Video: “Press Conference: 54 Colorado Sheriffs File Suit Against Anti-Gun Bills“
May 18, 2013
March 30, 2013
Video: “[Mike Lee:] Constitution Wasn’t Written to Maximize the Convenience of the Federal Government”
Video: “[Mike Lee:] Constitution Wasn’t Written to Maximize the Convenience of the Federal Government“
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December 1, 2012
Nullification Documents
In Part II of Nullification: How To Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2010), Thomas E. Woods, Jr., includes eleven historical documents explaining and supporting the concept of nullification.
I found these documents online (some more or less abridged than in the book), and I bookmarked and annotated them in my Diigo account:
I. The Virginia Resolutions of 1798 (annotated)
II. Address of the General Assembly to the People of the Commonwealth of Virginia (annotated)
III. The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 (annotated)
IV. The Kentucky Resolutions of 1799 (annotated)
V. Virginia General Assembly Report of 1800 (annotated)
VI. Speech of Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull Opening of the Special Session of the Legislature (annotated)
VII. Resolution of the General Assembly of Connecticut (annotated)
VIII. Fort Hill Address (annotated)
IX. An Exposition of the Virginia Resolutions of 1798
X. A Review of the Proclamation of President Jackson (annotated)
XI. Joint Resolution of the Legislature of Wisconsin (annotated)
November 11, 2012
“If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority”
I’m currently reading The Constitution Made Easy (New York: Sterling, 2012) by Michael Holler. This morning I read the section on “Limited Government” in the introduction. Holler leads into the section with this quote from Federalist No. 33: “If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.”
I thought this passage was particularly timely because of recent events.
If it’s up to us, the people, to “redress the injury done to the Constitution,” we have to answer the following questions:
- What constitutes “tyrannical use” of the federal government’s powers?
- What standard have we formed?
- What measures do “exigency . . . suggest and prudence justify”?
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May 3, 2012
The Founders’ Key by Larry P. Arnn
After readying The Founders’ Key (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012), I’m still not sure what Larry Arnn is referring to in the title. The connection between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is obvious. The Declaration of Independence presents the principles upon which our government is founded, and the Constitution lays out the specific method and limits for the U.S. government.
In his “Conclusion,” Arnn correctly points out that
Article I, section 8, of the Constitution lists in seventeen paragraphs the things about which Congress may legislate. Half of them concern national defense. The rest mainly concern the guarantee of an unimpeded national system of commerce and property rights and the ability of the federal government to operate on the territory it possesses. There is no word about education, health, retirement, welfare, or any of the hundreds or perhaps thousands of areas of policy in which the Federal government now operates. (118-19)
In the following paragraph, he admits that we won’t “soon have a government that operates entirely within the confines of the Constitution. That will take a work of restoration and recovery of many years” (119).
I’ve thought the same thing recently in relation to the current presidential campaign. I believe Mitt Romney is a conservative, though he may not talk like one since he’s not a politician or a pundit. I believe he understands and supports the Constitution and will do what he can to restore it. He may not make the abrupt changes some people prefer, but he will set us on the right path.
As Arnn pointed out, the Constitution does not allow the federal government to get involved in “education, health, retirement,” etc., but we can’t just cut off student loans, Medicare and Medicaid, and Social Security. Promises need to be kept, and the programs need to be phased out gradually or relegated to the states.
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