NAPOLITANO: The right to shoot tyrants, not deer – Washington Times

NAPOLITANO: The right to shoot tyrants, not deer – Washington Times.

The Second Amendment is the guarantee of freedom

By Andrew P. Napolitano

The right of the people to keep and bear arms is an extension of the natural right to self-defense and a hallmark of personal sovereignty. It is specifically insulated from governmental interference by the Constitution and has historically been the linchpin of resistance to tyranny. Yet the progressives in both political parties stand ready to use the coercive power of the government to interfere with the exercise of that right by law-abiding persons because of the gross abuse of that right by some crazies in our midst.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, he was marrying the nation at its birth to the ancient principles of the natural law that have animated the Judeo-Christian tradition in the West. Those principles have operated as a brake on all governments that recognize them by enunciating the concept of natural rights.

As we have been created in the image and likeness of God the Father, we are perfectly free just as He is. Thus, the natural law teaches that our freedoms are pre-political and come from our humanity and not from the government. As our humanity is ultimately divine in origin, the government, even by majority vote, cannot morally take natural rights away from us. A natural right is an area of individual human behavior — like thought, speech, worship, travel, self-defense, privacy, ownership and use of property, consensual personal intimacy — immune from government interference and for the exercise of which we don’t need the government’s permission.

The essence of humanity is freedom. Government — whether voted in peacefully or thrust upon us by force — is essentially the negation of freedom. Throughout the history of the world, people have achieved freedom when those in power have begrudgingly given it up. From the assassination of Julius Caesar to King John’s forced signing of the Magna Carta, from the English Civil War to the triumph of the allies at the end of World War II, from the fall of communism to the Arab Spring, governments have permitted so-called nobles and everyday folk to exercise more personal freedom as a result of their demands for it and their fighting for it. This constitutes power permitting liberty.

The American experience was the opposite. Here, each human being is sovereign, as the colonists were after the Revolution. Here, the delegation to the government of some sovereignty — the personal dominion over self — by each American permitted the government to have limited power in order to safeguard the liberties we retained. Stated differently, Americans gave up some limited personal freedom to the new government so it could have the authority and resources to protect the freedoms we retained. Individuals are sovereign in America, not the government. This constitutes liberty permitting power.

Yet we did not give up any natural rights; rather, we retained them. It is the choice of every individual whether to give them up. Neither our neighbors nor the government can make those choices for us, because we are all without the moral or legal authority to interfere with anyone else’s natural rights. Since the government derives all of its powers from the consent of the governed, and since we each lack the power to interfere with the natural rights of another, how could the government lawfully have that power? It doesn’t. Were this not so, our rights would not be natural; they would be subject to the government’s whims.

To assure that no government would infringe the natural rights of anyone here, the Founders incorporated Jefferson’s thesis underlying the Declaration into the Constitution and, with respect to self-defense, into the Second Amendment. As recently as two years ago, the Supreme Court recognized this when it held that the right to keep and bear arms in one’s home is a pre-political individual right that only sovereign Americans can surrender and that the government cannot take from us, absent our individual waiver.

There have been practical historical reasons for the near universal historical acceptance of the individual possession of this right. The dictators and monsters of the 20th century — from Stalin to Hitler, from Castro to Pol Pot, from Mao to Assad — have disarmed their people. Only because some of those people resisted the disarming were all eventually enabled to fight the dictators for freedom. Sometimes they lost. Sometimes they won.

The principal reason the colonists won the American Revolution is that they possessed weapons equivalent in power and precision to those of the British government. If the colonists had been limited to crossbows that they had registered with the king’s government in London, while the British troops used gunpowder when they fought us here, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would have been captured and hanged.

We also defeated the king’s soldiers because they didn’t know who among us was armed, because there was no requirement of a permission slip from the government in order to exercise the right to self-defense. (Imagine the howls of protest if permission were required as a precondition to exercising the freedom of speech.) Today, the limitations on the power and precision of the guns we can lawfully own not only violate our natural right to self-defense and our personal sovereignties, they assure that a tyrant can more easily disarm and overcome us.

The historical reality of the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to keep and bear arms is not that it protects the right to shoot deer. It protects the right to shoot tyrants, and it protects the right to shoot at them effectively, with the same instruments they would use upon us. If the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto had had the firepower and ammunition that the Nazis had, some of Poland might have stayed free and more persons would have survived the Holocaust.

Most people in government reject natural rights and personal sovereignty. Most people in government believe that the exercise of everyone’s rights is subject to the will of those in the government. Most people in government believe that they can write any law and regulate any behavior, not subject to the natural law, not subject to the sovereignty of individuals, not cognizant of history’s tyrants, but subject only to what they can get away with.

Did you empower the government to impair the freedom of us all because of the mania and terror of a few?

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. He is author of “It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom” (Thomas Nelson, 2011).

The coming crisis – Tea Party Nation

The coming crisis – Tea Party Nation.

Posted by Judson Phillips

Barack Obama is about to bring a new crisis upon us.    Unfortunately it looks like John Boehner will be the House Speaker, so he will be leading the Republicans, so the crisis will not end well for America.

 What is the new crisis that is coming and what will it mean for America?

 Barack Obama has thrown down the gauntlet on the Debt Ceiling fight.   He has said he will not negotiate with the Republican majority in the House. 

 He just expects the GOP to roll over and do what he wants.

 If John Boehner remains as Speaker that may well happen.

 Obama signaled early on what he wanted with the debt ceiling.  He wants the unlimited authority to incur debt.    He wants to borrow money without any Congressional oversight.

 What he really wants is the power to be a dictator.

 Barack Obama does not like the American system of government.  He doesn’t like our founding fathers either.   Our founding fathers were very wise. They dealt with tyranny in their lifetime.   The fundamental purpose of the way they set up our government was not to be efficient or even to accommodate rapid change. 

 It was to block the accumulation of power by one man.

 Barack Obama wants to change this.

 If you read the Constitution, you see the genius of our founding fathers.  They set up three co-equal branches of government but it was the legislative, not the executive that was set up with the most power.

 Over the last 100 years, we have seen the erosion of this concept as the executive branch has grown in size and usurped more power.

 Barack Obama wants the authority to borrow money without even having to discuss the matter with Congress for two reasons.  Incurring even more debt is a part of his strategy to take America down as a superpower. 

 Obama does not love America.  He hates America.  He looks at America through his Marxist background and sees not the greatest nation in the world.   He does not see the country that has done more good for more people than any other nation.  He sees the evil oppressive power that Marxists always view America as.

 By continuing to borrow money, unabated, he knows sooner or later debt will completely bring down the American economy and possibly the American state.

 There is a deeper battle here as well.

 If Barack Obama and the Party of Treason can beat the Republicans down to the point where they abdicate or at least refuse to fight for their Constitutionally mandated role in controlling the purse, America will no longer have three co-equal branches of government. 

 If Obama wins this next battle, it will fundamentally transform America and our government.   Which is exactly what he said he wanted to do when he ran in 2008.  Obama has spoken several times, almost longingly talking about how he wishes he had dictatorial powers.   Now, here is his chance.

 The legislative branch, instead of being equal to the executive will now become inferior and submissive.   The tyranny of the strong leader that our founding fathers feared will have materialized here in America. 

 Today we need strong leadership.  We need men and women of courage and vision.  We need leaders like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson or James Madison.

 Instead we are stuck with John Boehner.

Guns Save Lives – Wayne Allyn Root – Townhall.com

Guns Save Lives – Wayne Allyn Root – Townhall.com.

Why do liberal politicians and the biased liberal mainstream media (meaning pretty much all media in America but FNC) always come to the wrong conclusion, and usually come up with the wrong solution, in response to every crisis? As an example, we don’t have a “fiscal cliff” crisis because of a tax problem in America. What we have is a spending problem- Obama is the biggest spender of any politician in world history.

The same story holds true with the gun control issue spurred by the tragic Newtown school shooting. The liberal politicians and media are using Rahm Emanuel’s famous saying, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” They are trying to turn a terrible tragedy into a gun problem. Their solution is to try to demonize and ban guns. But the Newtown tragedy wasn’t a gun problem, it was a mental illness problem.

Thank goodness the American public has more common sense than the politicians and media big shots. The latest Rasmussen poll is out following the Newtown tragedy. While 27% think stricter gun control laws are the solution, and 15% want limits on violent movies and video games, a dominant 48% believe the answer is more action to treat mental health issues.

It is obvious that many Americans feel in their gut what the statistics I’m about to share with you prove– that guns do much more than kill (in the wrong hands). More often than not, they save lives and prevent violence.

Here are a few proven facts that are too often missing from the gun debate (Thanks to Gun Owners of America and ZeroHedge.com for these statistics):

Based on a 2000 study, Americans use guns to defend themselves from crime and violence 989,883 times annually. Banning guns would leave about 1,000,000 Americans defenseless from criminals who have no problem acquiring guns illegally.

A nationwide survey of almost 5000 households found that over a five-year period 3.5% of households had a member who used a gun to protect themselves, their family, or their property. This also adds up to about the same 1,000,000 incidents annually.

The Clinton Justice Department identified 1.5 million cases per year of citizens using guns to defend themselves.

Another survey found that Americans use guns to frighten intruders away from a home break-in about 500,000 times annually.

Armed citizens shoot criminals more than twice as often as police each year (1527 to 606).

Each year about 200,000 women use a gun to defend themselves from a sexual crime or abuse.

The Carter Justice Department found that of more than 32,000 attempted rapes, 32% were actually committed. But when a woman was armed with a gun or knife, only 3% of the attempted rapes were actually successful.

Now that we’ve polled the citizens, how about we see what the felons have to say:

A survey of male felons in 11 state prisons across the USA found that 34% had been scared off, wounded or captured by an armed victim of their crime.

40% of felons made a decision not to commit a crime because they feared the potential victim had a gun.

69% of felons knew other fellow criminals who had been scared off or captured by an armed victim.

57% of felons polled agreed that “criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police.”

Statistical comparisons with other countries show that burglars in the United States are far less apt to enter an occupied home than their foreign counterparts who live in countries where fewer civilians own firearms.

These facts (and many more too voluminous to show here) prove that guns- in the right hands- defend citizens, families and children. In short, guns save lives.

But for me, it’s always been a personal and emotional argument, even more than a factual one. I’m a proud Jewish American. Over six million of my fellow Jews were enslaved, starved, tortured, and then slaughtered by Adolph Hitler. Before it could happen, in 1938, Hitler banned gun ownership for Jews.

That act on November 11, 1938 (one day after the infamous Kristallnacht) was the beginning of the end for Germany’s Jews. Millions of Jews were left defenseless from that day forward. Just like the criminals in the studies above, who were far less likely to break into a home or attack a victim, if they feared the victim was armed, Hitler only started his murderous genocide after first ensuring his victims were disarmed, defenseless, and helpless.

Will a conservative NRA (National Rifle Association) and JPFO (Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership) member like me support reasonable gun control? Of course. Should we ensure that mentally ill people cannot purchase guns? Of course. Should we enforce current gun laws? Of course.Should we do more to ensure that all gun owners are licensed, trained, responsible and mentally competent? Of course. Should we take lessons from Israel’s gun laws that require strict mental evaluation and examinations, as well as rigorous training? Absolutely.

But should we move to ban guns, thereby leaving the law-abiding citizens defenseless and helpless? Never. Not in America.

Should government and law enforcement be the only ones legally able to carry guns? Never. Not in America.

Should government be allowed to take away guns from honest, law-abiding homeowners, business owners, and citizens like me? Only when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.

Thomas Jefferson put it best:

“When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”

Related articles

• What happens when they take your Guns away…….. A short History Lesson (twighlightslastgleaming.wordpress.com)
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The Proper Role of Government? They Don’t Have a Clue! – Tea Party Nation

The Proper Role of Government? They Don’t Have a Clue! – Tea Party Nation.

Posted by KrisAnne Hall

What is the proper role of Government? We have witnessed the perspectives of those in government, we have heard the answers in recent presidential debates, but what did those who DESIGNED it envision? Wouldn’t you like to KNOW what government is supposed to be doing? The interesting thing is, we don’t have to guess, we don’t have to make it up, we simply need to look to the framers of our Constitution. It is almost simplistically elegant the way they described the role of the Senate and the House. Yet, even the simplest of explanations seem to have eluded the entire government machine. As the employers of our government, it is essential that we know what government is supposed to be doing and require them to fully accomplish their job description.

What follows is a brief and simple primer about the structure of our Republic according to our founders. James Madison said that the powers delegated to the federal government are few and defined. He lists them as war, peace negotiations, and foreign commerce. He explains that the general welfare clause does not grant the government the power to do generally whatever they want; it simply describes the purpose in delegating those few powers he listed. In other words our founders believed in and intended limited government, very limited.

“I, sir, have always conceived—I believe those who proposed the Constitution conceived—it is still more fully known and more material to observe, that those who rarified the Constitution conceived—that is is not an indefinite government…but a limited Government. The Powers delegated to the federal government are few and defined…war, peace negotiations, and foreign commerce.” James Madison

By the same token, Congress was to have a limited and strictly defined role as well. Congress was not established to “become” the federal government but to control it on behalf of the people. That is the reason they hold the most influence and control through the checks and balances established through powers of impeachment and congressional oversight.

In the American Constitution The general authority will be derived entirely from the subordinate authorities. The Senate will represent the States in their political capacity; the other House will represent the people of the States in their individual capac[it]y. ~James Madison to Thomas Jefferson 24 Oct. 1787

First, the Senate was established to represent the states in the federal government. That is why each state is allotted the same number of Senators, to ensure equal representation and therefore equal control for all states. The Senate’s primary job description was to protect the states from federal encroachment and ensure each state’s sovereignty. “Defenders of the 10^th Amendment” would be a good description for the job our founders intended them to perform.

President bears no resemblance to a king, so we shall see the Senate have no similitude to nobles. First then not being hereditary, their collective knowledge, wisdom and virtue are not precarious, for by these qualities alone are they to obtain their offices; and they will have none of the peculiar follies and vices of those men who possess power merely because their fathers held it before them, for they will be educated (under equal advantages and with equal prospects) among and on a footing with the other sons of a free people.~Tench Coxe– An American Citizen: An Examination of the Constitution of the United States II September 28, 1788

The House was designed to be the representatives of the people. That is why there are more house members than senators, to better reflect the population of people in each state. The House’s primary job description was to be the guardians of Liberty, so the people can maintain the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. “Defenders of the 9^th Amendment”would be a good description for the job our founders intended them to perform.

Each member of this truly popular assembly will be chosen by about six thousand electors, by the poor as well as the rich. No decayed and venal borough will have an unjust share in their determinations. No old Sarum will send thither a Representative by the voice of a single elector. As we shall have no royal ministries to purchase votes, so we shall have no votes for sale. For the suffrages of six thousand enlightened and independent freemen are above all price.~ Tench Coxe- An American Citizen: An Examination of the Constitution of the United States III September 29, 1788

But here we are today with a Senate that looks more like a protector of the federal government than a defender of the states and a House that feels it’s primary role is to “protect” national security instead of the rights and Liberty of the people. Placing security over liberty seems to be a common affliction of our Congress. Remember Patrick Henry made it perfectly clear that without Liberty life was not even worth living. Benjamin Franklin rightfully declared that if security was placed above Liberty, we would lose them both.

Our framers made it clear that if the federal government was not following their constitutional duties or abiding by the limitations established, their actions (their laws) were null and void.

If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution… But it will not follow…that acts of the large society which are NOT PURSUANT to its constitutional powers, but which are invasions of the residuary authorities of the smaller societies, will become the supreme law of the land. These will be merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such. Hence we perceive that the clause which declares the supremacy of the laws of the Union, like the one we have just before considered, only declares a truth, which flows immediately and necessarily from the institution of a federal government. It will not, I presume, have escaped observation, that it EXPRESSLY confines this supremacy to laws made PURSUANT TO THE CONSTITUTION.~ Federalist Paper #33

This is the fundamental principle of state nullification. If Congress understood their proper role they would KNOW that when the federal government creates unjust and unconstitutional law, it is their job to protect the people from it and declare the sovereignty of the people over the powers delegated to the federal government. If they really understood their oath to the Constitution and what their obligations were, THEY would be nullifying Obamacare, UN Treaties, and the myriad of unconstitutional executive orders spewed out by this current administration.

Of course there are those who would assert that the Supreme Court has “declared” state nullification invalid. The problem with that assertion is that the Supreme Court is NOT the supreme law of the land. The Supreme Court is one third of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (the division of government with the least power, by the way), a Federal government created by the people. Allowing SCOTUS to determine the degree of sovereignty each state has over the federal government is the ultimate expression of a conflict of interest. Let us remember that the Federal government, which includes the SCOTUS is a creature of the people. Would you allow the defendant in a criminal case to decide HIS own guilt or innocence? Of course not! But allowing the Supreme Court to determine how the Federal Government (of which it is a part) is operating with respect to State’s rights is to have to have the offender declaring his own innocence. Is the Supreme Court capable of making the proper ruling? I’m sure they are, but they are equally capable of making the improper ruling and such would be the destruction of liberty by declaring the 9^th and 10^th Amendments irrelevant.

Alexander Hamilton declared in Federalist paper #33 that when the government steps outside its constitutional bounds, it is incumbent upon the people to redress the injury done to the Constitution.

The current lack of understanding of the proper relationship between the States and its Federal Government as well as the neglect of the proper roles of our Congressional employees is leading directly to the destruction of our Constitution. And as Daniel Webster warned, we as a nation have an obligation to hold onto this great Constitution, or suffer consequences of our neglect.

Is our Constitution worth preserving?Guard it as you would guard the seat of your life, guard it not only against the open blows of violence, but also against that spirit of change…Miracles do not cluster. That which has happened but once in six thousand years, cannot be expected to happen often. Such a government, once destroyed, would have a void to be filled, perhaps for centuries, with evolution and tumult, riot and despotism.~ An Anniversary Address by Daniel Webster July 4^th 1806

NAPOLITANO: Bad days for freedom – Washington Times

NAPOLITANO: Bad days for freedom – Washington Times.

Government is free to violate our civil rights at will

By Andrew P. Napolitano

Presently in America, nearly half of all households receive either a salary or substantial benefits from the government. Presently in America, nearly half of all adults pay no federal income taxes. Presently in America, the half that pay no income taxes receive the bulk of their income courtesy of the government, but ultimately from the half that do. This money is extracted involuntarily from the paying half by a permanent bureaucracy that extracts and gives away more each year no matter who is running the government. The recipients of these transfer payments rely upon them for subsistence, so they have a vested financial interest in sending to Washington those who will continue to take your money and give it to them.

It is no wonder that we are now saddled with the micromanagement of health care by the same bureaucratic mindset that mismanages the U.S. Postal Service and everything else the federal government runs. It should not be surprising to know that presently in America, half of the people actually want the government to take care of their needs. The same was the case under communist regimes, but here those folks vote.

Hence, we have laws that force us to be charitable to those whom the government designates as worthy of our charity, that limit the amount of salt that restaurants can put into our food, that permit the government to watch us on street corners and subways and in the lobbies of buildings, that let the president fight wars of opportunity, that permit the Federal Reserve to print money with no value and inflate prices and destroy savings, that allow the government to listen to us on our cellphones and use those phones to follow us wherever we go, and, according to CIA Director David Petraeus, that let the government anticipate our movements inside our homes.

As of the last week in June, the government has a vast new power that was brought to us by the Supreme Court’s latest attack on personal freedom. Congress can now lawfully command any behavior of individuals that it pleases – whether or not the subject of the behavior is a power granted to Congress by the Constitution – and it may punish noncompliance with that command, so long as the punishment is calleda tax.

Justice Antonin Scalia’s whimsical query during the Supreme Court oral argument on the health care law about whether Congress could make him eat broccoli suddenly isn’t as funny as it was when he asked it, because the answer is: It can fine him for not eating broccoli, so long as it calls that fine a tax.

Quick: If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? Answer: Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make a tail a leg.

How did we get here?

We got here because voters and the government we elected, and even the courts the popular branches appointed and confirmed, have lost sight of first principles. When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are a part of our humanity, and when we fought and won the Revolution under that premise, and when the first Congress enacted that language as the first federal law, this became the irrevocable recognition of the natural law as the basis for our personal freedom and limited government. Since our rights come from our humanity, they don’t come from the government.

But you would never know that from looking at the government. In New York City, where I work at Fox News Channel, we are all embroiled in two disputes this summer over the constitutional role of the government in our lives. The mayor, a self-made billionaire who likes donuts and has bodyguards but wants to tell others how to live in private and in public, is trying to ban soda pop in containers larger than 16 ounces and wants the police to be able to stop and frisk anyone on a whim – and all in the name of health and safety. He is actually banning freedom.

Imagine Jefferson being told what to eat or stopped and frisked on a whim. And then imagine the Supreme Court telling him that he must pay a tax if he fails to comport his personal, private behavior as Congress – which doesn’t believe in privacy or personal freedom – commands.

Here is how you can tell that these are bad days for freedom: Does the government need your permission to violate your rights, or do you need the government’s permission to exercise them? The answer is painfully obvious.

Presently in America, what are we going to do about it?

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. He is the author of “It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom” (Thomas Nelson, 2011).

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NAPOLITANO: Big Brother’s all-seeing eye – Washington Times

NAPOLITANO: Big Brother’s all-seeing eye – Washington Times.

Use of military surveillance drones overhead would be un-American

By Andrew P. Napolitano – Washington Times

For the past few weeks, I have been writing in this column about the government’s use of drones and challenging their constitutionality on Fox News Channel, where I work. I once asked on air what Thomas Jefferson would have done if – had they existed at the time – King George III had sent drones to peer inside the bedroom windows of Monticello. I suspect Jefferson and his household would have trained their muskets on the drones and taken them down. I offer this historical anachronism as a hypothetical only, not as someone who is urging the use of violence against the government.

Nevertheless, what Jeffersonians are among us today? When drones take pictures of us on our private property and in our homes and the government uses the photos as it wishes, what will we do about it? Jefferson understood that when the government assaults our privacy and dignity, it is the moral equivalent of violence against us. Folks who hear about this, who either laugh or groan, cannot find it humorous or boring that their every move will be monitored and photographed by the government.

Don’t believe me that this is coming? The photos that the drones will take may be retained and used or even distributed to others in the government so long as the “recipient is reasonably perceived to have a specific, lawful governmental function” in requiring them. And for the first time since the Civil War, the federal government will deploy military personnel insidetheUnitedStates and publicly acknowledge that it is deploying them “to collect information about U.S. persons.”

It gets worse. If the military personnel see something of interest from a drone, they may apply to a military judge or “military commander” for permission to conduct a physical search of the private property that intrigues them. Any “incidentally acquired information” can be retained or turned over to local law enforcement. What’s next? Prosecutions before military tribunals in the United States?

The quoted phrases above are extracted from a now-public 30-page memorandum issued by President Obama’s secretary of the Air Force on April 23. The purpose of the memorandum is stated as “balancing … obtaining intelligence information … and protecting individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.” Note the primacy of intelligence-gathering over protection of freedom, and note the peculiar use of the word “balancing.”

When liberty and safety clash, do we really expect the government to balance those values? Of course not. The government cannot be trusted to restrain itself in the face of individual choices to pursue happiness. That’s why we have a Constitution and a life-tenured judiciary: to protect the minority from the liberty-stealing impulses of the majority. And that’s why the Air Force memo has its priorities reversed – intelligence-gathering first, protecting freedom second – and the mechanism of reconciling the two – balancing them – constitutionally incorrect.

Everyone who works for the government swears to uphold the Constitution. It was written to define and restrain the government. According to the Declaration of Independence, the government’s powers come from the consent of the governed. The government in America was not created by a powerful king reluctantly granting liberty to his subjects. It was created by free people willingly granting limited power to their government – and retaining that which they did not delegate.

The Declaration also defines our liberties as coming from our Creator, as integral to our humanity and inseparable from us, unless we give them up by violating someone else’s liberties. Hence, the Jeffersonian and constitutional beef with the word “balancing” when it comes to government power versus individual liberty.

The Judeo-Christian and constitutionally mandated relationship between government power and individual liberty is not balance. It is bias – a bias in favor of liberty. All presumptions should favor the natural rights of individuals, not the delegated and seized powers of the government. Individual liberty, not government power, is the default position because persons are immortal and created in God’s image, and governments are temporary and based on force.

Hence my outrage at the coming use of drones – some as small as golf balls – to watch us, listen to us and record us. Did you consent to the government having that power? Did you consent to the American military spying on Americans in America? I don’t know a single person who has, but I know only a few who are complaining.

If we remain silent when our popularly elected government violates the laws it has sworn to uphold and steals the freedoms we elected it to protect, we will have only ourselves to blame when Big Brother is everywhere. Somehow, I doubt my father’s generation fought the Nazis in World War II only to permit a totalitarian government to flourish here.

Is President Obama prepared to defend this? Is Mitt Romney prepared to challenge it? Are you prepared for its consequences?

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. He is author of “It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom” (Thomas Nelson, 2011).

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The Government as Lawbreaker, Again – Judge Andrew Napolitano – Townhall Conservative

The Government as Lawbreaker, Again – Judge Andrew Napolitano – Townhall Conservative.

Can Congress make legal something that is inherently wrong, and can Congress take a freedom that is a part of our humanity and make its exercise criminal?

If there were no First Amendment, would we still have the freedom of speech? The answer, like many in the law, depends on what values underlie the legal system. If the government is the source of our rights, then without the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech, any government could legally punish you for saying words and expressing thoughts it hated or feared; and it could even silence you before you spoke.

On the other hand, if our rights come from our humanity and our humanity is a gift from God, then we would still enjoy the freedom of speech, whether it is insulated from government interference by the First Amendment or not. The wording of the First Amendment itself gives us a peek at what its authors thought. They wrote: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” It doesn’t say that Congress shall grant freedom of speech; rather, it prohibits Congress from interfering with it. And by referring to free speech as the freedom of speech, the drafters recognized that the freedom of speech already existed before the country that they were founding even came to be.

The same founders who drafted the First Amendment also accepted Thomas Jefferson’s values articulated in the Declaration of Independence that we are endowed by our “Creator with certain inalienable rights, (and) that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It is clear beyond serious dispute from just scratching the surface of history that wedded to this country at its birth is the Judeo-Christian concept of the natural law. The natural law is the self-evident truth that our rights come from our humanity; that we have them by virtue of our mortal existence; that they do not depend upon government for their existence; that they do not vary as a consequence of where we are now or where our mothers were when we were born; and thus we remain fully endowed of these rights so long as we live, wherever we go. If you believe that we are the present result not of a supreme being, but of natural selection, you can accept as the founders did that humanity — and not government — is the repository of freedom.

I suspect that most people accept the natural law. We have even seen people in the government claim to accept it. Yet almost as soon as they take the oath to uphold these values, they start rejecting them. In the Patriot Act, for example, Congress made it a crime to reveal that the feds came calling on you with a search warrant in which a federal agent authorized himself to search records that you might have. This, of course, not only violates the Fourth Amendment, which stipulates that only judges may authorize searches, but it also violates the First Amendment because it punishes speech.

This week, Congress is wrestling with more proposals that violate the natural law. One of our fundamental natural rights is the right to be free from government restraint, absent a proven case of criminal behavior. This, too, was articulated by the framers when they wrote in the Fifth Amendment: “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” This recognizes the right to be free from restraint by the government, unless the government, utilizing due process, can make a case against you. That means a fair trial in your presence, with lawyers defending you and jurors deciding your case under the guidance of a neutral judge.

Yet, your representatives in Congress are about to authorize the president to violate your natural rights by enacting legislation that would permit him to use the military to arrest Americans and restrain them without due process. Even King George III, against whose armies the colonists fought for freedom, did not have the power to do that. And, just because Congress votes to make these acts of tyranny legal does not mean they are constitutional. The Constitution is a higher law than anything Congress can write; and all that Congress writes must conform to it.

Since the Constitution was written to keep the government from violating our natural rights, what can you do when the very government we have hired to protect those rights is violating them? If you live in Iowa or New Hampshire, you can vote for the only Republican candidate running for president who believes that the Constitution means what it says. You know who he is.

Related articles

• Can Congress Steal Your Constitutional Freedoms? – Judge Andrew Napolitano – Townhall Conservative (gds44.wordpress.com)
• Brewer Stands Up for the 10th Amendment by Asking a Federal Judge to Overturn Her State’s Medical Marijuana Law (reason.com)

Is the Second American Revolution Coming? (via Voting American)

To President Obama and all 535 Voting members of the Legislature It is now Official that the Majority of you are Corrupt Morons  The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775. You have had 234 years to get it right and it is broke.  Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 74 years to get it right and it is broke. Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 71 years to get it right and it is broke. War on Poverty started in 19 … Read More

via Voting American