The 221st Anniversary of the Bill of Rights Should Inspire States to Re-Assert Their Sovereignty
(6). That if North Carolina accepts or continues to accept these violations and inappropriate interpretations, and continues to allow all three branches of the federal government to exercise unbridled authority, it would be surrendering its own form of government.
(7). That the people of this state will not submit to undelegated and consequently unlimited powers.
(8). That every state has a right to nullify all assumptions of power by others within their limits, and that without this right, states would be under the dominion and power of anyone who might try to exercise that power.
(9). That the rights and liberties of North Carolina, and its fellow states, must be protected from any dangers by declaring that Congress is limited by the federal Constitution and Bill of Rights.
(10). That any act by the Congress of the United States, Executive Order of the President of the United States, or decision/judicial order by a federal court that assumes a power not delegated by the federal Constitution diminishes the liberty of this State and its citizens and violates the federal contract established by the signing of the Constitution. The State of North Carolina, on behalf of its own sovereignty and the sovereignty of it People, declares that certain reserved state powers will be guarded jealously and aggressively. Acts by the federal government that would be seen as violations of the limited nature of the US Constitution, would be subject to nullification and interposition by the State, and would result in a legitimate breach of the federal compact which ties North Carolina politically to the federal government include, but are not limited to:
(a) establishing martial law or a state of emergency within a state without the consent of the legislature of that state;
(b) requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service other than a draft during a declared war or pursuant to or as an alternative to incarceration after due process of law;
(c) requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service of persons under the age of 18 other than pursuant to or as an alternative to incarceration after due process of law;
(d) surrendering any power delegated or not delegated to any corporation or foreign government;
(e) any act regarding religion, further limitations on freedom of political speech, or further limitations on freedom of the press; or
(f) any act regarding the right to keep and bear arms or further limitations on the right to bear arms, including any restrictions on the type or number of firearms or the amount or type of ammunition any law-abiding citizen may purchase, own, or possess.
(11). That if any act of Congress becomes law or if an Executive Order or judicial decision/judicial order is put into force related to the reservations expressed in this resolution, North Carolina's political bond to the federal government under the federal compact (the signing of the Constitution) would be considered breached and all powers previously delegated to the United States by the federal Constitution would revert to the State and the people, respectively.
(12). That any future government of the United States shall require ratification of three-fourths of the States seeking to form a government and shall not be binding upon any state not seeking to form a government.
(13). That the Secretary of State send a copy of this law to the President of the United States and to each member of the United States Congress in order that they be put on notice of North Carolina's position with respect to the Constitution, the government, and the respective rights and responsibilities of each sovereign.
[This proposed State Sovereignty Bill is of course, a bit long-winded.....]
As we celebrate 221 years with the Bill of Rights to protect our fundamental rights from government oppression, we have reason to 221st anniversary of the Bill of Rights, for there can be no better proof of the wisdom of the Framers than the endurance of the Constitution. We appreciate their brilliance as we witness the oppressive and tyrannical consequences of a government that continually and increasingly abuses the constitutional limits and guarantees that they provided for us.
As we enter into 2013 (our 222nd year with the Bill of Rights), let us realize what the government will force us to do by the end of the year - enroll in a healthcare insurance program or be punished for it. The government is already forcing millions of Americans to submit to repeated, egregious, and humiliating violations of their fourth amendment rights every time they fly on an airplane or visit a federal facility, forcing religious institutions to violate its own religious tenets, detaining Americans for promoting opposition to government policies, shoring up the indefinite detention provisions for American citizens in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and looking for ways to limit our second amendment rights. These policies of the federal government are no less serious than the policies of King George against the colonies.
In August 2012, a 26-year-old former marine and citizen of the state of Virginia, Brandon Raub, wrote the following posts on facebook: "The idea that men can govern themselves is the basis for every just form of government." "The bill of rights is being systematically dismantled." "You elected an aristocracy. They are beholden to special interests. They were brainwashed through the Council on Foreign Relations. Your leaders are planning to merge the United States into a one world banking system. They want to put computer chips in you. These men have evil hearts. They have tricked you into supporting corporate fascism. We gave them the keys to our country. We were not vigilant with our republic.... But there is hope. BUT WE MUST TAKE OUR REPUBLIC BACK." For those words, the government showed up at his home, arrested him, committed him involuntarily to a mental hospital, and planned to detain him indefinitely. The government made the decision to take his rights away. (Luckily, his mother and a sharp lawyer were able to fight the unlawful arrest). This happened in Virginia, the state that gave us Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, Patrick Henry, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and the Virginia Resolutions of 1798. This is the state that gave us such fiery speeches as "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!" This famous speech in 1775 motivated the Virginia Provincial Convention to bear arms against England and then to vote for independence from England. This was a state that would not ratify the Constitution until Madison gave the delegates assurances that he would draft a Bill of Rights and the First US Congress would propose them and then send them to the states.
Fortunately, the world didn't end on December 21st. And so, on this 221st anniversary, let us reflect on what we, as citizens, can do to keep the spirit of the Bill of Rights alive. As I discussed earlier, one option is to demand that our state legislatures re-assert the sovereignty that our Founders acknowledged in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. If power is not carefully shared among the states and the federal government and if the states are not willing to stand up to the federal government, then this most powerful of checks and balances is useless and individual liberty is destined to suffer. We already see it happening before our eyes.
When the federal government takes on functions not permitted to it by the Constitution, in violation of the Tenth Amendment, it is only a matter of time before it will usurp the unenumerated rights of the people, in violation of the Ninth Amendment. When the government can misappropriate the unenumerated rights of the people, it is only a matter of time before it will trample upon their enumerated rights - those most fundamental rights which are explicitly spelled out in the rest of the Bill of Rights.
The Bill of Rights still stands for liberty, even though our government won't.
A few weeks ago, on December 15, Karen Kwiatkowski gave a speech and said: "I believe the Bill of Rights is the natural companion to the Declaration of Independence. May both of these documents inspire us all to seize the day, and live free. May the Bill of Rights guide us in our lives and work, focus our prayers, broaden our dreams, and lead us to end the tyranny, and restore our badly damaged Republic."
Let's hope the government doesn't arrest and detain her for speaking those words. And let's hope that the Bill of Rights, the companion to the Declaration of Independence, continues to inspire us to want to live free.
References:
1791: US Bill of Rights. [With information from James McClellan, Liberty, Order, and Justice: An Introduction to the Constitutional Principles of American Government (3rd ed.); Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000. http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?Itemid=264&id=574&option=com_content&task=view
Edward Drake, "The Men Who Didn't Sign the Constitution." http://books.google.com/books?id=k9BPrepFvZ4C&pg=PA1101&lpg=PA1101&dq=Who+didn't+sign+the+Constitution+in+1787?&source=bl&ots=vcQKEJZ_DU&sig=HW_gI_YRM5PRvasqb9ZFKWuXEGc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=liHQUNCILY-08ASk0YG4Cw&ved=0CG0Q6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=Who%20didn't%20sign%20the%20Constitution%20in%201787%3F&f=false
Stewart Rhodes, "Oath Keepers Bill of Rights Day Message: Prepare to Fight for Bill of Rights," December 15, 2012. Referenced at: http://oathkeepers.org/oath/2012/12/15/11145/
Montana House Joint Resolution No. 26 Affirming States Rights --http://data.opi.mt.gov/bills/2009/billhtml/HJ0026.htm
The Bill of Rights and annotations - http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/billofrights
Patrick Henry's Opening Remarks at the Virginia Ratification Convention, June 4, 1788 - http://www.academicamerican.com/revolution/documents/HenryConst.htm
James Madison's Speech to Congress, June 8, 1789, in which he proposed 20 amendments to the new Constitution - http://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/james-madison-speech-june-8-1789.html
The revision history of Madison's proposed Bill of Rights (amendments):
(a) The amendments as James Madison proposed them on June 8, 1789: http://www.constitution.org/bor/amd_jmad.txt
(b) The proposed amendments consolidated by the House down to 17 in number and then passed on August 24, 1798:
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/rbpe:@field(DOCID+@lit(rbpe21200200))
(c) The Senate product: On September 21, 1789, a House/Senate conference was called, and the differences between the versions of the two houses were worked out. Madison was one of the House managers in the committee. Several points were agreed upon, and the House was informed of the Senate's acceptance of the compromise bill on September 25, 1789, the official date of submission of the Bill of Rights to the states.
http://www.usconstitution.net/first12.html
Ratification of the Constitution by North Carolina, November 21, 1788 - http://www.constitution.org/rc/rat_decl-nc.htm
Federalist Papers No. 45 - http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa45.htm
Federalist Papers No. 58 - http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa58.htm
Ratification of the Constitution by North Carolina, November 21, 1788 - http://www.constitution.org/rc/rat_decl-nc.htm
Jack Balkin, "The Right Strikes Back: A New Legal Challenge for Obamacare," The Atlantic, September 17, 2012. Referenced at: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/09/the-right-strikes-back-a-new-legal-challenge-for-obamacare/262443/
Allah Pundit, "Say, Doesn't the Constitution Require Tax Bills to Originate in the House?", Hot Air, June 28, 2012. Referenced at: http://hotair.com/archives/2012/06/28/say-doesnt-the-constitution-require-tax-bills-to-originate-in-the-house/
Joint Resolution - "To Approve and Affirm Certain Acts of the President of the United States for Suppressing Rebellion and Insurrection" - http://www.archive.org/stream/speechofhonlwpow00powe#page/n5/mode/2up]
Jane Kwiatkowski, "Bill of Rights, RIP?" Lew Rockwell, December 15, 2012. Referenced at: http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski291.html
June 16, 1788 (Virginia Ratification Convention): Patrick Henry Demands and Gets a Bill of Rights," Free Republic, October 17, 2003. Referenced at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1003306/posts
"The 14th Amendment: Equal Protection of the Laws or Tool of Usurpation?," US Congressional Record - House, June 13, 1967; page 15641.
W. Kirk Wood, A Constitutional History: 1776-1833, University Press of America, Maryland (2009).
APPENDIX:
(A) THE BILL OF RIGHTS (with explanation)
The First Amendment: Religious Freedom, and Freedom to Speak, Print, Assemble, and Petition
We hear a good deal nowadays about "a wall of separation" between church and state in America. To some people's surprise, this phrase cannot be found in either the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. Actually, the phrase occurs in a letter from Thomas Jefferson, as a candidate for office, to an assembly of Baptists in Connecticut.
The first clause of the First Amendment reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This clause is followed by guarantees of freedom of speech, of publication, of assembly, and of petitioning. These various aspects of liberty were lumped together in the First Amendment for the sake of convenience; Congress had originally intended to assign "establishment of religion" to a separate amendment because the relationships between state and church are considerably different from the civil liberties of speech, publication, assembly, and petitioning.
The purpose of the "Establishment Clause" was two-fold: (1) to prohibit Congress from imposing a national religion upon the people; and (2) to prohibit Congress (and the Federal government generally) from interfering with existing church-state relations in the several States. Thus the "Establishment Clause" is linked directly to the "Free Exercise Clause." It was designed to promote religious freedom by forbidding Congress to prefer one religious sect over other religious sects. It was also intended, however, to assure each State that its reserved powers included the power to decide for itself, under its own constitution or bill of rights, what kind of relationship it wanted with religious denominations in the State. Hence the importance of the word "respecting": Congress shall make no law "respecting," that is, touching or dealing with, the subject of religious establishment.
In effect, this "Establishment Clause" was a compromise between two eminent members of the first Congress--James Madison and Fisher Ames. Representative Ames, from Massachusetts, was a Federalist. In his own State, and also in Connecticut, there still was an established church--the Congregational Church. By 1787-1791, an "established church" was one which was formally recognized by a State government as the publicly preferred form of religion. Such a church was entitled to certain taxes, called tithes, that were collected from the public by the State. Earlier, several other of Britain's colonies had recognized established churches, but those other establishments had vanished during the Revolution.
Now, if Congress had established a national church--and many countries, in the eighteenth century, had official national churches--probably it would have chosen to establish the Episcopal Church, related to the Church of England. For Episcopalians constituted the most numerous and influential Christian denomination in the United States. Had the Episcopal Church been so established nationally, the Congregational Church would have been disestablished in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Therefore, Fisher Ames and his Massachusetts constituents in 1789 were eager for a constitutional amendment that would not permit Congress to establish any national church or disestablish any State church.
The motive of James Madison for advocating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment was somewhat different. Madison believed that for the Federal government to establish one church--the Episcopal Church, say--would vex the numerous Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Quaker, and other religious denominations. After all, it seemed hard enough to hold the United States together in those first months of the Constitution without stirring up religious controversies. So Madison, who was generally in favor of religious toleration, strongly advocated an Establishment Clause on the ground that it would avert disunity in the Republic.
In short, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment was not intended as a declaration of governmental hostility toward religion, or even of governmental neutrality in the debate between believers and non-believers. It was simply a device for keeping religious passions out of American politics. The phrase "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" was meant to keep the Congress from ever meddling in the disputes among religious bodies or interfering with the mode of worship.
During the nineteenth century, at least, State governments would have been free to establish State churches, had they desired to do so. The Establishment Clause restrained only Congress--not State legislatures. But the States were no more interested in establishing a particular church than was Congress, and the two New England States where Congregationalism was established eventually gave up their establishments--Connecticut in 1818, Massachusetts in 1833.
The remainder of the First Amendment is a guarantee of reasonable freedom of speech, publication, assembly, and petition. A key word in this declaration that the Congress must not abridge these freedoms is the article "the"--abridging the freedom of speech and press. For what the Congress had in mind, in 1789, was the civil freedom to which Americans already were accustomed, and which they had inherited from Britain. In effect, the clause means "that freedom of speech and press which prevails today." In 1789, this meant that Congress was prohibited from engaging in the practice of "prior censorship"--prohibiting a speech or publication without advance approval of an executive official. The courts today give a much broader interpretation to the clause. This does not mean, however, that the First Amendment guarantees any absolute or perfect freedom to shout whatever one wishes, print whatever one likes, assemble in a crowd wherever or whenever it suits a crowd's fancy, or present a petition to Congress or some other public body in a context of violence. Civil liberty as understood in the Constitution is ordered liberty, not license to indulge every impulse and certainly not license to overthrow the Constitution itself.
As one of the more famous of Supreme Court Justices, Oliver Wendell Holmes, put this matter, "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic." Similarly, statutes that prohibit the publication of obscenities, libels, and calls to violence are generally held by the courts to conform to the First Amendment. For example, public assemblies can be forbidden or dispersed by local authorities when crowds threaten to turn into violent mobs. And even public petitions to the legislative or the executive branch of government must be presented in accordance with certain rules, or else they may be lawfully rejected.
The Constitution recognizes no "absolute" rights. A Justice of the Supreme Court observed years ago that "The Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact." Instead, the First Amendment is a reaffirmation of certain long-observed civil freedoms, and it is not a guarantee that citizens will go unpunished however outrageous their words, publications, street conduct, or mode of addressing public officials. The original, and in many ways the most important, purpose of freedom of speech and press is that it affords citizens an opportunity to criticize government--favorably and unfavorably--and to hold public officials accountable for their actions. It thus serves to keep the public informed and encourages the free exchange of ideas.
The Second Amendment: The Right to Bear Arms --
This amendment consists of a single sentence: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Although today we tend to think of the "militia" as the armed forces or national guard, the original meaning of the word was "the armed citizenry." One of the purposes of the Second Amendment was to prevent Congress from disarming the State militias. The phrasing of the Amendment was directly influenced by the American Revolutionary experience. During the initial phases of that conflict, Americans relied on the militia to confront the British regular army. The right of each State to maintain its own militia was thought by the founding generation to be a critical safeguard against "standing armies" and tyrants, both foreign and domestic.
The Second Amendment also affirms an individual's right to keep and bear arms. Since the Amendment limits only Congress, the States are free to regulate the possession and carrying of weapons in accordance with their own constitutions and bills of rights. "The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms," observed Justice Joseph Story of the Supreme Court in his Commentaries on the Constitution (1833), "has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of the republic, since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers, and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them." Thus a disarmed population cannot easily resist or overthrow tyrannical government. The right is not absolute, of course, and the Federal courts have upheld Federal laws that limit the sale, possession, and transportation of certain kinds of weapons, such as machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. To what extent Congress can restrict the right is a matter of considerable uncertainty because the Federal courts have not attempted to define its limits.
The Third Amendment: Quartering Troops --
Forbidding Congress to station soldiers in private houses without the householders' permission in time of peace, or without proper authorization in time of war, was bound up with memories of British soldiers who were quartered in American houses during the War of Independence. It is an indication of a desire, in 1789, to protect civilians from military bullying. This is the least-invoked provision of the Bill of Rights, and the Supreme Court has never had occasion to interpret or apply it.
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