Is the State Sovereign?

States or governments are never sovereign -- they are at best legitimate. The individual is sovereign and rights reside only in the individual. The legitimacy of government is derived from its protection of the many and broad sovereign rights of the individuals within its territory of operation. It is this individual rights protection service that justifies the existence of government. To say that a government or state is sovereign is the equivalent of saying that all rights reside in the government and the state hands out such privileges as it sees fit to individuals. Those privileges can be revoked at the whim of the sovereign state. The sovereign state demands that the people serve it, while the sovereign individual demands that the state serve each and every individual. There is a world of difference.

Joe Biden has explicitly embraced the sovereign state that grants such privileges as it chooses to individuals and denies the sovereignty of individuals and their pre-state assertion of rights which governments are formed to protect. This viewpoint highly dominates those of the Democratic Party and is also held by quite a few Republicans. It is the basis for the belief that it is a proper function of the government to do harm to some as long as it can claim it is doing good for more people than are harmed or that it is doing good for the "least among us." This viewpoint removes sovereignty from the individual and effectively removes all of his rights, while opening the floodgates on an endless list of government powers. The only real limit on government power is that it is only legitimate to the degree that it protects the exercise of each and every individual's rights.

A Nation of Sovereign Individuals with Unalienable Rights

Obama's 6 July radio address said that on 4 July 1776, a small band of men declared that we Americans were created equal and free to think and worship as we pleased.  He said we were now a land of liberty and opportunity.

Obama did not say in what very limited manner we were equal because his agenda requires that to be vague.  He did not note that while we are still free to think and worship as we please, we are very often not free to speak and write what we think or to act upon our beliefs, religious or not.  He did not note that our liberties are constantly becoming fewer and that he wants them to become fewer.  He did not say that he also wants to dictate the nature of our ever more limited opportunities and pick who will be given greater opportunity than others with manipulative government policies.  He habitually defends unequal status before government as an honest effort to create equality among the People.

To understand how insulting this man's ideas and policies are to the sovereign rights of the individual, we really need a much better understanding of what our individual rights are than most people have.  Indeed, even our founding fathers had an inadequate view of them, though I generally admire them for having understood the problem as well as they did in their time.

The Declaration of Independence, agreed upon on 2 July and published on 4 July 1776, wonderfully stated 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, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Yes, I do not agree that our rights come from our "Creator", but they do derive as Ayn Rand observed from our nature.  At that time, almost everyone assumed the nature of man had been determined by man's Creator and therefore the rights that derived from man's nature were endowed by man's Creator.  This reference to our Creator is a big deal with many who are religious today and because they attribute many of their beliefs to the will of a god they know nothing about, there are unfortunate consequences to this.  Despite this error, there are many really great insights in this quoted statement of the Declaration of Independence.

The statement firmly places sovereignty in the hands of the People, not with government.  It clearly takes individual rights to be of a very broad nature.  Note that it even implies rights beyond those of each individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of their happiness with the word "among."  At the time, most Americans believed in the individual right to life, liberty, and property.  The substitution of pursuit of happiness for property was clearly a way of broadening the claim of individual rights.  Of course, the pursuit of happiness implied a freedom to acquire and keep property.  But, it also would imply such things as a freedom to choose one's own friends and domestic partners, to choose what books one would read, to choose a religion or not to choose one, to enter into trade with others of one's choosing for the purposes of one's choosing, to maintain the privacy one desires, and many more actions leading to any of the many means to and forms of happiness that individuals might choose.  This is a clear statement of a very broad concept of individual rights.

These rights are unalienable.  The existence of a government does not diminish these rights.  These rights are always sovereign in the individual.  These rights are not given to the individual by the government.  No, the government is only legitimate and able to claim a reason for its very existence to the extent that the government serves faithfully and well to protect these unalienable rights sovereign in the individual.  The government is the servant of individual rights and when it fails to protect them as a matter of principle, the sovereign individuals will reform and reorganize government by their right so that it does follow principles to protect their individual sovereign rights.

These are powerful, well-stated principles that are manifestly ignored and/or misunderstood by the Progressive Elitists who dominate most academic viewpoints on the role of government today.  This American principle of highly limited government with a legitimacy limited to its protection of individual rights held unalienably by sovereign individuals is unheard in academia, most media, and from most politicians.  The People, long educated in government-run and dominated schools, no longer have a clear concept of their sovereignty, of their broad rights, and of their equally unalienable claim to these rights.  Individuals are obviously unequal in most respects, but in the context of government, the most essential way in which they are equal is with respect to their equal and sovereign individual rights.  To give some people favored status by law is to abrogate this one critical respect in which we are equal before the law.  Those who most claim to believe in equality in the present political arena are most likely to destroy the most important sense in which we are equal.  For all of his talk promoting equality, the Progressive Elitist today believes in neither equal rights nor even one-man, one-vote.

The sovereignty of the individual is re-affirmed in the Preamble of the Constitution.  The statement of the highly limited powers of government issues from the sovereignty of the individuals who constitute that government.  The government is formed only to serve their needs by protecting their liberties and their general welfare.  This reference to general welfare is now often used in an out-of-context manner to support the welfare state and a massive redistribution of wealth.  This could not be further from the intention of the time.  No, then the general welfare implied government actions beneficial to everyone, not a bare majority or some special interest as it means today.  Securing individual rights would provide peace and tranquility, justice, and the general welfare for everyone.  No other government purpose can do this.  Other government actions will most likely be unjust to many, require threats of violence upon many, and will harm the interests of many.

The 9th Amendment of the Bill of Rights makes a clear statement that the rights of the individual are broad and are indeed unalienable.  They are not to be denied or disparaged by the government.  It is no small infraction of the principle of legitimate government that our government has long ignored this amendment and overtly claimed it to be meaningless.  Indeed, the Supreme Court has actually claimed that the government is sovereign, which it most manifestly is not.  Were this the case, then there would be no means by which a legitimate government could be formed and judged.  There would be no possible basis for overthrowing it when it became tyrannical and inimical to the rights of the individual.  Such a government would be inconsistent with both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  Indeed, a sovereign government, rather than a government serving to protect the rights of sovereign individuals, is inconceivable in a human-centered morality in which individuals think and act as individuals for the purpose of preserving their lives, flourishing in liberty, and pursuing their own happiness.

This enlightenment and early American view of sovereign individual rights and very limited government legitimately protecting individual rights is very much at odds with the loose and hoary notions of government and rights held by Obama, the Progressive Elitists, and other advocates of big government today.  They assume that it is the purpose of government to grant individuals such rights as it may choose to give them.  They assume that government is supposed to hurt the interests of many for the purpose of helping some who are incompetent in living their lives.  They believe it is just and moral to propagate innumerable laws and regulations limiting our individual freedoms, even as each mandate is enforced by the threat of violence should anyone stand upon their individual rights.  No peace and tranquility are possible as faction upon faction, special interest upon special interest, and even race upon race, battle for control of the brutal power of government.  It is clear that by the criteria of our own Declaration of Independence, our government today is illegitimate.

The rational American does not celebrate the federal government on the 4th of July.  He celebrates the American Principle set forth by the Declaration of Independence and implemented in the Constitution by the mandate of American individuals.  The American Principle states that the individual is sovereign and each individual has equal and broad rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It states that the only legitimate purpose of government is the protection of the unalienable rights of the individual.  Due to this very limited function, government has and can claim but few powers.  The sovereign individual retains his sovereignty with respect to the freedom to exercise his rights, while government is entirely his servant devoted to the sole task of protecting the rights of each and every individual American.  By adherence to this dedicated purpose, good government harms no one and never initiates the use of force against anyone.

Declaring our Independence from the Progressive Aristocracy

The Progressive (Liberal, Socialist) elitists have become an aristocracy who rule, manage, and manipulate the remainder of Americans who are supposedly no more than organic bits of various special interest groups or factions.

The Progressives have long insisted that man's nature could evolve rapidly with proper indoctrination in the government-run schools to engineer American youth who hold socialist values.  Some of the indoctrinated would prove suitable to be selected as the new members of the aristocracy, but most would just be trained to be docile followers.  The government-run schools reflect this philosophy, with many schools being little more than holding cells to train the inmates in being members of an underclass and in doing as they are told by authorities.  Some schools have effective multiple tracks and some few produce many future Progressive elitists.  These indoctrinated youth are then to vote democratically to further enlarge government.

The old American tradition, stated in the Declaration of Independence, in which the only legitimate purpose of government is to protect the equal, sovereign rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is the enemy of progress in their viewpoint.  This traditional American viewpoint necessitates a very limited government and a very dynamic private sector, where everyone has an equal right to exercise his choices and to find others who will associate or trade with him for a given purpose in a voluntary activity.  That limited government was provided for by the Constitution.  The Progressives claim these traditional, but radical, American ideals deny the science of history.  They have pointed to a long history of governments around the world always trying to expand their powers and usually succeeding in doing so.  They have claimed that history is a march of progress, so if many governments have succeeded in expanding their powers, this must be what progress is and progress must be good.  These governments with expanded powers need to be directed by energetic leaders who will not shrink from using force to promote the General Welfare, which is always found in the organic expression of shared democratic will.  The government tells the people what their rights are.  Those suitable for leadership are those most indoctrinated and knowledgeable about the goals of socialism.  These leaders are the graduates of the right colleges and are those who are well-connected in the network of Progressive activists.

The Progressives look down on people who produce goods and services in the free market and are paid with money.  They believe those who serve have a higher moral status, even if those who serve do so as government employees and are well paid with taxes levied mostly on the producers and taken from the producers under the threat of force.  The producers are evil because they use resources of the earth such as materials, because they change the earth, and because they pander to individuals acting on their individual goals and needs.  The Progressives believe that when the individual is subsumed by some group or other, the individual has become an organic part of a greater whole.  They believe there is some higher ideal reached whenever the individuality of the individual is diminished.  But Progressives do not have a very high regard for the ability of most people to choose their own values and then to manage their own lives in accordance with those values.  Indeed, they find the very idea of such an expression of individuality to be abhorrent.  If people were actually to do any such thing, the government would not be able to satisfy them with its central planning efforts.  The people must be taught to identify themselves with one group or even a number of different groups, so the Progressives and government can deal with the easier problem of just dealing with this much smaller number of groups.

Once the people are just so many groups or special interests, or factions, then the democratic process can be used to sort out who the winners and losers will be.  Of course, this results in quite a bit of a free-for-all, but that is why the elitist Progressives are needed as leaders and controllers of the governments.  They are the parents watching over the children squabbling over the toys in the sandbox and setting the rules of play.  The elite Progressives make the laws and regulations in government as the democratic rulers.  So, Progressives tend to flock to government positions because that is where the real action is.  They shun the private sector and they grow the public sector.  The game is in fact one of redistributing the wealth produced by the private sector through their hands in government and handing it out to grateful groups who will vote for them, give them money, and sing their praises. 

Of course, these leaders are so important to the cause of Progressivism, that it is perfectly reasonable for them to use their power to extort those in the private sector with threats to do them harm, unless the leaders are given enough money for their re-election campaigns ad nauseam.  Or, these leaders offer factions favorable legislation in exchange for re-election campaign backing, as they do to labor unions, teachers, trial lawyers, and many Wall Street investment firms.  These Progressive government employees are the new aristocracy.  Like the aristocracy of old, they control the levers of power to do whatever they want as they manipulate the peasants and give them just enough to keep them from rebelling.  At least this is how it has often worked in the past and it is how they believe it is supposed to be working now.

The Progressive elite is now furious.  Many of the peasants are revolting.  This is how they see the Tea Party protesters.  Their response has been one of utter hatred.  The hatred is so strong, that they describe the Tea Party rebels with all the words they have long associated with evil or disdain.  So, the Tea Party rebels must be racists.  They must be ignorant.  They must be trailer trash. The Progressives know this to be so, because the peasants must be evil to rebel against the progress of history and the evolution of society.

The Tea Party activists are not evil.  Mostly, they are American individualists who have finally taken notice that Progressivism is an attack upon their individuality.  It is an attempt to dictate to them what their personal values will be.  It is an attempt to micromanage their lives.  It is a refusal to recognize them as individuals.  It is a thorough-going attack upon the very idea that they have sovereign and unalienable rights which are not given to them by government.  It is an attack on the idea that legitimate government exists to protect the equal rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  The Tea Party protesters are sick of the attacks on the productive Americans to force them to forever subsidize less productive Americans and illegal aliens.  They are sick of the transfer of wealth from the private sector to the public sector.  They are sick of the transformation of their personal choices in the private sector to democratic and factional choices in the public sector.  They are tired of being ignored and denigrated.  They are tired of an aristocracy of bureaucrats, politicians, college professors, and media people who look upon them as peasants.  They are sure that they are competent to choose their own values.  They know they are able to manage their own lives and make their own choices.  They have awakened to the fact that it is the free market that provides them with these choices and the opportunity to express themselves as individuals.  They are coming to understand that they have made themselves the individuals they are in large part and they want to continue to be in control of the development of their own character and that of their children.

A choice has to be made about the purpose and scope of government.  Our Founding Fathers and the Framers of the Constitution chose very limited government consistent with the viewpoint that the General Welfare of the People who institute government was best served when government's function and scope was to simply protect the equal, sovereign, inalienable right of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  The individual American was seen as capable of choosing his own values and of managing his own life.  Freedoms such as freedom of speech, of press, and of assembly would allow any American to develop his knowledge, his judgment, and his character.  Americans had the freedom to work and to own property and the income from their work.  When an American individual wanted to work with others for a common goal, he could arrange that using his many freedoms of association and contract in the free market.  There he would have a plethora of choices and ample expression of his individuality.  The interests of many individuals could be worked out in great harmony in the private sector.  While our government had a measure of democracy in the choosing of its leaders, that democracy was constrained by the Constitution, which gave us a representative limited government.  This government of limited powers had a further balance of power within the branches of the government and between the federal government and the states that required a strong consensus to be developed before the federal government could act.  The power of government was to be limited, so that the warfare among factions would be limited.  Too powerful a government led to too many factions being created.  These factions then would fight too viciously for too much power.  In that environment, the rights of the individual could not be equally protected and they would not even be protected.  The General Welfare and the peace and tranquility of the nation would be damaged by such factional squabbles over the exercise of government power.  The antithesis of this American viewpoint is Progressivism, which is largely a European import.

Now consider what we have seen.  We have a Progressive government, which very little constrains itself in accordance with the Constitution.  We have top leaders who are disdainful of the People.  We have top leaders who have said they disagree with the Constitution and its limits on their power.  We have top leaders who tell us we only have the rights the government gives us.  It is clear this government is a Progressive government.  So, I ask you:

• Have we seen government serving the best interests of the American people (the General Welfare) with minimal factionalism and a great tranquility of our society?
• Do we see evidence that Americans have evolved such characters that they have lost their individuality and are willing to submerge themselves in a Hegelian whole of society? 
• Have we seen solid evidence that the Progressive ruling elite is able to choose our values for us better than we can choose them ourselves?
• Have we seen a powerful government evolve which wisely micromanages our lives?
• Have we seen this government make centrally planned economic decisions which are wise?
• Have we seen this government responsibly manage its finances and minimize the debt to be passed on to later generations?
• Do we like what we see in Europe so much that we agree that their way is superior to the American way of life?

I submit to you that the answer to each of these questions is NO!!!!  From this objective evaluation, I conclude that Progressivism is a proven failure.  It is a concept of government which is wholly unacceptable.  The vision of our Founders and of the Framers of the Constitution was in fact astoundingly wise.  They were not ignorant of the essence of Progressivism.  They considered it and they astutely rejected it.  They were right to do so.  I wish to encourage every American to think these issues and choices through carefully and to chose the most beneficial concept of government function and scope of these two waring viewpoints.  If you do so, I think most of you will be wise enough to confirm the wisdom of our Founders and the Framers of the Constitution.  They were the real advanced thinkers, not these wrongheaded so-called progressives who merely added a bit of democracy to an essentially aristocrats-know-best feudal merchantilist society.

Obama Usurps the Presidency

A few hours ago, Senator John McCain conceded the 2008 Presidential Election to Senator Barack Obama. Obama will clearly win the Electoral College vote. Our Constitutional system of government says that this is the way the presidential election is won. So, how can I say that Obama has usurped the presidency?

The unique American innovation in government was that the individual holds sovereignty over his own life and that all rights are individual rights which are owned by the individual. These rights are not granted to the individual by government, but they are a consequence of the nature of man. Man, by nature, must utilize his mind to understand reality and to find ways to alter his environment so that he can survive and flourish. The act of using your mind is a very individual effort. Our rights derive from the needs we have as a result of this requirement.

Living in society can offer man many advantages, since trading ideas, goods, and services can be very beneficial to the individuals involved. People working together can provide one another enhanced security from threats and minds work differently, so different people can solve different problems. There is much to the saying that two minds are better than one. But, these interactions and trades are well known to work most efficiently when they are as voluntary as possible. Envy and avarice commonly cause many people to try to steal the wealth created by others who have used their minds more effectively. When a society of individuals begins to give free reign to this envy and avarice to allow some to take what they want without having used their own minds and hard work to create it, then society quickly loses its advantages. Indeed, societies often fall into orgies of the brutal use of force.

History is full of illustrations of this. Medieval Europe faltered under a heavy yoke of Christian mysticism and ubiquitous Robber Barons, while a freer Middle East largely prospered and generated much knowledge. The United States rose from a wilderness and became the manufacturing and agricultural envy of the world by WWI. Czarist Russia, with huge land mass and resources, remained primitive. Nazi Germany rose and fell very quickly. Stalin's USSR and Mao's China moblized masses of people, but remained primitive. Pol Pot's Cambodia was a bloodbath. The lack of property and other individual rights in Latin America kept those countries from coming close to developing their potential. Chavez's Venezuela is falling apart and Cuba fell apart long ago. Africa, with its dictators and socialist states remains primitive still. Europe, the envy of the world after the Enlightenment, fell in esteem as it became highly socialist in the 20th century, when it also suffered the bloodbaths of WWI and WWII, before the anxieties of the Cold War. Now, it commonly suffers 10% unemployment and the people are so depressed that they do not have enough children to even come close to maintaining the populations of most European countries. Europe is clearly in decay.

For a long time, most Americans in the Northeast, on the Pacific Coast, and in a midwestern cluster of states including Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, have wanted the United States to be more like Europe. Obama is exactly their man. HE, like most Europeans, is a pessimist. HE believes most people are oppressed by a few wealthy individuals made up mostly of white males. HE believes these oppressed masses are individually helpless and can only better their condition by turning to elite leaders who will use government power ruthlessly to force the wealthy to spread around some of the goodies they have taken from the many helpless people. HE does not believe in the creation powers of the individual mind. HE also does not believe in the sovereignty of the individual, which derives from his need to use his mind. HE believes, as do most Europeans, that government gives rights to individuals and that government is the source of sovereignty. Perhaps, it is slightly more accurate to say that he believes that sovereignty lies in the collective of all the people, rather than in each individual. There is little practical difference in these two concepts, however. Both the fascist/nazi socialist Hitler and the communist Stalin and Mao believed the same thing, that sovereignty lay in the collective people.

As I have pointed out many times, the Constitution of the United States was formulated to so limit the powers of government that it could not mess with the sovereignty of the individual. That remarkable, miraculous document makes no sense except in the context that sovereignty lies in the individual and that individuals have rights whether government is good enough to recognize them or not. The Declaration of Independence clearly and explicitly made this declaration, which was much more important than simply declaring independence from and war on King George III. The Constitution's purpose was to secure American's independence from all despots and all forms of tyranny. Among these forms of tyranny was any democracy which did not honor the rights of the individual. The Founding Fathers were very clear on this subject.

The President is the head of the Executive branch of the federal government. His principal job is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. This means his principal job is to see that the government recognizes individual sovereignty. He must be committed to governing the government's use of force strictly so that it does not violate the rights of the individual. Anyone taking on the execution of the President's Office is a tyrant and an usurper to the degree that he does not honor the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If he fails in this, our own Declaration of Independence makes it clear he is a despot and that the people, or any part of them, or any individual have the right to rebel and overthrow him for the very same reasons they had the right to rebel against King George III.

Of course the President is not the only officer of the federal government charged with preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution. The entire Congress and the federal courts are also charged with this same task. For each of the three branches of government, this is their primary purpose and function. For a long time, none of these branches have done a decent job, because all of them have failed our Constitution. In doing so, they have failed the American people. But, because we have so democratic a republican government, the people have failed their own great Constitution. Of course, this means the American people have failed themselves. They have failed to guard their own sovereignty.

In his victory speech, Obama once again made it clear that HE does not think Americans are principally individuals. HE says we are something more than that. Well, in a way we used to be more than that. We were a people who understood that we were sovereign individuals and that we were able to manage our own lives. Now, it is clear that we are mostly just like European socialists who beg governments to give them goodies. We used to create wealth and security for our families and friends. Now, we will fight one another to see who can steal the most from others. We used to live in respectful harmony. Now, we will live in constant angst. Perhaps, like Europeans, we will even lose the will and confidence to procreate.

Clearly, we have given up on growth and we have chosen decay. The human being either grows or decays. America long brought on constant change with growth generated by using our individual minds and freely trading the ideas that resulted. These ideas provided a cornucopia of goods and services. Now America will change more slowly by decay and our minds will stultify under the threat of ubiquitous force. It has always been so historically and we have chosen to relive sad and uncertain times. We have chosen to return to more primitive times.

Choosing a President

Ask most people what criteria they use to choose a president and they will say something like:

• He should be smart.
• He should have experience.
• He should look presidential by looking good and being self-assured.
• He should make me feel comfortable and that I can trust him.
• He should care about the people.
  

In reality these translate into:

• He should not be really smart, because then he would not be like me, but the mainstream media should say he is smart.
• He should have been busy creating coercive laws, but know nothing about business and running other voluntary organizations.
• He should be a megalomaniac who is sure that he knows what is best for the rest of us and he should look like someone a good-looking woman might choose for sex.
• He should have a silvery tongue and be able to convince me to follow him off a cliff.
• He gives never-ending speeches claiming that he cares about people, but he gives money to special interests to get their vote and deprives everyone of their liberty.

Well, what should be the principle upon which a rational person would make his choice for president? It would be great if he were very smart, if he had real experience in living a happy and productive life, if he had self-confidence, but also understood that the job of the president is so overblown now that no one could perform that job well, that he has a clear understanding that he serves the people, and that he knows that the best way to care about them and to serve them is to govern in accordance with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But note that none of the other characteristics is really important and useful unless he will act as President in a manner consistent with his role as set out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If he is smart, but he uses his intelligence to consistently seek more power over the lives of individuals, then his intelligence is in the service of the Devil. The same is true if he looks presidential or has years of experience turning out coercive laws. If people think he cares about them because he makes promises that government will deliver goodies to them, then he is dangerous and will soon control us all by making us dependent upon his goodies and fearful of his taxes and service mandates. If he has a silvery tongue, this is also a great danger if he uses it toward evil goals.

The Declaration of Independence placed sovereignty for the first time squarely in the hands of the individual. The individual has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And, yes, to his property, which word was left out because it was clearly already covered by the given trilogy of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration declared that just, legitimate government became so only if it served the people by protecting their individual sovereignty by ensuring their inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Government and its leaders could and should be overthrown if they did not act in recognition of the inalienable rights of the individual, which all of the people enjoyed and which none of the people had to apply to government for. Their rights were inalienable and could not legitimately be denied by government.

The Constitution attempted to bring about the mechanisms of government which would help to direct government to fulfill its goal of protecting the individual's rights and thereby serving the sovereign people well. The Preamble sets this understanding up. It states that the Constitution is to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." The Constitution then embarks on enumerating a very carefully chosen list of powers held by the President, the Congress, and the Federal Courts. It is very obvious that these powers are very limited. Let us examine some of the powers that Congress was given:

• To borrow money on the credit of the United States
• To regulate commerce between the states, foreign nations, and the Indian tribes, where regulate meant to keep the states from interfering with free trade, as they had been doing.
• To establish naturalization and bankruptcy rules.
• To coin money and establish weights and measures.
• To establish penalties for counterfeiting.
• To establish post offices and post roads.
• To provide for copyrights and patents.
• To set up federal courts inferior to the Supreme Court.
• To define and punish piracies and felonies on the high seas.
• To declare war and make rules for captures.
• To raise and support Armies.
• To provide and maintain a Navy.
• To provide for calling forth the Militia.
• To tax for the purpose of performing the above powers. There was no implication that taxes could be levied and used for other purposes, though some soon claimed they could be and were opposed by such men as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison.

The President and every Congressman have a primary function of protecting the Constitution and its protections of the rights of the individual. The President is explicitly required to make the following oath: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States , and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." Any president who does not do so is illegitimate and a threat to the inalienable rights of the individual and clearly subject to overthrow by our birth certificate, The Declaration of Independence. Therefore, the most central principle for choosing a president is clear: He must be the man who will do the best job of preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States, whose central purpose is to honor the inalienable right of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by maintaining government's very limited scope of action and leaving as much as possible to the individual choice of those who are the people.

Many people opposed the idea of establishing a Bill of Rights, since they said that the powers of the Federal government were so limited that they could not be used to violate the rights of the individual. There was no need to declare a right to freedom of speech, since it was clear that the government was given no power to limit freedom of speech. In fact, when the decision was finally made to put together the Bill of Rights, one of the original amendments, Amendment IX, states "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." This makes it very clear just how jealously the people claimed their inalienable individual rights!

Today, we should do no less. Today, we are much more threatened by illegitimate and overblown government than the colonies were by the government of King George III and a Parliament in which they had no representation. The actual encroachments upon the rights of the individual in the colonies were small compared to those we now experience in America. The level of taxation was microscopic compared to the present. The redistribution of wealth and the requirements for service were small in comparison. There are now many more limitations upon our right to lead productive and self-directed lives. We are allowed the freedom to make a much smaller fraction of our life choices now. The mere fact that a plurality of voters may choose to violate the Constitution and the rights of the individual does not lessen the horrible fact that the rights of the individual and his sovereignty are under brutal attack. This government, backed by this plurality of voters, is illegitimate.

Just as the most singly critical principle for choosing a President is whether he will preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, so is that also the most important criterion for choosing any member of Congress. We do an awful job of choosing those people as well as choosing Presidents. The people we have chosen have proven very adept at violating our individual, inalienable rights. This is no surprise, given that few of us recognize the most important principle for choosing our President and our representatives in the House and Senate. Most people have richly earned the loss of their liberty, but they must be damned for also losing that of the few who deserved their liberty and for losing that liberty for our Posterity!