In a well distributed letter, Paul M. Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation indicated that what he calls the "collapse of the culture" is enough to make his brand of conservative drop out of the American culture.

What many of us have been trying to do for many years has been based upon a couple of premises. First of all, we have assumed that a majority of Americans basically agrees with our point of view. That has been the premise upon which we have tried to build any number of institutions, and indeed our whole strategy. It is I who suggested to Jerry Falwell that he call his organization the "Moral Majority." The second premise has been that if we could just elect enough conservatives, we could get our people in as Congressional leaders and they would fight to implement our agenda.

http://www.freecongress.org

Weyrich realized that most of the American population was not partaking in the Moral Majority. That is, unlike his close-net set, most Americans are not followers of folks like the Reverend Jerry Falwell. In fact, many of us are not really "conservatives," in the strict sense of the word. Rather, we look for public officials who will protect, defend and obey the Constitution. And, in today's political atmosphere, that is hardly being a "conservative."

Over the years, Weyrich and Free Congress have offered many good ideas. They are also in position to provide a lot of very useful information to us out here in fly-over country. However, that is not to say that, just because we often agree, we're out here marching in lock- step with their leadership. In fact, that is definitely not the case.

Free Congress and the Moral Majority are true Conservative organizations. That is, they do not want change from the Christian morals that made this country so great. Where they differ from most people out here in the real world is that they would have government enact law to insure that the tenets of the Moral Majority are enforced. So, when Weyrich writes, "fight to implement our agenda," that is exactly what he means -- implement their agenda into the law of the land.

Well, here's where parts of their scheme start to rub the fur the wrong way in many areas of the country: There are over 1,500 religions or denominations in the United States. Each, as is their right, have different beliefs and rules for their members. There are certain similarities between many of these religions, but there are also many differences. Who's beliefs and rules, then, shall we use as the law of the land?

I want mine. You may want yours. Falwell wants his. All may be slightly different. That presents a problem. Must many conform to the tenets of one?

Interestingly enough, the Founding Fathers also had this very same problem back then. And, they solved it. In a polite society, I am not to publicly comment disparagingly about other people's religion, and they are to extend the very same courtesy to me. Government has yet a different role in this controversy. They are to stay completely out of it. Because, our First Amendment right to freedom of religion means that government should not interfere in any way whatsoever.

As usual, though, Weyrich made some very good points. One was that the new politically correct fad amounts to little more than "Cultural Marxism." One point he makes is that, "for the first time in their lives, people have to be afraid of what they say."

Actually, though, that's only true for "normal" people. We notice that the far left socialists and Marxists among us have no fear of calling the Moral Majority "radical right wing religious fanatics." Even non-religious supporters of the Constitution are often called "right wing zealots" today -- which is an obvious public admission by the far-left that there is a large contingent in government, academia and the media who intentionally disparage our Constitution.

Yet, were we to call that contingent un-American Marxist-socialists, we would probably get charged with a hate crime, or something. But, that's what they are.

Those "turn on, tune in, drop out" acid heads of the 60s who said "never trust anyone over 30" are about 55 years old now. Some of them are busy corrupting government. Others are still on campuses throughout the country, corrupting the minds of our young. Still others are in the media, adding a leftist spin to the news. They are the bulk of the core of the socialist movement. And, they are not afraid to get in the face of anyone who does not conform to their politically correct revisionist garbage.

If we want change, we must make a concentrated effort to clean out the socialists in the schools, bankrupt the liberal media and fire all the socialist groups taking up residence in government. If we want freedom, we must all band together to get it done -- and this agenda must include across the board freedom for everyone, which may include some things some of us may not necessarily like.

Most importantly, we must stop acting like we are afraid someone won't like us if we speak up! If we declare war on these communists, Marxists and socialists we have to get in their face with it. We will have to behave every bit as ornery, mean and obnoxious as they do. We will have to learn to discuss and defend the Constitution, as presented in the Federalist Papers, and apply the law just as forcefully as the far-left does. We will have to publicly call programs un-American, socialistic and Marxist when they are, not stand back and act like wimps while we compromise our liberty away.

The fine art of ridicule is in order again. That is, public ridicule should be pelted upon any person or organization proposing federal government programs that deviate from our Constitutional form of government.

The Constitution, as described by the Founding Fathers, is to be the law of the land -- our rule of law. And, until amended, everyone in the country must conform equally. Our Constitution is not a "living document." Rather, it is a firm contract between the people of the various States and the federal government, which allows certain powers to the federal government and preserves all others for the States and/or the people. Anyone deviating from that plan deserves our expressed scorn.

There is only one way we can protect freedom for our grandchildren: Fight for it! "Rebel, Revolt, Resist," as the old saying goes. The Marxist-socialist network must be exposed for exactly what it is: Un-Constitutional, un-American and a direct threat to freedom and liberty.

When the American people see that movement begin, then, and only then, will they help. As Samuel Adams, the Father of the American Revolution, said:

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in peoples minds."

Well? It worked for him. Isn't it time? If not now, then when? If not us, then who?

All people, as is their natural want, are interested in their own personal freedom. The next great American leader will be that person who most loudly calls for a resurgence of those freedoms intended by the Founding Fathers to belong to all Americans equally -- and can explain why properly.

In general, the American people know the federal government is a corrupt mess -- a sick parody of the government intended by the Founding Fathers. What they do not know is what to do about it. That is why less than 25% of the electorate was able to put a totally inept president into office. That is why 85% of the American people clearly do not trust the federal government. Simply put, for lack of visible leadership -- leadership who can be trusted to do what is Constitutionally correct -- most of America dropped out of the political process. All the recent impeachment fiasco did was to further punctuate that opinion throughout the country.

There is no large "Moral Majority" to speak of, and there will never be. There is, however, a vast silent majority of good Americans of many races, religions and nationalities, each yearning for that old "truth, freedom and the American way" we learned of as children. But, any leader wanting help from that group better show them something first.

The only acceptable agenda is the enforcement of the Constitution. If we do not start that movement very, very soon, all else will be lost. Because, as Weyrich points out, the "Thought Police" are already here. The full implementation of a George Orwell "1984" type society requires but a very few more laws, executive orders and regulations.

Today's Marxist-socialists call their oppressive program the "Third Way," but the end result will be the same. Totalitarianism, it's called.

Last week, 46 year old Rep. John Kasich (R-OH) celebrated Presidents Day by kicking off his campaign for the Republican nomination for the presidential election in 2000. They came up with a cute theme, too: "Giving America back to the American people."

"We've got to run America from the bottom up ... from our families to our communities ... to the top," Kasich told an audience of 1,200 supporters and media. "Tax cuts are not just about economic theory. They are about the fact that we can be empowered to do what we need to do in our own communities. There is no substitute for this and we must march every day to get our power back because the more we have the more we can do and we can control our own destiny. Please join me in the never ending fight to cut government and taxes in America."

Sounds good, huh? We'll get back to this shortly. According to his campaign committee, the details on the Kasich campaign can be found on his Internet site at <http://www.k2k.org>. There's not much there yet, but it's early.

"Our mission is pretty simple: Let people have their power back," he said. "Run America from the bottom up. Restore the value of faith in God, and the values and virtues that come from that faith. And finally, each and every one of us stand up and make a difference in the world we live in."

Kasich says he has a mission: to take power and influence away from elites in Washington and return it to the American people. Towards that end, he proposes a 10 percent across-the-board tax cut for America's working families. Thereafter, he takes credit for balancing the budget and reforming welfare.

Well, the budget is far from being in balance because they are still stealing all the Social Security money and spending it as part of the general fund. As chairman of the House Budget Committee, Kasich is responsible for repeatedly giving every department of the federal government a raise, growing government year after year -- even EPA received a 10% budget increase. And, they also added more welfare programs, like the earned income tax credit, for instance.

Then, adding insult to injury, Kasich showed us how little he knows about the Constitution and the Founding Fathers: "I love the fact that no one's been elected from Congress because [if] it's going to happen; it might as well be me. I mean, why not?" Kasich said.

Well John, Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution clearly states that "Congress … shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives." Therefore, many Members of Congress have been elected President. And, even if we are only talking about the House, the Father of our Constitution served as a Representative in the First Congress and was later elected President: James Madison.

A few years ago, I stood right in front of Rep. Kasich and clearly heard him say that he believes in the family, freedom of the individual, and the right to keep and bear arms. Now he's pushing the same old rhetoric. So, let's take a little peek at some of Kasich's voting record these past couple years and see if he puts his vote where his mouth is.

In 1997, a bill came up to get the U.S. out of the UN and the UN out of the U.S. Kasich voted in favor of sticking with the UN. Then came a bill to bar anti-gun prosecutors from punishing gun owners who use a gun in self-defense against violent attackers. Kasich voted against our right of self defense.

He also voted to approve the obnoxious Lautenberg gun ban that passed in 1996. That stupid law imposes a lifetime gun ban on those who have committed minor infractions in the home "offenses" that could be as slight as shoving a spouse or spanking a child.

Kasich also voted against a bill that would repeal the ban on more than 180 types of firearms, magazines holding more than 10 rounds, and the unprecedented restrictions upon gun dealers that have helped drive 50% of the gun dealers out of business. And, of course, he voted to keep the Brady Law, the Clinton 1994 ban on semi-automatics and gun magazines, and the ridiculous "sporting purposes" test -- a test which has been used by Presidents Bush and Clinton to ban the importation of many semi-automatic firearms.

Worse yet, Kasich voted to allow the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) to conduct searches and seizures in violation of the Fourth Amendment -- and, he even gave BATF a pay increase. Then, he voted for H.R. 666, which allows all federal officers to conduct searches and seizures in violation of the Fourth Amendment, if they act in "good faith." The bill also limits the protections afforded by the "exclusionary rule" -- a procedural rule which excludes illegally obtained evidence from trial.

Clearly, John Kasich does not like the American family enough to allow them to protect themselves against illegal intruders. In fact, his voting record shows that he intends to gut the Bill of Rights and give more police power over the people to the central government.

Shouldn't "Giving America back to the American people" include getting the federal government the hell out of our personal lives? We think so. Therefore, John Kasich is not acceptable to us as President.

We'll wait for someone who respects the Constitution.

Really, we all owe a hardy "thank you" to the Paula Jones attorneys. In order to sue the Impeached First Sexual Predator, they had to first get permission from the court. And, the case ran all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court -- where Clinton lost nine to zip.

But, it gets better yet:

This may be hard to completely understand, but the Court said something in this unanimous decision that could become much, much more important to us than the fun of watching Slick Willie squirm and commit perjury in court.

The fact is, if the Court carried this thought forward just a little bit further, we citizens might actually have a shot at winning back some freedom from those one-hundred-million words of womb to tomb federal regulations.

Writing for the Court, Justice Stevens rambled on a little about the separation of powers and how the federal government was intended to be compartmentalized. Here's the part where we started loosing our train of thought about Slick Willie lying to the court:

The doctrine of separation of powers is concerned with the allocation of official power among the three co-equal branches of our Government. The Framers built into the tripartite Federal Government . . . a self- executing safeguard against the encroachment or aggrandizement of one branch at the expense of the other.

 

Yeah. That's what was intended all right. But then Roosevelt came along with out and out socialism and violated nearly everything the Founding Fathers wanted in government. Consequently, we ended up with over one- hundred federal agencies, each of which is its own executive, legislative and judicial branch wrapped into one body.

The benefit of a "triparite," or three branch government, effectively ended for most matters affecting the lives of citizens when the fourth, or regulatory branch, began. Nowadays, bureaucrats from the federal regulatory branch of government control nearly everything affecting our lives, with little or no input needed or desired from elected officials.

Justice Stevens continues:

Thus, for example, the Congress may not exercise the judicial power to revise final judgments, or the executive power to manage an airport, see (Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority v. Citizens for Abatement of Aircraft Noise, Inc., 501 U. S. 252, 276 (1991) holding that if the power is executive, the Constitution does not permit an agent of Congress to exercise it). (See J. W. Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States, 276 U. S. 394, 406 (1928) (Congress may not invest itself or its members with either executive power or judicial power)).

"Similarly, the President may not exercise the legislative power to authorize the seizure of private property for public use. (Youngstown, 343 U. S., at 588.)

 

This was the place we had to completely stop reading and consider what was being said here. "The President may not" what?? Huh?

The executive branch and the regulatory agencies do that almost every day. That's been going on for at least fifty years. How many hundreds of executive branch regulations are there that can totally halt any use of private property, "for the good of the general public"? And, since when has Congress ever been consulted when the executive branch, through one of its regulatory bureaucracies, condemns property for public use? Never. And Congress will not force the issue because Congress has no interest in protecting people's rights anymore.

The opinion rambled a little more, and then the other shoe dropped:

We have recognized that even when a branch does not arrogate power to itself . . . the separation-of- powers doctrine requires that a branch not impair another in the performance of its constitutional duties. (Loving v. United States, 517 U. S. ---, --- (1996) see also Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U. S. 425, 443 (1977)).

 

"Arrogate," by the way, means "to appropriate or claim without right." Therefore, when the subject is the executive branch, "arrogate" becomes a very, very interesting choice of words for the Supreme Court to use.

Of course, a corrupt Congress gave Roosevelt all those unconstitutional (and dictatorial) regulatory powers. Then Roosevelt unilaterally arrogated (usurped) even more. At first, the Supreme Court protested, and knocked them down. But, FDR managed to corrupt the Supreme Court, and ultimately the Court let the whole series of laws setting up unconstitutional regulatory agencies stand.

After the war, Truman tried to further expand executive powers by taking over some of the nation's steel plants. But by then the Supreme Court had had enough and put a stop to that foolishness. The Court should have taken that opportunity to go back and undo the damage it allowed under the Roosevelt administration. But, it did not. Nor did succeeding presidents cancel these oppressive and Constitutionally aberrant powers.

The government has been centralizing power in Washington ever since. Once the Supreme Court allowed Congress to violate that parchment boundary set down in our Constitution, the rest became easy.

Very few of the provisions set down within the Constitution are respected by those in today's federal government. Congress now feels that it has unlimited authority to legislate on any subject it wishes. And when Congress does not have time to "correct" the actions of us wayward citizens, the bureaucrats at the regulatory agencies fill the void with new laws technically called rules and/or regulations. Even the President now feels free to unilaterally legislate at will through executive orders.

All of the limits set forth in our Constitution by the Founding Fathers are now null and void, circumvented over the years through the use of legal trick and device. Politicians still pay lip-service to the Constitution, when it is convenient. But were they to actually follow the document, as intended by the Founding Fathers, over one-third of the federal government would instantly disappear. So too would all of the "arrogated" authority over the people usurped by the federal government these past 60 years.

That's why these words buried in the text of the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court are so important. The Court is again considering fundamental Constitutional issues. Look at the words again, this time somewhat condensed and more readable.

The Supreme Court unanimously, said:

The doctrine of separation of powers is concerned with the allocation of official power among the three co- equal branches of our Government. . . . The Framers built into the tripartite Federal Government . . . a self-executing safeguard against the encroachment or aggrandizement of one branch at the expense of the other. . . . Thus, for example, the Congress may not exercise the judicial power to revise final judgments. . . .

Similarly, [for example] the President may not exercise the legislative power to authorize the seizure of private property for public use. . . . [In fact] We have recognized that even when a branch does not arrogate power to itself . . . the separation-of-powers doctrine requires that a branch not impair another in the performance of its constitutional duties.

 

Indeed! But, how do we stop them?

The Court even quoted the Federalist Papers #51 (in footnote #30):

The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachments of the others.

We would like to add another short quote from The Federalist Papers here. In No. 47, James Madison tells us exactly what the "concentration of the several powers in the same department" is called:

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether on one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

And that, in a nutshell, is exactly why we have so much trouble with those unconstitutional federal regulatory agencies -- or a president making law unilaterally through executive order.

Could it be that the Supreme Court is about to correct the mess it allowed Roosevelt to make of our federal government sixty-some years ago? It almost seems that way. Justice Thomas has been pushing Tenth Amendment issues for a few years, but most of those decisions were bare majority opinions. This decision was unanimous. Nine to zip! And folks, unlike Members of Congress, the Justices of the Supreme Court actually read the texts before they vote. They know what they said, and they plan to repeat it.

So, we think (hope) there's a foreshadowing message there.

Read Clinton v. Jones (95-1853) at:

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/95-1853.cpanel.html