Tag Archives | Power

New England Nullification Movement Grows

By on May 10, 2011 in Big Government, Constitution, Federalism, Government, Liberty, Nullification, Sovereignty Movement

Back in March, the town of Sedgwick, Maine courageously voted to nullify certain unconstituional federal regulations dealing with local food production.

The ordinance was passed in response to S.510, the odious Food Safety and Modernization Act, written by agricorps like Monsanto to put their smaller competitors out of business, and passed by Congress under the cover of darkness on Christmas Eve last year. 

The Sedgwick ordinance stated in part that

“Sedgwick citizens…[may] produce, process, sell, purchase, and consume local foods of their choosing,”

and declares that

“It shall be unlawful for any law or regulation adopted by the state or federal government to interfere with the rights recognized by this Ordinance.” 

As I pointed out in March:

This is so basic and yet so revolutionary.

In these days when petty tyrants seem to be at the helm of every government agency, imposing their arbitrary and destructive will upon a cowering citizenry, it is refreshing to know that there are still people with the courage and capacity to stand up and say “Not in our town.”

Now another town has joined the fight.

Voters in Blue Hill, Maine have adopted a similar ordinance to protect their own local food producers.

Nullification, the legal and moral equivalent of peaceful non-cooperation, marches on as more and more Americans discover that tyranny cannot exist without the people’s consent.  

h/t LRC

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A Doorway to Hell

By on September 27, 2010 in Liberty

In an earlier article for this website I’ve written about the non-coercion principle and how it is connected to individual liberty and morality itself. I laid out the reasons why moral rules that we hold dear are really products of individual liberty by using the imagery from Lord of the Rings. It was a little fun but I was not attempting to belittle the reader’s intelligence but to illustrate that the cause of all evil is the violation of the non-coercion principle which really is an assumption of power over other people.

Think of the worst act a human being can do to another which is rape. This is a crime in every culture but the difference between rape and sex is the non-coercion principle. Sex is a voluntary act between two willing people but rape is an involuntary act. The physical act does not change itself since it is intercourse as defined by medicine but the difference is free-will. Two people who engage in sex have free-will and each other’s consent to do it but rape is an absence of consent of one person. What made it a moral crime against another person was not the act itself since the act is essentially the same in both situations but more an absence of free-will. The absence of free-will made it an act of evil since there was none.

Not only does this rule apply to that situation but it also applies in all other situations where human beings interact with each other. The act of theft is no different than the act of trade since it involves the movement of one person’s property to another. The only difference is the absence of free-will. A person who exchanges their property with another does so freely of their own free-will. They may do this for charitable reasons or to get something that someone else has but whatever the reason is it is always done in accordance with their free-will. Continue Reading →

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Have we reached a Hamiltonian Endpoint?

By on September 24, 2010 in Big Government

In the field of Economics there is a term commonly used to express the sheer hopelessness of our current predicament, it’s “Keynesian Endpoint.”  Supposedly, this is the point where our society is so deeply in debt that any amount of further borrowing to “stimulate” only causes counter-stimulative effects.  That is, borrowing 50 billion more to “stimulate” the economy will cause inflationary effects that completely counter any stimulation of aggregate demand which spending that 50 billion might cause.  Thus, the main underlying assumption behind Keynesian economics is no longer true – that government spending in all cases is good.  I believe we  have already reached this place in time.****

However, that is not the point of this post.  I believe that we as a nation have reached another endpoint, a Hamiltonian endpoint.  The Hamiltonian premise is that the Federal Government may do anything which is not specifically forbidden by the U.S. Constitution (regardless of the clear language by the founders in the Federalist papers/ratifying conventions).  This system has an endpoint because it is inherently unstable.
First, we must define Hamiltonian-ism. This is from Websters online dictionary:

The political principles and ideas held by or associated with Alexander Hamilton that center around a belief in a strong central government, broad interpretation of the federal constitution, encouragement of an industrial and commercial economy, and a general distrust of the political capacity or wisdom of the common man

I am speaking specifically of the broad interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE

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Why Not!

By on September 23, 2010 in Big Government

These are the first words that a two year old tells their parents and is the beginning of that person asserting their authority over themselves. The parent then stunts that first ideas of free-will that child might have by saying something akin to ‘don’t talk back to me’. This naturally stops the child from asking any questions over the parent’s decisions and authority over the child. The child then continues to obey until they reach a much older age of the teenage years and the question of ‘why not’ begins to be heard more loudly than before and eventually the child gains equal authority with their parents when they reach adulthood.

What if that child never asked ‘why not’? That child would then grow up to be obedient to there parent’s will and to the will of anyone else since they never ask ‘why not’ to anyone. The right to question others is not only beneficial to obtaining truth but also in establishing equality between two people because the decision someone makes for someone else must pass mustard which can only happen people ask why. Continue Reading →

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The Paternal Power

By on September 10, 2010 in Law

I’m sure most people remember how free they felt the day the left home and lived on their own. At first it might have seemed a bit scary because you had to pay bills and survive independently of your parents but after a while you felt a new sense of freedom in your own life. You may not have realized this but what you did is that you have freed yourself from the paternal power of your parents.

The paternal power that your parents had was well established since you were born because they had to take care of you. While they were taking care of you you were dependent on them and this gave your parents a sense of power over your being. This is why your parents believe they have a right to control what you do with your life while they are taking care of you and the expression ‘under my house…blah…blah…blah’ exist.

The one thing that many political philosophers such as John Locke were dealing with at the time was the paternal power of the state. Monarchs were not magistrates who executed the law but seen as parents who assumed they had control over you in the same way a parent does over a child. The king was responsible for your welfare and survival which turned each citizen into a personal ward of the king. This established the same relationship you had with your parents when you lived with them between the king and society. Continue Reading →

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Living? Breathing?

By on August 16, 2010 in Constitution

Words mean things.

And context illuminates meaning.

Context not only includes other words within a given work, but also past and future writings of the authors, and the social and philosophical framework within which the work was produced.

The articles and sections of the Constitution mean things.

And context illuminates meaning.

Progressives view the Constitution as a living, breathing document.  Barak Obama wrote in The Audacity of Hope:

“Ultimately, though, I have to side with Justice Breyer’s view of the Constitution—that it is not a static but rather a living document, and must be read in the context of an ever-changing world.”

In other words, the Constitution means – whatever you want it to mean. Continue Reading →

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The Power to Create is not the Power to Enforce

By on August 2, 2010 in Constitution

The commerce clause is being used to by the federal government to regulate the economic aspect of our lives.  It claims it has the right to establish laws that regulate how businesses conduct themselves.   This is not correct because the commerce clause was always meant to break down trade barriers that states may attempt to impose onto each other.

Now lets assume, for the sake of argument, that the federal government’s interpretation is correct and look at one particular enumerated power which is the power to tax.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

This gives congress two powers which are the power to lay taxes and the power to collect taxes.   The power to lay taxes is the power to establish laws that demand citizens pay taxes while the power to collect taxes is the power to establish laws that actually do collect taxes.   Without the power to collect taxes the federal government wouldn’t have the ability to collect them and under the tenth amendment that power would fall to the states.  Continue Reading →

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Supreme Court Nominee Could Coronate Obama

By on June 23, 2010 in Judiciary

Writes Bruce Fein:

…If confirmed by the United States Senate, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan will crown President Obama with “imperial” constitutional powers. Congress and Federal Courts will wither as checks against his presidential usurpations or abuses whenever war or other national security claims are bugled over Iran, North Korea, Yemen, international terrorism, economic adversity, or otherwise. In these matters, Kagan will prove the flip side of retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, whose vote and voice have, for decades, arrested executive branch lawlessness or encroachments on the co-equal branches of government. Stevens’ vote was decisive in a pair of recent cases invalidating both military commissions for the trial of alleged war crimes and the suspension of the Great Writ of habeas corpus for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

…Kagan is a creature of the executive branch.

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Heading for a Cliff

By on May 20, 2010 in Big Government, Economics

Catastrophe is dead ahead, and it is clear to see – so why are we not stepping on the brakes? I think the November election will be a small “pump” of the brake but will that be enough? Our kid’s future is being spent on bailing out unionized, entitled Greek workers, who need to cut their own benefits, fix their own self made problems, and leave our kids money alone!

The federal government has a plan to end obesity, but the problem is it ends our kid’s freedom. These people are evil dictators disguised as do-gooders. We need to read the constitution and apply it; now!

Government healthcare will ruin healthcare. Unions are destroying the jobs they supposedly treasure. The government programs are destroying charitable giving. The education system is destroying education, respect for the flag and faith in God.

Unemployment “benefits” are destroying incentive to work. Illegal people in this country are taking jobs, undermining wages, bankrupting our community services, and filling our prisons. But we can’t afford a fence.

The free market is under attack and companies that make bad business decisions are being rewarded with political favor, and our hard earned income, and kid’s futures are being siphoned to takeover these failures. Utilities are raising rates to pay for the people that can’t pay but they somehow can afford other luxuries in life.

A minority leftist group has been staging this coup d’état for many years, and they are now implementing an agenda that hates, despises, and wants to destroy the constitution and America. They are in the driver’s seat speeding toward the cliff. We need a new driver. We need to start standing up for our principles.

We need to be proud that we pray, work hard and make money to support OUR families. We need to be proud that we volunteer and give to the charities WE believe deserve our support. We need to be proud of home schooling and private education, and promote education that supports OUR Kid’s future. We need to fly the flag, wear the flag, and sing our national anthem with a new vigor. We need to be proud Americans again believing in OUR INDIVIDUAL greatness that allows us to share our individual wealth to help others. We need to end poverty in Detroit and other communities of color by getting the people currently locked into generational government programs off of government programs and focused on the true American Dream. We need to drive back to our founding principles and constitution that has given us the greatness WE have created and stop telling lies that government has given us anything of worth. The last thing this government has given us of worth was the constitution.

Everything else has been driving us straight toward a cliff…

If you have been paying attention you know we are losing our country. If you have read our constitution you know it is being trampled as if it doesn’t exist. If you have been paying attention you are getting ever more anxious about how this is going to end up. If you have been paying attention you are feeling helpless to stop this madness. If you have been paying attention you are frightened. If you are paying attention you must get involved. If you are paying attention you need to learn our history and read our constitution. If you are paying attention you know you have to get everyone else’s attention…

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Betrayal of our Nation

By on May 12, 2010 in Big Government, Health Care

Editor’s note: thank you to Dee Clark for supplying this clear and concise example letter for sending to press editors! (cross-posted from the Texas Tenth Amendment Center) Read on…

Dear Editor:

When our federal government forces an individual to participate in a healthcare program under which access to care, and decisions about treatment, are controlled by the government, it is infringing upon that person’s “inalienable rights” – taking control of his/her Life, limiting his/her Liberty, and restricting his/her Pursuit of Happiness. That is a direct violation of the Bill of Rights, which was written to prevent that very infringement.

In addition, the Constitution states that all powers not specifically given to the federal government remain in the hands of the People, and the States. No part of the Constitution specifically give the federal government the power to control healthcare, so the current administration is over-stepping the limits of its Constitutional authority.

Our Founders worded the Constitution so that it could be understood by all Americans. Since the current administration is made up of well-educated people, I must assume that they do understand it – and that their violation of its constraints is deliberate.

And that is why Obama’s healthcare mandates must be opposed and nullified as quickly as possible. This is abetrayal of our nation – and our People – that cannot, and must not, be allowed to stand.

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