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By Bernie Quigley
Hat tip: Tenth Amendment Center
At the beginning of every movement is a wild bunch. Rowdy workers on the docks in Boston, John Brown and his half-mad family. When historians trace back from Scott Brown to the beginning, they will get to a wild bunch in New Hampshire called the “Free Staters.”
They moved here a few years back and live on the edge of the forest, not more than a handful at first but expecting thousands to follow, intending to start the republic fresh again. And in a way they did. I came to their attention with an article in 2003 titled “A States’ Rights Defense against Dick Cheney” premised on Thomas Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions, making the claim that New Hampshire and Vermont need not participate in the war on Iraq without the permission of our state governors.
They had moved up here drawn to our state motto, I think – Live Free or Die. But it was no big ideological thing, more a free-spirited awakening which brought the usual scoffs from the lace curtain MSM and conventional political religionists here in the cold where local politics sometimes seems a substitute for religion. I received an email from one blithe spirit who said that she was basically about “ . . . opposing gun laws, legalizing marijuana and Hillary is a bitch.”
What we had in common was the premise that Thomas Jefferson had recognized the natural state that formed of its own initiative when ideology was removed from the equation. And acknowledged that in the Constitution by declaring that the states had the natural right and the ability to defend themselves against an abusive, arrogant, immoral or delirious federal government.
February 16th, 2010 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »
By Andy Myers
andy@ohiofreedom.com
January 27, 2010
This article appeared in the Xenia Gazette on Jan 26. It is reprinted with permission.
”Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all . . . The Nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.” George Washington, Farewell Address, September 17, 1796
I hate that term. “The War on Terror.” I hate using the word “hate.” But I feel so strongly that our foreign policy has gone awry that I can’t help but speak out. We should all feel a duty as Americans to protect and defend the Constitution whose limits are made a mockery of by the misguided “intellectuals” in Washington and their taxpayer funded “think-tanks” who call the shots and continually get it wrong. Their punishment, a promotion to some other bureaucratic agency where they can wreck more havoc and again disregard the rule of law. Even congress, who’s authority it is, doesn’t even have the fortitude to “declare war” as outlined in Article I, Section 8 of our constitution anymore. Can you imagine what our founder’s would think of our foreign policy exploits and the executive powers held by the President today? Death, destruction-reconstruction and the bankrupting of behaving as an “empire” will only garner additional support for those who despise our overreaching foreign policy behavior. Nations don’t hate us because of our way of life or our freedom-they despise our governments never ending meddling in their internal affairs. Ask yourself how you would feel if a “foreign” nation were on our soil doing what we are doing in over 130 countries and over 700 bases around the world. You know all well you’d be fighting mad!
“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes-known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” James Madison, Political Observations, 1795
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January 28th, 2010 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
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July 3rd, 2009 | Posted in Print Edition | Read More »
Jean Yarbrough
The following address was delivered at Hillsdale College on April 16, 2009, at the dedication of a statue of Thomas Jefferson by Hillsdale College Associate Professor of Art Anthony Frudakis.
It is one of the wonders of the modern political world that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Unaware that the “Sage of Monticello” had died earlier in the day, the crusty Adams, as he felt his own life slipping away, uttered his last words, “Thomas Jefferson still lives.” And so he does.
Today, as we dedicate this marvelous statue of our third President, and place him in the company of George Washington, Winston Churchill, and Margaret Thatcher on Hillsdale’s Liberty Walk, soon to be joined by Abraham Lincoln, it is fitting to reflect on what of Thomas Jefferson still lives. What is it that we honor him for here today?
Without question, pride of place must go to Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence. That document established Jefferson as one of America’s great political poets, second only to Abraham Lincoln. And fittingly, it was Lincoln himself who recognized the signal importance of its first two paragraphs when he wrote: “All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times,” where it continues to stand as “a rebuke and a stumbling block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.”
That abstract truth, of course, was 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.—That to secure these rights Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” It is surely a sign of our times that so many Americans no longer know what these words mean, or what their signal importance has been to peoples around the world. The one thing they are certain of, however, is that Jefferson was a hypocrite. How could he assert that all men were created equal and yet own slaves? What these critics fail to notice is that this is precisely what makes Jefferson’s statement so remarkable. Under no necessity for doing so, he penned the immortal words that would ultimately be invoked to put the institution of slavery on the road to extinction. His own draft of the Declaration was even stronger. In it, he made it clear that blacks were human and that slavery was a moral abomination and a blot upon the honor of his country.
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July 2nd, 2009 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »
The following introduction text is based on text from the Ohio Republic blog.
Senators Keith Faber (R-Celina) and Timothy Grendell (R-Chesterland) introduced a State sovereignty resolution Wednesday, April 6, 2009. While modeled on Oklahoma’s, it contains language that has never appeared in another State sovereignty resolution. There are now 35 states that have introduced (with varying levels of success) such resolutions.
One of the most interesting paragraphs effectively addresses the media assertion that the resolution is “secessionist”: “… We believe in the importance of all levels of government working together to serve the citizens of our country, by respecting the constitutional provisions that properly delineate the authority of federal state, and local governments.”
It includes a reference to Printz v. United States/Mack v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997), in addition to the more common reference to New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992). The resolution also quotes James Madison in the Federalist Papers Nos. 39 and 51 as well as the Kentucky Resolution written by Thomas Jefferson.
Following is the complete text of Ohio’s resolution:
May 7th, 2009 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »
Hat tip: Mises Daily
by Clifford F. Thies
Posted on 4/28/2009
Can states secede? There are three levels on which this question can be answered:
1. the inalienable right of secession,
2. the international law of secession, and
3. the US law of secession.
All three say yes.
The Inalienable Right of Secession
The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America invokes the self-evident truths that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that governments are formed to protect these rights and gain their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that when a government becomes abusive of these rights, it is the right — no, it is the duty — of the people to alter or abolish that government.
To say governments were formed to protect the rights of men would be historically incorrect. Almost all governments were formed by ruthless men exerting their will over others through the use of force. Some governments, over time, evolved toward the rule of law, perhaps only because their rulers saw that this would sanction their own continued enjoyment of the wealth that they possessed. In some instances, this evolution involved one or more “revolutions” in which those who were governed were able to better establish the rule of law.
The language of the Declaration should not be construed as an argument about the historical origins of government but, rather, as what would be true and just to an enlightened person, namely, that as persons and as communities of persons, we have the right and the duty to alter or abolish governments that become abusive of our rights. As Benjamin Franklin once put it, “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”
The concept of an inalienable right of secession was not original to the American Revolution. It can be traced to the scholastics, to Reformation politics, and to the most ancient Greek and Hebrew writings. Without going into a dissertation on the subject, let me simply point to the flag of the state of Virginia, which was designed by Thomas Jefferson. It depicts a female warrior (Athena) standing atop a slain tyrant (Zeus).
According to legend, Zeus, the greatest and most terrible of the gods, was supposed to be the god of law, yet he was himself lawless. When he heard that he would sire a child who would destroy him, he swallowed his wife whole to prevent it. But the child grew within him and then burst from him fully grown. This child was Athena, the goddess of victory, liberty, and peace. And, she did indeed slay her father. It should be easy to see, in this legend, how the rule of law might be established from a government formed through the use of force.
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April 28th, 2009 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »
Hat Tip: Lew Rockwell.com
by Michael Gaddy
The state has many weapons in its arsenal to keep Boobus ignorant of their illegal, unconstitutional activities and in compliance with its confiscatory tax and slavery system. In all likelihood, the two most often used of these weapons are fear and prevarication.
Our new US Attorney General/Race Agitator, Eric Holder, last week used a bright shining lie in his advocating the introduction of a new Assault Weapons Ban. (AWB) He stated:
“Putting the ban back in place would not only be a positive move by the United States, it would help cut down on the flow of guns going across the border into Mexico, which is struggling with heavy violence among drug cartels along the border. I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum.”
What a crock; believing the fantastically wealthy drug cartels actually secure their weapons from America is analogous to taking a hamburger to a steak dinner. The drug cartels use their millions, if not billions, to purchase some of the finest weaponry that can be had, far exceeding the firepower of their state-armed opponents in both Mexico and the US.
One of my sources in federal law enforcement in the El Paso area stated it was common for his forces to be totally outgunned by members of the cartels. To believe these weapons came from weapons that are currently legal in this country is preposterous and an obvious lie.
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March 2nd, 2009 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »
by Jim Quinn
www.opednews.com
“The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”
—Historian and writer James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book “Epic of America.”
Mr. Adams penned these words in the midst of the Great Depression. Then as now, the reason the American Dream is slipping away is due to the actions of politicians running our government and bureaucrats running the Federal Reserve. Those with ability who have earned a better life through their hard work and intelligence should be attaining a higher position in the social order. Instead, our government is rewarding those Americans who have taken unwarranted risks, made brainless decisions, and willingly chose the course of excessive debt to climb the social ladder. As the politicians scurry to “save” capitalism through the use of communist measures, more Americans are becoming disheartened.
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January 9th, 2009 | Posted in Print Edition | Read More »
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