Jul 23, 2011 | Constitution, Healthcare
By Dr. Harold Pease
Many do not know that we live under two political systems: one primarily national in function, the other primarily domestic. It’s called federalism—the two share power and are equal. Neither was to be subservient to the other and each was to have separate duties. Thomas Jefferson explained it best when he said, “The states are not subordinate to the national government but rather the two are coordinate departments of one single and integral whole…. The one is domestic the other the foreign branch of the same government.”
Think of this relationship as an ideal marriage, where neither partner is subservient to the other. The duties in a relationship are gradually assigned to one partner or the other. Neither feels beneath the other, rather they are a team.
Though this was the ideal, the Founders were aware of the nature of all governments to grow. George Washington articulated this when he warned, “Government is like fire, a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” In order to ensure that this fire does not spread too far and burn down the home, one builds a fireplace to keep the fire under control. That fireplace is the Constitution, particularly Section 8, which outlines all powers that are given to Congress. Everything Congress did was to be clearly linked to at least one of these enumerated grants of power. In essence the States, who created the Federal Government, retained unto themselves all other powers as per Amendments 9 and 10 of the Constitution.
The advantages of federalism are enormous. States become laboratories of experimentation. Californians remember numerous “brownouts” at the turn of the century because of California’s failed energy policies. Other states viewing this were careful to avoid the same policies. States have the tendency to look at sister states for models and to borrow from them in refining their own programs. These places of experimentation work to everyone’s advantage. What if we had federalized California’s failed energy policy? We would have had “brownouts“ on a national scale.
Had our power crazed Federal Government refrained from their natural inclination to take more power, health care reform could have gone through this experimental process designed by our Founding Fathers. We would then have been able to identify the weaknesses or strengths while they were still geographically isolated. Only three states had tried it: Oregon, Massachusetts, and Hawaii. That was clearly not enough to identify and avoid the “brownouts “ in the area. Instead they took a half-baked idea and made it mandatory for all. Of course, this would have necessitated an enlargement of the enumerated list through Article V, requiring ratification by “3/4th of the Several States.” Since more than 60% of the people did not want this bill, the Constitution would have protected us from the federal government’s self empowerment.
To protect federalism the Founders did two things. First, Senators were to be selected by state legislatures so the U. S. Senate would be protective of state concerns. All law required the approval of the House of Representatives, the peoples’ representatives, and the Senate, the states’ representatives. That is why we have two branches of government to make law—two perspectives. The Seventeenth Amendment, insisting that the people also elect U. S. Senators, destroyed this protection. States thereafter were left unprotected.
Second, the structure of the U. S. Constitution limited and defined federal power leaving all power not specifically defined with the states as per the 10th Amendment. When Congress fails to defend this amendment and federalism as intended, it falls upon governors and their attorney generals to take the more confrontational approach as has Arizona over illegal immigration, or the 26 states presently suing the federal government over mandated national healthcare, or Idaho who took an even stronger stance on the same subject. “It ain’t happening here!” “See you in court.”
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Jul 14, 2011 | Economy, Healthcare
By Dr. Harold Pease
I met R. Sellner Reese some five years ago and found her story one of the most interesting and unusual ever; she lived under two of the most murderous tyrannical governments ever: Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin. “I was born under Hitler, grew up under Stalin and worked under communist dictators Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honnecker in East Germany,” she told me. Few have more practical experience under socialism than she. She and her three children came to America in 1985 for political and religious freedom requesting political asylum. Her main message to us: “socialism never worked under these regimes and it will never work in America either.” She sees us falling into the same trap of repeated lies and promises that duped her German friends and neighbors.
“Hitler promised National Socialism but gave us tyranny instead,” she said. “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.” Some warned the people but the promises were so desirable and powerful. “My friend’s father told other people, that Hitler is a liar and will bring Germany down. One evening, two men came to his apartment and took him in for questioning before the police. Five days later, the wife received a letter that he has passed away with a heart problem. The family was told his grave is at the City Cemetery. The family was so afraid to ask questions, and nobody knew what the Gestapo had done. No paper concerning his death was ever found. I personally know so many people who have suffered in the Nazi time.”
A second Hitler promise: “Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.” The socialist promise that the government would take from the rich and give to the poor only made everyone poor and resulted in human suffering and death, and eventually war. “In my school class of 40 children, only 8 had a father after the war. Women had to take all the responsibility for family and their future.” So much for the socialist promises.
After the war the Soviets held the eastern part of Germany where she lived, (renamed East Germany) under socialism with Joseph Stalin. “We had to learn how wonderful the Red Army was and that socialism will take over the whole world to make all people free.” She remembered the fruitless promises of prosperity under Hitler. Socialism never delivered then or under Stalin. “We had little food and I never saw a banana, and chocolate was only a dream. We had to stand in long waiting lines for food. When I finally got to the counter, there might not be anything left. To buy a car, there was a 10-15 year waiting time. Of course, you must have cash!” Still, even midst all this poverty, the message went out, “SOCIALISM IS THE ONLY TRUTH ON THIS EARTH!” But the real truth was that the people could not choose their education or occupation. “The government had control over your personal life, our work, living place, childcare, school and the ‘STASI’ (Socialistic Secret Service) constantly watched us. If you resisted you ended up in prison and your children could be taken from you and adopted.”
A visit to Russia, the motherland of socialism, in 1982 revealed the failure of the promise of socialism there as well. “The citizens of Russia were so poor. Bad housing, not enough food and clothing.”
In 1985 Reese was finally able to leave socialist East Germany and come to the United States under political asylum. What she sees here in recent years is too similar to the socialist worlds from which she escaped, Reese says, and it frightens her that we are taking the same path of forced sharing the wealth and socialized medicine and so many other things, and she is forced to watch tyranny return one more time.
When she sees Congress having its own healthcare plan rather than taking the same one forced on the people visions of privileged healthcare for the socialist leaders in East Germany comes to mind. She experienced rationed healthcare when her mother, at 70, was declared too old for an operation and died two years later because resources would be better spent on the young but knew that such would not be denied a government official.
Reese warns, “What is happening in America right now is scary! I’d like to tell everybody, socialism will never work in America either.” Her loss of freedom in her former settings, she says, “didn’t happen overnight, but gradually, and it can happen in America!!”
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Jul 10, 2011 | Constitution, Tea Party
By Dr. Harold Pease
Has it really come to this? Time magazine, one of our most respected magazines, seriously posing the question, “Does It Still Matter?” over the backdrop of the U. S. Constitution partially shredded as their cover page for their 10th Annual History and Fourth of July Issue. The second page of the ten-page article, authored by Richard Stengel, has the U. S. Constitution completely shredded vertically. This event signals a disrespect and ignorance of this document that I have not seen in my over 25 years teaching it.
The article’s overriding fallacy begins with the first sentence and continues throughout, “Here are a few things the framers did not know about: World War II, DNA, sexting, airplanes, the atom, television, Medicare, collateralized debt obligations, the germ theory of disease, miniskirts …” etc. In short, “How can it be relevant, without great alteration for our day?” Certainly the piece is a masterful explanation of the Constitution as a “living Constitution.” Among other things it criticizes the “Tea Party and its almost fanatical focus on the founding document.”
The truth is that the Constitution has nothing to do with these things nor did it have for the new things of the 1800’s, nor will it have for a new list the following century after the one we are now in. None of these things matter because this document is based upon human nature and natural law which do not change from century to century. Man is still power hungry whether he rides a horse, drives a car, or flies an airplane. Stengel does not seem to understand this.
When confronted with this “horse vs. airplane” nonsense, I ask my students in every Constitution class, “What in the Preamble to the Constitution, which is a statement of the needs of man to which government attempts to address, is no longer relevant? Outdated if you will?” Year after year the answer is the same. Nothing! “Were these the same needs of those 600 years ago and will they be the same for those 200 years from now?” Yes!!! “What would you add?” Again, nothing! Then, the basic needs of man do not change and the Preamble must be the most complete summation of those needs ever recorded. It is based upon a long history of human nature that the well-read Founders understood.
After the Preamble the Constitution then divides power between two entities, the Central Government and the States with those of the Federal Government specifically listed in Art. I, Sec. 8, and those to the states, everything else, as noted in Amendment 10. Why? Because the Founders knew from human nature, that all governments have the natural tendency to collect power to themselves (which is what is happening today) and if successful individual liberty is always suffocated. This will still be so 200 years from now as it was centuries ago in Athens and Rome. Either the people harness the government or the government harnesses the people.
The Constitution then divides what power is left to the federal level between its three branches: legislative (which makes all the law), executive (which executes the law), and Judicial (which judges the law when contested). All three kept separate for the purpose of keeping the Federal government from consolidating into one and thus enlarging its jurisdiction over us. Our right to less jurisdiction used to be called freedom. Stengel surely knows this simple truth but seems not to know why. All governments like to grow their power and will inevitable do so unless restrained.
Did the Founders not believe in change? Of course they did! But enlarging federal power beyond the list in Art. I, Sec. 8, required three-fourths of the states to consent to have a new power moved to the federal level. This was change one could believe in and total transparency because it would be written. Often those of both major parties like to forget how change is authorized in the Constitution just making it anyway, counting on the ignorance of the masses or party loyalty to sustain them. Time magazine, Stengel, and other “living Constitution” advocates appear to like governments increasing jurisdiction in everything and offer no counter to the natural flow of power away from the people and lower levels of government. In time they will remove all protection from big government and indeed destroy the Constitution as created, ironically in the name of the Constitution they pretend to value.
This Constitution is the clearest ever written and can handle, quite nicely, any new problem, including the four referenced by Stengel. What we need are people in power who know how it works and will follow it precisely as intended—even “fanatically,” as with the Tea Parties. It follows the premise to never elevate to a higher level that which can be resolved at a lesser level. So why is that important, because it maximizes the individual’s influence over his/her government. It assumes that he, in fact, does know what is best for him.
But some want an evolving document, one that “rolls with the times,” one that is one thing today and quite another tomorrow. We Tea Party Patriots say, “No thanks.” “The original one was designed to limit people, like you, from getting power and destroying our liberty.”
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Jul 4, 2011 | Constitution
By Dr. Harold Pease
It always amazes me when otherwise intelligent people are unable to find evidence of God in our governing documents. The Declaration of Independence, the signing of which we commemorate July 4th, alone has five references to God—two in the first paragraph, one in the middle, and two in the last.
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” Who is responsible for “the laws of nature” but God—certainly not man nor nature itself? From the “laws of nature” sprang an awareness of natural law (sometimes called common sense), understood by early philosophers to be a source of higher law that never changes. This was best explained by Cicero, a Roman politician, as early as the 1st Century B. C. —even predating the existence of Christianity when he wrote: “Nor may any other law override it, nor may it be repealed as a whole or in part… Nor is it one thing at Rome and another at Athens, one thing today and another tomorrow, but one eternal and unalterable law, that binds all nations forever.” Of “Nature’s God,” the second reference to deity is, of course, more explicit and needs no explanation.
The third reference to God is the word “creator” found in the second paragraph. “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.” This boldly identified our base for at least three unalienable rights as God, and the Founders identified this truth as self-evident. Any person endowed with common sense or reason would/could come to this conclusion.
So passionate were they with respect to these three “God-given rights” that such was identified as the purpose of government. “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
Moreover, their right of revolution hinged upon the denial of these “God-given rights.” “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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes… But when a long train of abuses and usurpations… evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government and to provide new Guards for their future security.” Once again, an appeal to natural law, which emanates from God, was noted and the loss of which always justifies revolution.
The fourth and fifth references to God are found in the last paragraph. The rightness of our cause was left to God as judge. “We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown…”
The fifth and last reference to God asks for his divine protection in our revolutionary course of action. “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
There was no dissent noted with respect to these references to God and their placement or emphasis in this document by any of the participants then, nor should there be now.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College
Jul 4, 2011 | Constitution
By Dr Harold Pease
The Declaration of Independence ends with one of the most passionate appeals ever put to words and memorized by yesterday’s grade school child. “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” Their action would bring on war against the then greatest power on earth, and no European strategist gave them a ghost of a chance—yet they stood.
And, of course, a goodly number did suffer loss of life and property as a result. Most paid a remarkably high price for taking their stand. In a wrathful spirit of revenge, the enemy singled them out for harsh vengeance. Five were captured and imprisoned and two others barely escaped captivity. Richard Stockton, one of those captured after his whereabouts was betrayed by a loyalist informer, was “dragged from bed in the middle of the night, severely beaten and thrown into prison” where he underwent continual abuse and also suffered malnourishment. By the time the Congress arranged for his exchange, he was broken physically and never recovered. He had also lost almost all his property.
Unable to capture Abraham Clark, another signatory, the British took their wrath out on his two sons, who were imprisoned on the notorious prison ship Jersey. “Word was sent to Clark that his boys would be freed if he would disown the revolutionary cause and praise the British Crown. At his refusal, his sons were singled out for cruel treatment. One was placed in a tiny cell and given no food. Fellow prisoners kept him alive by laboriously pushing tiny bits of food through a keyhole. Both sons somehow survived their ordeal.”
The British had a particular zeal for destroying the homes and property of the signers. Those suffering this fate included Benjamin Harrison, George Clymer, Dr. John Witherspoon, Philip Livingston, William Hooper, and William Floyd. The sacrifices of John Hart and Francis Lewis are particularly noteworthy. “While his wife lay gravely ill, Redcoats destroyed Hart’s growing crops and ripped his many grist mills to pieces. Bent on taking him, they chased him for several days. They almost nabbed him in a wooded area, but he hid in a cave. When he returned home with his health broken, he found his wife dead and their 13 children scattered.”
The story of Francis Lewis was equally tragic. “When the British plundered and burned his home at Whitestone on Long Island, they took his wife prisoner. She was thrown into a foul barracks and treated cruelly. For several months she had to sleep on the floor and was given no change of clothing. George Washington was able eventually to arrange for her exchange for two wives of British officers the Continental Arm was holding prisoner. Her health was so undermined that she died two years later.”
Thomas Nelson Jr., another signatory, made one of the most unusual sacrifices of the war. At Yorktown the British had selected his residence as headquarters. Washington, reluctant to destroy his compatriots beautiful home, was directed to do so by Nelson himself.
Probably John Quincy Adams, a son of one of the 55 patriots making the above pledge and later a president of the United States, said it best. “Posterity—You will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.” Let us never forget that liberty is not free. It was purchased and maintained by the blood of those before us.
Let this be a warning to those who would take it from us now, we too are standing “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence,” mutually pledging “to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor” as well.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
