Congress’s right to withdraw its jurisdiction.

With such abundant historical evidence, it is perplexing why conservatives would place so much trust in the Supreme Court, an unelected body that has such great influence to affect public policy, when clearly the other two branches have been awarded more power by the Constitution.

Attacking Obama for his decision on the Defense of Marriage Act, Rush Limbaugh stated recently that the Supreme Court has the exclusive right to decide the constitutionality of our laws.

Newt Gingrich also opposed the President’s pronouncement in an interview with Newsmax, stating that Obama is not a “one-person Supreme Court” and his decision sets a “very dangerous precedent” that must not be allowed to stand.

But a fair question should be asked, would a conservative President defend the constitutionality of the Roe decision, or either the unconstitutional and obnoxious McCain-Feingold Act or the Patriot Act, both of which did so much damage to the first amendment?

The dangerous precedent is to take that kind of power away from the democratic branches of the federal government and hand it to an unelected oligarchy with lifetime appointments.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend, “To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.”

Justices, with their power, are “more dangerous” because “they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.”

Jefferson had it exactly right.  If federal courts are allowed to make political decisions, our liberty is in grave danger.

Judicial Tyranny in Arizona

Just twelve hours before a new immigration act in Arizona was set to take effect, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton, appointed by Bill Clinton, issued a temporary injunction against the most significant portions of the law.

The teeth of the law includes provisions that make it mandatory for immigrants to carry their papers and identification at all times and require police officers to check the status of immigrants while enforcing other laws.  Illegals, or so-called “undocumented workers,” are also prohibited from soliciting employment under the new law.

Judge Bolton halted enforcement of these provisions until the courts have resolved the legal issues surrounding the law.  Her ruling, in effect, has rendered the act of no force.

But the ball is now in the court of Governor Jan Brewer and the State of Arizona.  Will they submit to the dictates of a politically-appointed judge?  Or will they defy the courts and continue to enforce their own laws within their own borders?

Judge Bolton is overseeing seven lawsuits that have been filed against the law, including one by Attorney General Eric Holder.  The State of Arizona had filed a motion with the federal court to have the lawsuits thrown out, but now the judge has sided with the federal government.

Should we be surprised?

In recent decades, the states have chosen to fight the federal government in federal court.  This is the wrong move and an unwinnable situation.  It is not a proper check on the power of Washington.  The federal government has proven time and again that it will never check itself.

Furthermore, when suits are filed by the states against Washington, the feds are allowed to preside over its own case.  This would be like Gulf Coast fishermen suing British Petroleum for damages, while BP’s CEO acts as the final arbitrator.  We all know how that one would come out. 

And as a result, Washington has grown all-powerful.  As Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend in 1825, “It is but too evident, that the three ruling branches…are in combination to strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of the powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all functions foreign and domestic.”  How right he was!

The federal government from day one has bristled with hostility anytime a state encroaches on its constitutional authority, as it alleges with the Arizona law, but Washington has encroached on the rights of the states almost since the inception of the Constitution itself, for which it has shown little remorse.

“By enforcing this statute,” Judge Bolton wrote in her ruling, “Arizona would impose a ‘distinct, unusual and extraordinary’ burden on legal resident aliens that only the federal government has the authority to impose.”

But Washington has not imposed its authority in enforcing U.S. immigration law, and Arizona is living in a nightmare as a result.  Phoenix is now the kidnapping capital of the nation, and the crime and violence on the border is horrendous.  The federal government has failed miserably in securing the border but now is preventing a sovereign state from acting in its own best interest to protect its citizens.

Arizona should defy this ruling and go ahead with the enforcement of its law, which simply codifies existing federal law. 

Governor Brewer certainly has some fight in her.  “This fight is far from over,” she said after the ruling.  “In fact, it is just the beginning, and at the end of what is certain to be a long legal struggle, Arizona will prevail in its right to protect our citizens.” 

“Courts have no law enforcement powers; that is the prerogative of the executive alone,” wrote Andrew Jackson.  But rather than vow to appeal the decision, Governor Brewer should take a page from Old Hickory and announce that Judge Bolton has made her decision, now let her enforce it!  Arizona is moving forward!

Chicago Equals Insanity

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  Chicago’s gun laws fit Einstein’s definition perfectly.  In an effort to combat violent crime, Windy City liberals have succeeded in making law-abiding citizens defenseless against thugs who do not obey any laws.  But rather than change their strategy, Chicago’s leaders try more of the same.

Consider the hell on earth that is present-day Chicago.

In 2008 there were 511 murders, including 125 during the summer months; in 2009 the number was 453; and from January to May 2010, 164 homicides have been committed.  With violence this bad it has been suggested that the National Guard may have to be called out to quell the viciousness Chicago’s citizens have unleashed on one another.

However, the Supreme Court recently struck down Chicago’s 28 year-old gun ban as unconstitutional but the city wasted little time by imposing more draconian gun restrictions just days later.  The Chicago City Council passed a new ordinance that allows only one assembled and operable firearm in a household.  Any remaining weapons must be locked away while also decreeing that all firearms must be kept inside the house and can not be taken outside, onto the porch or in the garage.

In a press conference to announce and defend the new proposals, Mayor Richard Daley said of the new laws:  “It responsibly and reasonably balances previous Court rulings on 2nd Amendment Rights with our determination to protect our residents from violence and keep them safe.”

In addition, Mayor Daley cited, not the out-of-control violence in his city, but several strange facts on the supposed danger of firearms in the home:

• A gun in the home increases the risk of unintentional firearm injury, suicide and homicide.
• The danger of having a gun in the home is especially serious for children and adolescents. In states with more guns, young people are at higher risk for accidental gun injuries, suicide and homicide.
• Women in states with higher levels of household firearm ownership are more likely to be murdered.
• A long line of studies show that gun availability is a risk factor for suicide. Firearms in the home are associated with significantly higher rates of suicide, including among young people.

The mayor also expressed “great concern over the danger faced by law enforcement and emergency ‘first-responders’ when they enter a home in which there are guns.”

So Mayor Daley is not particularly concerned about the warzone his city has become. 

“As long as I’m mayor, we will never give up or give in to the gun violence that continues to threaten every part of our nation, including Chicago,” Daley said.  “I believe that enacting a new handgun law is the responsible step for us to take and the right thing to do. Without it, I fear for that there will be greater violence on our streets and in our homes.”

It is understandable that people have an inordinate fear of guns.  We live in a gun culture.  But firearms are the surest way for citizens to protect themselves in a society that is becoming more violent every day. 

A woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma recently defended herself from two “well known” thugs who broke into her home armed with knives, threatening to rob and sexually assault her.  She shot them both, killing one and critically injuring the other.  Had she not possessed a firearm, she would have been robbed, raped and God knows what else.  Officials in Tulsa wisely decided to file murder charges but against the wounded attacker in the hospital.  A state law allows such a charge if that person commits a felony and someone dies in the process.

The two assailants in Tulsa had no guns, but carried out the crime with other weapons.  Criminals are the problem, not decent, law-abiding citizens, and certainly not firearms. 

Oklahoma is demonstrating sanity by allowing citizens to defend themselves, without fear of prosecution, and going after thugs who prey on society.

If there is one indisputable fact about liberalism it is this: if carried to its fullest extent, it will always accomplish the exact opposite of its intended purpose.

Disarming law-abiding citizens will only lead to more violent crime, not less.  Chicago is definitive proof of that fact.

In times past, namely the Old West, guns were freely carried by law-abiding citizens.  But sadly, much of our perception of history comes from television and the movies.  The words “old west” or “wild west” would probably conjure up an image from a film, most likely a shootout scene with guns blazing.  Movies portrayed the era much differently than reality, however.

It might be surprising to many that there were very few murders, and other violent crimes, in the Old West.  Scholars who have studied the period have concluded that violence was quite low.  Dodge City, of Wyatt Earp fame, had its deadliest year in 1878, when just five murders took place.  One historians’ study found that there were only 45 murders in the five major cattle towns in the Wild West from 1870 until 1885, an average of just three a year.

Why was violence so low?  The answer is obvious.  It was never a good idea to violently confront someone with a six-shooter strapped to each hip.

But in a blatant form of hypocrisy, politicians have armed guards to protect them each and every day, then vote to strip citizens of their rights to own and possess firearms for defense.

The best idea to ensure that politicians look out after the personal well-being of the nation’s citizens comes from the late Harry Browne, two-time Libertarian Party presidential nominee, who once said that if he were elected president he would immediately order the disarming of Capitol police officers, who would remain unarmed until Congress repealed all federal laws that restrict a citizen’s right to keep and bear arms.  If citizens can not protect themselves, he said, then politicians had no right to such protection.

Mayor Daley, President Obama, and every leader in our cities, our states, and our nation’s capital should have to face the same fears the rest of us face.  Maybe then the insanity would end and laws that actually work to protect the citizenry would prevail.

The Mystifying Logic of the Supreme Court

In the past couple of weeks, in three major cases released before adjournment, the United States Supreme Court has left us all wondering just what passes for logic in the hallowed chambers of the nation’s highest judicial chamber. 

This honorable Court has ruled, in recent days, that enemy combatants, who are not U.S. citizens, should be granted access to our court system and provided the same rights under our Constitution enjoyed by American citizens; that the State of Louisiana cannot execute child rapists; and, in what should have been an open-and-shut case, rightfully struck down a Washington, D.C. ban on handguns but only by the slimmest margin possible, 5 to 4.

In the first decision, Boumediene v. Bush, the Court ruled, outrageously, that Guantanamo detainees, that is those persons that U.S. military forces have captured on foreign battlefields and who are engaged in combat against us, have a right to the same due process rights, found in the Fifth Amendment, as U.S. citizens.  In other words, they can use civilian courts rather than the military tribunals, which have always been used throughout U.S. military history.

The Court in this case reversed the decision of the D.C. Court of Appeals, which rightfully concluded that constitutional rights do not apply to aliens outside the United States.

Giving such rights to known terrorists borders on insanity.  Once inside a civilian court, with a defense lawyer in tow, they can demand the right of discovery, gaining valuable intelligence information.  This happened when the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing were caught and put on trial.  Not only is the turning over of information damaging, and potentially deadly, terrorists can also learn how we are gaining our intelligence, which is infinitely more harmful to our national security.

And can you not see how illegal aliens might be able to use this ruling to their benefit?

In Kennedy v. Louisiana, the decision by the Supreme Court to strike down a law passed by the State of Louisiana to execute child rapists is yet another example of the arrogance and misguided logic in Washington.  Here again we see the Supreme Court reaching down into a sovereign State and overturning a law passed by its duly elected representatives.  This practice has been going on since the days of John Marshall, and is clearly outside the bounds of the strict parameters of Article III of the Constitution.

Governor Bobby Jindal called the ruling “an affront to the people of Louisiana.”

And again the chosen method is the Bill of Rights, as the Court often enjoys applying those restrictions to the individual States.  The Left believes that the Fourteen Amendment fastens the First Amendment restrictions upon the States.

But this is not what our Founders desired.

In 1866 Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.  Section 1 declares: 

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Two years later, on July 9, 1868, the requisite number of States had ratified it (although some of them where still out of the Union at the time, which makes for an interesting argument against its legality). 

However, nothing in that amendment even suggests that the Bill of Rights was being applied to the individual States.  It does use the same language as the Fifth Amendment, applying those protection upon the States, but nothing more.

It was never the intent of the Founders to apply the Bill of Rights to the States.  Those ten amendments were seen very clearly at the time as a means of binding the federal government. 

In 1875, seven years after helping to pass the Fourteenth Amendment, Congressman James G. Blaine of Maine, who served in the U.S. House, including three terms as Speaker, in the U.S. Senate, as Secretary of State twice, and was the GOP nominee for president in 1884, proposed an amendment that would apply part of the First Amendment to the States.  The “Blaine Amendment” concerned the use of public funds for religious schools, a issue still disputed today.  His amendment stated as follows:

“No State shall make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; and no money raised by taxation in any State for the support of public schools, or derived from any public fund therefor, nor any public lands devoted thereto, shall ever be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations.”

Now the question is this, if the Fourteenth Amendment applied the Bill of Rights to the States, why would Blaine have needed such an amendment?  Because the Fourteenth Amendment did not impose the Bill of Rights upon the States.  But it has since been used by the Court to impose restrictions upon the States and upon the people.

One year later, however, the Court was presented an opportunity to rule on this very subject.  In United States v. Cruikshank (1876) the Court held, by a vote of 9 to 0, that the Bill of Rights does NOT apply to the States.  The case involved civil rights but it clearly had wide-ranging implications, as noted in Chief Justice Morrison Waite’s majority opinion.  He stated, in regard to guns, that the Second Amendment declares that just such a right “shall not be infringed, but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress.  This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government….”  Simply put, Congress, or any part of the federal government, cannot infringe on the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights.

As for the Washington, D.C. gun ban case, District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court does exercise jurisdiction here because Congress, under Article I Section 8 of the Constitution, is given authority over the seat of the national government. 

The Court struck down D.C.’s long-standing ban on hand guns, in place since 1976, as an unconstitutional violation of the Second Amendment, which the Court interpreted to be an individual right.  But why would this case be so close?  Four justices, the liberal members of the Court, took the opposite side in what should have been a slam-dunk case.  But this is judicial activism at its best – if they don’t like the Constitution they just simply rule how they would like it to be.

Over the weekend I watched one of my favorite movies, Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, in which several scenes brought me back to the Heller case.  If you recall the film, Gene Hackman’s character, Sheriff Little Bill Daggett, oversaw a gun ban in his small town of Big Whiskey, Wyoming.  This left the townspeople, and any visitors who might enter, totally at the mercy of the sheriff’s department, i.e. the government.  Without any weapons to defend themselves against an over-bearing government, the people simply had to endure Little Bill’s vicious beatings, three of which are showcased during the film. 

The Founding Fathers had just such a scene in mind when they envisioned the Second Amendment, the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” in order to defend themselves against an oppressive government, on any level.  The idea of a government taking away the people’s arms smacked of tyranny in its worst form.  For if a people were disarmed, government would be free to do as it wished.  This should be unthinkable to any freedom-loving person.

The Second Amendment simply states:  “A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”  It must be noted that a militia in the 18th century was not like today’s national guard, but a unit consisting of the local people, who were armed, and could repel invasions, like the minutemen at Lexington and Concord.  George Mason, a “Father of the Bill of Rights” along with James Madison,  once said of militias, “I ask, sir, what is the militia?  It is the whole people, except for a few public officials.”

But the amendment also protected one’s right of self-defense and the right to dispose of a hostile government.  The evidence for this is clear in the historical record.  Without the Second Amendment, the rest of our protected rights are meaningless.

The Left, predictably, has already kicked off a full-scale assault on the ruling and on gun rights in general.  The Chicago Tribune editorialized on Friday, June 27th, that not only were the Founding Fathers complete idiots but we should, as the title states, “Repeal the 2nd Amendment.”

We must be on-guard against these kinds of brazen attacks.  Although they may be unthinkable, the Left has always been masters of chipping away at our rights and liberties until they are no more. 

But we cannot, as true conservatives, put too much faith in the Supreme Court as the final judge of our liberties.  This was not the intent of the Founders and it should not be our platform either.  For the logic of five robed members of the Supreme Court can trample our rights as surely as a despot.

Politics vs. Statesmanship in the Immigration Debate

The current national debate over immigration reform has caused me to think deeply about what is actually happening in our country. What we are seeing right before our eyes is a bunch of politicians defying the clear will of the vast majority of the American people. Poll after poll clearly show that upwards of 75 to 80 percent of the people want illegal immigration halted in its tracks and restrictions placed on legal immigration. Yet most of our illustrious leaders in Washington are doing their level best to disobey their masters.

This issue, as much as any other, will demonstrate to you, the American citizen, the true character of your elected representatives. Is he or she a statesman or just another politician? And believe me, there is a vast difference between the two.

Today we like to throw the label “Statesman” around yet not really understand the true definition of it. You probably recall many times seeing one of our older members of Congress on television and hearing the commentator refer to him as an “elder statesman.” That may or may not be true. It all depends on who he is and what he has stood for over his career. So let me bring this to the forefront and clear the air.

The textbook definition of a statesman is partially true, defining it as one who practices the art of government. I hate this definition because under it Adolf Hitler was a statesman and none of us would agree with that. But the second part of the definition is “one who governs wisely.” Now this will tell us much about today’s current debate.

Is it wise to allow millions of illegal aliens to cross our southern border every year with no serious effort to stop it? All we have heard since that fateful morning in September over four years ago is that the world changed, that we must adjust our policies to it. And we have done so, launching unprecedented pre-emptive wars, engaging in massive nation-building efforts, and seeking to spread democracy around the globe, all at a cost of countless billions of taxpayer dollars and thousands of lives. Yet we have left our southern border with Mexico wide-open, and at a time when al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have threatened new attacks on our homeland, possibly with weapons of mass destruction. This is far from wise.

But the national security reason is not the only one. Economics is also an equally important factor. Just this week we heard President Bush, speaking from Cancun, Mexico, remind us that these immigrants, seeking work in the United States, will do the jobs American won’t do. Now that is an out-and-out, bald-faced lie! And it has been spewed from Washington for years. The truth is that Americans won’t work for four or five dollars an hour, and illegal immigrants (and legal ones for that matter) will. This is the main reason the Republican Party has allowed such as flood of illegals to cross over into our country, in order to pay back massive campaign contributions from corporations and big business. The GOP gets campaign cash, businesses get cheap labor. And what does the American worker get – the shaft! Massive floods of cheap labor will, and is, driving wages in this nation downward. More labor means lower wages. It’s simple economics.

For Democrats the issue is a little different, although they are aiding businesses as well. Don’t ever think they are not. But mainly they want to expand a voting block in which they will always get the vast majority of the votes. Republicans were overjoyed when Bush gained 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004. Well yahoo! That will not cut it, not ever. Don’t these fools realize that if Mexicans continue to pour into this nation at that rate, gain amnesty and citizenship (or just vote as illegals the way many Democrats want it) that the days of a Republican majority are over forever? Our nation, the nation of our fathers, will be lost. Our culture will be changed and it can never be regained. This is my biggest fear. I’m beginning to think the late Sam Francis was right. Maybe they are the Stupid Party!

Now back to our definitions. Those who support and promote this crazy immigration policy are not statesmen but politicians. They are worried only with now, today, the present, and have no thought for tomorrow. Oh we hear every campaign season how they are “fighting for the children” but we should look at their actions, not their words. As our Lord told us in Matthew 7:15, “By their fruit you will know them.” Don’t believe what comes out of a politician’s mouth, but look at what they actually do to judge their character. Most of our representatives in Congress only care about staying in office and their power. They are not concerned with what happens to this nation in the future. A statesman, on the other hand is wise and takes a long range view of situations, all the while standing on principle. A politician thinks about today but a statesman thinks about tomorrow, or more accurately, the next generation. Think about it my fellow citizens – what will our great nation be like in 20 or 25 years of unrestricted immigration? I can tell you – you won’t recognize it! A politician will do anything, and say anything, to get elected. We hear it all the time, yet a statesman will stand on his principles and if he is defeated he will retire to his home happily. The trappings of power do not affect him. We need men of this caliber in Washington today.

One of America’s greatest statesmen and political thinkers, John C. Calhoun, wrote and spoke often about the differences between a politician and a statesman. To Alexander Hamilton, Jr., he wrote in 1830: “The distinction between the statesman and the politician is broad and well defined. The former is an ornament and blessing to his country, but the latter a pest. No one is worthy of the public confidence, who does not place himself on principle and services as the means of advancement. Intrigue and cunning will, I trust, prove as feeble as they are detestable.” So where does your elected representative stand?