Thread: LOOK AT WHAT ALL IS AGAINST OUR CONSTITUTION

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The Constitution: Sovereignty and Accountability
The following are remarks excerpted from Howard Phillips' lecture on the United States Constitution.

Recently, I had a conversation with someone who questioned the continuing relevance of the Constitution of the United States, which was adopted in 1787 and ratified in 1789. He said, "Well, that was then, this is now." And I said, "If you bought a car, there is probably an owner's manual in the glove compartment. And no matter how long you own the car, what the owner's manual prescribes for the care of that car will still be relevant. Because the car has not changed, the owner's manual has not changed. If you reject what the owner's manual prescribes, you're going to get in trouble."

I'd argue that the federal republic that was founded in the 18th century ought still be governed by the plain language of the Constitution of the United States because human nature has not changed and there is still relevance to that great document, which in my view is the greatest political document in the recorded history of mankind. But to understand the Constitution you must first understand the Declaration of Independence. I would argue that the Declaration is the preamble to the Constitution of the United States. And it says in the Declaration, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Consider carefully what is conveyed in those words. We are endowed by our creator. We are created beings. God created us and he is author of our liberties. Our rights are a gift from God. They are not benefits from the state. They are not the product of man's reason per se. They are a gift from God. "We are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights."

Then it goes on to say that governments to secure these rights are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That's a religious statement. The governed are God's creatures; as God's creatures we owe a duty of stewardship to our Creator. We are accountable to God. And to the degree that we delegate control over policy and resources to civil government we have an obligation to hold civil government accountable to us so that we can be accountable to Him. This is the bedrock premise to American liberty, the bedrock premise of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

If you read the Constitution, which I hope you all do, right after its preamble Article I, Section 1, the most important part of the Constitution, says, "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives." Every policy authority, every bit of legislative authority delegated to the federal republic herein granted shall be vested, that which is vested cannot be surrendered or reassigned, to a congress of the United States. This is the underlying premise of our political system. But it's a premise which in all too many ways has been forgotten….

"All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States." Let me in headlines just demonstrate how that principle has been violated. First of all, presidential executive orders, which set policy, which assume a legislative function, conflict with Article I, Section 1. Many presidents have been guilty of this usurpation of legislative authority. Bill Clinton was a major usurper of legislative authority. Let's remember that our president is our chief executive but he's not our legislator in chief. So that is one area where Article I, Section 1 has been violated.

Another area is with respect to regulatory agencies. The Food and Drug Administration has authorized the distribution of RU-486, the purpose of which is to kill unborn children. That is a function which should not be in the review of any regulatory agency. Because the regulatory agencies do not stand for election, they are to a large extent accountable only to themselves and in many cases become the captives of those they purport to regulate. Of course there are another great many regulatory agencies which have not been given clear instructions by the Congress and therefore violate Article I, Section 1 when they set policy….

Another area in which Article I is violated-"All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States"-is with respect to the funding of private organizations by the federal government. This started and became very prevalent during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. During the Nixon Administration, I was in charge of the Office of Economic Opportunity which had a budget under the Economic Opportunity Act of several million dollars which in those days was a fairly significant sum of money. And the tragedy was that a significant portion of that money subsidized private left-wing organizations. It would have been equally wrong for funding conservative organizations.

One of the programs under the "Great Society" under my jurisdiction at the time was the legal services program which has had some 325 grantees and hundreds of other sub-grantees which have had authority to lobby, organize, and proselytize their preferred views of public policy. Because they have lobbyists in the state legislatures and Congress, a vast array of left-wing activist groups have a major impact on policy. They brought a lot of the test cases that led up to Roe v. Wade. They brought a case in New Jersey, which led to the kind of decision in New Hampshire where local communities are not allowed to have varying expenditures under the property tax for education. They were heavily involved in pushing for amnesty for illegal aliens and voting rights for illegal aliens. And it's in comprehensive conflict with the Constitution for Congress year after year to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on grants of this kind. When I was head of the agency, I had 2000 who reported to me directly, but there were 500,000 people on the payrolls of some private non-profit organizations being subsidized under these budgets. Now, that can stop whenever we have a president or a Congress who decides to defund them. But we have had neither since then. In fact, under every president-Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush-the funding for these entities has gone up, year after year after year.

Another area is the Federal Reserve system. Now this is a rather complex subject and most people are blissfully unaware of the Federal Reserve, but let me say that the Federal Reserve is capable of taxing us, even more than the Congress itself.

The Federal Reserve was established in 1913. And let me quote to you that provision of the Constitution in Article I, Section 8 which defines this. Article I, Section 8 says that, "The Congress shall have power…. To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures." Why would they talk about weights and measures in the same clause where they're talking about coining money? Well, for this reason: by the time the Constitution was ratified they'd just gone through a very bad experience. They had a paper currency during the War for Independence, the value of which diminished by the hour. And you've probably heard the phrase, "It's not worth a Continental." So what they decided to do was have money of real value by weight. That didn't mean you had to carry gold and silver in your pocket. You could have a piece of paper that reflected there was gold and silver to back it up. The dollar was defined in the 18th century. The definition has never been changed. It's 371 and 1/4th grains of silver. That is a dollar. That also happens to have been the weight of the Spanish coin which was called, "pieces of eight." That Spanish coin, you remember the parrot in Treasure Island owned by Long John Silver? The bird said, "Pieces of eight, pieces of eight," because that was the money, that's what they wanted. And it was called pieces of eight because it was divisible by eight pieces, eight bits….

Now the Fed was established in 1913. From 1787 to 1913 there was virtually no sustained inflation in the United States. Inflation is a form of taxation. Indeed, inflation was less than 17% during that period of 126 years. But since 1913, inflation has climbed more than 1000%, and the best way for me to illustrate this is a virtual example. My wife and I were married in 1964. In 1965 we were able to buy a new Plymouth. That Plymouth cost us $1,129 after a lot of hard bargaining. A similar vehicle today would cost 16, 17, 18, thousand dollars not because the car is better, because the dollar is worse….

Now what the combination of the IRS and the income tax in fact did was remove the seal on how much the federal government could tax and spend. As long as the government relied on duties, excises, and imposts, there was only so much they could receive each year. Because if you made your tariffs too high, the people would stop purchasing the products on which the tariffs were levied. So there was a reasonable level of income which was more than adequate to pay for the constitutional elements of the federal government. But since 1913 when we moved away from the revenue tariff and went to the income tax, the federal government, its size, its scope, has increased dramatically….

Let me talk about some other aspects of our Constitution. Let's talk about the 1st Amendment to the Constitution. There's nothing in the constitution which proclaims a separation of church and state. It is nowhere there. What it posits is non-establishment of a church. It says, "Congress will make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This has nothing to do with the states….

We also need to remember the decisions of the Supreme Court are not law. The Supreme Court cannot legislate on its lunch hour. They can't amend the Constitution on their coffee break. They cannot by merely putting pen to paper, violate the provisions of the Constitution. Now their decisions are binding on parties to the cases which they hear and which they decide but do not have general actability. Roe v. Wade does not legalize abortion. Now, a lot of constitutionally ignorant have assumed that it does, but it doesn't. It's binding on Roe and Wade, but it doesn't legalize abortion. Indeed, the 5th Amendment to the Constitution says, "No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law." What that means is that if you are a person living in the womb of your mother, before your life may be lawfully extinguished you must be indicted for a capital crime, brought to trial, convicted by a jury of your peers on the testimony of two or more witnesses, sentenced to death, and defeated on your efforts to obtain an overturned verdict on appeal. But 40 million American children have been killed as a result of the failure of our leaders to adhere to the 5th Amendment, which has that language governing the federal government, and the 14th Amendment, which has that language concerning the authority of the states….

The difference between a republic and a democracy is that in a republic your rights to life, liberty, and property granted to you by God Almighty cannot be abrogated by simple majority vote. In a republic you have rights of which you cannot be deprived by a majority. In a democracy, a 51-49 vote may strip you of your rights. So let's remember the importance of the fact that we were given a republic, as Franklin said, "if you can keep it," as he told the lady outside Constitution Hall in Philadelphia as he was departing from the deliberations....

Our rights come from our Creator. We are created beings. As God's creatures we owe a duty and accountability to our Sovereign. Sovereignty reposes not in the state but in Almighty God-God is sovereign. To the degree that we delegate control over policy or resources to civil government, we have a moral obligation of the highest order to hold civil government accountable to us, so that we can at all times, be accountable to Him.

Well, this is a keeper! Great information! Thanks

Just simply a great post!! Very well written and easily understood...

MJ