From vancelawutah.com
In many respects, I agree with the views of W. Cleon Skousen as set forth in “The 5000 Year Leap; The 28 Great Ideas that Changed the World” when it comes to the proper nature and scope of the federal government.
If you drop a live frog into a pot of boiling water, the frog will immediately attempt to jump out in order to save its life. However, if you put a live frog into a pot of tepid water, and gradually turn up the heat by small degrees, the frog will sit in the pot even when the water starts boiling, and the frog will die. Our Founding Fathers would be horrified by the magnitude of today’s federal bureaucracy and spending, and similar to a frog being dropped into a pot of boiling water our Founding Fathers would immediately attempt to jump out of the boiling federal bureaucracy and programs. However, the citizens of this nation have been placed in a pot of tepid water, and gradually over time federal bureaucracy and programs have been incrementally added—although at times the increased heat may make us feel uncomfortable, we find it bearable without understanding the ultimate impact it will have in boiling and killing our nation.
The U.S. Constitution plainly spells out the nature and scope of the federal government, with all other powers reserved to the respective states. If the Constitution does not expressly authorize the federal government to take action, the federal government is not authorized to take such action. The 10th Amendment plainly states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the People.”
James Madison plainly set forth the intended division of powers between the federal and state governments in the Federalist Papers, No. 45. “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government are few and defined. . . . The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and the properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.”
Unfortunately, Congress has grossly exceeded the actual power and authority granted to it by the Constitution, and through tortured interpretations and misapplications of the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, and the General Welfare Clause, excessive, unnecessary, and unconstitutional federal bureaucracy and programs have been allowed to proliferate unchecked.
Commerce Clause:
The Commerce Clause is found in Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution, which reads: “The Congress shall have Power . . . To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”
Because each of the states within the union are independent sovereign states, it was necessary to grant the federal government the power to regulate commerce among the several states so that the various individual states would not interfere with inter-state shipments as they had done in the past.
The Founding Fathers never intended that this clause empower the federal government to regulate commercial activities occurring solely within a particular state (such as the education of the citizens of that state, or the production of wheat on a farm located in a single state for personal consumption by the owner of that farm within the state).
Necessary and Proper Clause:
The Necessary and Proper Clause is found in Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 of the Constitution, which reads: “The Congress shall have Power . . . To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”
Accordingly, unlike the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause is not an independent source of power or authority for the federal government, but rather it is only a clarification that Congress can make laws necessary and proper to execute a particular power of the federal government specifically enumerated elsewhere within the Constitution.
General Welfare Clause:
The Preamble to the Constitution makes reference to promotion of “the general Welfare.” However, even the United States Supreme Court has acknowledged: “Although the Preamble indicates the general purposes for which the people ordained and established the Constitution, it has never been regarded as the source of any substantive power conferred on the Government of the Unites States or on any of its Departments.” Jacobsen v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11, 22 (1905).
Whenever the “General Welfare Clause” is relied upon, reference is typically being made to what is more commonly known as the Taxing and Spending Clause found in Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Constitution, which reads: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the Common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”
In his 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, the revered United States Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story concluded that (similar to the Necessary and Proper Clause) the General Welfare Clause is not an independent grant of power, but rather is merely a qualification on the taxing and spending power expressly granted to the federal government in Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 (set forth above). The United States Supreme Court has officially adopted Justice Story’s interpretation as being the correct interpretation of the General Welfare Clause. United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1, 65 (1936).
This interpretation of the General Welfare Clause is consistent with Thomas Jefferson’s explanation that “the laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They [Congress] are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union. In like manner, they are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose.” (Boyd, Julian P., ed. (1950), The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 19. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 285.) Notably, Jefferson was concerned with the “welfare of the Union” in matters such as national defense, not the welfare of individual citizens.
This interpretation of the General Welfare Clause is also consistent with statements made in 1824 by John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court: “Congress is authorized to lay and collect taxes, &c. to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States. . . . Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1, 199 (1824).
Simplify Bills
Within the bills enacted by Congress, the subject matter thereof should be set forth in an orderly and comprehensive manner so that members of Congress know and understand what they are actually enacting. Instead of enacting readable bills, Congress has been enacting incomprehensible books (and members of Congress are being told how to vote without actually understanding the bills on which they are voting).
For example, what is known as “Obamacare” primarily consists of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, along with the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. The actual bills for these two Acts totalled 2,471 pages. Admittedly, bills have wide margins and are double-spaced. However, the printed statutes resulting from these two Acts still total 961 pages. Additionally, the Acts themselves are so vague and ambiguous that they require 1,093 pages of regulations. However, the actual number of pages is misleadingly low—unlike the printed statutes, the regulations are printed in very small print with three columns to a single page. While the statutes themselves consist of 425,116 words, the regulations consist of 1,147,271 words (270% more than the actual statutes), for a total of 1,572,397 words.
For comparison purposes, there are 783,137 words in the King James Bible (less than half of that of Obamacare), and it takes 70 hours to read the Bible out-loud.
How many members of Congress have actually read and truly understand everything in Obamacare (or even a significant portion thereof)?
NATIONAL DEBT
Our ever-increasing national debt is negatively impacting our society, burdening our children, and creating a concern for our national security. We need to make drastic cuts in our national spending, and we need to do so now!
The acknowledged amount of our existing national debt is already frightening, and it only continues to increase each year that federal spending exceeds federal revenue. Often overlooked and not counted in the official national debt figure is the trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities for which Congress has already obligated us to pay, or the trillions of dollars lost from the Federal Reserve as shown by a partial audit.
We need to immediately stop spending more than the federal government takes in each year in revenue, and actually spend significantly less in order to pay-off the current national debt. Such fiscal responsibility can realistically be achieved by implementing the following multi-step approach.
(1) Spend less than we make by drastically reducing and closely monitoring spending in all areas of the budget (no line item of the annual budget is exempt from scrutiny).
(2) Phase out and ultimately eliminate all unconstitutional and unnecessary federal bureaucracy, such as the Department of Education, Obamacare and other federal level welfare programs, etc.
(3) Eliminate all earmarks and multi-subject bills—each bill should only have a single topic, and the only funding approved in such bill should be for that specific bill (with each funding request standing on its own rather than being bootstrapped to another piece of legislation).
(4) Eliminate the Federal Reserve as an entity independent of the federal government, and put it under the direct control of our federal government as a true federal agency regulated and controlled by the federal government instead of a private venture.
(5) Substantially curtail foreign aid, which should be reserved for truly exceptional circumstances instead of being doled out on a regular basis at the expense of our national debt (and our children’s futures).
Spend Less than We Make by Reducing Spending in All Areas of Budget
Our nation is currently on a reckless path of irresponsible spending that would not be permitted by any responsible household or business venture, and should not be tolerated by our federal government. While it will always be necessary for the federal government to raise revenue through taxes, and spend such revenue for the welfare of the United States as a whole, efficiencies should be actively sought out and rewarded.
The simple concept of not spending more than you make has been lost on generations of politicians in Washington who seem to adhere to the fallacy that “I must still have money if I still have checks.” Politicians have completely lost touch with reality and are ignoring the consequences of spending more money than they have available to spend; and it is the everyday citizens, and in particular our children, who will have to pay the consequences of such reckless spending.
In light of our already staggering national debt, reducing the amount of each current yearly deficit, or even balancing current year budgets, is simply not enough. The federal government has to immediately spend significantly less than it receives in revenue each year in order to have the funds available to pay-down, and eventually pay-off, our existing national debt.
It is indeed possible for Washington to spend less than it makes. Truthfully, some difficult decisions are going to have to be made in order to do so. Politicians have consistently lacked the desire and/or courage to make such tough decisions. However, if we fail to make those tough decisions now, catastrophic consequences for our nation as a whole are inevitable in the very near future.
For purposes of implementing a realistic and meaningful plan to reduce spending, the three major categories of the federal budget must each be analyzed: mandatory spending; discretionary spending; and interest payments.
Mandatory spending is not truly mandatory as politicians would like you to believe, but rather simply consists of spending that automatically continues each year without Congress having to approve it. We can and should make significant cuts in mandatory spending.
Discretionary spending is funding that Congress must re-appropriate each year. Discretionary spending accounts for more than 35% of our annual budget as a country. We can and should make substantial cuts in discretionary spending.
As long as we have a national debt, we have no choice but to pay interest thereon. The only way to reduce, and eventually eliminate, interest payments is to pay-down, and eventually pay-off, our national debt. The billions of dollars in interest alone paid by our country accounts for a substantial portion of each annual deficit. The irony is that we are going further into debt in order to make the interest payments on our national debt, continuing the vicious cycle of destruction.
Phase Out and Ultimately Eliminate All Unconstitutional and Unnecessary Federal Bureaucracy
The U.S. Government Manual, Appendix C, contains ten pages listing the federal agencies appearing in the Code of Federal Regulations. Many of these departments and agencies may have a legitimate purpose. However, the reality is that much of our federal budget has been squandered primarily to build a vast (and largely unnecessary, and at times duplicative) federal bureaucracy.
Not only has Congress created unconstitutional departments, agencies and programs, but Congress has put much of the funding for such matters on auto-pilot under the guise of “mandatory spending” (again, meaning that the funding for such matters is automatically provided for in each year’s annual budget with little or no discussion or review). There is simply no provision in the Constitution that authorizes the federal government to meddle in such things as education, the environment, energy, health care and/or social welfare, which matters should be left to the individual states as mandated by the Constitution. We need to immediately start phasing out, and ultimately eliminate, all social welfare programs at the federal level, and allow the states to handle the welfare of their respective citizens as contemplated by our Founding Fathers in framing the Constitution and expressly setting forth the specific powers of the federal government, reserving all other powers to the states.
Each and every federal department, agency and program must be evaluated to determine:
(1) Is it even constitutionally permitted at the federal level?
(2) Even it constitutionally permitted:
(a) Is it still a good idea to do it at the federal level?
(b) Can it be done more efficiently?
At a bare minimum, the Departments of Education and Energy, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, should be completely eliminated from the federal government, with some components of the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency being absorbed into the Department of Defense to the extent there are matters that affect our national security.
Each and every one of the federal departments, agencies and programs that will continue to be operated on a federal basis should provide a comprehensive accounting for all monies spent in the previous year and justify the funds requested for the upcoming year.
Eliminate all Earmarks and Multi-Subject Bills
Each bill should only have a single topic. It is very common to throw completely unrelated matters into the same bill so that one can piggyback on the other. In this manner, programs and projects that could never be justified on their own slide through as part of the approval of a much more worthy program or project. Each matter must stand or fall on its own merits. Similarly, funding within a bill should relate specifically and solely to the single subject of the bill. Again, each funding request must stand or fall on its own merits.
Eliminate the Federal Reserve as an Entity Independent of the Federal Government
Reigning in the Federal Reserve is an absolute necessity if we are to ever control our burgeoning national debt. Surprisingly, the Federal Reserve is currently not even a true federal department or agency, but rather it is an independent entity that has a dramatic (and often negative) impact on our economy. We need to enact laws that bring the Federal Reserve squarely within the control of Congress, and make the Federal Reserve directly accountable to Congress.
In July 2011, the U.S. Government Accountability Office prepared a report to Congress regarding operations of the Federal Reserve from August 2010 through July 2011 that is available on-line at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11696.pdf.
In that report, the following explanation is given of the Federal Reserve Act, which was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on December 23, 1913.
“The Federal Reserve Act made the Federal Reserve System an independent, decentralized bank . . . . The Federal Reserve System consists of the Federal Reserve Board located in Washington, D.C.; 12 Reserve Banks, which have 24 branches located throughout the nation; and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which is composed of the Board of Governors, as well as five Reserve Bank presidents, serving on a rotating basis. . . . Although the Federal Reserve Board is required to report to Congress on its activities, its decisions do not have to be approved by either the President or Congress. Unlike the Federal Reserve Board, the Reserve Banks are not federal agencies. Each Reserve Bank is a federally chartered corporation with a board of directors. . . . Federal Reserve System revenues contribute to total U.S. revenues, and deductions from System revenues thus represent an indirect cost to U.S. taxpayers.”
In other words, while loosely labelled as a federal agency, the Federal Reserve Board is not accountable to the federal government and acts independently without the need for approval of its decisions and actions by either the President or Congress. The actual 12 Federal Reserve Banks do not even pretend to be federal agencies, but rather act completely independent of the federal government under the direct control of each bank’s own board of directors.
Nevertheless, losses from the Federal Reserve System are passed on to U.S. taxpayers (even though such losses are not currently being included in the current calculations of our national debt, meaning our national debt is substantially larger than even being reported). Independent entities, such as the Federal Reserve Banks, should not be permitted to unilaterally distribute taxpayers’ dollars without the consent or control of the federal government.
Some of the more notable aspects of the partial audit of the Federal Reserve for a single operating year have been summarized on the website for U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont as follows.
“‘As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world,’ said Sanders. ‘This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.’
Among the investigation’s key findings is that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. ‘No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president,’ Sanders said.
The non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress also determined that the Fed lacks a comprehensive system to deal with conflicts of interest, despite the serious potential for abuse. In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans.
For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the New York Fed’s board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. Moreover, JP Morgan Chase served as one of the clearing banks for the Fed’s emergency lending programs.
In another disturbing finding, the GAO said that on Sept. 19, 2008, William Dudley, who is now the New York Fed president, was granted a waiver to let him keep investments in AIG and General Electric at the same time AIG and GE were given bailout funds. One reason the Fed did not make Dudley sell his holdings, according to the audit, was that it might have created the appearance of a conflict of interest.
To Sanders, the conclusion is simple. ‘No one who works for a firm receiving direct financial assistance from the Fed should be allowed to sit on the Fed’s board of directors or be employed by the Fed,’ he said.
The investigation also revealed that the Fed outsourced most of its emergency lending programs to private contractors, many of which also were recipients of extremely low-interest and then-secret loans.
The Fed outsourced virtually all of the operations of their emergency lending programs to private contractors like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. The same firms also received trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near-zero interest rates. Altogether some two-thirds of the contracts that the Fed awarded to manage its emergency lending programs were no-bid contracts. Morgan Stanley was given the largest no-bid contract worth $108.4 million to help manage the Fed bailout of AIG.”
Private bankers should not be permitted to continue lining their own pockets at taxpayers’ expense. Immediate and dramatic changes need to be made to the Federal Reserve system to actually bring it under the control of, and make it truly accountable to, the federal government.
Substantially Curtail Foreign Aid
For many of the same reasons that the federal government should not be involved in social and welfare matters of the citizens of the various states, the federal government should not be involved in bailing out the world at the expense of our own national debt. Nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government authorized to levy taxes for the benefit of foreign interests, but rather Congress is only authorized to levy taxes for the benefit of the United States.
While there may be some truly exceptional circumstances that warrant foreign aid from the federal government, the huge amounts of money that are routinely shipped overseas are far beyond the scope of the proper use of taxpayers’ money by the federal government.
Warnings About Debt From Our Founding Fathers
Our Founding Fathers warned us about going into debt as a nation, but we have simply ignored their sage advice.
“There are two ways to enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.” —John Adams
“Think what you do when you run in debt; you give to another power over your liberty.” —Benjamin Franklin
“No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable.” —George Washington
“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” —Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Taylor, May 28, 1816
“The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.” —Thomas Jefferson
“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.” —Thomas Jefferson
“Allow a government to decline paying its debts and you overthrow all public morality—you unhinge all the principles that preserve the limits of free constitutions. Nothing can more affect national prosperity than a constant and systematic attention to extinguish the present debt and to avoid as much as possibly the incurring of any new debt.” —Alexander Hamilton
“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which, if acted on, would save one half the wars of the world; and justifies I think our present circumspection.” —Thomas Jefferson
“The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys.” —Thomas Jefferson
“To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion [extravagance of expenditures] and servitude.” —Thomas Jefferson
IMMIGRATION
Immigration is an issue that many people try to avoid addressing directly. Oftentimes, people attempt to dance around the issue without really addressing the core issues.
For example, some people claim that anyone who wants to take a hard-line stance against illegal immigration lacks compassion for those people from other countries trying to find a better life for their family, while ignoring the dramatic and negative impact of the flood of illegal immigrants on our country. Others claim we need to secure our borders, but at one end of the spectrum they have unrealistic views of how to do so (such as a modern day Great Wall of China between the United States and Mexico), or at the other end of the spectrum they simply provide lip service to the general idea of securing our borders with no meaningful method to actually do so.
Following is my position on immigration.
(1) Legal immigration should continue, with reforms to put potential immigrants from across the globe on equal footing instead of favouring those in adjacent countries who are willing to illegally cross the border.
(2) We need to build an economic wall along our borders by eliminating government assistance for illegal aliens and their families, promptly prosecuting and deporting illegal aliens, and making sure those who cross our borders illegally go to the back of the line with respect to legal immigration.
(3) We need to make reasonable efforts to secure all of our borders, not just the line between the United States and Mexico, as a matter of national security as well as sound economic policy in protecting our nation’s economy and workforce.
(4) We need to eliminate the policy of automatically extending citizenship to babies who happen to be born in the United States regardless of the citizenship status of their parents or the circumstances under which these babies were actually born in the United States.
Legal Immigration
America is the great melting pot in which people from all corners of the world have come and become productive citizens of the United States. The naturalization process requires immigrants to learn about America, and pledge their allegiance to America. Legally naturalized citizens are likely to become productive members of our society.
Prospective immigrants to the United States from around the globe should all stand on equal footing regardless of the geographic area in which they currently reside.
Build an Economic Wall and Provide Disincentives for Illegal Aliens
Our system is currently completely backwards in its approach to immigration—economic incentives abound for illegal aliens and their families, including welfare assistance, free education, free health care, etc. We need to eliminate all economic benefits for illegal aliens and their families, which in a sense will create an economic wall along our borders.
There should also be a meaningful consequence for illegal border crossings in the context of legal immigration—those who are not willing to play by the rules go to the back of the line for purposes of legal immigration. This will actually create an incentive to pursue legal immigration instead of illegally crossing the border.
Securing Our Borders for Economic Reasons and National Security
Illegal immigration is currently costing Americans in excess of a $100 billion per year, which is a hefty price tag even during prosperous times, and is unconscionable in light of our current national debt. The annual cost to Utah alone of illegal immigration is estimated to be approximately 453 million.
However, the need to secure our borders is more than just an economic issue, but is also a matter of natural security. In this day and age of increasing terrorism, America is more and more susceptible to attacks on its home soil. While securing our borders alone will not in and of itself prevent all terrorist attacks within America, we need make reasonable efforts to secure our borders in an effort to minimize as much as possible the threat of terrorist attacks on American soil.
I believe that the use of U.S. troops on our borders can be a much more effective means of securing our borders than proposed “walls” and other methods, and would be less costly than our current attempts to prevent illegal immigration and the resulting impacts on our economy from illegal immigration.
Eliminating Automatic Citizenship for Babies Born in the United States
Citizenship should not be based solely on fortuitous circumstances with respect to the location of a birth. Birthright citizenship means that any child born in the United States automatically becomes a citizen with no consideration whatsoever of the citizenship status of the parent, or the circumstances under which the child happened to be born in the United States. We should not reward illegal immigration with citizenship for children, and we should not favor illegal immigrants who fortuitously live close enough to our border to enter illegally in order to have a child here while millions of potential immigrants all over the world would do the same if they lived in closer proximity to our borders.
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution has been misinterpreted for over a century. It does not automatically extend the right to citizenship based simply on birth within the United States, but rather it includes the qualification “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” Correctly understood, this means that the children of illegal immigrants, who are not under the jurisdiction of the United States government but rather are here in the United States illegally, should not be granted automatic citizenship for a baby that is fortuitously born in the United States.
Allowing birthright citizenship actually encourages illegal immigrants to pour unchecked into our country. Affording children born in the United States with automatic citizenship provides would-be immigrants a strong incentive to illegally cross the border, even if only for short period within which they give birth to a baby. Such an “anchor baby” with United States citizenship can then be exploited to prevent the authorities from deporting the parents, and to gain access to a variety of government benefits and assistance.
As the only European Union country where birthright citizenship was available, Ireland experienced large numbers of pregnant women from all over the world visiting Ireland in order to give birth, simply to ensure that their babies would gain the benefits of EU citizenship. Consequently, Ireland changed its laws after a referendum passed overwhelmingly in 2004 to prevent “citizenship tourism.”
Subsequent to Ireland’s elimination of birthright citizenship, the United States and Canada are now the only developed nations in the world to still offer birthright citizenship to children born within their borders to parents who are tourists or illegal aliens.
I believe that United States citizenship should only be granted automatically to children born in the United States if at least one of the parents is already a U.S. citizen (and perhaps if at least one of the parents is already a legal resident of the United States for a specified number of years prior to the birth).
2nd AMENDMENT
The 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution plainly 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.”
I stand firmly by the side of Thomas Jefferson in his explanation and support of the right to bear arms as set forth in the 2nd Amendment.
“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed one.” —Thomas Jefferson, quoting Cesare Beccaria, Criminologist in 1764.
“The constitutions of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property and freedom of the press.” —Thomas Jefferson
“The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.” —Thomas Jefferson
“I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.” —Thomas Jefferson
“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” —Thomas Jefferson
The right to arm one’s self is a personal liberty guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment. The right to bear arms was incorporated within the Bill of Rights to suppress insurrection, to uphold the law, to deter oppressive governing bodies, to repel invasions, and to facilitate the natural right to self-defense. When the 2nd Amendment was adopted, the tyrannous rule of the British parliament was still fresh in the mind of our Founding Fathers. The American people yearned for an express provision within the Constitution that would guarantee them the right to bear arms and protect themselves against a similar situation arising in the future.
In 2008, in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, the United States Supreme Court conclusively ruled that the “right to bear arms” is an individual right without being tied to service in a militia. The Supreme Court clarified that the 2nd Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm to use for traditionally lawful purposes, such as defending oneself within their home or on their property, and that actual service in a militia was not a necessary prerequisite to the individual right to bear arms.
Nevertheless, I believe that reasonable rules and regulations regarding firearms are appropriate. For example, the same way that a convicted felon may forfeit the right to vote, I believe a convicted felon’s right to bear arms may properly be restricted. Similarly, if a person is incompetent or has a mental illness, that person’s right to bear arms may also be appropriately restricted. Finally, while I firmly believe the right to bear arms extends to handguns, rifles, shotguns, etc., I am not convinced that such a right necessarily extends to machine guns and other arms typically only used in a military context.
PRIVACY ISSUES
Privacy issues are first and foremost on the minds of most Americans, and if they are not then they should be.
Signed into law on October 26, 2001, the Patriot Act was in clear violation of the U.S. Constitution. However, the emotions of Congress and the American people at the time allowed for this travesty to happen. The Act increases the ability of law enforcement agencies to search telephone, e-mail communications, medical, financial, and other records; eases restrictions on foreign intelligence gathering within the United States; expands the Secretary of the Treasury’s authority to regulate financial transactions; and enhances the discretion of law enforcement and immigration authorities in detaining and deporting immigrants suspected of terrorism-related acts. The Act also expands the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism, thus enlarging the number of activities to which the Patriot Act’s expanded law enforcement powers can be applied.
Although many of the provisions of this Act were supposed to end December 31, 2005, for various reasons Congress has allowed these provisions to remain in effect. Many have criticized the Act as being unconstitutional, especially when the private communications of law-abiding American citizens might be intercepted incidentally. Notably, what initially began as “might be intercepted incidentally” was found later to be intentional collection by our government with the evaluations of Eric Snowden released in May of 2013 to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras.
The citizens of the United States now need to pay especially close attention to how the two main political parties are working together in order to circumvent the Constitution. Justin Amash (R-Michigan) and John Conyers Jr. (D-Michigan) introduced legislation aimed at cutting off funding to NSA programs that gather data about Americans’ phone use. However, House leadership of both parties coordinated together to kill the bill. No other meaningful attempt to stop abusive governmental invasion of privacy has been made by either political party.
It is my goal and intention to propose legislation to not just cut off funding for programs like these but to put an end to them all together.