"It is very imprudent to deprive America of any of her privileges. If her commerce and friendship are of any importance to you, they are to be had on no other terms than leaving her in the full enjoyment of her rights."

--Benjamin Franklin, Political Observations

"The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them."

-- Thomas Jefferson, Rights of British America, 1774

Tom Hoefling 2012
tomhoefling.com

"Just as 'good fences make for good neighbors,' good government is mainly about knowing where the legitimate boundaries are, and having the courage to defend those borders forcefully. This is true in terms of the defense of our territory, our security, and our national sovereignty, of course, but it also applies to the imperative duty all of those in government have to equally protect the God-given, unalienable rights of each individual person, their sacred obligation to stay well within the Enumerated Powers of our Constitution, and of the role government must play in balancing the competing rights and interests of the American people."

-- Tom Hoefling, 2012 presidential nominee of America's Party

Alan Keyes counters 'religious freedom' claim regarding contraceptive mandate

WorldNetDaily.com

Alan Keyes

In my WND column last Friday, I pointed out that “every assertion of a fundamental human right necessarily relies in turn upon an assertion about what is right.” Today this fact is more often than not ignored, even by Americans who profess to be ardent defenders of the liberty America’s founders intended to establish and preserve. Madison succinctly summarized the founders’ understanding when he said that “Justice is the end of government, it is the end of civil society. …” But the Declaration of Independence makes clear that the end or aim of the institution of government is to secure God-endowed unalienable rights. (“To secure these rights governments are instituted among men. …”) Justice is thus identified with the security (safe existence) of unalienable rights, because both are identified as the singular end or aim of government. (If A=C and B=C, then A=B.)

This appears even more plainly when we recall that the root of justice (Latin “iustus”) is right (Latin “ius” or “ious”). But in the context of the Declaration’s stated purpose for government, God endows right (i.e., He provides the “income” that establishes it; He determines what goes into it; He is the source of its conceptual substance or meaning). In the Declaration America’s founders declare that the colonies “are, and of right ought to be free and independent States. …” Their free condition is thus identified as a matter or right, a consequence of the substance or meaning which God endows their nature. By invoking their natural right they invoke the authority of the Creator, which is its source and substantiation.

Since the founders’ assertion of freedom invokes the authority of the Creator, the validity of the assertion depends on its conformity with the substance or meaning of right established by that authority. But this dependency has a consequence. It restricts the assertion of freedom within boundaries determined by this conformity to God-endowed right. Freedom is therefore not an unlimited potential for action. The assertion of freedom is valid only for action in conformity with the substance or meaning of right as established (endowed) by the Creator.

By this straightforward logic Abraham Lincoln was bound to conclude that one cannot have the right to do what is wrong. If it is wrong, for instance, to murder innocent people, one cannot claim to do so as a matter of right. If it is wrong, by enslaving them, to violate their God-endowed liberty, one cannot claim to do so as a matter of right.

Read this story at wnd.com ...

_Still a Ron Paul Fan?

By the editor at Lonely Machines

I wrote briefly about the Congressional amicus curiae brief [pdf] in support of the petitioners in McDonald v. Chicago when it was submitted.  We saw a great deal of support from both sides of the political spectrum, but one signature was notable for its glaring omission: Ron Paul.

I'd been wondering about that, and Howard Nemerov was able to get a statement from Dr. Paul's office:

Congressman Paul’s DC office said he didn’t sign the brief because he believes that it interferes with state’s rights, whose policies shouldn’t be dictated by the federal government.

Let's get a few things straight here, people.  First off, states do not have rights. Like any other government, they have powers that are delegated to them by the people.  Only people have rights.

Second, the 14th Amendment does not conflict with the 10th, and in no way does it interfere with the agendas of individual state governments.

Some background:

The 10th Amendment has undergone a bit of a renaissance over the last year.  The Federal government has long been over-reaching with a rather loose reading of the Interstate Commerce Clause.  Though the Rehnquist Court had long been keeping abuses of the clause in check, a schism took place in the 2005 case Gonzales v. Raich.

In Gonzales, the Court ruled that the cultivation of marijuana for personal, medical use was illegal under Federal law, even if it was legal under California law.  Despite the fact that "commerce" was in no way involved, the Court found that the clause applied because of "the likelihood that the high demand in the interstate market will draw such marijuana into that market."

In his dissent, Justice Thomas lamented,

If the Federal Government can regulate growing a half-dozen cannabis plants for personal consumption (not because it is interstate commerce, but because it is inextricably bound up with interstate commerce), then Congress' Article I powers — as expanded by the Necessary and Proper Clause — have no meaningful limits. Whether Congress aims at the possession of drugs, guns, or any number of other items, it may continue to "appropria[te] state police powers under the guise of regulating commerce.

The Gonzales decision was closely followed by the Court's disastrous reading of the Takings Clause in Kelo v. City of New London.  Reaction to the Kelo verdict was swift, and a movement began to revive the ailing 10th Amendment.

I'm very supportive of the initiatives taken thus far.  Dr. Paul deserves credit for his work in bringing attention to the issue.  I agree with many of his positions.

But I can't understand how a man who calls himself a libertarian and a "Constitutionalist" opposes an originalist reading of the 14th Amendment.

The concern now, as it was in 1868, is that the 14th Amendment somehow violates the principles of federalism and stands in the way of self-determination for states.  This is a stilted reading of the matter.  As the Paragon Foundation brief [pdf] explained:

Federalism is central to this Republic and dearly important to amicus curiae. However, federalism is a shield for States against the federal government, not a sword for States against fundamental, individual rights. States cannot sacrifice those rights on the altar of federalism.  p. 9

As Justice Brandeis wrote in his dissent in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann,

To stay experimentation in things social and economic is a grave responsibility. Denial of the right to experiment may be fraught with serious consequences to the nation. It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

The 14th and 10th Amendments can coexist gracefully. States still have power to pursue their own economic and social policies, but by no sane interpretation can they infringe on the basic rights of citizens enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

This idea goes back to the framers. Madison believed that the federal government was ultimately responsible for the protection of our rights, even when the states failed in that regard.  An early draft of the Bill of Rights had the passage, "no state shall infringe the equal rights of conscience, nor the freedom of speech, or of the press, nor of the right of trial by jury in criminal cases."

In Federalist #51, he wrote,

It can be little doubted that if the State of Rhode Island was separated from the Confederacy and left to itself, the insecurity of rights under the popular form of government within such narrow limits would be displayed by such reiterated oppressions of factious majorities that some power altogether independent of the people would soon be called for by the voice of the very factions whose misrule had proved the necessity of it.

The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were drafted to rectify such abuses.  An Amendment guaranteeing liberty to all Americans fits right in with Madison's ideas.

Federalism did change a bit during Reconstruction, and I for one am not the least bit sorry that it did. We needed clearer, more specific protections of civil rights than were given by the Framers.  Akhil Amar has pointed out that the contours of the 2nd Amendment (among other civil rights) changed between 1789 and 1868. It was an organic, logical evolution, to which I doubt any of the Framers would have objected.

Madison's proposal for a Bill of Rights stated,

In the first place, it is too uncertain ground to leave this provision upon, if a provision is at all necessary to secure rights so important as many of those I have mentioned are conceived to be, by the public in general, as well as those in particular who opposed the adoption of this Constitution. Besides, some States have no bills of rights, there are others provided with very defective ones, and there are others whose bills of rights are not only defective, but absolutely improper; instead of securing some in the full extent which republican principles would require, they limit them too much to agree with the common ideas of liberty.

(…)

It is true, there are a few particular States in which some of the most valuable articles have not, at one time or other, been violated; but it does not follow but they may have, to a certain degree, a salutary effect against the abuse of power. If they are incorporated into the Constitution, independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights; they will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the Legislative or Executive; they will be naturally led to resist every encroachment upon rights expressly stipulated for in the Constitution by the declaration of rights. Besides this security, there is a great probability that such a declaration in the federal system would be enforced; because the State Legislatures will jealously and closely watch the operations of this Government, and be able to resist with more effect every assumption of power, than any other power on earth can do; and the greatest opponents to a Federal Government admit the State Legislatures to be sure guardians of the people's liberty.

The Constitution grants certain powers to the Federal government, which are clearly defined and should be narrow in interpretation.  The remaining powers of government belong to the states, which are entitled to a great degree of sovereignty in their policies.

However, the ultimate sovereign in our system is the individual.  Federalism stops where the Bill of Rights begins.  The 14th Amendment, particularly the Privileges or Immunities clause, is the guarantor of that idea.

Regardless of one's position in the libertarian spectrum, the ultimate idea is the same: when there is a confict between state interest and individual freedoms, the rights of the individual stand paramount.

Could someone please explain this to Ron Paul?  I find it sad that Harry Reid, Arlen Spector and Olympia Snowe have shown more interest in civil rights than he has in this case.

_"The Founding Fathers expressed in words for all to read the ideal of Government based upon the dignity of the individual. That ideal previously had existed only in the hearts and minds of men. They produced the timeless documents upon which the Nation is founded and has grown great. They, recognizing God as the author of individual rights, declared that the purpose of Government is to secure those rights.

To you and to me this ideal of Government is a self-evident truth. But in many lands the State claims to be the author of human rights. The tragedy of that claim runs through all history and, indeed, dominates our own times. If the State gives rights, it can—and inevitably will—take away those rights. Without God, there could be no American form of Government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first--the most basic—expression of Americanism. Thus the Founding Fathers saw it, and thus, with God's help, it will continue to be. ...Veterans realize, perhaps more clearly than others, the prior place that Almighty God holds in our national life.

And they can appreciate, through personal experience, that the really decisive battleground of American freedom is in the hearts and minds of our own people.... The path we travel is narrow and long, beset with many dangers. Each day we must ask that Almighty God will set and keep His protecting hand over us so that we may pass on to those who come after us the heritage of a free people, secure in their God-given rights and in full control of a Government dedicated to the preservation of those rights..."

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

__ourdocuments.gov

Although 12 amendments were originally proposed, the 10 that were ratified became the Bill of Rights in 1791. They defined citizens' rights in relation to the newly established government under the Constitution. During the debates on the adoption of the Constitution, its opponents repeatedly charged that the Constitution as drafted would open the way to tyranny by the central government. Fresh in their minds was the memory of the British violation of civil rights before and during the Revolution. They demanded a "bill of rights" that would spell out the immunities of individual citizens. Several state conventions in their formal ratification of the Constitution asked for such amendments; others ratified the Constitution with the understanding that the amendments would be offered.

On September 25, 1789, the First Congress of the United States therefore proposed to the state legislatures 12 amendments to the Constitution that met arguments most frequently advanced against it. Articles 3 to 12, ratified December 15, 1791, by three-fourths of the state legislatures, constitute the first 10 amendments of the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights. Article 2 concerning “varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives” was finally ratified on May 7, 1992 as the 27th Amendment to the Constitution. The first amendment, which concerned the number of constituents for each Representative, was never ratified.

For more history and background on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, read A More Perfect Union: The Creation of the U.S. Constitution at the National Archives' new Charters of Freedom site.