Dr. Harold W. Pease
Two years ago the nation was astounded to learn from a survey conducted of high school seniors in Oklahoma that 23% could not identify the first president of the United States. But wait, their parents apparently aren’t too bright either.
In a survey conducted earlier this year by Newsweek magazine of a random sampling of 1,000 adult Americans, summarized by Andrew Romano, 29% could not identify the name of the current vice president of the United States—Joe Biden. Nine percent could not correctly answer, “What Ocean is on the West Coast of the United States?”—The Pacific. Eighty percent did not know “who was president during World War I”—Woodrow Wilson, and 40% did not know who we fought in World War II—Germany, Italy and Japan. With respect to individuals, 59% could not identify what Susan B. Anthony did—women’s rights activist, and 23% were ignorant of what Martin Luther King Jr. did—civil rights activist (Newsweek, How dumb Are We? By Andrew Romano, March 28, 2011, pp. 56-63).
It gets worse. Seventy-three percent did not know what the main concern of the United States was during the Cold War—the spread of communism. The Cold War ended in 1989 only 22 years ago so most adults lived through it. This makes the ignorance here even more blatant and inexcusable.
Their most startling conclusion is that 38% of American adults would not qualify to be citizens of their own country were they required to pass the same test for U.S. citizenship required of non-citizens.
For me, what the sampling showed of our ignorance of the Constitution was especially appalling. Knowledge of it, and its imposed limitations on the federal government, are absolutely critical to preserving our liberty. So how did the adults do? Amazingly, a third could not identify the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence—July 4th, 1776, and 2/3rds, 65%, could not identify what happened at the Constitutional Convention—the writing of the Constitution. Only 74% of adults could identify the first three words of the Constitution—“We The People.” Sadly, 61% did not know how long a U. S. senator served—six years, and 81% could not identify a single power of the federal government noted in the Constitution. May our Founders and others, who risked their lives for this freedom, forgive us for our ignorance.
Unbelievably, 27% did not know who was in charge of the executive branch of the government—the president, nor did 42% know who would next be in charge should both the president and vice president be unable to serve— the Speaker of the House. A whopping 63% did not know the number of justices on the Supreme Court—nine. Seventy percent were unable to answer, “What is the supreme law of the land?”—The Constitution.
With respect to the difficult three-year struggle to get passage of the U.S. Constitution, 88% could not identify even one of the three authors of The Federalist Papers making ratification possible—James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, or John Jay. Forty-three percent did not know what we call the first 10 amendments to the Constitution—The Bill of Rights, and 94% did not know how many amendments the Constitution has—27. Some 67% amazingly could not identify the economic system in the United States—free enterprise.
The study concluded that we are “imperiled by our ignorance.” How can anyone reason otherwise? As a nation are we constitutionally illiterate? Too bad the study was not done on the 535 members of congress or on the executive branch. Would we find a third of them not qualified to be citizens of their own country as well? Given their neglect in preserving this document as designed by the Founders, I think so. 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.
We finally did what John McCain, a Republican Party Presidential candidate, said that we should do in Libya and it was Barak Obama, the Democratic Party Presidential candidate and ultimate victor, who then did it—enforce a no-fly zone on another country who poised no military threat to the United States. Are there any real differences between the two major parties on foreign policy? Where is the authority for a single person to approve military action against another country which action has always been considered an act of war?
Although I have no sympathy for Moammar Gadhafi, how would we feel if Libya was the super power and did the same to us? Of course, I realize that this was done by coalition forces (mostly France and Britain) through the power of the United Nations, but whose kidding who: it is mostly our aircraft, our pilots, our ships and our Mohawk Missiles.
I am concerned about the constitutionality of this action by either a Democratic or a Republican President. The making and funding of war were clearly denied the President in the Constitution because he “had the most propensity for war.” Only Congress has the right “to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water.” War requires the blood of our young warriors and this requires the permission of the people who are required to be the fodder in such. Only the peoples’ representatives can “provide and maintain a navy or make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces” and for “calling forth the militia…to repel invasions “ or “provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States….” Congress is directly responsible for any acquisition of property for military use. All of this is in Article I, Section 8 and belongs to the legislative branch alone.
Funding for war is yet another Constitutional concern and clearly left with the House of Representatives. The document says: “no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years.” Two years is the designated time that a member of the House is elected and authorized to represent his people. So, President Obama cannot expend monies to attack Libya, or anywhere else, without congressional approval. Article I, Section 7 requires that “all bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives…” As far as we can ascertain he did not consulted with Congress. No! Not even with his own party!
The only power the president is allowed to have is as “Commander in Chief of the army and navy of the United States, … when called into the actual service of the United States,” which is done only by Congress not by himself. Senator McCain and President Obama, and democrats and republicans, have no Constitutional authority to engage in war without a declaration of war—even if done by other presidents before them. And there is no authority to defer this power to an international government—the United Nations—to do it for us. To commit our young to potential death unilaterally is not within a presidents’ power and should be an impeachable offense.
By the second day of bombing, Moammar Gadhafi’s troops were targeted and civilians killed. In time an American pilot will be shot down and rightfully held as a prisoner of war. This justifies sending even more troops with, “We Must Support Our Troops,” signs and we will be at war with yet a third country in the Obama administration.
I, together with other Tea Party Patriots, recommend immediate defunding of this war by the House of Representatives and withdrawal. Any other course of action entrenches us further and violates two of our core values: constitutional limited government, and fiscal responsibility.
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.
On February 16, 2011, the Idaho State Legislature passed a bill by an overwhelming 49-20 vote nullifying, in its state, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act popularly referred to as “Obamacare.” Is it Constitutional to say no to the Federal Government when a state believes a Federal Mandate to be unconstitutional? Eleven other states appear prone to do the same thing. The Tea Party movement largely supports the nullification doctrine. Twenty-eight states have sued the federal government for having exceeded its Constitutional power, but Idaho is the first state to say, “no will do.” Can they do so?
Such has never been presented to the Supreme Court but the issue has two historical precedents. Thomas Jefferson in 1798 attempted to nullify The Alien and Sedition Acts created by his Federalist Party predecessors. These raised residency requirements for citizenship from 5 years to 14. Moreover, the law allowed the president to deport “dangerous” foreigners during times of peace and imprison them during times of hostilities. Anyone defaming or impeding government officials, including the president, was subject to heavy fines and/or imprisonment. Jeffersonians objected on the basis of the unreasonable empowerment of the president and the attack on the First Amendment, particularly freedoms of speech and press. They too said, “no will do.” The Supreme Court never took the case, largely because the bill was design to last only until 1801, (Federalists did not want it used against them should they lose the next election) thus the issue remained unresolved.
Next to use the Nullification Doctrine was South Carolina with respect to the 1828 “Tariff of Abominations,” believed by them and neighboring states to be unconstitutional. Opponents to it declared it to be “null and void” within their border and threatened to take South Carolina out of the Union if Washington attempted to collect custom duties by force. President Andrew Jackson prepared to invade the state. A compromise Tariff of 1833 gradually lowered the tariff to acceptable levels and the issue faded away; again with no Supreme Court ruling.
When the Founding Fathers created the Constitution they recognized two co-existing governments known as Federalism: one, the federal government, to function primarily externally, the other, the states, to manage internal functions. Like a marriage they functioned—neither being master nor slave. Of the two only the federal government was restricted in its functions by a list of 17 specific powers found in Article I, Section 8. The Founders knew that all national governments like to grow. The states were left unrestricted. To make doubly sure that this limitation on the federal government was permanent the States insisted on having a Bill of Rights included in the Constitution as a condition of their acceptance of it. Amendment 10 reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution…are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
Unfortunately for power-hungry federal politicians, the word health is not in Section 8, nor has it been added to the Constitution by way of amendment through Article V, which is the process for “change that you can believe in,” and thus it is devoid of Constitutional authority. If we are to follow the Constitution as intended, and not make a mockery of it, health related question are state functions at best and cannot be moved to a Federal jurisdiction without a 3/4th affirmative vote of the states as per Article V of the U.S. Constitution. Idaho has every right to say, “no will do” and more states should do the same.
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.
Dr. Harold W. Pease
“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi March 8, 2010, before the passage of the National Health Care legislation. It turns out that buried deep within the 2,700 page bill there exists funding to the tune of $105 billion dollars built into it to the year 2019, including five billion for this year alone. Is funding beyond the length of time a member is elected to serve constitutional? Definitely not!!
Why would they do this? The planners knew that given the length of the bill (more especially the several hundred pages injected the night before the final vote) that it would not be read. They also knew, given the massive Tea Party rejection of ever more government in our lives, that it was not popular and that they might lose control of the House in the November 2010 elections making possible the refunding of Obamacare. Whether Americans are in support of the Bill or not this has to go down as the most deceitful piece of legislation in American History. Every lawmaker who did not read it fully should be fired in the next election and everyone who did, and let this kind of hidden funding pass, rejected as well.
What is wrong with it outside the massive indebtedness passed to our children and grandchildren who are already slaves to a debt of over 14 trillion dollars? It also seriously damages the Constitution as well. Article I, Section 7, requires that “All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.” All spending is also taxing. Spending necessitates taxing or inflating the currency which is also taxing. This was placed in the Constitution to insure that the people were never over taxed as it is the nature of all governments to grow and doing so necessitates taking more money from the people. All taxing bills would also have clarity and transparency as such. The idea of hiding a tax measure, more especially guaranteeing funds for eight years into the future (literally added in the middle of the night as mentioned), would have been foreign to the Founders.
Section 8 of the same Article, Clause 12, defines a spending limit of two years for money financing war. “To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years.” The reason for the two-year limitation on this, and everything else, is that members of the House of Representatives are elected for two-year terms renewed only if they continue to reflect the will of the people. They have no constitutional legitimacy to force the extraction of tax monies past the time they legitimately represent the people—two years.
The $105 billion assures the implementation of the 159 new federal bureaucracies created by the bill no matter what the people or any future Congress feels about it. This appears to be intentionally designed to bypass Congress’s normal appropriations process and to keep the next Congress from undoing their work. Once these bureaucracies are in place it is nearly impossible to undo them, as the thousands of new bureaucrats in place will be highly motivated and vocal to prevent their dismantlement. The 112th Congress, the House of Representatives in particular, must act immediately specifically identifying and defunding each program one-by-one before any already allocated funds are spent and before moving on to any other business. This is that critical. Goliath grows bigger everyday and will forever eat increasingly more out of the taxpayer’s pocket.
For the 111th Congress to extend its’ jurisdiction for an additional eight years, in effect reducing the power of the next four Congresses, is unconscionable. By not challenging this precedent, established by a Constitutionally rogue Congress, it could be used by other Congresses in the future. This must not be permitted. This may well be the most corrupt Congress in U. S. History—certainly one of the most damaging to the U. S. Constitution. The 112th could be second if it does not reassert its power and return to the constitutional appropriations process. 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.
The renewal of the USA Patriot Act, initiated by President George W. Bush within just six weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, would extend the greatest threat to the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution since World War II. On February 8, 2011, the House of Representatives unsuccessfully sought a further extension of the Act through the end of 2011, failing largely because Tea Party House support was not there. This surprised Republican Party leadership; avid supporters of the Act, but Tea Party Patriots are dedicated to the Constitution first. Without an extension, the Act is set to expire on February 28, 2011.
The Fourth Amendment reads, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
This was placed in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution because of the tendency of the British government to simply walk the streets arresting anyone who looked the least bit guilty of something, invade their premises, and draw up accusations based upon what they found. The Founders saw this as harassment and invasion of privacy and did not want our government empowered to do the same thing.
Among other things, the USA Patriot Act allows searches without notice to the suspect; grants roving wiretap warrants that allow government eavesdropping on any telephones used by suspects; and allows the interception of email. So much for the right to be secure in one’s “houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches.” All of this is Constitutionally permitted only with a search warrant that emanates only upon probable cause (a real definable reason). Reasonable is determined, not by the secret agent snooping through your papers or eavesdropping on your conversations, but upon probable cause determined by someone disassociated from the accusing party, a judge, who holds his position by his sworn oath to preserve the Constitution. Even then such a Warrant must describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. All of this must precede governments disturbing your house, papers, and effects.
The USA Patriot Act also allows investigators to obtain information from credit card companies, banks, libraries, and other businesses; authorizes the seizure of properties used to commit or facilitate terrorism; and allows the indefinite detention of non-citizens whom the “Attorney General believes may cause a terrorist act,” all clear and major violations of the Fourth Amendment. How could the Constitutional language “not be violated” be any stronger? The American Library Association objected and issued a statement that the Act “allows the government to secretly request and obtain library records for large numbers of individuals without any reason to believe they are involved in illegal activity (USA Patriot Act, Wikipedia).”
With the word terrorist poorly defined one wonders why the government was/is more interested in internal terrorists (fellow Americans) than external “terrorists” (foreigners). The same government appears unconcerned about our very porous southern border even knowing that many come across from terrorist countries—even Hezbollah (See “A Line in the Sand: Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border,” House Committee on Homeland Security, 2006).
All of this initiated by a Republican President and approved by a Republican Congress with almost unanimous Democratic Party support, falls short of meeting even basic constitutional standards of due process and fairness, as it allows the Attorney General to detain persons based on mere suspicion (see USA Patriot Act, Wikipedia). Where were the Constitutionalists from either party? Certainly, the times were drastic and unusual but the urgency was over-stated and is now largely gone thus mere renewal is not the proper course. We have time and another chance to do this right without distorting the Constitution. Hopefully the Republicans who gave us the USA Patriot Act will join their Tea Party and Democratic Party colleagues on preserving the Constitution instead.
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.
We are presently over 14 trillion dollars in debt, three trillion of which was incurred the last two years under President Barack Obama. So what is a trillion dollars? Let me try to give some perspective. To begin with a trillion is the number 1 followed by twelve zeros. A trillion dollars is a thousand billion and a billion is a thousand million. This still means very little to my students who count their money in fives, tens and twenties.
One mathematician gave us a more practical way to evaluate our outstanding debt. One trillion one-dollar bills stacked atop each other (not end to end but flat) would reach nearly 68,000 miles into space—a third of the way to the moon. If so, the debt incurred under President Obama alone would take us to the moon. Moreover, if you like traveling atop this stack of ones, you could return to earth for yet another three trillion dollars which is six trillion dollars. You could repeat your visit to and from the moon for yet another six trillion, making 12 trillion total. We have two trillion in debt remaining, just enough to get us two-thirds of the way to the moon again (See CNN News Cast, Feb. 4, 2009).
Senator Mitch McConnell gave another illustration just as awe striking. He calculated that if we spent a million dollars every day since Jesus was born we still would not have spent a trillion dollars—only three-fourths of a trillion dollars. We would have 13 1/4 trillion left.
Someone else equated our national debt to seconds and concluded that a million seconds is about 11 ½ days and a billion seconds is about 32 years. A trillion seconds is about 32,000 years thus 14 trillion seconds is 448,000 years (See CNN News Cast, Feb. 4, 2009). This is not helpful and only makes my head spin. My Ph. D is not in math.
I ask my students, “Who gets to go without so that this debt can be paid?” Go without?” That is a concept foreign to this generation!! They do not know and neither do their parents and grandparents who laid it on their backs. When they are told that their immediate share of the debt is $127,529 (see USDebtClock.org) due immediately, they are angry. The 13th amendment ending slavery has been rescinded. The past generation wanted nice costly programs for free and were willing to sell their children in order to drive new Cadillac’s now. Well, the Cadillac’s are in the auto wrecking yards, Communist China owns a tenth of us and the bills are due. What is worse the older generation is still anxious to incur even more debt on our defenseless children and grandchildren. Are we the most debt addicted, insensitive generation in all human history?
But there is hope. When you go bankrupt in your personal life you are expected to sell everything that you own to get out of debt. The nation has one asset left that could probably vaporize this national debt and do so in one generation but I am reluctant to bring attention to it until we have learned the lesson that we cannot spend beyond our means without someone paying for it latter. Unfortunately, neither party is fully there yet. Sell government land. Most are surprised to learn that the federal government unconstitutionally owns a third of the landmass of the United States. The Constitution limits the amount of land that the federal government can have to 10 square miles for a capital and land acquired through the limits of the Constitution for military purposes.
Over the decades the federal government withheld the land that went with statehood in the West. New states were so anxious to gain statehood that they overlooked the omission. According to public land statistics Alaska owns only 1 ½ % of itself. Arizona 56% of itself, California 52 ½ % of itself, Idaho 36% of itself, Nevada, a mere 12% of itself, and Utah 36 ½ % of itself. We, of course, would have to restrict foreign countries and perhaps place a limit on individual takes, but the idea would be to spend every penny derived from the sales to liquidating our 14 trillion dollars of debt.
