- "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty
when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are
naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment
by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
-- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
US Supreme Court Judge
Source: Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting, Olmstead v. United States,
277 US 479 (1928)
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- You are like me in that one single word is twisted and forged into a new paradigm by those that want to hold power over the people. However let us look at the words:We the people [all of the Americans from the various individual States] of the "UNITED" States [meaning they have agreed to unite the Various States under these conditions] in order to FORM a more perfect Union [dissolving the Confederation] . . . . . . . . .Now under these circumstances the People through their fiduciary [The ratifiers] gave instructions for the Various State to Unite under this new contract that the PEOPLE have given the government to form under and to operate under it's words, statements, clauses, and direct instructions and limits on all levels of government and its branches. The People maintained the final power over both Federal and State governments and it was their responsibly to enforce the Constitution upon the governments.We are now living under a triple usurpation - a trifecta of law breakers, the Executive declaring wars, the Legislatures forcing laws upon the States and the people outside of the Article I section 8 limits, the SCOTUS approving of the wanton destruction of the fabric of the Constitution by using clauses to supersede the direct items they were to apply toward. clearly the courts are outside the Article III limits of the powers of the court but they will not be punished as they have expanded the powers of the other two branches so now we have mutual usurpation. Many of the Founders warned this would occur and instructed the States to protect the people and if necessary for the people to rebel even with force of arms to restore the Constitution.And my friends, I believe we are coming to the end of days of our Republic if the States nullifying is not upheld by SCOTUS. The last attempt at peaceful restoration would be the States and 38 of them revoking the 14th, 16th and 17th amendments while reinforcing the limits on the courts through a new amendment.Thank you for reading this long post.
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- "Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain."WHAT SORT OF DESPOTISM DEMOCRATIC NATIONS HAVE TO FEARAlexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville 1830
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- Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?Tocqueville
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- This all prove to us that nothing is new in the attempts by man to rule man by any means possible since recorded time. I assume that it was that way in the caves. Man is mans only prey for we are the top of all other food chains. There is nothing good in evil men and history has proved that well, there is nothing good in being complacent and weak history has proven that - So. in hard time my friends we must unite under a common goal and push until the goal is crossed and then we must secure that by restoring the original Constitution and the limits of power on governments. They must be kept small and weak for other wise we will just repeat history.Lock John Piatt 2011
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- A brilliant passage describing the essential difference between philosophy of Locke and william Penn:“Locke, like William Penn, was tolerant; both loved freedom, both cherished truth in sincerity. But Locke kindled the torch of liberty at the fires of tradition; Penn at the living light in the soul. Locke sought truth through the senses and the outward world; Penn looked inward to the divine revelations in every mind. Locke compared the soul to a sheet of white paper, just as Hobbes had compared it to a slate on which time and chance might scrawl their experience. To Penn the soul was an organ which of itself instinctively breathes divine harmonies, like those musical instruments which are so curiously and perfectly formed, that when once set in motion, they of themselves give forth all the melodies designed by the artist that made them. To Locke, conscience is nothing else than our own opinion of our own actions; to Penn, it is the image of God and his oracle in the soul. . . . In studying the understanding Locke begins with the sources of knowledge; Penn with an inventory of our intellectual treasures. . . . The system of Locke lends itself to contending factions of the most opposite interests and purposes; the doctrine of Fox and Penn, being but the common creed of humanity, forbids division and insures the highest moral unity. To Locke, happiness is pleasure, and things are good and evil only in reference to pleasure and pain; and to ‘inquire after the highest good is as absurd as to dispute whether the best relish be in apples, plums or nuts.’ Penn esteemed happiness to lie in the subjection of the baser instincts to the instinct of Deity in the breast; good and evil to be eternally and always as unlike as truth and falsehood; and the inquiry after the highest good to involve the purpose of existence. Locke says plainly that, but for rewards and punishments beyond the grave, ‘it is certainly right to eat and drink, and enjoy what we delight in.’ Penn, like Plato and Fenelon, maintained the doctrine so terrible to despots, that God is to be loved for His own sake, and virtue to be practised for its intrinsic loveliness. Locke derives the idea of infinity from the senses, describes it as purely negative, and attributes it to nothing but space, duration and number; Penn derived the idea from the soul, and ascribed it to truth and virtue and God. Locke declares immortality a matter with which reason has nothing to do; and that revealed truth must be sustained by outward signs and visible acts of power; Penn saw truth by its own light and summoned the soul to bear witness to its own glory.”George Bancroft, 1800–1891
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- Interesting comparison no doubt JDRI'm not sure where the 'Locke derives the idea of infinity from the senses, describes it as purely negative'.... comes from - but then I don't claim expertise on the subject.my overall take on the post is Penn had some points I would agree to, maybe leaning more towards those points than Locke's for some individual considerations. But in the context of restoring our founding principles it is Locke's writings and concepts that I believe are more applicable. Especially his political philosphy, that is rooted in Natural Law and by my reading of :The Second Treatise of Civil Government
1690I get the impression that our governmental design has/had his ideas incorporated pretty thoroughly.
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- The Declaration of IndependenceLocke on Government, Book II“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another…”“…the legislative being only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends, there remains still in the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them. For all power given with trust for the attaining an end being limited by that end, whenever that end is manifestly neglected or opposed, the trust must necessarily be forfeited, and the power devolve into the hands of those that gave it, who may place it anew where they shall think best for their safety and security. And thus the community perpetually retains a supreme power of saving themselves from the attempts and designs of anybody, even of their legislators…”“…and to assume among the powers of the earth…”“…And this puts men out of a state of nature into that of a commonwealth, by setting up a judge on earth, with authority to determine all the controversies, and redress the injuries that may happen to any member of the commonwealth”“…the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them…”“…To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature…”“…mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”“…the people, who are more disposed to suffer than right themselves by resistance, are not apt to stir.”“…But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security…”“…But if a long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel what they lie under, and see whither they are going; it is not to be wondered, that they should then rouse themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected…”“We hold these truths to be self-evident...”“…there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection…”“…all men are created equal…”Though I have said… That all men by nature are equal, I cannot be supposed to understand all sorts of equality… all men are… in respect of jurisdiction or dominion one over another; which was the equality I there spoke of… being that equal right, that every man hath, to his natural freedom, without being subjected to the will or authority of any other man.”
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- I have posted some items from the Greeks and now here are some from the Romans.According to the law of nature it is only fair that no one should become richer through damages and injuries suffered by another.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Freedom is a man's natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
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We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other. - Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts (11 October 1798)
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- “May it please your Excellency - We, his majesty's loyal subjects, the representatives of the people of this colony, in congress assembled, beg leave to disclose to your Excellency, the true cause of our present proceedings… It is unnecessary to enumerate the grievances of America; they have been so often represented, that your Excellency cannot be a stranger to them.— Let it, therefore, suffice to say, that the hands of his majesty's ministers, having long lain heavy, now press with intolerable weight. …solely for the preservation and defense of our lives, liberties, and properties, we have been impelled to associate and to take up arms.”“…we only desire the secure enjoyment of our invaluable rights, and we wish for nothing more ardently, than a speedy reconciliation with our mother country, upon constitutional principles.”“Conscious of the justice of our cause, and the integrity of our views, we readily profess our loyal attachment to our sovereign, his crown, and dignity; and, trusting the event to Providence, we prefer death to slavery. These things, we have thought it our duty to declare, that your Excellency, and through you, our august sovereign—our fellow subjects—and the whole world—may clearly understand, that our taking up arms, is the result of dire necessity, and in compliance with the first law of nature [self defense, my emphasis].”By order of the Provincial Congress, at Charles Town, June 20, 1775.They taught us the American Revolution about taxation without representation. It was fought for independence and liberties sake. I’m beginning to think it was none of these. I see it as a case of self defense against a government aiming to achieve complete submission.Does history repeat itself?
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- Troy is there no importance to any principle in the world that is not involved with the evil money lender - I know you were not fairly treated but if you do not use a bank then they have no influence on you at all. Money is neither the root of all evil nor the most important ingredient of happiness.Money is simply a medium of exchange that allows me not to trade for a whole cow when I just want the steaks. It is a very useful item in commerce and that is why it exists in any form. It is the product of the extension of Natural Law for it is just common need and use that allows it to exist.All things have changed nothing remains still for the universe and Natural Law state that movement and change is the normal state.
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