Category Archives: Founding Fathers

UPDATE II: A July 4th Toast To TJ, Author of The Declaration

America, Founding Fathers, History, Pseudo-history

THOMAS JEFFERSON, that is. For most, Independence Day means firecrackers and cookouts. “The Declaration of Independence—whose proclamation, on July 4, 1776, we celebrate—doesn’t feature. To be fair to the liberal establishment, ordinary Americans are not entirely blameless. In fact, contemporary Americans are less likely to read it now that it is easily available on the Internet, than when it relied on horseback riders for its distribution.”

Back in 1776, gallopers carried the Declaration through the country. Printer John Dunlap had worked ‘through the night’ to set the full text on ‘a handsome folio sheet,’ recounts historian David Hackett Fischer in Liberty And Freedom. And President (of the Continental Congress) John Hancock urged that the “people be universally informed.”

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, called it ‘an expression of the American Mind.’ An examination of Jefferson’s constitutional thought makes plain that he would no longer consider the mind of a Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, or the collective mentality of the liberal establishment, ‘American’ in any meaningful way. For the Jeffersonian mind was that of an avowed Whig—an American Whig whose roots were in the English Whig political philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. …

… Jefferson’s muse for the ‘American Mind’ is even older.

The Whig tradition is undeniably Anglo-Saxon. Our founding fathers’ political philosophy originated with their Saxon forefathers, and the ancient rights guaranteed by the Saxon constitution. With the Declaration, Jefferson told Henry Lee in 1825, he was also protesting England’s violation of her own ancient tradition of natural rights. As Jefferson saw it, the Colonies were upholding a tradition the Crown had abrogated. …

Naturally, Jefferson never entertained the folly that he was of immigrant stock. He considered the English settlers of America courageous conquerors, much like his Saxon forebears, to whom he compared them. To Jefferson, early Americans were the contemporary carriers of the Anglo-Saxon project.”

The original Independence-Day column in its entirety is “A July 4th Toast To Thomas Jefferson And The Anglo-Saxon Tradition.”

UPDATED AND CONFIRMED I (July 5): Certain Americans will never own the founding history of this country, and one of perhaps three just wars Americans have fought.

The foul-mouthed Chris Rock: “Happy white peoples independence day.”

UPDATE II: In response to a Facebook comment: The issue here is not slavery, Myron. No need to crumble in white guilt at the mere mention of the American Revolution.

Let’s Break-Up And Break Free, Says BAB Contributor

America, BAB's A List, Federalism, Founding Fathers, History, Liberty, Nationhood

Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli has an Independence-Day message of freedom: Let’s break-up and break free. If you haven’t gotten his drift, on this Independence Day—Dr. Pauli recommends doing away with the supersize version of the United States of America, as this will do wonders for liberty. Hear hear! (Myron’s bio is below. It’s packed with his usual flare. Perhaps Myron’s highest achievement, however, is his teenage daughter. Dr. Pauli is the most devoted single dad I know.)

DO WE NEED TO HAVE A “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”? Of course, our Founders asked questions like that – but nowadays, to ask is even borderline treason making one a racist, terrorist, or psychotic. So much for the Land of the Free. But I will ask it anyway!

Other Empires have devolved – USSR being the best recent example. I don’t want to get caught up in detailed nuances but it can be done – so we can have 20 to 50 “countries” instead of one. OK – the 2 Dakotas and Montana can be the Republic of Northland. It will not be a superpower – but not everyone has to be #1. The Danes, Swiss, and Costa Ricans sleep soundly even if China, France, and Israel have more powerful armies. Is China about to invade Northland, anyway?

In fact, the “Federal” Government of the 1787 Constitution was not created (dismissing the Articles of Confederation as more of a Congressional coffee klatsch) to ward off imminent attack from Frederick the Great. Much of the impetus came from the corruption and ineptitude of the 13 states which quickly slid into “banana republic” governments. The soldiers of the Continental Army were stiffed and would have staged a coup if not for General Washington. Fiat paper money was shoved into circulation (sounds like today!). Debts, foreclosures, and contracts were negated by demagogic mobs that controlled the local legislatures. If someone in Rhode Island owed money to a creditor in Virginia, forgetaboutit!

If, when debts were not repudiated, gangs like Shays Rebellion put pressure to do so. Goods flowing from Maryland to New Jersey risked getting the “TSA treatment” from goons in Pennsylvania or Delaware. It was with that mess in mind that people like Franklin joined up with quasi-monarchists like Hamilton and supported a national government with LIMITED powers to restrain the states from the hanky-panky they were sliding into. An indirectly elected national government with limited powers could serve as a check-and-balance on the two-bit state demagogues. Franklin recognized this in his famous 17 September 1787 speech – that it would serve the cause of liberty for some time until the people will have grown corrupted.

Even 100 years after, advocates of limited government had a champion in Grover Cleveland, but by 1896, there was an electoral choice between the Plutocratic Imperialists of McKinley and the Currency Debasers of Bryan.

The country has grown but government has grown more and liberty has shrunk. The price of keeping Wyoming safe from an invasion from India currently includes SWAT teams raiding chemo patients for pot plants and bureaucrats from 3000 miles away scanning algebra test scores.

If we did break up, we run the risk of DC turning into Zimbabwe and Mississippi becoming Klan land, but there might be some restraint on the states due to economic competition. If Texas and North Carolina wanted racial, second-class status for Asians, their universities and engineering companies would become a laughing stock. The higher Massachusetts raises taxes, the more people would emigrate to New Hampshire.

But it might not go all that smoothly. What would prevent a combination of Mexico and California from invading an Arizona that attempted to enforce immigration restrictions? Would a power-hungry New York megalomaniac (Bloomberg) attempt to coerce Connecticut as well?

The danger is not as likely to come from China or India or Russia or some bucktoothed Afghan Pushtuns, but from North American Huey “Kingfish” Longs.

Franklin supported the Constitution, but warned that it “can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.” One can also add Jefferson’s quote: “experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”

The TSA, the SWAT Teams, the endless undeclared wars, the out-of-control deficits, the drones and constant surveillance – this was not forced on us by Germans or Martians but what WE HAVE DONE TO OURSELVES. Local corruption might be preferred to national or international corruption, but it is still evil.

So my preference is summed in one word – small may not always be beautiful, but it’s better for liberty.

**
MYRON PAULI, Ph.D., grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism.

UPDATED: Screwed By The SCROTUM & Its Chief Politico (Obama On Top)

Constitution, Founding Fathers, Healthcare, Justice, Law, The Courts, The State

“Anticipating A Turn of The Health-Care Screw,” last night’s Barely-a-Blog post title, was apt.

The SCROTUM would fail to dissolve “the hulking bill,” Orwellianly titled “The Affordable Care Act.” The Supermen Court, after all, doesn’t follow natural law; individual rights, or even the founders’ federalism.

Why, the Constitution itself, in all its amendments, has long since veered from the just law. All the more so the jurisprudence that “interprets” this already flawed, dead-letter scroll. (“Sometimes the law of the state coincides with the natural law.“ More often than not, natural justice has been buried under the rubble of legislation and statute.”)

“As affable as he is,” said a September 15, 2005 blog post titled “Judge Roberts: Smooth Operator?”, during Roberts’ confirmation hearings, “Roberts, regrettably, is no Janice Rogers Brown.”

Their devotion (and dotage) prevents President Bush’s lickspittles from realizing that he too considers Rogers Brown ‘outside the mainstream,’ to use the Democrats’ demotic line. Let’s hope, at the very least, that Roberts is a Rehnquist.” AND, “here’s the thing that unsettles: Roberts seems to be all about the moves.”

Lyle Denniston, of the SCOTUS Blog, speaks to the technicalities of today’s decision, in “Don’t call it a mandate — it’s a tax”:

Salvaging the idea that Congress did have the power to try to expand health care to virtually all Americans, the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the constitutionality of the crucial – and most controversial — feature of the Affordable Care Act. By a vote of 5-4, however, the Court did not sustain it as a command for Americans to buy insurance, but as a tax if they don’t. That is the way Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., was willing to vote for it, and his view prevailed. The other Justices split 4-4, with four wanting to uphold it as a mandate, and four opposed to it in any form.

“The Roberts Court is Born”:

Today’s Supreme Court is often referred to as Anthony Kennedy’s Court. Although Kennedy is the swing justice who usually casts the deciding vote in close cases, the landmark ruling this week in the healthcare cases clearly mark the maturation of the “Roberts Court.”
Chief Justice John Roberts was the surprising swing vote in today’s Obamacare decision. Although he agreed with the four conservative justices, including Kennedy, that the individual mandate was not a regulation of interstate commerce, he voted with the Court’s moderates to hold that it was justified as a tax. Because people who don’t obtain insurance pay a tax to the IRS, the mandate was within Congress’s power to raise taxes for the general welfare. As a result, the Affordable Care Act was upheld.
With this deft ruling, Roberts avoided what was certain to be a cascade of criticism of the high court. No Supreme Court has struck down a president’s signature piece of legislation in over 75 years. Had Obamacare been voided, it would have inevitably led to charges of aggressive judicial activism. Roberts peered over the abyss and decided he didn’t want to go there.

UPDATE: Absolutely right is the New York Time: “The decision was a victory for President Obama and Congressional Democrats, affirming the central legislative pillar of Mr. Obama’s presidency.”

AND, so was “SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: ARIZONA ET AL. v. UNITED STATES.”

So, for heaven’s sake. Quit the denial. Liberty was not sundered with Obama. It’s long gone.

UPDATED: IRS Survivors (Fleeing Police State USA)

Founding Fathers, Ilana Mercer, Law, Liberty, Natural Law, Taxation

Writer Christopher Sandford describes his interactions with the Internal Revenue Service as “dealing with a simultaneously incompetent and psychotically aggressive opponent.” “What is beyond a doubt is that our relentlessly progressive and humanely empathetic leader had done precious little for the rights of those of us who find ourselves caught in the spokes of his infernal government machinery. Indeed, he and his government myrmidons have frequently spoken of their intention to pursue the allegedly noncompliant taxpayer to the very brink of that unhappy individuals’ endurance and sanity. That most certainly is part of Obama’s record.” (Writing in the April issue of Chronicles Magazine.)

“Think the IRS can’t send you to prison?,” warns CBS’ Survivor winner Richard Hatch in a timely television commercial. “The IRS sends people to prison and they’re not celebrities. If you owe the IRS $10,000 or more, call for your free tax consultation NOW. Listen, I went to prison for over four years, and you don’t want to,” Hatch tells potential victims.

The US government exercises a brutal tax-enforcement regimen. As a police state, it regularly finds citizens guilty of crimes absent the intent to commit a crime—the legal imperative of mens rea.

The “taxpayer,” compliant or not, however, must accurately be described as an innocent, non-aggressive property owner, who has the natural right to keep what he has worked for, or what was voluntarily bequeathed to him.

In the case of the so-called “non-compliant” victim of this armed and dangerous syndicate—the state—his actions have been criminalized, even though his alleged crime, more often than not, was unintentional; he did not mean to “deprive” his masters of the spoils of his labor.

Going by Thomas Jefferson, we live under tyranny, for as this founder said, “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”

UPDATED (April 17): Fleeing Police State USA. Special Report: Tax time pushes some Americans to take a hike.