Category Archives: Founding Fathers

Updated: Life, Liberty, And PROPERTY ('Own It')

Founding Fathers, Individual Rights, Liberty, Political Philosophy, Private Property

“I like Fox-News broadcaster Glenn Beck. The man exudes goodness and has a visceral feel for freedom.

From this scrupulous soul I’d like to hear less about ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ and more of the original Lockean phrase, from which Thomas Jefferson drew when writing the Declaration of Independence.

‘No one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions,’ wrote the British philosopher John Locke, in the Second Treatise on Civil Government.

By ‘the pursuit of happiness,’ Jefferson meant property plus; the right to take action to acquire what is required to sustain and satisfy life. Instead, the founder bequeathed us a vagueness that has helped undermine the foundation of civilization: private property.

By and large, modern-day Americans have twisted the famous phrase, and have turned into looters who pursue happiness at the expense of the producers.

Elsewhere, Jefferson affirmed the natural right of ‘all men’ to be secure in their enjoyment of their ‘life, liberty and possessions.’ But in the Declaration, somehow, he opted for the inclusiveness of ‘the pursuit of happiness,’ rather than cleave to the precision of ‘property.'” …

More about why you should “shout ‘life, liberty, and property’ from the proverbial rooftops,” in my new WND.com column, now on Taki’s Magazine, titled aptly, “Own It.” Remember: If you miss the column on WND, you can catch it Saturdays on Taki’s Magazine.

Update III: The Real Tea Party Movement (Go Home Republicans!)

Classical Liberalism, Constitution, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Republicans, Taxation

“The Founders were Lockean liberals who believed that we had natural rights and could combine to delegate certain powers to the government such as self-protection. But in natural law, no man can steal from another so you can’t delegate that power to the government and create a welfare state. Similarly, the people don’t have the right to counterfeit, so they can’t delegate that power to the Federal Reserve. And the people do not have the right to rule the world, so they can’t delegate to the government the right to create a global military empire.”

The Founders were not anarchists but they still had a dim view of taxes. To tax people for purposes other than core government functions is theft and tyranny. Jefferson said that in his own words in his First Inaugural.”

The excerpt is from my WND interview with James Ostrowski, tea party organizer and author of the manifesto, “How We Can Win the Second American Revolution Without Firing a Shot.”

Update I (April 18): if you missed the column on WND, you can catch it each and every week on Taki’s Magazine, where the reading, overall, is really really good. Read “The Real Tea Parties,” NOW on Taki’s Magazine.

Update II : The absolute imperative of denouncing the GOP was the theme of my interview with Jim Ostrowski. Is my wish coming true? I hope so. Rep. Gresham Barrett of South Carolina was booed off the stage he tried to occupy.

“Barrett faced the ire of the tea party protesters because of his vote last year for the $700 billion,” reports the Huffington Post.

Here’s the clip. “GO HOME” the crowd cries. The Republican knave tries to galvanize the crowd with the “our men and women in the military” mantra. But all he gets is: “GO HOME, GO HOME, GO HOME, too late, too late, boo, boo.” Love the fury.

Update III: In her syndicated column, Michelle Malkin, the only real fiscal conservative among Republican pundits, documents the extent of the revulsion GOPiers (including those who appeared with Sean Hannity) have inspired among tea party goers:

“If only the condescending cable TV anchors at CNN and MSNBC had paused from wallowing in gutter puns about tea bags, they might have reported an even more significant phenomenon: Tea Party protesters were as vocal in their criticism of Republicans as they were of Democrats. In Salt Lake City, Utah, a crowd of 2,000 repeatedly booed GOP Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, who both supported the $700 billion TARP bailout, and protested GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman’s decision to accept $1.6 billion in porky stimulus funds.”…

Read on.

Update III: The Real Tea Party Movement (Go Home Republicans!)

Classical Liberalism, Constitution, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Republicans, Taxation

“The Founders were Lockean liberals who believed that we had natural rights and could combine to delegate certain powers to the government such as self-protection. But in natural law, no man can steal from another so you can’t delegate that power to the government and create a welfare state. Similarly, the people don’t have the right to counterfeit, so they can’t delegate that power to the Federal Reserve. And the people do not have the right to rule the world, so they can’t delegate to the government the right to create a global military empire.”

The Founders were not anarchists but they still had a dim view of taxes. To tax people for purposes other than core government functions is theft and tyranny. Jefferson said that in his own words in his First Inaugural.”

The excerpt is from my WND interview with James Ostrowski, tea party organizer and author of the manifesto, “How We Can Win the Second American Revolution Without Firing a Shot.”

Update I (April 18): if you missed the column on WND, you can catch it each and every week on Taki’s Magazine, where the reading, overall, is really really good. Read “The Real Tea Parties,” NOW on Taki’s Magazine.

Update II : The absolute imperative of denouncing the GOP was the theme of my interview with Jim Ostrowski. Is my wish coming true? I hope so. Rep. Gresham Barrett of South Carolina was booed off the stage he tried to occupy.

“Barrett faced the ire of the tea party protesters because of his vote last year for the $700 billion,” reports the Huffington Post.

Here’s the clip. “GO HOME” the crowd cries. The Republican knave tries to galvanize the crowd with the “our men and women in the military” mantra. But all he gets is: “GO HOME, GO HOME, GO HOME, too late, too late, boo, boo.” Love the fury.

Update III: In her syndicated column, Michelle Malkin, the only real fiscal conservative among Republican pundits, documents the extent of the revulsion GOPiers (including those who appeared with Sean Hannity) have inspired among tea party goers:

“If only the condescending cable TV anchors at CNN and MSNBC had paused from wallowing in gutter puns about tea bags, they might have reported an even more significant phenomenon: Tea Party protesters were as vocal in their criticism of Republicans as they were of Democrats. In Salt Lake City, Utah, a crowd of 2,000 repeatedly booed GOP Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, who both supported the $700 billion TARP bailout, and protested GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman’s decision to accept $1.6 billion in porky stimulus funds.”…

Read on.

Statist Struggles With States’ Rights

Constitution, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, The State

States across the country are discovering the 10th Amendment to the Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Quaint, I know, but to the federal government were delegated only limited and enumerated powers (Article I, Section 8). Most everything it does these days is extraconstitutional.

Forced to take fiat currency from the federales, the states also realize that the price is too high to pay: not only must they heed the occupying force, they must bankrupt themselves in the process. For accepting these piles of paper implies expanding services and keeping them going in perpetuity.

So, governors and state representatives are invoking that which ought to have been the law of the land: the ingenious 10th Amendment.

But what happens if you are neoconservative, or have such proclivities, and think that the manner in which Lincoln sundered the federal structure was not only constitutional but moral?

Why, then, you’re in a bit of a pickle. To his credit, Harvard grad Ben Shapiro is a very bright neoconservative, who’s well aware of the contradiction inherent in a sudden support for the states in their rightful reclamation of sovereignty.

See what you think of the tack Shapiro takes:

The federal response to the slavery question was quick and right – President Abraham Lincoln’s Civil War restored for all time the founding promises of the Declaration of Independence. Despite the Civil War, however, the legacy of Jim Crow further eroded the moral authority of states’ rights. And the federal government, wielding the ethical imperative of racial equality, stepped in. States’ rights advocates were forever branded as bigoted Orval Faubus types, standing in the doorways of segregated schoolhouses.

Now states are surprised to find that their ability to resist federal directives has been all but extinguished. They are surprised that they are no longer able to set their own standards regarding social, economic or criminal policy. They are surprised that through a combination of moral blindness and drooling greed, they surrendered their role in the constitutional system.

Surrendered? Not quite.

It would seem that young Ben is equally surprised at the quest for the “reinstitution of local government” (a phrase that diminishes the idea of state sovereignty).