In 21st century America, the idea of states declaring unconstitutional laws null and void, and resisting unconstitutional overreach of federal power, seems radical and even extremist to many citizens. But in fact, the idea of states nullifying unconstitutional federal acts rests on a philosophical foundation squarely in the mainstream of political thought for our nation’s founders.

And the Commonwealth of Kentucky sinks its roots deep into the soil of liberty.

In November 1798, the Kentucky legislature passed a series of  resolutions known as the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, declaring the Alien and Sedition Acts passed by Congress “altogether void, and of no force.”

Who authored this radical resolution?

Thomas Jefferson.

Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, actually four separate laws, in the summer of 1798. With winds of war with France blowing strongly, Congress passed the laws to expand federal power to prevent “seditious” acts from weakening the U.S. government.

The first law required aliens to remain residents in the U.S. for 14 years instead of five before becoming citizens. The second authorized the president to deport aliens “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States” during peacetime. The third allowed for the arrest, imprisonment and deportation of any alien who was a citizen of an enemy nation during wartime. The final law declared any treasonable activity a high misdemeanor punishable by fine and imprisonment. Treasonable activity included “any false, scandalous and malicious writing.”

Based on this law, federal officials arrested 25 men, most editors of Republican newspapers. The law also effectively shut down their presses. Benjamin Franklin’s grandson was among those arrested. Benjamin Franklin Bache, editor of the Philadelphia Democrat-Republican Aurora, was charged with libeling President John Adams. Matthew Lyon was fined $1,000 and sentenced to four months in prison. He was a congressman from Vermont and the editor of the Republican paper known as The Scourge of Aristocracy. And a prominent Pennsylvania lawyer,  physician and  editor of the Northumberland Gazette served six months in prison for criticizing the Alien and Sedition Acts.

It doesn’t take a constitutional lawyer to see the violation of the First Amendment posed by this fourth law, known as the Sedition Act.  Other provisions in the laws proved equally constitutionally problematic, including granting judiciary power to the executive branch.

Kentucky acted quickly.

Governor James Garrard addressed the legislature on Nov. 7, 1798, saying the state, “being deeply interested in the conduct of the national government, must have a right to applaud or to censure that government, when applause or censure becomes its due.” He urged the legislature to declare its support for the U.S. Constitution, while “entering your protest against all unconstitutional laws and impolitic proceedings.”

Rep. John Breckinridge, of Fayette County, proposed the Kentucky Resolutions in the House of Representatives on Nov. 8, 1798. They passed on Nov. 10 and won unanimous concurrence in the Senate. Gov. Garrard approved the resolution on Nov. 16.

It wasn’t learned until some years later that Jefferson penned the resolutions. Virginia passed similar resolutions, authored by James Madison and the two likely collaborated to some degree.

The Kentucky Resolutions built their case against the constitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Acts on the 10th Amendment. In fact, Jefferson restates the amendment verbatim three times. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, not prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Jefferson lays out the philosophical grounds for declaring the laws void in the first section.

Resolved, That the several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral part, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.

In section eight, Jefferson forcefully asserts the state’s right to nullify unconstitutional acts of the federal government.

…that to take from the States all the powers of self-government and transfer them to a general and consolidated government, without regard to the special delegations and reservations solemnly agreed to in that compact, is not for the peace, happiness or prosperity of these States; and that therefore this commonwealth is determined, as it doubts not its co-States are, to submit to undelegated, and consequently unlimited powers in no man, or body of men on earth: that in cases of an abuse of the delegated powers, the members of the general government, being chosen by the people, a change by the people would be the constitutional remedy; but, where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy: that every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact, (casus non fœderis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits: that without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.

Jefferson, and the legislators of Kentucky, feared the unfettered power of the federal government. That fear proved justified in light of the arrest of 25 men for merely expressing political opinion deemed inappropriate by the powers that be.

We live in a time of ever expanding federal power, and the threat to our liberties from an overreaching government is no less real today than it was in 1798. We have a federal government that would demand individuals purchase a service in health insurance; a federal government spending money with no oversight, spiraling the nation into ever deepening debt; a federal government creating rules and regulation through non-legislative and virtually unaccountable bureaucratic agencies. Our only remedy lies in standing up against this unconstitutional and dangerous intrusion into the affairs of the states and the people – standing up and telling the feds that we reject their unconstitutional acts.

And we must stop cowering in fear at the mere mention of federal power, as if the United States government were some omnipotent god to whom we must bow down and serve. We the people have forgotten that government operates by our will. We are not slaves, servants and serfs of the government. Government serves the people and exists only by the consent of the governed.

Those who would stand against the unconstitutional expansion of power are not the radicals. We stand firmly within the philosophical foundation upon which the United States was built. We are not the extremists. The Statists and progressives hold that honor. Let them take that mantel upon their shoulders. I reject it.

I will stand with Thomas Jefferson, who wrote:

“In questions of powers, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.“

Note: Take the time to click on the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 link and read the entire Kentucky Resolution of 1798. It provides a brilliant look into the mind of one of our nation’s founders and his understanding of the Constitution. I will be writing more in the coming days on the philosophical underpinnings of the resolution, the effect of the resolutions,  as well as the Kentucky Resolution of 1799.

Michael Maharrey [send him email] is the state chapter coordinator for the Kentucky Tenth Amendment Center

Copyright © 2010 by TenthAmendmentCenter.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given

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The defenders of centralized governmental power (a.k.a. tyranny) despise the Jeffersonian idea that the citizens of the states have a right to nullify what they believe to be unconstitutional federal laws. They hate it so much that they falsify history whenever they are forced to discuss it when it becomes news, as it has in recent months. Their favorite falsehood is the myth that nullification was the idea of U.S. Senator John C. Calhoun, the principal architect of South Carolina’s nullification of the federal “Tariff of Abominations” in 1832. This tariff, sponsored by Henry Clay, raised the average tariff rate to 45% with tariffs on some items exceeding 100%. Since almost all of the items covered by the tariff were manufactured in the Northern states, only Northern manufactures would benefit from them by charging higher prices once international competition was prohibited by the tariff on imports. South Carolinians, Virginians, and other Southerners correctly believed that the tariff was a break with the constitutional compact that outlawed discriminatory taxation. They were correct to interpret the Tariff of Abominations as an attempt by the neo-Puritanical New England “Yankees” to use the power of the central state to plunder them (and all consumers for that matter). That was a trend they sought to nip in the bud with their nullification law.

The defenders of this particular form of legal plunder usually heap the worst calumny imaginable on Calhoun, a former vice president of the United States and one of America’s most brilliant political theorists (read his Disquisition on Government), by associating him with slavery and nothing but slavery. The not-so-veiled implication is that nullification was some kind of white supremacist plot. Associating nullification with Calhoun and only Calhoun, and then relentlessly smearing him, is nothing more than a dishonest diversionary tactic on the part of the defenders of consolidated or centralized governmental power, the purpose of which is censorship of all discussion of the nullification of unconstitutional federal laws.

The idea of nullification was actually popular among the American colonists, long before Calhoun’s time, but is most closely associated with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, authors of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolves of 1798. Jefferson authored the Kentucky Resolve at the request of the Kentucky legislature as a way of nullifying the hated Sedition Act that was being enforced by President John Adams. This law essentially outlawed free political speech in America.

As soon as the Federalist Party gained power it outlawed free speech, in clear violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The spark that ignited this totalitarian impulse was an editorial by the grandson of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin Bache, editor of the Philadelphia Aurora newspaper. Bache was a follower of Jefferson and his Democratic-Republican Party, and was outspokenly opposed to the Federalist program of protectionist tariffs, central banking, corporate welfare, high taxes, and a large public debt. In an editorial he called John Adams “old, querulous, bald, blind, crippled, toothless Adams.” Federalists responded in kind. Noah Webster called the Democratic-Republicans “the refuse, the sweepings of the most depraved part of mankind . . .”

Abigail Adams is said to have gone berserk over Bache’s characterization of her husband, and she and the Federalist newspapers began calling for Bache’s punishment. The result was the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Sedition Act was enacted on July 14, 1798, and made it a crime to publish “false, scandalous, and malicious writing against the government or its officials.” Of course, the government itself would solely decide what constituted improper and illegal speech, as was the case in the Soviet Union and all other totalitarian states during the twentieth century. The law was written so as to expire on the day that John Adams left office so that it would only be used against Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party.

Many of Jefferson’s followers resented the ostentatious displays of king-like grandeur that the Adams’s were known for. For example, according to the Wikipedia entry on the Alien and Sedition Acts, in July of 1798 President John Adams and his wife Abigail were making their way back home to Braintree, Massachusetts in elaborate carriages as part of a parade, with canons firing to celebrate their entry into every city and town along the way. A man named Luther Baldwin was sitting in a pub in Newark, New Jersey where, upon hearing the canon fire, said “There goes the president and they are firing at his arse.” He also said that he didn’t care if “they fired through his arse.” For this he was sent to prison and assessed fines and court costs.

In November of 1798, a man named David Brown put up a liberty pole in Dedham, Massachusetts with the words, “No Stamp Act, No Sedition Act, No Alien Bills, No Land Tax [referring to Hamilton’s national property tax], Downfall to the Tyrants of America; Peace and Retirement to the President; Long Live the Vice President [Jefferson].” For this he was fined and sentenced to eighteen months in prison.

Several dozen newspaper writers who were supporters of Jefferson were arrested under the Sedition Act for criticizing the government. In addition, Federalist party mobs often attacked newspapers and newspaper editors who were sympathetic to the Democratic-Republican Party or who criticized John Adams. Federalist Roger Griswold, a congressman from Connecticut, attacked fellow Congressman Mathew Lyon of Vermont by beating him with a hickory cane on the floor of the House of Representatives after Lyon criticized the Federalists as being “in opposition to the interests and opinions of nine-tenths of their constituents.”

After Lyons wrote a newspaper article suggesting that Adams had “an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice,” the Adams administration convened a grand jury and indicted Lyons. After walking the Revolutionary War veteran through the town of Vergennes, Vermont in shackles, he was imprisoned. He ran for reelection from prison and won handily.

All of this is what motivated Thomas Jefferson to author the Kentucky Resolve of 1798, accompanied by Madison’s Virginia Resolve, which was almost identical (See William J. Watkins, Jr., Reclaiming the American Revolution: The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and Their Legacy). Section One of Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolve reads as follows:

Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principles of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution For the United States and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, delegated to that Government certain definite powers, reserving each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self Government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force . . . . That the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common Judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well as of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.

Madison’s Virginia Resolve, in turn, declared that “in case of deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact [i.e., the Constitution], the States who are parties thereto, have the right and are duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.”

With Jefferson’s election as president, the Sedition Act ended at midnight on March 3, 1801, the moment Jefferson became president. Upon assuming the office, Jefferson ended all ongoing prosecutions and pardoned those who had been convicted under the Sedition Act.

South Carolina’s nullification of the Tariff of Abominations in 1832 was not even the second example of the principle of nullification being implemented. Far from it. After President Jefferson enacted a trade embargo in response to British theft of American ships and the kidnapping of American sailors, New England legislatures nullified the embargo act by quoting Jefferson himself. For example, on February 5, 1809, the Massachusetts legislature declared that the embargo was “not legally binding on the citizens of the state” and denounced the law as “unjust, oppressive, and unconstitutional” (See James J. Kilpatrick, The Sovereign States). All of the New England states (where the shipping industry was concentrated), plus Delaware, officially nullified the embargo act.

When the War of 1812 broke out (also the work of Henry Clay as much as anyone), the New England Federalists essentially seceded from the union by not participating in the war. Their political vehicle was nullification. As stated by the Connecticut state assembly:

[I]t must not be forgotten that the state of Connecticut is a FREE SOVEREIGN and INDEPENDENT State; that the United States are a confederated and not a consolidated Republic. The Governor of this State is under a high and solemn obligation, ‘to maintain the lawful rights and privileges thereof, as a sovereign, free and independent State,’ as he is ‘to support the Constitution of the United States,’ and the obligation to support the latter imposes an additional obligation to support the former. The building cannot stand, if the pillars upon which it rests, are impaired or destroyed.

This statement by the Connecticut state assembly echoed Jefferson’s states’ rights interpretation of the Constitution, as beautifully stated in the Kentucky Resolve. This places modern-day “conservatives” and “neo-conservatives” in a conundrum: They would like to nullify “Obamacare” and much of the other socialistic legislation that is being passed, and the movement in favor of state nullification as the vehicle for doing so is gaining more and more momentum by the day (see the Web site of the Tenth Amendment Center). But to embrace nullification is to associate oneself with the Jeffersonian compact theory of the state that was overthrown at gunpoint by the Lincoln administration, after several generations of nationalist/consolidationist/Yankee politicians failed to do so through the normal, non-violent political process. As Jefferson clearly stated in the Kentucky Resolve, the states are free, independent, and sovereign. They therefore have a right of secession as well as nullification. Jefferson himself wrote frequently in favor of a states’ right of secession. Indeed, the Declaration of Independence was nothing if it was not a declaration of secession from the British Empire.

An easy prediction is that the neocons will in fact advocate nullification as long as the Democrats are in power. But when they reassume power they will revert back to their cornerstone ideology of Lincoln idolatry, centralization, militarization, censorship, spying, torturing, endless warmongering, and denunciation of nullification and all other forms of the American tradition of states’ rights, otherwise known as federalism.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln; Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe and How Capitalism Saved America. His latest book is Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution – And What It Means for America Today.

Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Article brought to you by Tenth Amendment Center.

Why have I decided to invite a state Senator from New Jersey to debate with New York Times best selling author, Thomas E.Woods Jr. on my blogtalkradio show?

Recently I wrote an article which defended states that want to legalize medical marijuana in defiance of unconstitutional federal drug laws. I pointed out the inconsistency of those (mostly Republicans), who denounce what has come to be called “Obamacare” on constitutional grounds, but who also defend the equally unconstitutional “War on Drugs” being carried out by our central government.

When Assemblywoman Alison Littell-McHose along with state Senator Doherty asserted that New Jersey has the authority to nullify “Obamacare” within its borders recently, state Senator Jim Whelan promptly demonstrated that neither of the two major parties has a monopoly on hypocrisy! In a recent statement, Sen. Doherty wrote, “This amendment, if ratified by the voters of this state, will nullify any law that mandates health coverage within New Jersey’s borders…”

Tom Wood's New Book! "Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century"

What did Sen. Whelan have to say about the use of the word “nullify”?  He said, ”While we are all entitled to our own opinions, we are not entitled to our own history…”. Senator Whelan then took it upon himself to give Assemblywoman Alison Littell-McHose a lecture about how federal law always trumps state law and how nullification is a dead issue that has already been decided. Andrew Jackson was the “decider” in that conflict, just in case you were wondering. Sen. Whelan used an extremely condescending tone, I might add. You can hear it yourself at about the 3:04:50 mark here.

What we should all find more than a little ironic is the fact that Senator Whelan sponsored New Jersey senate bill-119, entitled the “New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act”. This act militates against the very doctrine of federal judicial supremacy that Sen. Whelan invoked to supposedly refute Sen. Doherty and Asw. Littell-McHose!

Of course, Sen. Whelan claimed that he is perfectly consistent because the Obama administration has assured us that they won’t enforce the federal laws when it comes to medical marijuana. I guess Sen. Whelan still hasn’t heard the news: the DEA didn’t get the memo. Jeffrey Sweetin, the special agent in charge of the DEA’s Denver office, declared: “It’s still a violation of federal law. It’s not medicine. We’re still going to continue to investigate and arrest people.”

Even if Obama’s promise had not gone up in smoke, however, I fail to see how it would make Sen. Whelan’s pet medical marijuana law conform to what he is pleased to call federal law, which he claims always trumps state law. In fact, coming from a guy who said, “The state doesn’t get to pick and choose which federal laws they’ll follow.”, frankly I’m shocked! I guess he just figures that if Obama unilaterally says it’s not going to be enforced, it’s not a federal law anymore.

I’m not saying that the federal drug laws in question are legitimate, since the Constitution doesn’t grant Congress the authority to pass laws concerning  production, distribution and use of plants or other substances that takes place completely within a state’s borders. I’m just trying to decipher Sen. Whelan’s logic.

The only way I can think to explain Sen. Whelan’s seemingly contradictory positions on medical marijuana and “Obamacare”, is to assume that he is putting either his party or his preferences, or both, above principle. If he would like to come on my internet radio show as a quest and explain it himself, however, I would be grateful.  If he were to accept my invitation, it would also be helpful if he could explain how Thomas Jefferson came back from the dead and led the nullification movement in the 1830’s against John Adams. I urge you to read the statement he issued below, as well as the response that was given by NJ Republicans. Sen. Whelan wrote:

Assemblywoman Alison Littell-McHose along with Sen. Doherty are attempting to “nullify” the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” citing the actions of Virginia and Kentucky, led by Jefferson and Madison, in response to the federal Alien and Sedition Act in the 1830s.

Now, while we are all entitled to our own opinions, we are not entitled to our own history. The historical fact is that the Alien and Sedition Act was a blight on our history and on President John Adam’s otherwise stellar record of contributions to our country. In part, because of the bad law, Adams was a one term president and the Alien and Sedition Act was repealed by the Federal Congress, not nullified by individual states. You see, then as now, we have elections; that’s how we decide things.

Further, the nullification crises of the 1830s was resolved when President Andrew Jackson threatened to send troops into South Carolina. When South Carolina relented, the principle that the Federal law was supreme was even more firmly established.

Of course, the greatest crisis of whether we are a nation of the people, as our Constitution’s preamble states (“We the people”) or a collection of individual free states was the Civil War. The secessionists, state’s rights nullifiers lost. The United States of America won. We are one nation, indivisible, governed by the laws our Congress and President enact.

Here’s the Republican response:

Memo to Senator Whelan:
Earlier today nullification movement leader (at least when it comes to pot smoking) Senator James Whelan sent out an email attempting to again attack Senator Mike Doherty and Assemblywoman Alison Littell McHose by using a distorted reading of history.
In his memo, Whelan claims that Thomas Jefferson “led” the nullification movement in the 1830’s against John Adams. That would have been a neat trick. In fact, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on July 4, 1826.
And once again, Senator Whelan attempts to link the nullification movement with the Confederacy. Even a casual reading of the history of the 19th century would reveal that his party, the Democrat Party, was the political face of the institution of slavery. On the other hand, the anti-slavery Republican Party was formed in response to laws like the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and their earnest attempt to nullify federal law that mandated that slaves who escaped to freedom be returned to their captors.
Instead of lecturing the party of Lincoln, Senator Whelan should focus on cleansing his own party’s use of slave-holding Democrat Presidents in their party fundraisers. In April, the Democrat State Committee held a Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in honor of those two slave-owning Democrat Presidents. When one considers how those men treated their captives, particularly the women they held against their will, we would hope that Senator Whelan would reconsider the use of their names in the future.
Unless he wants to nullify history as well. Seems the Democrat party in NJ isn’t good at much, but they are terrific on revisionist history.
ALSO: Assemblyman Mick Carroll of Morris County pointed out to me that Whelan also got the role of nullification in the Cival War era backwards in that rant. “It was the North, not the South, which was interested in nullification just before the war, specifically with regard to the fugitive slave law,” said Carroll.
Quite right. It was the federal government that insisted free states had to return escaped slaves to their owners. Northern states fought against this law, apparently without Whelan’s approval. If you take him at his word, the feds had every right to force slaves to return to their owners.
I’m sure he didn’t mean that. But the fact is the Civil War did not put an end to nullification, as he argues. It put an end to the federal government’s endorsement of it.

The Original Constitution

I have come to realize lately that the Republican party was, in truth, forged by many who favored nullification and states’ rights. This is not how nullification is usually characterized, however. We are often reminded by people like Sen. Whelan about the supposed failure of nullification when employed by slave states in the 1830′s, but we hear almost nothing about the success of nullification when used by northern abolitionists and Republicans in the years leading up to the War Between the States. This is something all Republicans should be aware of.

However, since Sen. Whelan is a  member of the other major party and apparently claims that the federal government  is the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, I urge him to listen to the father of his party and respect his words. As Carl Schurz (who later became a US Senator), said in a speech he gave in 1859:

The Legislature of Kentucky, on the 10th of November, 1799, adopted resolutions equally strong, clear and unmistakable. They were written by the same hand that wrote the Declaration of Independence, and I request all those who call Thomas Jefferson the father of their party, to respect his words. In those resolutions, the Legislature of Kentucky declares: “That the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode and measure of redress.” — Thus spoke Thomas Jefferson.

I think I’ll side with Thomas Jefferson and Sen. Carl Schurz, rather than Sen. Whelan, on this one.

Let’s hope that both Sen. Whelan and Tom Woods will agree to be guests on my show for an informal debate sometime in the near future. I promise to be completely civil and to give them equal time to make their points, which is more than you can expect from most mainstream media radio programs these days!

Derek J. Sheriff [send him email] is the state chapter coordinator for the Arizona Tenth Amendment Center. His blog and podcast “Principles of ‘98″ can be found at www.PrinciplesOfNinetyEight.Com

Copyright © 2010 by TenthAmendmentCenter.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given

Article brought to you by Tenth Amendment Center.

Down With The King

All branches of the United States federal government have for over a century eroded the liberties and protections that were guaranteed to us by our founding fathers. This constant expansion of authority and usurpation of individual liberties and State sovereignty are directly counter to the principles and intent that the framers established.As administrations from both parties have expanded their reach into every area of our personal lives and decisions, they also have extended their hands into our pockets. The constant expansion requires an ever increasing amount of revenue to fund, but these actions also hold other purposes. Not only do they confiscate the product of our sweat and labor to fund this bloated system, but also to exact control over the citizenry and the States. They use the very funds they take from us to hold over our heads to enact de facto uniform national laws, to redistribute wealth from those who produce to those who do not, to bolster their own selfish desire to retain power and influence, and to exact policies in areas that are explicitly reserved to the States and the People.

After decades of this constant erosion, the People have grown weary, developed a sense of helplessness, become complacent with the status quo as they believe nothing can be done, for it matters little who they elect to represent them, the constant assault on the People continues. The ballot box has become little more than a place to select the lesser of two evils. Those who are selected in this manner then insulate themselves in Washington, alienated from those who consented to their governance, and immune from the will of the very people for whom they were chosen to speak. Those third and fourth parties, the options that many people wish they could choose, are effectively excluded from the conversation and blocked access to the ballot.

Many look to Washington in hope change will take root and blossom from within the Beltway. Hold no such illusions – the power, influence and authority held within the halls of Congress, in the White House and the high Court will never be willingly ceded by those who hold that power. Some believe if only their candidates were elected, if their party were in power, that these things could and would change. However, both parties have shared and dominated that power throughout our nation’s history, and both have seized as much authority and control as they felt necessary, whether through Executive Order, administrative and bureaucratic regulation, fiscal bribery or judicial activism.

No, this change will not come from Washington, it will be forced on Washington, by the People. The mechanism for this change will be the initiation of a Constitutional convention by the People at the State level. The State legislators – our neighbors, friends, family members, who live amongst us, who we can visit face to face – will direct Congress, as prescribed in the Constitution, to call a convention. When that convention passes this amendment proposal back to the States, it once again will be those elected officials in our communities – not in the disconnected and insulated national capital – who will enact the People’s directives.

Such an amendment will have as its primary objective the complete contraction of the federal government, in scope, size, power, authority and fiscal abilities. Secondary (but no less important) objectives that will naturally result include the return of powers reserved to the States and the People; the stimulation of economic growth and power, as individuals and businesses retain more of their wealth, and are restricted less by overburdening regulations; the restoration of the “fifty laboratories” concept, where different ideas and forms of governing can be tried, refined and modified, with those successful States providing a model for those less successful, and where the People can choose to reside in the laboratory that is most agreeable to them; and the return of federal focus to those areas specifically and expressly outlined in the Constitution, and as our founders intended.

This is how the amendment will accomplish these goals:

• repeal the 16th Amendment to the Constitution
• limit the amount of revenue the federal government has access to through a capped flat tax and firm restrictions on sources of income
• require the federal government to balance the budget every year, just as the People must balance their budgets every month, or face repercussions; stop the condemnation of our yet unborn progeny to a life of servitude to bear the weight of incredible financial burden
• require the federal government to fund the areas that are their expressed Constitutional domain, and return the authority and responsibility for all other areas to the States and the People
• restrict the federal governments ability to pass de facto national laws – that otherwise would be unconstitutional – by essentially bribing the States and the People with their own money
• close the interstate commerce clause that has allowed the federal government to claim Constitutional authority for many of their actions

It is time to reframe the discussion, and the expectations of how lasting changes to restore liberty can realistically be accomplished. Our founding fathers tried reason, tried to work within the constraints of an oppressive system, tried to negotiate to get out from under the crushing tyranny of the King of England. Of course, those methods were not successful, so the People forcibly claimed their liberties. Today, the federal government is the King of England, and the People once again are oppressed and living in tyranny. It is time to throw off the chains of bondage, to disobey and disavow the King’s edicts, to forcibly reclaim your freedoms and your inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

D. Brian Carter
Interim National Chairperson
The28thAmendmentProposal.org
03 AUG 2009

Please take some time to visit The28thAmendmentProposal.org and read through the proposed 28th Amendment.  This is a grassroots effort, so we can use all the volunteers we can get.  Whether you would like to simply spread the word to your family and friends, or become more involved and apply for an open position on the Volunteer Opportunities page, we can use your help!

The28thAmendmentProposal.org is also on Facebook.  Click here to become a fan!

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

This video does a great job of driving the point that we need to quit just sitting back and need to unite as one to bring change.  We need to make those that pass bills without reading them and ignore what we the people really want accountable.

The Constitution of the United States of America is accurately written in all points. There is nothing in it that is not there for a reason, that is not written intelligently, that is not precisely presented. So why is it that numerous laws and court rulings have been based upon claims of penumbras (gray areas) existing in our Constitution?

How much easier it would be to hold our government to the true contextual meanings of the contents of our Constitution if our founding fathers had declared a framework for it! Yes, it surely would be if such were still acknowledged. As it turns out, there is a framework to our Constitution; it simply has been ‘overlooked’ for some time.

In the closing paragraph just before the signatures, the US Constitution states, “Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the states present the seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven and of the  independence of the United States of America the twelfth. In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names.”

Notice the prepositional phrase of the…

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