The word republic is from the Latin res, which means thing, affair or interest, and publica which means of everybody. It literally means everybody's thing or interest.
The essence of a republic is the rule of law, by which is meant the common or scientific law, which is certain and unchangeable. This law is discovered, not made, in that the tendency is to find the freedoms and restraints imposed by natural law, and base decisions upon them. ("Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them," wrote Tom Paine.) Since human nature doesn't change, what was right yesterday should be so today and tomorrow. Courts seek out and enforce a higher law as opposed to political or man-made law. As a result, the law seeks truth, transcends politics, is reasonable, consistent, predictable, and reflects or approximates natural justice. Government acts like a shield punishing the abuses of freedoms - assaults against the life, liberty, and property of innocent people - not the freedoms themselves. For example, the misuse of a firearm which results in injury to an innocent party would be punished rather than the mere possession of such a weapon. Officers of the law are appropriately called peace officers, for they do not enforce political law, but protect everyone equally from force and fraud. The military is used as a last resort to protect the nation. Moral authority rests outside the political class who are held to a high moral standard through public pressure. Government's purpose is to protect rights and defend freedom. Taxes are voluntary assessments used to fund legitimate government functions serving the common good (in obedience to John Adams' dictum that "No man may be taxed against his will. . . ." ).
The House of Representatives will vote on the Health Care bill with a 1.2 trillion dollar price tag this week. It is absolutely critical that we let our elected officials know where we stand on a government takeover of the health care industry. Congressman Cassidy has already taken a stand against this bill. Now is the time to concentrate on Senator Landrieu.
Download, print, fill out, and bring these petitions with you to the protest! Someone will be available to deliver these during the event. Petitions can be found here:
The U.S. government has now extended its assassination program to the drug war. According to the New York Times, the Pentagon now has an assassination list for suspected drug dealers in Afghanistan.
No arrests. No hearings. No attorneys. No judges. No trials. Just kill them.
Great! So now the occupation of Afghanistan has expanded not only to CIA drone assassinations but also now to Pentagon's drug-war assassinations.
U.S. officials are justifying the drug-war assassinations as part of their counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan. They say that they're only going to be assassinating those drug dealers whose drug trafficking is benefiting the terrorists.
I wonder how they make that determination, especially without judicial hearings and trials.
Keep in mind that U.S. officials justify their occupation of Afghanistan as part of their overall "war on terrorism." Keep in mind also that according to them, in the war on terrorism the entire world is a battlefield, including the United States.
As part of their war on terrorism, U.S. officials claim the power to treat Americans as "enemy combatants," which entails the power to ignore the rights and guarantees in the Bill of Rights for people suspected of committing the federal criminal offense of terrorism. That includes the power to arrest suspected terrorists, incarcerate them for life, torture them, and deny them due process of law.
It also includes the power to assassinate suspected terrorists, a power that U.S. officials have exercised on "the battlefield" in such places as Yemen, where they assassinated an American citizen who happened to be traveling with a suspected terrorist, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. So far, they have not exercised the assassination power on that part of the battlefield that encompasses the United States, but they certainly now wield the post-9/11 power to do so.
And now they have extended their assassination power to the drug war. And without even bothering to ask Congress to enact a law giving them such power. Hey, this is the era of the war on terrorism. They don't need no stinking assassination law. All they need is a presidential order to the CIA and the military to begin assassinating people.
Will they apply their assassination power to suspected drug dealers elsewhere in the world? After all, doesn't the sale of heroin everywhere likely put money into the pockets of drug producers in Afghanistan, given that that's where 90 percent of the world's heroin originates?
We know that they are employing the power to assassinate suspected terrorists in different parts of the world. Time will tell whether they do the same with suspected drug dealers, including, of course, that part of the battlefield that encompasses the United States.
Meanwhile, families are mourning the deaths of three American DEA agents and 11 U.S. soldiers who died this past week in two helicopter crashes in Afghanistan.
Fourteen more senseless deaths. Where does this lunacy end?
End the assassinations. End the occupations. End the war on terrorism. End the war on drugs. There is no other solution for restoring freedom, morality, peace, prosperity, and security to our nation.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Matthew Hoh, the senior U.S. civilian in Afghanistan's Zabul province, resigned in protest because he believes the American effort there is simply fueling the insurgency, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. Hoh, a former Marine Corps captain who also served in Iraq, wrote a four-page letter to the State Department's head of personnel in September, and his resignation became official last week.
"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote in the letter. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."
Hoh's letter caused a stir in the Obama administration, and he was hastened to meetings with senior U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington. They praised his record of service and begged him to stay, offering him new positions in both locations. Hoh initially accepted the Washington job, but changed his mind a week later.
Hoh said that his act of protest and decision to speak out were painful, even "nauseating" at times, but he was strongly motivated by the friends he had lost on the battlefield and the mental anguish he has experienced since returning home. "I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right,' " he explained, adding that he "is not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love."
Hoh will meet with Joe Biden's foreign policy adviser this week, and will advise a reduction in troops. He said he feels the U.S. "has an obligation for it not to be a bloodbath," but that Afghans are resistant to what they see as a military occupation.
A Local Coordinator is a volunteer who is willing to go door to door in their precinct or neighborhood regarding an issue that affects their neighborhood. The times that people will go door to door are generally prior to an election to hand out information on candidates or issue that will be on the ballot, when there is a community or neighborhool issue that you want to raise awareness about, or just a neighborhood bar-b-que. Local Coordinators are the most valuable people to make a change in elections. There are 180,000 precincts in the country and if we can get 180,000 people who are willing to be Local Coordinators it will be very easy to make a difference in elections.
For instance, if your county has 30 precincts and you have 25-50 people who agree on something that have stepped up to be Local Coordinators it is very easy to get information to people. We all are aware of the problems with the talking box (aka television) and newspapers. Many times they give an opinions and not facts but the people who watch or read them seem to think that they are seeing or hearing facts.
Let's use the example of a new road. If a county wants to put in a new road for the benefit of a company in a neighboring county the currently elected county officials discuss it and how much it will cost. There are usually a few articles in the local paper about it and maybe a talking head will mention it once or twice. The request for the funding is put on the municipal ballot and people are asked to vote for or against it. Just how much information do the voters really have about the issue? Because this is not really a partisan issue the republican and democratic precinct leaders are probably not going to do any canvassing of their precincts to provide information to the people. Republican and Democratic precinct leaders mainly canvass to keep or get back their party's power or dominance.
If there were liberty minded Local Coordinators who would go door to door with information regarding the project the voters would be better informed. Maybe provide a copy of the budget for the highway that shows where the county intends to get the funds from, information that shows the layout of the proposed road, information about who benefits the most from the road, and information about what property the county will intend to take through emininent domain for the project. This information is needed by voters to make informed decisions and they are not going to get it from partisan parties so it us up to us, We The People. The Local Coordinator would also remind people when the election day was and maybe even offer to provide a ride for their neighbors who don't drive.
The Campaign For Liberty Local Coordinator program has great tools and teaching programs to help people learn about their precinct. While not necessary they are EXTEMELY helpful as you learn how many voters you have, how many people vote in the general election verses the municipal elections, which way your neighborhood generally votes, etc. As an active Local Coordinator your neighbors will start to look to you as a source of information after you have canvassed your area a few times. They will recognize you and most are happy that someone has stepped up and is willing to provide them with information that they don't get from the talking box or dying newspapers.
How many of you walked your neighborhood to hand out information regarding Ron Paul? If you could walk your neighborhood to give out information regarding the presidential elections why can't you walk your neighborhood to give out information regarding local issues that directly affect you and your neighbors? To restore constitutional principles to our country we must to restore order to our local governing bodies. To make our voices heard we must stand together. As we work on our local areas as a Local Coordinator we can and will re-awaken the spirit of our country and remind people that what made our country great was less government, not more. Local elections are extremely important to fix the foundation of our government.
Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. You can message me here if your are logged into the Campaign For Liberty site or here if you are not a member yet. The R3volution continues with people taking action.
Robyn Hamlin MO CD 1 Interim MO State Co-Coordinator
By now we have all heard the cliches and seen the posters from the "Tea Parties" espousing freedom, less government, and perhaps most of all, how the federal government had better back off trying to shove their national healthcare down our otherwise healthy throats. The truth of the matter is all the slogans of "Don't Tread On Me" or "Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death" or "We're Mad As Hell And We're Not Taking It Anymore," don't mean a thing when compared to reality; the real and actual answer to all the protests, marches, and outrage. The answer is in our own backyards! The States can stop every bit of it! That's right, the individual States can stop "Obamacare" and all other forms of out-of-control federal government mandates and "big brother" tactics. If Arizona, Hawaii, New Hamshire, Texas, etc. want nothing to do with National Healthcare as proposed by Barack Obama or Congress, then all they have to do is say "No!"
If we are to take back America and keep this process peaceful, then state and local officials will have to step up to the plate.
For you skeptics who think the States could no more do this than fly to the moon, let's look at the law. First, the U.S. Constitution is the ultimate and supreme law of the land. More specifically, the Bill of Rights was established, because some of our Founding Fathers, feared that the Constitution did not go far enough in restricting or limiting the central government. Hamilton was one of a select few who wanted a bigger and powerful federal government. However, several key states and powerful delegates such as Patrick Henry, said they would not support the formation of a new government if the Constitution did not contain a Bill of Rights, a supreme law to establish basic and fundamental human rights that could never, for all future American generations, be violated, altered or encroached upon by government. So the Framers of our Constitution came up with ten; ten God-given freedoms that would forever be held inviolable by our own governments.
The last of these basic foundational principles was the one to protect the power, sovereignty, and the autonomy of the States; the Tenth Amendment. This amendment and law underscores the entire purpose of the Constitution to limit government and forbids the federal government from becoming more powerful than the "creator." Let's be very clear here; the States in this case were the creator. They formed the federal government, not the other way around. Does anyone believe rationally that the States intended to form a new central government to control and command the States at will? Nothing could be further from the truth. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution details what duties the federal government will be responsible for under our new system of "balanced power." Anything not mentioned in Article 1, Sec. 8, is "reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." (Tenth Amendment) Hence, the federal government was not allowed creativity or carte blanche to expand or assume power wherever and whenever they felt like it. The feds had only discrete and enumerated and very limited powers. Omnipotency was the last thing the Founding Fathers intended to award the newly formed federal government. They had just fought the Revolutionary War to stop such from Britain and their main concern was to prevent a recurrence here in America.
In perhaps the most recent and powerful Tenth Amendment decision in modern history, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Mack/Printz v U.S. that "States are not subject to federal direction." But today's federal Tories argue that the "supremecy clause" of the U.S. Constitution says that the federal government is supreme and thus, trumps the States in all matters. Wrong! The supremacy clause is dealt with in Mack/Printz, in which the Supreme Court stated once and for all that the only thing "supreme" is the constitution itself. Our constitutional system of checks and balances certainly did not make the federal government king over the states, counties, and cities. Justice Scalia opined for the majority in Mack/Printz, that "Our citizens would have two political capacities, one state and one federal, each protected from incursion by the other." So yes, it is the duty of the State to stop the Obamacare "incursion." To emphasize this principle Scalia quotes James Madison, "The local or municipal authorities form distinct and independent portions of the Supremacy, no more subject within their respective spheres, to the general authority than the general authority is subject to them, within its own sphere." The point to remember here is; where do we define the "sphere" of the federal government? That's right; in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution and anything not found within this section belongs to the States or to the People. So where does health care belong? The last place it belongs is with the President or Congress. It is NOT their responsiblity and the States need to make sure that Obama does not overstep his authority.
Just in case there is any doubt as to what the Supreme Court meant, let's take one more look at Mack/Printz. "This separation of the two spheres is one of the Constitution's structural protections of liberty. Hence, a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other..." What? The Constitution, the supreme law of the land, has as a "structural protection of liberty" that States will keep the federal government in check? No wonder it was called a system of "checks and balances." The States (and Counties) are to maintain the balance of power by keeping the feds within their proper sphere.
So do the States have to take the bullying of the federal government? Not hardly! The States do not have to take or support or pay for Obamacare or anything else from Washington DC. The States are not subject to federal direction. They are sovereign and "The Constitution protects us from our own best intentions." (Mack/Printz) Which means the States can tell national healthcare proposals or laws to take a flying leap off the Washington monument. We are not subject to federal direction!
In the final order pursuant to the Mack/Printz ruling Scalia warned, "The federal government may neither, issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States' officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program. Such commands are fundamentally incompatible with our constitutional system of dual sovereignty." It is rather obvious that nationalized healthcare definitely qualifies as a "federal regulatory program."
Thus, the marching on Washington and pleas and protests to our DC politicians are misdirected. Such actions are "pie in the sky" dreaming that somehow expects the tyrants who created the tyranny, will miraculously put a stop to it. Throughout the history of the world such has never been the case. Tyrants have never stopped their own corrupt ways. However, in our system of "dual sovereignty," the States cando it. If we are to take back America and keep this process peaceful, then state and local officials will have to step up to the plate. Doing so is what States' Rights and State Sovereignty are all about.
Louisiana's Campaign for Liberty's Region 4 Coordinator, James Burns is to humble to post this on our Website, but I am not.
This man covers Ireland, The Lisbon Treaty, and the European Union... and how this relates to us here in America. Listen closely to what he has to say, because one person DOES make a difference.
James is another Patriot in this fight and I am Proud of his efforts!
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
—Thomas Jefferson
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