If, say, 35%-to-40% of Americans understood their rights, we would have a “wise and frugal government” and it would not matter who was elected to office, since they would not have the power to interfere in our day-to-day lives.
At Thomas Jefferson’s first inaugural address (1801), he explained the type of government the Founders created for us:
“A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement; and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”
According to Jefferson, “to close the circle of our felicities,” or rather, to pursue happiness, no American would be subject to an income tax; and would not be regulated, licensed, and taxed in their economic endeavors to support themselves, their family, and to acquire property.
Today, because a significant majority of Americans do not understand their rights, “virtually nothing remains untouched by the myriad influences of governmental expenditure, taxation, and regulation, not to mention the government’s direct participation in economic activities.”[1] Most of what the federal and State governments now do is illegitimate, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, “the supreme Law of the Land.” The Constitution has been ignored, where possible, and purposely reinterpreted in favor of government power over individual rights.
“Fearing overweening power, the Framers sought to limit power by strictly authorizing and enumerating it. In their scheme, the Bill of Rights was an afterthought, added to the Constitution some two years later as kind of [a] secondary, fallback defense.”[2]
The Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments of the Constitution. Let’s look at Amendment I:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Contrary to popular opinion, the Founders, particularly Thomas Jefferson, did not call for the separation of church and State. Jefferson merely did not want the State to sponsor a specific religion and support that church with taxpayer funds. Ben Franklin believed that most religion’s moral teachings were similar and ought to be taught in schools.
Freedom of speech does not encompass assault and battery, threatening other individuals, interfering with other people’s ability to travel, to go to work or to school, or to go shopping; and it does not include the destruction of private or public property. These are all crimes that should be prosecuted, and harsh sentences handed out to the perpetrators.
What about freedom of the press? The mainstream media and the social media platforms have been taken over by Democrats and the “Deep State!” In Missouri v. Biden, No. 23-30445 (5th Cir. 2023), the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the State of Missouri, several private individuals, and a news website. High-level officials from the Biden White House, Surgeon General’s office, the CDC, the FBI, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), “coerced” and “actively controlled” the social media platforms’ content moderation decisions. This government coercion infringed on the Plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear this case. Will they do the right thing and side with the Fifth Circuit?
The first amendment is directed at Congress and Government, not at private businesses. Therefore, you cannot use the first amendment to protest private businesses and interfere with their customers and employees.
Notice also that Congress cannot make any law restricting the right of the people to peaceably assemble. The Democratic members of Congress went along with “the mostly peaceful protests” in the summer of 2020 when many of our major cities were looted and burned, resulting in the destruction of both public and private property. Vice President Kamala Harris, along with many Democrats, encouraged the rioters and looters. Harris and other Democrats even supported a fund to bailout the perpetrators!
The ability to “peaceably assemble” is only authorized against the Government, NOT against private businesses, i.e., assemble peaceably in front of Court Houses, Police Stations, Congress, State legislative offices, and DO NOT interfere with other people’s rights!
As Thomas Jefferson explained, rightful liberty is “unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.”
Amendment II states:
“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.”
Jefferson stated: “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms” and “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” Common sense would tend to suggest that the Founders expected the people to keep the government in check by using their weapons against the government when it exceeded its authority, trampling on the rights of the individual. This is exactly what they did in 1776 against the British government. So, under this scenario, do you really believe that the Founders would have required background checks, concealed carry permits, and restrictions on the type of weapons and ammunition available for patriotic Americans, who are willing to defend the First Amendment rights of citizens against a tyrannical government? As Jefferson wrote, “Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans and must be that of every free state.” He continued, “I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”
George Washington stated, “A free people ought . . . to be armed.” George Mason asserted in a debate, “. . . to disarm the people—that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.” And, as John Adams explained, “Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society [i.e., the Constitution], and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would.”
Therefore, self-defense and the right to keep and bear arms are inalienable rights that precede the State; and these rights cannot be surrendered to any legitimate government.
Several so-called Constitutional Scholars have purposely tried to misinterpret that “peculiar preamble”—including most recently Congressman Jamie Raskin— “A well regulated Militia” today is represented by the National Guard, which is well regulated by the States and federal governments. The Founders had a very distinctly different interpretation. The “Militia” was the people and “well regulated” just meant that every American should practice with their arms and be able to shoot straight and hit their target. This is just another example of so-called scholars purposely misinterpreting and re-writing the Constitution.
On June 23, 2022, the Supreme Court wrote, “We . . . now hold, consistent with Heller and McDonald, that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.” Unfortunately, buried in the 135-pages of verbiage are details as to how the States and local municipalities may continue to deny the rights of citizens “to keep and bear Arms.” See Chapter IV, Freedom vs. Democracy, available through Amazon.com.
The Supreme Court conveniently ignored four words or the “plain text” i.e., “shall not be infringed!” Not only did they ignore these four words, but the Supreme Court also explained exactly what laws would be acceptable to continue to infringe on “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms.” Accordingly, in places like New York, Chicago, New Jersey, and California, law-abiding citizens will still be prevented from exercising their Second Amendment rights and thereby, their ability to defend themselves, particularly in high-crime areas.
The Second Amendment has become a second-class amendment. As understood by the Founders, the right of self-defense was a natural right, and the purpose of the Second Amendment was for patriots to revolt against a tyrannical government… something that the Supreme Court, along with academia and the political establishment, does not want the average American to understand.
If Americans understood their Second Amendment right, “certain reasonable” and “well-defined restrictions” on “the right to keep and bear Arms” would NOT be palpable, nor would background checks, and concealed carry permits.
For those of you who know very little about weapons, they are just tools. How many people are killed and hurt by automobiles each year? Almost anything, including our hands, head, feet, knees, and legs, can be turned into a weapon. Did you know that the Chicago mobster Al Capone’s weapon of choice was a baseball bat?
People are the problem, not inanimate objects! Dr. John R. Lott, Jr. did a study and published it through the University of Chicago Press in 1998, More Guns Less Crime, Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws. If you are afraid of others around you carrying weapons, I suggest you read Dr. Lott’s book.
Let’s skip the third amendment and go to Amendment IV:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
In Boyd v. U.S., 116 U.S. 616 (1886), the United States Supreme Court discussed the Writs of Assistance issued prior to the American Revolution and referred to Entick v. Carrington “as one of the landmarks of English liberty.” Justice Bradley concluded, “that a compulsory production of a man’s private papers to establish a criminal charge against him, or to forfeit his property, is within the scope of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. . . [And] . . . any forcible and compulsory extortion of a man’s own testimony or of his private papers to be evidence to convict him of crime or to forfeit his goods is within the condemnation of that judgment. In this regard the Fourth and Fifth Amendments run almost into each other.”
A very important point, which has been ignored by subsequent Supreme Court decisions, is this strong relationship between the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. The Fourth Amendment allows a warrant to be issued “upon probable cause” but, if the private papers (e.g., books and records, invoices, cell phone data, etc.) can “be used as evidence to convict [for a] crime or to forfeit . . . [property,]” then a warrant may NOT be properly issued for private papers, if the papers, physical or electronic, would be used as evidence to convict a person of a crime or cause a person to forfeit his or her property.
Therefore, if a warrant is issued for private papers, those papers should NOT be able to be used to convict the owner of those papers for a crime or to take his or her property, since that would violate the right not to be a witness against him or herself under the Fifth Amendment.
At this point you are probably wondering how the U.S. government can legally monitor our internet activity and phone calls; have access to our bank and financial records; require banks and other financial institutions to spy on us and provide suspicious activity reports (SARs) to the IRS; require us to report offshore accounts to FinCEN annually; require us to report beneficial ownership interest in our private companies in the United States to FinCEN beginning January 1, 2024; prepare and file income tax returns annually; and voluntarily submit to IRS Audits that require us to provide ALL of our private papers or books and records, including invoices for every deduction taken on our tax returns.
After all, in 1886 Justice Bradley, in Boyd, struck down a tax law, as unconstitutional, that authorized the compulsory production of private financial papers, like the requirements that now exist under our current income tax laws. Boyd is still good law today. In 2007, when I completed my LL.M thesis, The U.S. Income Tax is Incompatible with a Free Society, Boyd was cited 4,352 times. However, it has purposely been ignored, where possible, or misinterpreted, or distinguished on ridiculous grounds, especially when it comes to the income tax laws and reporting requirements by banks and other financial institutions.
So far we have touched on only a portion of the Fifth Amendment and have not gotten to Amendments VI through X, so I strongly suggest that you acquire The Cato Pocket Constitution, available through Amazon.com or through Cato at The Cato Pocket Constitution | Cato Institute. Make sure you read the Preface. This is priceless information!
Article IV, Section 4 states that “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government. . .” Buried on page 1,296 within Laurence Tribe’s treatise on American Constitutional Law (Third Edition – 2000), where most students would not even see it, is a definition of a republican government:
A Republican Government is one “whose citizens shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of other citizens; where no law shall be made prohibiting the free exercise of religion; where the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; where the right of the people to be secure in their person, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and where no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”
In 1798, Justice Chase, in Calder v. Bull, explained the principles of individual freedom established in the Declaration of Independence and carried forward in the U.S. Constitution:
“The people of the United States erected their constitutions or forms of government, to establish justice, . . . to secure the blessings of liberty, and to protect their persons and property from violence. . . The nature and ends of legislative power will limit the exercise of it. This fundamental principle flows from the very nature of our free republican governments. [There] are acts which the federal, or state legislature cannot do, without exceeding their authority. There are certain vital principles in our free republican governments, which will determine and overrule an apparent and flagrant abuse of legislative power. [An] act of the legislature (for I cannot call it a law), contrary to the great first principles in the social compact, cannot be considered a rightful exercise of legislative authority. [A] law that punishes a citizen for an innocent [action;] a law that destroys or impairs the lawful private contracts of citizens; a law that makes a man a judge in his own cause; or a law that takes property from A and gives it to B; it is against all reason and justice, for a people to entrust a legislature with such powers; and therefore, it cannot be presumed that they have done it. The genius, the nature and the spirit of our state governments amount to a prohibition of such acts of legislation; and the general principles of law and reason forbid them. [To] maintain that our federal, or state legislature possesses such powers, if they had not been expressly restrained, would, in my opinion, be political heresy, altogether inadmissible in our free republican governments.”
Today, the “great first principles” discussed by Justice Chase, have, for all practical purposes, been legislated away, without any directly related change in our Constitution. This legislative destruction of our individual rights has been supported by the Supreme Court, using numerous differing methods of Constitutional interpretation, along with “esoteric hermeneutics,” to reinterpret the Constitution, allowing for greater government power at the expense of individual freedom.
Like all past empires, we are quickly heading towards our own demise, maybe even another Civil War. We have an important election this November. If former President Trump can get re-elected, he will clean house and extend the duration of our empire.
However, if we don’t make significant long-lasting changes, bringing us back to a more limited government, with much less power to impact our day-to-day lives, we will ultimately implode.
Here’s an idea. Read Democracy vs. Freedom, The Supreme Court May Be Our Last Hope, and Our Right to Privacy Hijacked by Government, both available through our website and directly from Amazon.com. Encourage your family, friends, neighbors, and business associates to do the same. After reading, send your copies to the Supreme Court, particularly Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. Justice Thomas believes in natural rights and Justice Gorsuch just wrote a book entitled, A Republic, If You Can Keep It, a quote from Ben Franklin.
By sending these books to the Supreme Court, Americans would be exercising their First Amendment right to peaceably “petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Imagine if Justices Thomas and Gorsuch received tens-of-thousands of copies… they might wake-up and do the right thing before it is too late!
Dum Spiro Spero—While I breathe, I hope.
Slainte mhath,
Robert (Mike) G. Beard Jr., C.P.A., C.G.M.A., J.D., LL.M.
[1] Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan, 1987.
[2] Roger Pilon, Restoring Constitutional Government, CATO Institute, 1995.