Before government can guarantee provision of a specific good or service to any one individual, thus creating a so-called “positive right,” it must first take by force the means of producing that very good or service from someone else.

Health care is no different. Whether by forcibly appropriating and redistributing the money to purchase care for those who lack it, or by arbitrarily devaluing the time and effort of those who provide it, once a government mandate supplants voluntary exchange, coercion must be used to exercise that “right” to health care.

But how can taking what belongs to another person (their money, time, or effort) through legislative force be a right?

Is that not the very essence of slavery?

The truth is that the only rights actually guaranteed to Americans by the Constitution are those that protect freedom of action.

They are “negative rights,” which do exactly the opposite of their positive counterparts. Rather than initiate and rely on the use of force to produce a specific reward or outcome, negative rights allow individuals to act or not act in the absence of coercion, so long as they do not hinder the freedom of others to do the same.

For instance, it is the right of people in this country to vocalize unpopular opinions, associate with unpopular people, practice unpopular religions, and even carry unpopular weapons. Thanks to our negative rights the government cannot, without due process, take the life, liberty, or property of any American.

But nowhere in the Constitution does it say that, in order to exercise their rights, each citizen must at birth be given a microphone, a bible, or a gun.

That was no accident. For more than two hundred years, the freedom and responsibility to determine one’s own future has been the foundation of America’s unparalleled success. But the critical role played by our negative rights has become less and less clearly understood over time.

Many of this country’s most celebrated leaders have manipulated that ignorance, redefining rights as unearned rewards for politically favored groups; payoffs thinly veiled in the pious rhetoric of social justice.

FDR himself was among the worst. The abject failure of the New Deal notwithstanding, FDR proposed to codify his authoritarian progressive agenda in a constitutional amendment, known as the “Economic Bill of Rights.”

It reads like a list that could just as easily have flowed from the pen of Karl Marx:

The right to a useful and remunerative job…

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition…

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care…

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

Besides being, as any citizen of the former Soviet Union can attest, economically disastrous and utterly impossible to define or achieve, the biggest problem with FDR’s list was that it sought to make America into a nation of serfs.

The logic is inescapable. Once something has been deemed a right by those in government, the ability of every person who produces or consumes that good or service to engage in voluntary transactions with the fruit of their own labor is stolen. Their labor is then owned and administered by agents of the collective.

Again, I ask: Is that not the very essence of slavery?

There is no doubt that freedom entails risk, and America has not always lived up to the promise of her founding. But when certain people or groups pervert the notion of rights, harnessing the power of government to take by force what they desire but have not earned, then negative freedom becomes a positive tyranny.

Let us hope that more Americans, before it is too late, learn how to tell the difference.

Josh is a proud “tenther”, freelance writer, and activist originally from the Washington, D.C. area.

From a speech before the US House of Representatives  September 7, 2006

Politicians throughout history have tried to solve every problem conceivable to man, always failing to recognize that many of the problems we face result from previous so-called political solutions. Government cannot be the answer to every human ill. Continuing to view more government as the solution to problems will only make matters worse.

Not too long ago, I spoke on this floor about why I believe Americans are so angry in spite of rosy government economic reports. The majority of Americans are angry, disgusted, and frustrated that so little is being done in Congress to solve their problems. The fact is a majority of American citizens expect the federal government to provide for every need, without considering whether government causes many economic problems in the first place. This certainly is an incentive for politicians to embrace the role of omnipotent problem solvers, since nobody asks first whether they, the politicians themselves, are at fault.

At home I’m frequently asked about my frustration with Congress, since so many reform proposals go unheeded. I jokingly reply, “No, I’m never frustrated, because I have such low expectations.” But the American people have higher expectations, and without forthcoming solutions, are beyond frustrated with their government.

If solutions to America’s problems won’t be found in the frequent clamor for more government, it’s still up to Congress to explain how our problems develop – and how solutions can be found in an atmosphere of liberty, private property, and a free market order. It’s up to us to demand radical change from our failed policy of foreign military interventionism. Robotic responses to the clichés of big government intervention in our lives are unbecoming to members who were elected to offer ideas and solutions. We must challenge the status quo of our economic and political system.

Many things have contributed to the mess we’re in. Bureaucratic management can never compete with the free market in solving problems. Central economic planning doesn’t work. Just look at the failed systems of the 20th century. Welfarism is an example of central economic planning. Paper money, money created out of thin air to accommodate welfarism and government deficits, is not only silly, it’s unconstitutional. No matter how hard the big spenders try to convince us otherwise, deficits do matter. But lowering the deficit through higher taxes won’t solve anything.

Nothing will change in Washington until it’s recognized that the ultimate driving force behind most politicians is obtaining and holding power. And money from special interests drives the political process. Money and power are important only because the government wields power not granted by the Constitution. A limited, constitutional government would not tempt special interests to buy the politicians who wield power. The whole process feeds on itself. Everyone is rewarded by ignoring constitutional restraints, while expanding and complicating the entire bureaucratic state.

Even when it’s recognized that we’re traveling down the wrong path, the lack of political courage and the desire for reelection results in ongoing support for the pork-barrel system that serves special interests. A safe middle ground, a don’t-rock-the-boat attitude, too often is rewarded in Washington, while meaningful solutions tend to offend those who are in charge of the gigantic PAC/lobbyist empire that calls the shots in Washington. Most members are rewarded by reelection for accommodating and knowing how to work the system.

Though there’s little difference between the two parties, the partisan fights are real. Instead of debates about philosophy, the partisan battles are about who will wield the gavels. True policy debates are rare; power struggles are real and ruthless. And yet we all know that power corrupts.

Both parties agree on monetary, fiscal, foreign and entitlement policies. Unfortunately, neither party has much concern for civil liberties. Both parties are split over trade, with mixed debates between outright protectionists and those who endorse government-managed trade agreements that masquerade as “free trade.” It’s virtually impossible to find anyone who supports hands-off free trade, defended by the moral right of all citizens to spend their money as they see fit, without being subject any special interest.

The big government nanny-state is based on the assumption that free markets can’t provide the maximum good for the largest number of people. It assumes people are not smart or responsible enough to take care of themselves, and thus their needs must be filled through the government’s forcible redistribution of wealth. Our system of intervention assumes that politicians and bureaucrats have superior knowledge, and are endowed with certain talents that produce efficiency. These assumptions don’t seem to hold much water, of course, when we look at agencies like FEMA. Still, we expect the government to manage monetary and economic policy, the medical system, and the educational system, and then wonder why we have problems with the cost and efficiency of all these programs.

On top of this, the daily operation of Congress reflects the power of special interests, not the will of the people – regardless of which party is in power.

Critically important legislation comes up for votes late in the evening, leaving members little chance to read or study the bills. Key changes are buried in conference reports, often containing new legislation not even mentioned in either the House or Senate versions.

Conferences were meant to compromise two different positions in the House and Senate bills – not to slip in new material that had not been mentioned in either bill.

Congress spends hundreds of billions of dollars in “emergency” supplemental bills to avoid the budgetary rules meant to hold down the deficit. Wartime spending money is appropriated and attached to emergency relief funds, making it difficult for politicians to resist.

The principle of the pork barrel is alive and well, and it shows how huge appropriations are passed easily with supporters of the system getting their share for their district.

Huge omnibus spending bills, introduced at the end of the legislative year, are passed without scrutiny. No one individual knows exactly what is in the bill.

In the process, legitimate needs and constitutional responsibilities are frequently ignored. Respect for private property rights is ignored. Confidence in the free market is lost or misunderstood. Our tradition of self-reliance is mocked as archaic.

Lack of real choice in economic and personal decisions is commonplace. It seems that too often the only choice we’re given is between prohibitions or subsidies. Never is it said, “Let the people decide on things like stem cell research or alternative medical treatments.”

Nearly everyone endorses exorbitant taxation; the only debate is about who should pay—either tax the producers and the rich or tax the workers and the poor through inflation and outsourcing jobs.

Both politicians and the media place blame on everything except bad policy authored by Congress. Scapegoats are needed, since there’s so much blame to go around and so little understanding as to why we’re in such a mess.

In 1920s and 1930s Europe, as the financial system collapsed and inflation raged, it was commonplace to blame the Jews. Today in America the blame is spread out: Illegal immigrants, Muslims, big business (whether they get special deals from the government or not), price-gouging oil companies (regardless of the circumstances), and labor unions. Ignorance of economics and denial of the political power system that prevails in D.C. make it possible for Congress to shift blame.

Since we’re not on the verge of mending our ways, the problems will worsen and the blame games will get much more vicious. Shortchanging a large segment of our society surely will breed conflict that could get out of control. This is a good reason for us to cast aside politics as usual and start finding some reliable answers to our problems.

Politics as usual is aided by the complicity of the media. Economic ignorance, bleeding heart emotionalism, and populist passion pervade our major networks and cable channels. This is especially noticeable when the establishment seeks to unify the people behind an illegal, unwise war. The propaganda is well-coordinated by the media/government/military/industrial complex. This collusion is worse than when state – owned media do the same thing. In countries where everyone knows the media produces government propaganda, people remain wary of what they hear. In the United States the media are considered free and independent, thus the propaganda is accepted with less questioning.

One of the major reasons we’ve drifted from the Founders’ vision of liberty in the Constitution was the division of the concept of freedom into two parts. Instead of freedom being applied equally to social and economic transactions, it has come to be thought of as two different concepts. Some in Congress now protect economic liberty and market choices, but ignore personal liberty and private choices. Others defend personal liberty, but concede the realm of property and economic transactions to government control.

There should be no distinction between commercial speech and political speech. With no consistent moral defense of true liberty, the continued erosion of personal and property rights is inevitable. This careless disregard for liberty, our traditions, and the Constitution have brought us disaster, with a foreign policy of military interventionism supported by the leadership of both parties. Hopefully, some day this will be radically changed.

What two functions do each of us have that always says we are an individual? It is our mind and our mouth, what we think and what we say. No one can take that away from us. No one can punish us for the thoughts we entertain and how we express them. However, they can try and always have. What are the two most dangerous threats to any dictator? What we think and what we tell others about what we think.

The mind and mouth of the slave are two things that a dictator can never be sure of from anyone they rule. Fear is their only weapon of choice. Fear of retribution, once thought is discovered, is the only way to keep the mind and mouth in check.

In America, following its war of independence and its three constitutions, several of our “Founders” believed it necessary to chain the third constitution down with words that were simple and more forceful to preserve individual freedom. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison demanded a Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the newly ratified Federal Constitution.

The first of those ten amendments dealt specifically with the mind and the mouth, with our thoughts and how we express those thoughts. They felt it was not sufficiently nailed down for posterity to prevent political interference with thought and speech. Here it is, just as it was agreed early in the life of our Constitution, which established a small, limited, well defined central government. It was the first of ten to prevent tampering with liberty for the benefit of a few over the many, as is done today.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

To the freedom of the mind and the mouth they added the right to share with others and express to government, what they were thinking and saying, without fear of reprisal by government. In doing that, it expresses what was in the founder’s minds as to their distrust of the new government, as borne out today. The boisterous 2009 Town Hall meetings, on the issue of national health care, demonstrated the view of the people running the government as critical of the citizens speaking out against their legislative proposals. Their terms to describe those objecting, make their minds and mouths appear criminal.

Why, after the convention delegates spent four hot months shaping a new constitution, would these men go a step further in limiting the constitution as they did? They knew, without these plain, simple, forceful words, the politician would have found a backdoor and route to tyranny, as they are doing today while ignoring the constitution. It happened before the ink on the constitution was dry, with the passing and enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

It took a new rebellion in 1800, when the Federalists were tossed out of office and Thomas Jefferson was elected President. What glorious foresight he and Madison demonstrated fighting for a Bill of Rights. The First Amendment declared religion and its participation the first right, which is the right of thought. The following rights involved how we expressed our thoughts. All the rights in this amendment define the individual as the principle, not the community.

America prospered because of minds and mouths that were free. Men and women were free to think, to conceive, to believe and to achieve what they believed, and they prospered. As they prospered, their families prospered. As their families prospered, so did their communities.

Reflecting individual freedom and the supremacy of legitimate individual self-interests, when compared to the interests of the community, this amendment protects for each individual the right to think thoughts from his own mind, practice his or her own religion, to go to church, speak openly on the concepts of his beliefs and thoughts, print notices in the paper, or print his own paper, to gather with a group of like minded people and to tell elected and appointed officials in government what he thinks.

The present American government is just one step behind arresting and prosecuting people who complain about the wrongs committed by arrogant bureaucrats.

Clay Barham [send him email] has been a candidate for the California legislature and a stand-in talk show host for ABC.  He was educated in physical and behavioral sciences, with a Ph.D. in sociology.  He is the author of five books, including Foundations of Modern American Conservatism and Liberalism: The Roots of Freedom and Tyranny.  His latest is The Changing Face of Democrats: Libertarian Roots Lost.  Visit his website at http://www.claysamerica.com/.

Forget everything you know about politics. Forget the age old story about the Democrats and the Republicans, where one side is good and the other side are a bunch of America hating vats of pure evil. Forget about the left vs right debate, forget about conservative vs liberal. At this stage in the game, there are only two sides;

Those who support the further growth of a centralized authoritarian state and those who oppose them.

That’s it. There are your teams, which one are you playing for?

In the wake of the liberty revolution, there are many active groups doing good things to oppose centralized tyranny. They go by many names: the 912ers, the TEA Partiers, Campaign for Liberty, GOOOH, We Surround Them and of course our own Tenthers. These groups are all playing for the same team. Their backgrounds and tactics may be entirely different, but as members of any number of these groups, we must all keep the big picture in mind.

We are all on the same side.

Too often I hear about meetings of these different groups where there is a clamoring for control, where there are too many chiefs and not enough soldiers. This must stop.

When members of almost every group mentioned above found their way to Washington DC on September 12th, the estimated number of people present was not tallied as “300,000 GOOOH, 200,000 C4L, 800,000 912ers etc”. The number was simply 1.7 million people, all ready to fight tyranny and whether they knew it or not, all on the same side.

Let us learn to accept those who come from different ideologies, political parties, lifestyles and parts of the country. For me, the only thing I need to know about you at this point is this-

Are you with me, or are you with Big Brother?

2009 has seen the greatest proliferation in American government command and control in over half a century, together with its corresponding constriction in liberty. Power is increasingly being centralized in the federal government—at the expense of individuals and their voluntary associations — with the creation of multi-billion or trillion dollar new programs, massive bureaucracies and breathtaking income redistribution nowhere authorized in the Constitution.

While the current engorgement of our federal government already implemented or being proposed is unprecedented, it follows much the same path as earlier episodes, such as FDR’s New Deal. That is why there is wisdom to be found from those who understood and opposed that accumulation of social power in the hands of the government. Perhaps no one offers us more wisdom in this regard than Felix Morley, in his The Power in the People (1949).

Morley was a Rhodes Scholar, a Guggenheim Fellow, a Ph.D. from the Brookings Institution, a Pulitzer Prize winning editor of the Washington Post, President of Haverford College, and founder of Human Events, who has a journalism award named for him. According to James Person, he was “respected for his acumen and fairness by his peers across the political spectrum,” and reviewer Edith Hamilton termed The Power in the People “a remarkable book, nobly written and profoundly thought out.”

Morley’s key distinction The Power in the People was between self-government and coercive government. As Leonard Liggio summarized it,

Morley based his distinction between Society and State on the origins of the words. Society is derived from the Latin socius, a companion. Society and association are rooted in the voluntarism of companionship…Morley continues on to the word State, which is rooted in involuntary or forced association. He sees the absence of free choice and free contract as the basis of the word status, from which state is derived.

When a new edition of The Power in the People was produced in 1972, 23 years after its first publication, it was reprinted without change. A dozen years later still, Sydney Mayers concluded, “Nor is any change required currently.” Consider how much the same is true today.

This Republic is grounded on the belief that the individual can govern himself.

[A] political system designed to encourage people to govern themselves is increasingly distorted in order to subject them to remote administrative dictation.

The founders certainly believed, and frequently asserted, that the primary purpose of government is to secure private property.
The Constitution of the United States sets specific limits to the power of government so that the latter may not repress the individual characteristic of liberty.

[W]e may awaken to find that a government established to secure the blessings of liberty has actually produced…tyranny. Indeed, that…outcome is wholly probable whenever democratic processes place representative government in the hands of men willing to exploit ignorance in order to further the centralization of power…

[I]t is impossible to read even the bare text of the Constitution at all carefully without realizing that the American Republic was specifically designed to safeguard individual enterprise against the state.

[C]oncentrated political power is, and continuously should be, suspect by those whom it subjects.

[A]ny system of government cherishing the individual should make allowance for many conflicting viewpoints and should not impede their voluntary adjustment. The only workable alternative to a governmental system that encourages agreement is one that in encourages repression. And the latter, no matter how fair its initial pretense, is in nature, and will therefore eventually become in action, a system of tyranny.

Self-government is the very heart and core of the American way of life … the dominant emphasis was on self-government rather than on imposed government; on the development of Society, not on the aggrandizement of the State.

[T]he real sources of American strength…[rest] on the belief that the individual is at least potentially important, and that he fulfills himself through voluntary co-operation in a free society. This belief implies an instinctive hostility to the State—an agency created to discipline society and with a consequent tendency to assume the direction of all social functions.

[T]he issue stands out clearly. Shall man be subject to the authoritarian State or shall he restrain State powers to the minimum necessary for an orderly Society?

[I]n America the individual, retaining sovereignty, intended to fulfill his destiny through a free Society, holding the State in leash.
Although the democratic ideal encourages individualism, the actual operation of a democratic system produces a centralization of power hostile to self-reliance.

[A]rbitrary power in a democracy may be just as great a menace to liberty as the outright tyranny of a dictatorship.

[T]he survival of the Republic is not endangered by weakness in the central government, but by popular pressure for its aggrandizement.

The State, in short, subjects people; whereas Society associates them voluntarily.

Man…is now exchanging membership in Society for servitude to the State.

[T]he development of the State has been that of constant aggrandizement. Necessarily, that aggrandizement has been…at the expense of Society and of the individuals who create Society…

Power it has, and force, and techniques to make its commands effective…But since the State has no conscience, and is primarily a continuing mechanism of material power, the human welfare side of State activity should blind no thoughtful person to its underlying menace.

Americans have…largely ceased to reflect upon the implications of the unconditional surrender of power to political government…wholly contrary to the principles of the Republic …

Power in the hands of the State is less inhibited morally and more destructive physically than in Society.

State power, no matter how well disguised by seductive words, is in the last analysis always coercive physical power…As we come to recognize that the State is the repository of coercive power, and by its nature works ceaselessly to enlarge that power, much that seems shameful and senseless in the world today becomes intelligible…

A person who maintains that the State should solve, by necessarily coercive methods, any problem that individuals are capable of solving voluntarily, is…the very opposite of a liberal. The essence of tyranny is reliance on external, as opposed to internal, compulsion.

[R]emember that true liberalism insists on protecting the individual from tyranny of every variety, and that tyrannies are almost always imposed…by democratic means.

As State controls become more plausible, more far-reaching and more effective, the tendency of democracy is to succumb to the demagogue becomes ever more pronounced.

The American tradition is of course completely opposed to authoritarian government … The American conviction is that the ‘Safety and Happiness’ of the governed takes precedence over every governmental prerogative and that deference is not necessarily owing to those temporarily in a position of political command.

Encroachment on the rights of others is not prevented by withdrawing the power to encroach from individual hands and vesting it in government bureaus.

The American theory is that every man has within him the potential to make a significant contribution of some kind to human welfare. Therefore every minority…must be protected against the ever-possible tyranny of mass opinion.

[E]xalting the State is steadily to augment its physical power at the expense of Society. The more that power can be concentrated, the more perfect the State becomes as an instrumentality of suppression in the hands of those who believe in suppression…

Only one form of government can nurture liberty, and that is personal self-government.

The distinguishing characteristic of American civilization is the subordination of centralized power in behalf of individual liberty.

The market does not become more humane under the direction of the amoral institution that we have seen the State to be.

To transfer power to the State…serves only to monopolize power in wholly irresponsible hands…

[T]he tendency of the American people to turn to political authority for the solution of their economic problems was tragic…because there is no solution…in this fancied remedy…once a people are lost in the recesses of this blind alley, they will learn that it is almost impossible to find a way out.

Enlargement of the area of State authority therefore does not enlarge, but definitely contracts, the condition of economic freedom…this false god over every form of social organism is enormous and devastating.

One should not require personal experience with ration cards and queues and bureaucratic bungling to appreciate the practical superiority of the free enterprise system over any form of State-directed economic planning.

[S]ocial legislation is a sign of retrogression, not progress. It should be obvious that there has been widespread individual failure if humanitarianism has to be enforced by disciplinary governmental action.

Social strength can be diminished by a constant centralization and enlargement of governmental functions, the great majority of which are unproductive and…weaken the economic basis by the cumulative effects of regulation and taxation.

[T]here are many Americans who attest their willingness to accept political dictatorship, if the State will only furnish them with periodic handouts and otherwise show continuous benevolence in the ordering of their lives.

The reformer…is usually disposed to believe that improvement can be imposed by government fiat…placing great confidence in the coercive power of the State.

[T]he one enduring political folly is to concentrate in the hands of ambitious men power that they do not have the restraint to exercise wisely.

Nothing that advances the power of the State over Society, thereby subjecting the individual to the State, can properly be called liberal.

[T]he most that any government can do is set people ‘at liberty.’ The State can stabilize the condition of freedom, and that is its sole excuse for being…men must develop their liberty from within. It cannot be doled out by government agencies.

60 years ago, Felix Morley could say that “The worth and validity of American political principles are now being aggressively challenged by the philosophy of government planning.” That challenge is vastly greater today.

According to Joseph Stromberg, “Felix Morley… understood the old republic, the constitution, peace, and free markets, as well as their opposites, empire, lawless rule, war and generalized statism.” That is the understanding Americans need to rediscover to defend our liberty.

And doing so by reading The Power in the People brings with it what Sydney Mayers called “an unusual privilege, the rare experience of enjoying brilliant literary style whilst absorbing education thanks to the author’s keen mind and dexterous pen.”

Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University.

copyright 2009 Gary Galles

Today Georgians panic at the thought of being removed from federal government dependency, having forgotten that life did exist before the current level of intrusion, and life existed abundantly. Though we assert that the civil government spawns waste, bureaucracy and tyranny, we waffle at the sea of uncertainty as to how best proceed toward liberty.

The path to freedom is achievable but it is not easy. It is not easy because it depends on the political will of the people, a people who have been indoctrinated through government school systems to be owned by their government rather than to own their government.

Our founding fathers were gripped by a similar situation, but worse since they were attempting to invigorate a people toward freedom who had never known it, and could not look back in the annals of history to find it. Less than half of the American colonists wanted to assert life and liberty apart from Britain. About 3% became the revolutionaries risking wealth, family, friends, jobs, and life to embrace the risky business of freedom.

It was in this way, and thanks to this handful of colonists, that our nation was brought into the ideology of individual life and liberty. Known as The Great Experiment abroad, it was the first time in history where a people asserted their right to themselves, their property, their liberties, and their life as granted by God, and established a civil government to protect that which God granted.

The odds against them were immense and parallel the challenge that we are taking up and wrestling with today.

The current usurpation of power now centralized in the federal civil government has become the most powerful empire in the world. The interests of the empire are advancing while the interests of individual life and liberty are all but dead. The individual is forced into a position of powerlessness over his personal property, wealth and freedom. Having come so far away from individual life and liberty, how do we reclaim self-government and control?

The only way to restrain an out of control federal government is through the interposition of state authority to stand in defense of individual life and liberty. Those sound like nice words, but what does this mean precisely in application?

It means stepping out on our own two feet as a state. It means telling the federal government “No!” while asserting our legal authority in the contract amongst the states to do exactly that. It means equipping Georgians with the knowledge and the power to understand what is happening and how to engage in the process of change. It means having a Governor with the gumption to stand firm in the face of the storm of uncertainty, and one prepared to wield the lawful and Constitutional tools at his disposal to bring a unified independence to fruition in our great state.

We are unveiling a legislative course of action in order to lawfully, peacefully, and securely proceed in the advance of states’ rights as well as individual life and liberty for our Georgians.

Every week for the next two months, a new piece of legislation will be presented and explained in this strategic initiative. This is being undertaken with the goal that more Georgians will become more aware, more interested and more involved with the process of controlling their government all with an eye to the restoration of their own individual liberties as espoused in our country’s foundational documents. Just such an endeavor is long overdue.

The State Authority and Federal Tax Funds Act

Currently the federal government is directly taxing our Georgia citizens through a graduated income tax, one of the more important pillars of the Communist Manifesto, in addition to a myriad of other taxes. The State Authority and Federal Tax Funds Act would require that all federal taxes come first to the Georgia Department of Revenue. A panel of legislators would assay the Constitutional appropriateness of the Federal Budget, and then forward to the federal government a percentage of the federal tax dollars that are delineated as legal and Constitutionally justified. The remainder of those dollars would be assigned to budgetary items that are currently funded through federal allocations and grants or returned to the people.

As we assert our sovereignty, we can expect that we will have our federal funding cut off, money that originally belongs to the people of Georgia anyway. Georgia is currently known as a donor state, because the amount of tax dollars surrendered to the federal government is greater than the amount of federal tax dollars returned to the state. This theft would cease under the State Authority and Federal Tax Funds Act.

We must proceed wisely and prudently, passing the necessary legislation in proper compliment and tandem in order to insure that the tools needed for interposition by our Governor are in play and to be wielded when Ray McBerry becomes Georgia’s first states’ rights Governor.

We own our government, and it is to us our legislators must swear their allegiance, in preserving and protecting individual life and liberty, and in redeeming the value and integrity of our great Constitution.

We the people must govern our government. Only then, will we truly be free.

Ray McBerry [send him email] is running in the Republican primary in 2010 for Governor of Georgia.  Visit his website at http://www.georgiafirst.org

Article 3 in Series, Restoring Freedom: An Entrepreneur’s Perspective

We must bring our revolutionary product of individual freedom to market, and soon; otherwise servitude, Washington D.C.’s product of choice will monopolize and we will see out market share for freedom disappear and our great experiment in self-government fail.

Crossing the Chasm, a book focused on bringing technology products to market, presents an analogy based on World War II Europe. After Hitler took control of Europe, the Allies were left without a front to counter Axis aggression. At the time many considered Europe lost. The Allies, faced with an impossible task, developed a strategy to liberate Europe. That’s what we need: a strategy to liberate freedom itself.

Here’s what the book says about crossing the chasm: “This is not the time to focus on being nice. As we have already said, the perils of the chasm make this a life-or-death situation for you. You must win entry into the mainstream no matter what resistance is posed. So, if we are going to be warlike, we might as well be so explicitly.”

So here’s our strategy, we cross the English Channel and re-take Normandy, therefore reclaiming state sovereignty; then we use this beach head as a front to re-take Europe, demanding individual freedom and smaller federal government. In order to cross the English channel we must first assemble the right invasion force, which is a strong mix of grassroots individuals, state level politicians and any national level politicians willing to give power back once they get to Washington. We will need to have the right message that is suitable for the early majority. Remember, the early majority will not be interested in the 10^th amendment for historic or visionary reasons. They will want to know how a movement based on the 10^th can help them improve their daily lives or their children’s future. This communication will be easier over time as more pain from socialism becomes apparent, but reversing the trend right now would be much easier. So we can’t wait, we need to move forward today.

In 2010 our goal is to take over state governments thus liberating our Normandy, state sovereignty; but in preparation we must put together the invasion force. That is our goal for the next 12 months. To achieve this goal, every bit of effort must be placed on the task at hand. As individuals, we must regain control of state governments at all costs. And then we must focus these state governments on the federal government as a legal counter to federal power. For if we do not reclaim this undeniably legal front, guaranteed by the 10^th, then all is lost and we may find ourselves years from now resorting to a much less attractive option, guaranteed by the 2^nd.  No doubt this will happen if we continue our unfocused strategy of attacking whatever issue of the day the media or the politicians tell us to focus on.

As individuals, we must regain control of our state governments and use this to as our “beachhead” to defend our life, liberty and property.

So now that we know what needs to be done, let’s get to it. Just as the Allies faced a fortified beach head when the amphibious assault landed on the Normandy shores, we face massive barriers as we attempt to reassert the 10^th amendment. In 1913, states were stripped of much power when the 16^th and 17^th amendment were ratified. Since then, states have been thrown to the wolves of the progressive movement and judicial rulings have supported abuse of the interstate commerce clause and the welfare clause. This federal abuse of the Constitution is clearly at odds with our Founder’s intentions. Our goal must be to destroy these fortifications as we move forward with our invasion force.

As visionaries supporting the 10^th, many of us find the concepts behind it a strong enough argument to support the movement. The early majority, or the mainstream, does not share this enthusiasm but they can be reached. Consider the following tactics:

• Completely satisfy buying objectives of mainstream. We must clearly communicate the reasons for buying individual freedom in terms of the 10^th amendment. Then we must accomplish all buying objectives for our supporters. In other words, by working at the state level, we are working within a system that we can put together the resources to make significant changes in the short term, and we must develop tangible results to further grow the movement.

• Establish word-of-mouth marketing. For this develop there must be a critical mass of informed individuals who meet from time to time and by exchanging views reinforce the value of the product being sold. We should challenge unconstitutional laws based on the Constitution an the 10th amendment to increase exposure. Additionally, educating existing grassroots movements is key to this tactic.

• Become the market leader. This is very important. The early majority buys products from the market leader. That is why most people feel like they only have a choice between the Republicans and the Democrats. State sovereignty needs to be positioned and then marketed as the market leader in solutions for regaining individual freedom. This can be accomplished by making the 10^th amendment one of the top priorities of the Tea Party and 9/12 movements, recruiting vocal state legislators, supporting and putting in place dedicated governors and then working resolutions and bills at the state level that challenge unpopular federal laws.  Until a stronger movement is developed, targeting changes at the federal level will be very difficult because there will be very little incentive for a national politician to give back power to the states. This will have to be demanded at a later time. However, we should champion national leaders that are dedicated to our cause.

Many may claim that their individual “most important” issue should be the rallying point for regaining our freedom. However, any other issue, regardless of its popularity, does not have the ability to provide a more local, legitimate base of political power. Consider this business analogy… when a startup company seeks investment they must convince the venture capitalists that they have a revolutionary product with a disruptive technology and a management team capable of bringing the product to market. They understand that the only way to create massive change and thus massive wealth is to provide undeniable value to customers and fundamentally improve the way the customer does business. Therefore, they usually seek to invest in companies that can provide a core, fundamental platform that has the potential to provide the foundation for many other complementary products. They typically do no invest in the add-on products.

Every social, political or economic freedom must be defended first by a political power base that is specifically accountable to individuals intent on defending those freedoms at all cost. You can think of state sovereignty as the core technology and anything else as an add-on product. Winning state sovereignty is the key.

Just like the plan to re-take Normandy provided the allies with a front to retake Europe, a plan built on the 10^th provides a front to retake individual freedom. So are we ready to send in the amphibious assault… not so fast, we need to assemble the right forces, determine the right message for the early majority, and dedicate ourselves to the political fight of our lives. Then we might be ready.

Brian Roberts is the President and a founder of an innovative software company in Texas. He has joined the tenth amendment movement as the meetup organizer of Texas Tenth Amendment Center. Follow Brian on Twitter, bcroberts_99.

Keynote speech at the Ohio Rally for State Sovereignty, August 1, 2009.

Video: Part 1, Part 2

Let me set down a couple of fervent beliefs that animate everything I do and everything I say.

I believe that God created heaven and earth and every single individual on the planet.

I believe that the God who gave us life gave us liberty and that freedom is our birthright.

I believe that the States created the federal government and not the other way around.  And that the power that the States gave to the Federal Government – they can take back.

When we were colonists, and the King and the Parliament needed money from us, and they always seemed to need money, they devised ingenious ways to tax us.  One of them was called the Stamp Act. The Parliament decreed that every piece of paper that the Colonists had in their homes; every book, every document, every deed, every lease, every pamphlet, every poster to be nailed to a tree had to have the King’s stamp on it.  You think going to a Post Office is bad?  You had to go to a British Government office and buy a stamp with the King’s picture.

Question.  How did the King know that his picture was on every piece of paper in your house?  The Parliament enacted a hateful piece of legislation called the Writs of Assistance Act which let the king’s soldiers write their own search warrants, and bang down any door they chose to look for the stamps or anything else that they were looking for.

It was the last straw.

We fought a revolution.  We won the revolution. We wrote the Constitution. The constitution doesn’t grant power, it keeps the government off our backs.

When they were debating the Constitution in the Summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, there were two great arguments – one by the Jefferson and Madison crowd and one by the Adams and Hamilton crowd.  Jefferson argued, though he wasn’t physically there in Philly, as he did in the Declaration of Independence that our rights are ours by virtue of our humanity.  That as God is perfectly free, and we are created in his image and likeness, we too are perfectly free.  The big government crowd – yes they had them even in those days – argued that you can’t have freedom without government, and that government gives us our rights, and therefore, that government can take them away. This is not an academic argument. Jefferson and the natural law argument prevailed because the Constitution was written to keep the government from interfering with our natural rights.

And so, your right to think as you wish, to say what you think, to publish what you say, to travel where you want, to worship as you see fit, to keep and bear arms to defend yourself against a tyranny.  And, after the right to life, the greatest and most uniquely American of rights – and I say this in front of the seat of the government – is the right to be left alone.

We wrote a Constitution to ensure that the government would never interfere with these rights.  Think about it – if rights come from the government, then the government, by ordinary legislation, or presidential decree can take them away.  But if the rights come from our humanity, then unless we violate someone else’s natural rights, the government cannot take our rights away.

This is not just a democrat, upper case D, or a republican, upper case R, problem.  It’s a problem with government today.  There’s a republican version of big government just as assaultive to our liberties as there’s a democrat version of big government.

We fought a revolution because British soldiers could knock on our doors and demand that we house them, and demand that we turn over property to them because they could write their own search warrants.  In the Patriot Act, the most hateful piece of legislation since the Alien and Sedition Acts, a republican congress and a republican president authorized federal agents to do the unthinkable – to write their own search warrants. And the republican administration didn’t even let members of the House of Representatives read the Patriot Act before they voted on it.

Why should the government be able to spy on us?  We should be able to spy on them!

When some judge is rationalizing away our liberty, or some congressman is plotting to take away your freedom or your tax dollars, we should know what they do every minute that they do it.

I was speaking to a group of congressman from a neighboring state – I won’t tell you which state it was, but they don’t play football there – and they came up to me and said “this is the first time we have heard that the Patriot Act allows federal agents to write their own search warrants.”  Remember, in the Constitution, we put in the 4th Amendment, the right to be left alone, to make sure that if the government had a target, no matter how guilty the target, no matter how widespread is the belief in the guilt of the target, no matter how dangerous is the target, the government has to go through a neutral judge with a search warrant before it can get to that target.  These members of Congress said, “we didn’t know that the Patriot Act allowed the government to bypass the courts and write any search warrant they wanted.”  Then I asked them a question I knew the answer to already – did you read the Patriot Act before you voted on it?  The answer – no.  What were you voting on?  A summary we received.  Let me guess who wrote the summary – some lawyers in the justice department, right?  Of course.

Would you hire anybody to run your business that committed you to a violation of the very reason you’re in business if they didn’t even the document by which they were making that committment?  Of course  not.

The camera is the new gun.  There’s nothing that government dislikes more than the light of day, and cameras recording what the government is doing, whether it’s on a street corner, or in there, or in Washington D.C., we have the right to know everything that they do and why they do it, and when they do it, and how they are taking our freedoms.

I have another one of my basic core beliefs.  The individual has an immortal soul.  Every individual is greater than any government.

Your government is based on fear and force.  You don’t have to take my word on it.  The 2nd president on the United States, John Adams, said “Of course the government is based on fear.”  And the first president, George Washington, said “Government is not reason, it is force.”  I think they knew what they were talking about.

Now fast-forward to modern times.  Whenever the government wants something, it scares us.  During the civil war, Lincoln tried civilians in this state where no battles occured, by military tribunal.  After he died the supreme court invalidated everything the military tribunals did.  During the first world war, the Wilson administration locked up 2000 people called anarchists – same thing as enemy combatants.  No trial, no charge, just jail for the duration of the war.  In world war II, FDR locked up 150,000 Japanese Americans, people born in the United States, who got no trial and had no charges, and when the war was over were given $25 and told to go home.

Today we have federal agents.  You know I get in arguments with my friends at Fox News, and one of them, I don’t have to tell you who it is, but is truly the most irascible person there.  And he said to me, you know you have a problem with Guantanamo Bay, and you have a problem with the Patriot Act, what will you do if I get sent to Guantanamo Bay, will you visit me?  And I say, Bill – no, because they’ll probably keep me there as well.

Government likes to say that it’s taking an oath to uphold the Constitution.  In the years that I was on the bench, it seemed that every time government lawyers were in my courtroom, if the government was prosecuting someone who was legitimately guilty or whether it was a mistake, or whether somebody was suing the government because government contractors or government doctors, or government workers made a mistake – the government doesn’t come in to the courtroom to enforce the constitution, it comes into the courtroom to evade and avoid it.  That, ladies and gentlemen, must be stopped.

This is a great moment in our history.  A crowd of this magnitude on a beautiful day, in the boiling sun, in the most middle-American of great middle-American states…comes together not because the president is a democrat, not because his predecessor was a republican, not because a war is just or unjust, not because the Fed is stealing or printing – you’re here because you believe in human freedom.

It is the essence of our existence that we should be free.  But remember this: the government hates freedom.  It is an obstacle to every one of their designs.  Whenever they write laws, whenever they take your tax dollars, whenever they regulate your private behavior, whenever they tell you how to spend your money, whenever they tell you what medicines to take, whenever they tell you what food to eat, whenever they tell you with who you may or must associate, they are taking away your freedom and they love to get away with it.  And they cannot get away with it any longer.

In the long history of the world, very few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its maximum hour of danger. This is that moment and you are that generation!  Now is the time to defend our freedoms.

Jefferson was no saint but he was the greatest of our American presidents.  He believed that the individual was greater than the state.  He believed that the states were greater than the federal government.  And when he wrote that our rights come from our creator, and that our rights are inalienable, he forever wed the notion of natural rights to the American experience and the American experiment.  We must be vigilant about every right that the government wants to take away from us.

You’ve heard the president say, present president and his predecessor, “my first job is to keep you safe.”  He’s wrong!  His first job is to keep us free.  It is his only job to keep us free.

Shortly before he died, Jefferson lamented, that in his view of the world that is was in the natural order of things for government to grow and freedom to be diminished; how ardently he wish that that wouldn’t happen. And in order to prevent it from happening he had a very simple remedy, “When the people fear the government, that is tyranny.  When the government fears the people, that is liberty!”

Andrew P. Napolitano [send him mail], who was on the bench of the Superior Court of New Jersey between 1987 and 1995, is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel. His newest book is Dred Scott’s Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America, (Nelson, 2009) His previous books are A Nation of Sheep, The Constitution in Exile and Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws.

Copyright © 2009 Andrew P. Napolitano

Listen to and read Napolitano’s full speech here

For a professor of law at one of the country’s best law schools who was once the go-to guy in the Justice Department whenever the Bush White House needed legal cover for its truly lawless ventures outside the Constitution, John Yoo has revealed a breathtaking ignorance of American values, history, and jurisprudence.

In his startling mea culpa, published in the Wall Street Journal recently, Professor Yoo confessed to advising President Bush that he possessed powers from some source other than the Constitution, that in the name of public safety he could cut down all laws written for the express purpose of restraining the President, and that Americans would expect no less than this so long as they were actually kept safe as a result of it.

He advanced the argument that since the President’s first job is to keep us safe, he could disregard the 1978 FISA law as “obsolete” since it was written in an era when modern day non-state terrorism was not contemplated. By this unprecedented and perverse logic, one wonders if the President was told if he could disregard as obsolete any law that was inconvenient to his purposes; even the Supreme Law of the Land itself, which the Constitution declares itself to be.

The whole purpose of FISA was to abolish the Nixonian notion that “If the President does it, it’s not illegal.” While FISA’s statutory reduction of the constitutionally-mandated standard for obtaining a judicial search warrant – from probable cause of crime to probable cause of foreign status – is itself of dubious constitutionality, nevertheless, it is and was at the time Professor Yoo was telling President Bush to disregard it, the “exclusive” lawful means for agents of the President to wiretap foreign persons present in the U.S. Moreover, the FISA court has become the President’s rubber stamp by granting well over 99% of requested warrants.

It is not painless for one who loathes this law to defend it; but it was among the laws that the President and the Professor swore to uphold, it does force the executive branch to identify and specify who and what it wishes to pursue, and it presents at least a minimum of checking and balancing by forcing the President to go before a super-secret court (without an adversary present) and seek permission to violate the Fourth Amendment-guaranteed rights of the President’s targets.

The time-is-of-the essence argument is nonsense. I once issued a search warrant in my gym shorts from my living room at 3 am, and I know of a former FISA court judge who did the same from his cell phone while riding a motorcycle. While neither of these situations is optimal, there are at least written records of what was done to whom and why; and that was a goal of the law which President Bush was told was obsolete.

The Framers never contemplated FISA, and I cannot conceive of Jefferson, Madison, or even Hamilton condoning it. But one thing we know the Framers would never condone is a government that refused to reside within the Constitution; “chained down” by it as Jefferson once said.

The Founders, unlike John Yoo and George Bush, feared a king who enforced only the laws he found convenient to his present needs, who dispatched his agents with their own self-generated search warrants to knock on any door and seize any thing they or the king wanted, and who claimed to be doing all this for safety’s sake.

Cutting down the laws to get at the Devil is dangerous business. As Robert Bolt argued in A Man for All Seasons, the land is planted thick with laws. If you cut them down to get to the Devil, who could stand the wind that then would blow?

When President Lincoln and the Radical Republicans tried civilians in military tribunals in the North, hundreds of miles from battle, and in the South after the Civil War had ended, a unanimous Supreme Court stopped them. It declared that “The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances.”

President Bush argued frequently and forcefully that his first job was to keep us safe. He was wrong. The Constitution tells us that his sole job was to enforce the Constitution; and that means keeping us free. Free from tyrants who sought and claimed power from thin air; free from prince-like federal agents who could behave without constitutional or legal restraint; free to live with a government that obeyed its own laws. Any president who keeps us safe but unfree is rejecting his oath to the American people.

Andrew P. Napolitano [send him mail], who was on the bench of the Superior Court of New Jersey between 1987 and 1995, is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel. His newest book is Dred Scott’s Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America, (Nelson, 2009) His previous books are A Nation of Sheep, The Constitution in Exile and Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws.

Copyright © 2009 Andrew P. Napolitano