When even politicians are ignorant of the founding documents, our system is in trouble

by Christopher Dreisbach, Baltimore Sun

On Nov. 5, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the House minority leader, took the podium at a Republican rally, waved a document defiantly and declared:”This is my copy of the Constitution, and I’m going to stand here with the Founding Fathers who wrote in the Preamble, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ?” Mr. Boehner was encouraging participants to protest the pending House vote for health care reform by demanding their constitutional right to make medical decisions.

Pop quiz: What’s wrong with this picture?

If you said that there is no explicit constitutional right to make medical decisions, you score some points. If you said that the passage Mr. Boehner quotes is from the Declaration of Independence you get an A. If you also noted that the quotation is not even from the Declaration’s preamble, you earn extra credit.

Mr. Boehner is not the first opinion leader to confuse the Constitution with the Declaration, nor is he apt to be the last. Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, for example, said, “As our Constitution declares, we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights ?” Of course, Mr. Boehner, unlike Mr. Falwell, entered the profession by promising to protect the Constitution.

Mr. Boehner noted his 19 years of public service, yet how could he protect the Constitution when he can’t distinguish it from the Declaration? Indeed, how many public servants, for whom an oath to the Constitution is an entrance requirement, know the document well enough to protect it? Judging from the foregoing, from political rhetoric in media and from many anecdotes, one suspects that constitutional literacy is too low. This is a problem for sworn professionals who cannot protect what they don’t know, and it is a problem for the ordinary citizen who, in a democracy, is supposed to be running the country through informed voting and participation in public conversations.

Read the rest at this link.

by Rep. Ron Paul

With a faltering economy, multiple wars, and the approaching demise of the dollar’s reserve status, there are more than enough problems to keep politicians in Washington working day and night. In between handing out cash for clunkers and nationalizing healthcare, the administration is busy sending more troops overseas, escalating existing wars, and seeking out excuses to start new wars. Congress is working on “urgent” legislation to address crises like healthcare reform and climate change. The reforms are so very urgent that legislation must pass swiftly with no time to read the bills even though the new laws wouldn’t take effect for several years! Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is busy dealing with our dollar crisis by printing up more dollars.

Yes, there certainly is a lot for Washington to do these days. Most, if not all, of what Washington is doing however, is more of what created the problems in the first place. Capitol Hill is filled with politicians running around putting out fires – but with gasoline. The truth is that all these fires keep so many powerful people employed and wealthy that it is not truly in many decision makers’ interests to be very effective problem-solvers. If Washington ran out of problems, think how many lobbyists would be out of a job, and how many special interest groups would just disband? Sadly, whatever is bad for the greater economy is good for the economy and job market in DC.

Of course, no form of government, not even one that respected its Constitutional restraints, would magically create a problem-free society. The question is: how should a society deal with its problems? The form of government that our founders envisioned, in which the federal government was strictly constrained by the Constitution, allows private citizens and communities to solve their own problems. The role of the government should be to protect contracts, punish fraud and violence through appropriate laws, law enforcement and the courts. Not a whole lot of laws or bureaucrats are really necessary to work on just that. Instead, new laws are constantly needed to fix the problems that previous unconstitutional laws created. We have ended up with an incomprehensible maze of laws and regulations that severely constrains the people and expands the government – the exact opposite of what our founders intended.

This is all because the Constitution is treated like a suggestion manual instead of the supreme law of the land. Under the Constitution, politicians’ hands are supposed to be tied in most of the areas they involve themselves in today. But somewhere along the line, politicians stepped out of Constitutional bounds and started pretending to solve our problems for us. All we have to show for it is more problems.

Today, Washington politicians can busily “solve” one problem, knowing that unintended consequences from that “solution” will keep them and their friends all very busy tomorrow. The people are ultimately left suffocating under the burden of Washington’s helping hands. It is coming to a point where our economy, our dollar, and indeed, the rest of the world have had about all the help from Washington that they can stand. The United States is headed the way of Rome and the Soviet Union, for the same reasons, unless we reverse the trend.

I continue to hope that enough Americans will realize that the true strength of our country doesn’t come from Washington, but rather the limitations placed on government in the Constitution. We must resolve to reverse the destructive course that we are on and then never again let big government problem-solving take over our lives and our country.

by David Gardner

As many as one million people flooded into Washington for a massive rally organised by conservatives claiming that President Obama is driving America towards socialism.

The size of the crowd – by far the biggest protest since the president took office in January – shocked the White House.

Demonstrators massed outside Capitol Hill after marching down Pennsylvania Avenue waving placards and chanting ‘Enough, enough’.

Tens of thousands of people converged on Capitol Hill on Saturday to protest against government spending

The focus of much of the anger was the president’s so-called ‘Obamacare’ plan to overhaul the U.S. health system.

Demonstrators waved U.S. flags and held signs reading ‘Go Green Recycle Congress’ and ‘I’m Not Your ATM’.’

The protest on Saturday came as Mr Obama took his campaign for health reforms on the road, making his argument to a rally of 15,000 supporters in Minneapolis.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1213056/Up-million-march-US-Capitol-protest-Obamas-spending-tea-party-demonstration.html#ixzz0R8umLuWi

by Larken Rose

The “Campaign for Liberty” is about to have a huge event in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, in just a couple of weeks. I’m not sure yet whether I’ll be there (as a spectator), but I know I won’t be speaking there.

Being faced with the tyrannical monstrosity that now resides in Washington, a lot of pro-freedom folks are talking about how everyone who loves liberty should do whatever it takes to “get along” and to “work together” toward our common goals. The question is, what ARE those supposed common goals?

Let me start by saying that I have a lot of respect for people like Ron Paul, Andrew Napolitano, Adam Kokesh, and many others, for their vocal opposition to tyranny. And it’s great to see so many people, with the numbers growing every day, aware enough of what is going on that they want to do something about it. But what is it that “C4L” (Campaign for Liberty) is actually doing? I hate to be a stick in the mud, but can we pause the comradery and excitement long enough to ask what the game plan is? What is the end goal of all the time and effort being put into things such as C4L?

I know people will get mad at me for saying this, but most of the effort is, by its very nature, doomed to fail. The reason for this is quite simple: any effort to take over “the system,” in order to make it be pro-freedom, is utterly pointless. Not only is it impossible for “government” to be used to support freedom, but playing the tyrants’ games, by supporting this or that candidate, or pushing for this or that legislation, only LEGITIMIZES the notion that politicians have some divine right to rule.

In fact, it’s one of the most brilliant tyrant tricks of all times, and I discuss it in my first book, “How To Be a Successful Tyrant.”  If the tyrant builds into his regime the ILLUSION that the peasants have some say in the matter, some recourse within the tyrant’s own “system,” by which they can beg for freedom and justice, they will rarely actually resist. They will instead waste all of their time and effort trying to influence a system of control that is made entirely of the tyrants, by the tyrants, and for the tyrants.

A lot of liberty-minded people “run for office” with the best of intentions, when what they should be doing is running FROM “office” as fast as they possibly can. What they fail to understand is that the problem is not the particular lying crook that happens to currently occupy that office; THE PROBLEM IS THE OFFICE ITSELF.  Every “election” is nothing but a ritual designed to legitimize a ruling class, to make it look like the master somehow has the “consent” of his victims, or somehow “represents” them. It’s nothing but a show, designed to redirect any discontent among the peasants into completely ineffectual and fruitless endeavors (voting and lobbying). In other words, it offers the slaves a means of “redress” that never accomplishes anything, but gives them an outlet for their displeasure with the masters, so they don’t resort to actual resistance.

Even if it were possible to take over the system (and it isn’t), you can’t achieve freedom by BECOMING the ruler; you can only achieve freedom by tearing down the entire notion that the Divine Right of Politicians is valid to begin with. To put it another way, you can’t show your support for the concept of unalienable rights by ASKING THE TYRANTS to let you do something. Playing that game implicitly acknowledges that you DO NOT HAVE any unalienable rights, because it implies that you need “legal” PERMISSION to do something. (My Fourth of July rant*, which has caused quite a stir, touched on that point.)

In short, the entire concept of a “Libertarian Party” is a contradiction. The principle of non-aggression is absolutely incompatible with any “government,” no matter how small and “limited” you try to make it. The very premise that some group has the right to enact and enforce “laws” on the rest of us is logically incompatible with self-ownership and individual rights.  And by running for office, or voting, or begging your congressman to vote for or against some piece of “legislation,” you are CONDONING the notion of a ruling class, and REINFORCING the myth that such pseudo-religious political rituals are in any way legitimate, and that they can actually bestow upon anyone–even a good guy–the right to rule. In other words, instead of trying to tear down the authoritarian superstitions that allow for tyranny, most supposedly pro-freedom folk are trying to co-op it, in the hopes of somehow using the power cult as a tool for freedom.

Sorry, but it can’t be done. We all know how hard it is for someone who likes freedom to compete with the collectivist liars. Ron Paul showed just how hard the establishment will work to protect its power from outsiders. But even when a miracle occurs, and “limited government” folk get into office, what good does it do? Do we all remember the 1994 “Republican Revolution,” where a bunch of libertarian-leaning conservatives got into Congress? Remember all their promises to shut down a bunch of bureaucracies, slash taxes and dramatically reduce regulation and oppression? And what was the result? “Government” grew, freedom shrank.

I even believe that some of the people who ran in 1994 meant what they said (while others were just exploiting the anti-socialist fervor of the day). But they quickly learned that the show put on for the cameras is NOT how things actually work in Washington, and that reducing government power is something the system CANNOT be used for.

I hope that no one is still so silly to believe that the United States government is even trying to “represent” us. Like every other “government,” it is nothing more than a control machine, that cares about its subjects as much as a butcher cares about cows.  It’s not that there is some miscommunication, or that a good idea was spoiled with some “corruption”; it’s that the entire system exists for one purpose: the subjugation of mankind. As such, the only people it will ever serve are those who love to dominate their fellow man. (This reminds me a lot of the “One Ring” in The Lord of the Rings. Any attempt to use it for good is doomed to backfire.)

How much of history consists of the downtrodden masses desperately trying to get THEIR guy onto the throne? And how often does it work? Hardly ever. And even when it DOES work–when the people DO manage to replace the current tyrant with their own guy–then what happens? He becomes the NEW tyrant, even if he’s not trying to. (As an example, I believe that Ronald Reagan actually believed in limited government, and yet the system STILL found a way to turn his presidency into an expanding “government,” by way of the military and the immoral “war on drugs.”)

Government is not your friend. It never will be. It cannot be. You can’t co-op a system of extortion and oppression and use it as a tool for freedom. There can’t be such thing as a good slave-master.  As long as the slaves invest their time and effort begging the slave-master to be nice, or trying to appoint a new slave-master, they will STILL BE SLAVES. Only when the slaves stop THINKING like slaves, and realize they don’t NEED the master’s permission to be free, can they be free in mind. And if their minds are never free, their bodies will never be, either.

I will keep saying that, and conservatives and Libertarians will keep criticizing me for it. And they will keep demonstrating, with all their well-intentioned, Herculean efforts, that “authority” cannot be used as a tool for freedom.

Instead of continually trying to get freedom “legalized,” those who value individual liberty should be working to come up with ways to outwit, escape, resist or defeat the tentacles of “government.”  Yes, I mean they should be figuring out ways to be free, despite the fact that freedom is, and always has been, “illegal.”