Category: U.S. Constitution

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Common Sense general freedom individual achievement meme U.S. Constitution

Everything That Could Be Done

Patrick Henry

Two hundred forty years ago, the situation was dire. In the Virginia Colony, not too far from where I live, representatives to the Second Virginia Convention were debating the problems they were having with their “masters” in Britain — and the more dangerous, violent situation that was developing to the north.

Several days into the convention, Patrick Henry spoke. His speech was rousing. And it changed minds, concluding with the famous words “give me liberty or give me death!” — an ultimatum quite stark indeed.

Mr. Henry was for action, and waiting no longer. Addressing himself to the president of the convention, he said, “Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on.” And they had done a great deal, engaging in

- petitioning

- remonstration

- supplication

and, Henry went on, had even “prostrated ourselves before the throne.” And they got worse than the cold shoulder for all their efforts. They got the brush-​off, the turn of the cold robe. Along with troops of occupation.

Hence the need for serious action.

Then, Americans were wrestling with the world’s most powerful nation: the British Empire. Today we again face the world’s most powerful empire: our own.

A federal regime similarly out of control in terms of spending and debt, arrogance and corruption, intrusiveness and incompetence. As if dictated by a know-​it-​all king of old, or a cabal of insiders acting as oligarchs.

Then it was a far-​off Parliament; today it is our own far out-​of-​it representatives … duly elected.

We are engaged in a sort of class war, insiders vs. outsiders, and it is the insiders who are bringing the country to the brink of collapse.

The biggest difference between 1775 and 2015? We haven’t done all we can. There is much more to do. And possibly even succeed before the doom of another financial collapse, sovereign debt crisis, or … worse.

It often seems a Herculean task, but as Mr. Henry implored, “Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.”

Let’s join together to give ourselves, our loved ones, and generations hence liberty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Read the entire speech here

Printable PDF of the entire speech here

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The Meaning of "Liberal"

 

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Common Sense general freedom U.S. Constitution

Slavery & Racism

African Slaves

On Sunday, I marked an awful event in our history: The official beginning of chattel slavery as such in Britain’s American colonies.

At first, John Casor, an African indentured servant, had gained some control of his life. He charged his master, Anthony Johnson, a free black, with having forced him to labor longer than the term of his indentureship. He won, was freed, and then indentured himself to one Robert Parker. 

But Johnson sued, and, on March 8, 1655, won Casor back — as a slave for life.

The case established a civil ground for slavery, also enabling free blacks to own slaves. Even as late as the Civil War, the South harbored families of obvious African descent who themselves owned African-​Americans as slaves.

On the surface, American slavery wasn’t about race. But in the 1640 case of John Punch, sentenced to a life of slavery as criminal punishment for running away from his indentured servitude, his fellow escapees — whites — merely got longer terms of forced labor.

Racism, Thomas Sowell explains, became increasingly important to “the peculiar institution” as time went on. If you exalt the notion that “all men are created equal,” how do you square that with your slave-holding? 

By denigrating the humanity of blacks.

This vile ugliness of racism is still with us, to some degree … and slavery, too — at least, in small pockets around the globe and in a much bigger way in the Muslim world. An estimated eleven million slaves are held in Africa and the Middle East. And black Africans are still the main victims.

Sunday was also the 240th anniversary of Tom Paine’s first American call for slavery’s abolition.

Ending slavery: it’s way past time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense general freedom individual achievement judiciary U.S. Constitution

Racial Justice Advanced

Racial Justice Advanced (Paul Jacob on the leading thinker on race today)

I don’t know if Juan Williams is right about who qualifies as America’s most influential thinker on race. But I hope he is.

In a Friday Wall Street Journal op-​ed, Fox News’s liberal-​leaning political analyst and author of Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary (1998), argues that our country’s most important influencer of thought on race is neither some current and trendy academic writer nor our current president (or his outgoing attorney general). Instead, it is none other than Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

While more famous figures of African-​American descent have dominated the news talk shows and airwaves and popular consciousness, Justice Thomas has gone about “reshaping the law and government policy on race by virtue of the power of his opinions from the bench.” While previous African-​American racial activists and thinkers have striven to defend the rights of black people, Justice Thomas, “the second black man on the court, takes a different tack. He stands up for individual rights as a sure blanket of legal protection for everyone, including minorities.”

Opposed to “perpetual racial tinkering,” Thomas has marshaled Frederick Douglass’s words to make his case: “What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.” And justice, in Clarence Thomas’s judgment, does not entail a constant rescue-​worker attitude towards minorities, or other disadvantaged folks. It requires nothing other than equality of rights before the law. 

And perhaps some hard work on the part of the disadvantaged.

Hats off, then, to Juan Williams for recognizing the importance of Thomas’s common sense contention that “black people deserve to be treated as independent, competent, self-​sufficient citizens.” 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture Tenth Amendment federalism too much government U.S. Constitution

Manly Firmness

“Is repealing the Affordable Care Act an issue of manhood?” asks Alan Rappeport in the New York Times. He’s referring to the “macho language” in a resolution introduced recently in Jefferson City, Missouri, by State Rep. Mike Moon.

Moon’s House Resolution 99 decimates the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, in a dozen whereas clauses, noting the legislation was

  1. “passed under questionable circumstances”;
  2. found constitutional only on the contradictory determination that it was both a tax and not a tax; and, most notably,
  3. resoundingly opposed by Missouri voters, who have twice trudged to the polls to overwhelming pass measures to block this federal legislation.

HR 99 resolves that, “the members of the Missouri House of Representatives, Ninety-​eighth General Assembly, hereby insist that each member of the Missouri Congressional delegation endeavor with ‘manly firmness’ and resolve to totally and completely repeal the Affordable Care Act, settling for no less than a full repeal.”

Among today’s sophisticates, the phrase “manly firmness” elicits giggles, of course. Seasoned Democrats like U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill play the “war on women” card.  She complained that those words come from “a point in time when women were chattels and didn’t have the right to vote. I think we can update our vocabulary.”

Lost on — or purposely ignored by — the senator? The fact that the phrase “manly firmness” comes from the Declaration of Independence, from the fifth listed grievance against King George III.

And firmness is exactly what’s needed: adult, strong, serious standing up as our representatives — rather than representing themselves — and defending our individual freedom and its corollary, constitutionally-​limited government.

That’s what was needed back in 1776. It is every bit as desperately needed today.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture U.S. Constitution

Dead Document?

Could it be? We do not live under the Constitution of the United States. The document has been a dead letter for a century, maybe longer.

Ours is a Post-​Constitutional America.

Surely, there have been great moments of executive usurpation.

Andrew Jackson, in defiance of the Supreme Court, and against all normal principles of law and justice, removed the Cherokee from their agrarian holdings in Georgia and contiguous southeastern United States, sending them marching to Oklahoma. The Supreme Court said his order was unconstitutional. Jackson’s response? Not really much different from “nyah nyah, nyah nyah, nyah nyah.”

Much of the Civil War and Reconstruction was undertaken on the shakiest of constitutional grounds. And then came the “great progressive” presidents.

Republican Teddy Roosevelt and Democrat Woodrow Wilson defied the explicit intent of the Constitution’s authors — as written in The Federalist as well as in the state houses that adopted the new compact. Both presidents construed the Constitution as authorizing the federal government to do pretty much darn near anything not explicitly forbidden in the document.

That was not the original understanding.

And then there is war. The U.S. Congress hasn’t declared an explicit war since World War II. But we’ve been in a never-​ending string of wars.

With Obama, the post-​constitutional prevarication has reached new … effrontery. The current president says that, though he had previously declared the “Iraq War” a done deal, over, finito, he now says his new attacks upon ISIS are constitutionally justified by 2002’s Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iraq.

“Post-​constitutional”? It means our leaders are liars, beyond the law.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture U.S. Constitution

Principled, and Un-

Can one “rise above principle”?

Aren’t most (all?) who think they “rise above principle” actually sinking below it?

Economist David Henderson called our attention to this notion in reference to legal theorist Richard Epstein’s call for a war against ISIS. On AntiWar​.com, he challenged Epstein’s support for the president’s war on ISIS on constitutional grounds, and wondered why constitutional scholar Epstein hadn’t addressed this concern.

Then Epstein addressed it — using that curious phrase “rise above principle.”

Henderson’s response? Characteristically astute:

In which times of crisis do you need to “rise above principle?” What are the criteria for doing so? If you don’t specify criteria, then I think you’re saying that anything goes. If you do specify criteria, don’t those criteria amount to a principle? In that latter case, are you really rising above principle?

It’s not just a matter of constitutionality, though. Just war requires coherent goals. And a debate and vote in Congress over going to war against ISIS could help establish those goals.

Clearly, the continuing interventions in the Islamic East have suffered from massive confusion. A year ago, President Obama called for regime change in Syria and wanted to bomb government forces; today, we are bombing ISIS, the main opposition to that same government.

Sinking below principle on matters of warfare is the least excusable abandonment of law. It’s the suppression of hasty warfare — individual, group, or national — upon which the rule of law rests. Upon which civilization rests.

There’s no “rising above.” There’s no acceptable abandonment. There is only sticking to principle upon the issues that matter most.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.