Free Republic

Notice how this document bears similarities to our Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. A declaration of rights made by the representatives of the good people of Virginia, assembled in full and free convention; which rights do pertain to them and their posterity, as the basis and foundation of government. SECTION I. That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring...

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- More than 200 years after they were written, about 5,000 previously unpublished documents of the founders of the United States -- including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison -- are now available to the public at no cost. The Documents Compass group of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities at the University of Virginia has spent much of the past year proofreading and transcribing thousands of pages of letters and other papers. The documents are available online for free at the University of Virginia Press' digital imprint called Rotunda. "It's an exciting project," said Penelope Kaiserlian, director...

A Declaration of Restoration /July 4th 2009/ When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with a governing body they have created, which has turned tyrannical and detrimental to the peace and safety, and the very existence of the nation of the People who established the governing body, and to return to a previously established form of self governing under the Laws of Nature and Natures God as entitled therein, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which...

During the summer of 1814, British warships sailed into the Chesapeake Bay and headed towards Washington. The warships sailed up the Patuxent River and anchored at Benedict, Maryland on August 19, 1814. Over 4,500 British soldiers landed and marched towards Washington. The British mission was to capture Washington and seek revenge for the burning of their British Capitol in Canada, for which they held the United States responsible. A force of 7,000 Americans was hastily assembled near the Potomac River to defend Washington. During the afternoon of August 24, in 100°F heat, the two armies clashed. The British Army quickly...

Found this quote from James Madison while studying about the Nullification cricis: "And in the event of a failure of every Constitutional resort, and an accumuliation of usurpations and abuses rendering passive obedience and non-resistance a greater evil than resistance and REVOLUTION, there can remain but one last resort, the last of all:an apeal from the cancled obligations of the Constiutional compact, to the orginal rights and the law of self preservation. This is the ultima ratio of all governments whether consolidated, confederated, or a compound of both;and it can not be douted that a single member of the Union,...

Who Are the Best Keepers of the People's Liberties? National Gazette, December 22, 1792 Republican. — The people themselves. The sacred trust can be no where so safe as in the hands most interested in preserving it. Anti-republican. — The people are stupid, suspicious, licentious. They cannot safely trust themselves. When they have established government they should think of nothing but obedience, leaving the care of their liberties to their wiser rulers. Republican. — Although all men are born free, and all nations might be so, yet too true it is, that slavery has been the general lot of the...

First let me say - - it most certainly is an “obsession.” At least, given the verbal assaults that come my way when I so much as raise a question about the President's policies, it most certainly seems like an "obsession" to me. “Obsession,” by the way, is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “the domination of one's thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire, etc.” And doesn’t it seem that to you that many of our fellow Americans are “obsessed” with the “persistent idea” that our 44th President, Barack Obama, is something more than human? It may be...

Why is the press remaining mostly silent about the so-called "hate crimes law" that passed in the House on April 29? The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act passed in a 249-175 vote (17 Republicans joined with 231 Democrats). These Democrats should have been tested on their knowledge of the First Amendment, equal protection of the laws (14th Amendment), and the prohibition of double jeopardy (no American can be prosecuted twice for the same crime or offense). If they had been, they would have known that this proposal, now headed for a Senate vote, violates all these constitutional provisions....

There is a reason that the Senate is called the "deliberative" body. The the framers of the constitution created it that way. They understood politics very well, that at times the public would make decisions based on a temporary passion, the Senate's job is to slow things things down, before irreparable damage was made. Federalist 63 written by James Madison (or Alexander Hamilton) says: “There are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will...

The people can never wilfully betray their own interests; but they may possibly be betrayed by the representatives of the people; and the danger will be evidently greater where the whole legislative trust is lodged in the hands of one body of men, than where the concurrence of separate and dissimilar bodies is required in every public act. short context: It adds no small weight to all these considerations, to recollect that history informs us of no long-lived republic which had not a senate. Sparta, Rome, and Carthage are, in fact, the only states to whom that character can be...

During the fall of 2000, a political science professor at my university stated, quite correctly, I think, that the Democratic and Republican parties were becoming so alike that Americans were given no real choice in a given election year. I agreed with him then and I agree with him now. Many Republicans, myself included, voted for George W. Bush because we didn’t think it possible that he could be as fiscally irresponsible as his father, our 41st president who was replaced by a more fiscally responsible – though considerably more morally flawed – Democrat. In 2004, after the inexcusable expansion...

John Witherspoon was not only a Founding Father, but in his roles as preacher and professor he taught and influenced many of the great men of the Founding era.On November 15, 1794, a 72-year-old Presbyterian preacher lay dying on his farm near Princeton, New Jersey. In some ways he may have welcomed death. His wife had died five years earlier, and for over two years he had been blind, so his associates had to lead him into the pulpit, where he still preached with his usual earnestness and perhaps with more than his usual solemnity and animation. Even though his...

Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation... Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. -- Federalist Papers, #46 at 243-244. Congress shall never disarm any citizen unless such as are or have been in actual rebellion. Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant. Whenever there is an interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done and not less readily by a...

Learning From Conservative History: Main Trails . . . and Less-Traveled Paths - 01/02/09 This is part three of a symposium on contemporary conservatism hosted by ISI at Yale in November, 2008. Read part one. Read part two.By training, I am an historian. I love the discipline and believe that historical mindedness—the ability to see and understand the grounding of current institutions, issues, and events in the complex matrix of the past—this is the superior way to make sense of reality.All the same, I have been troubled for over a decade by the growing interest of American conservatives in...

James Madison, during the First Continental Congress, was asked to vote for an appropriation of money to settle some Frenchmen in our new country who had helped in our revolution from England. While holding a copy of the newly adopted Constitution, Madison asked the body of legislators to show him somewhere in the document where it allowed the taxation of all people for the benefit of only a few. The bill was defeated. It should be remembered that our Constitution is not just some historical document to be admired by later generations for its linguistic style and mastery of the...

If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their Own hands; they may a point teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation...

(Ninth in a series of ten. For other articles in this series, click on View all articles by John Armor--and "Blogs by this author.") The eleven amendments which constitute the Bill of Rights are more important than merely a recitation of rights beyond the reach of the federal government. Collectively, they are the third great document of American liberty, after the Declaration and the Constitution. Yes, I said eleven, though you were taught in school there were only ten. There were only ten, back then.... But, seven states demanded amendments to protect individual and states’ rights as a price of...

(Eighth in a series of ten, For other articles in this series, click on ''View all articles by John Armor,'' and "Blogs by this author.") In the short run, one could offer several provisions in the Constitution as the most critical. In the long run, one provision stands out. Without Article V, the amendment provision, the Constitution would have long since failed and been abandoned. Consider the early history of America. Our first government under the Articles of Confederation failed precisely because of its amendment clause. Under Article 13 of the Confederation, Congress could propose amendments which had to be...

Two weeks ago I took a Walk in the Park. It was touching, sad, funny, and educational and the best possible use of two hours of time. The park was a cemetery. It was populated by dead people who talked. This was the ninth year of the Walk in the Park, sponsored by the Highlands Historical Society. Each year the Society chooses seven or so residents of the cemetery, researches their stories, casts the actors and actresses, and invites the public to visit. It is an impressive experience to walk into a cemetery and see men and women, and sometimes...

The critical question in the 4-3 decision of the California Supreme Court to require homosexual marriages in that state is not whether that is a better policy. It is, who should decide that question? The majority said that this was a “good” policy, and they would therefore require it. The minority said that the court had no business making that decision. Back up a little bit. Like almost all states, California had a statute which defined marriage as involving “one man and one woman.” Not two men. Not one man and four women. Not a man, a woman, and a...

The Patriot Post Founders' Quote Daily "If we resort for a criterion to the different principles on which different forms of government are established, we may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior." -- James Madison (Federalist No. 39) Reference: Madison, Federalist No. 39 (241)

"Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own." James Madison (Essay on Property, 29 March 1792) This was before the trial lawyers started making substantial donations to politicians. . . "Strangers are welcome because there is room enough for them all, and therefore the old Inhabitants are not jealous of them; the Laws protect them sufficiently so that they...

National Bill of Rights Day customarily occupies a minor place on our calendars, if it occupies a place at all. It falls every year on December 15, commemorating the ratification of the first 10 amendments to our Constitution, which occurred on that day in 1791. Bill of Rights Day is a day for rising above the commotion over the meaning of each specific amendment. It is an opportunity for us to reflect upon the purpose of those amendments as a whole, to step back and consider the crucial questions that our Founders confronted in considering the idea of amending...

"It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the constitution and course of nature the foundations of the distinction. John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776) Can you imagine how the press of today would roar if any republican candidate made such a statement in today's setting? "Wise politicians will be cautious about fettering the government with restrictions that cannot be observed, because they know that every break of the fundamental laws, though dictated by necessity, impairs that sacred reverence which ought to be maintained in the breast of...

"To render the justice of the war on our part the more conspicuous, the reluctance to commence it was followed by the earliest and strongest manifestations of a disposition to arrest its progress. The sword was scarcely out of the scabbard before the enemy was apprised of the reasonable terms on which it would be resheathed." -- James Madison (Second Inaugural Address, March 1813) "Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings,...

There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. James Madison (speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 16 June 1788) Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils. - Benjamin Franklin (An Address to the Public, November 1789) It should therefore be difficult in a republic to declare war; but not to make peace. -- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)...

The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust. -- James Madison (Federalist No. 57, 19 February 1788) ---- “As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.” —James Madison

When all government, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the Center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1821 Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain, quoted in A.B. Paine's Mark Twain: A Biography (Harper, 1912, Vol. 2, page 724). The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop. --...

When James Madison agitated to make religious freedom fundamental to the United States Constitution, it was not from hostility to religion. It was from hostility to established religion, with its presumption of an authority in worldly affairs that only an elected government should exercise. James Madison (1751-1836) The first freedom listed in the Bill of Rights tells us that Congress shall "make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" — a rule that is just as important in its second half as in its first.  However, the free exercise of religion involves living by...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The U.S. Mint is hoping that Martin Van Buren and Millard Fillmore can do what Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea couldn't - get Americans to use dollar coins. The Mint on Monday revealed the design of the new U.S. $1 coin, which will be issued in a series that will eventually include the faces of each U.S. president. It will release four new presidential dollars each year, starting with George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in 2007.

Last week US District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, in Detroit, Michigan, ruled that the National Security Agency’s overseas communications intercept program was unconstitutional. This is tied for the worst decision I’ve ever read, in 36 years as a member of the bar, both federal and state. Dozens of pundits have already written about aspects of her decision that are egregiously wrong. Even the august New York Times, which opposes the NSA program and favors Judge Taylor’s result, still has called her opinion “badly reasoned.” It’s important that lawyers, legal writers, and experienced laymen be able to recognize a thoroughly incompetent...

James Madison Jr., House of Representatives, February 1792: I, sir, have always conceived--I believe those who proposed the Constitution conceived, and it is still more fully known, and more material to observe that those who ratified the Constitution conceived--that this is not an indefinite Government, deriving its power from the general terms prefixed to the specified powers, but a limited Government tied down to the specified powers which explain and define the general terms. The gentlemen who contend for a contrary doctrine are surely not aware of the consequences which flow from it, and which they must either admit or...

After a hard fought war for American independence, war clouds once again loomed on the horizon for the infant nation of the United States. The U.S. felt the British had forced their hand by violating three areas of sovereignty. First, England refused to surrender western forts promised to the United States in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War. Second, the U.S. accused Great Britain of stopping American ships, under the premise to search for deserters, but instead was pressing U.S. sailors into British service. Third, British sanctions during the Napoleonic Wars resulted in the seizure of...

THE GREAT DIVIDE Ever since its first European settlements, in the early 1600s, America developed as two completely different republics. We have been politically divided ever since, and will always remain so. This is because our two founding republican traditions are both opposite and irreconcilable. On one side of the divide were the agrarian republicans like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. They gave us the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, with their foundation stones of equal creation, personal freedom, and the inalienable rights of every citizen. Theirs was a republic of innate virtue, where crime and vice were nothing...

In 1815, Washington was in ruins: the White House and Capitol building burned and sacked by the British, the national treasury depleted, the U.S. bruised and battered (but not defeated) by the War of 1812. President James Madison called the Congress to its make-shift chamber at the Post Office Building and asked for something extraordinary: a declaration of war against a state thousands of miles away.What followed was the U.S.'s first war on terror. This little conflict is now largely forgotten, but it had great and lasting consequences, establishing the U.S. as a global naval power and ending more than...

We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. The Federal Convention convened in the State House (Independence Hall) in Philadelphia on May 14, 1787, to revise the Articles of Confederation. Because the delegations from only two states were at first present, the members adjourned from day to day until a quorum of seven states was...

Even today, sources on inventions list six by Franklin that are still in active use today. One of those sits in my back hall, cheerfully and economically heating the back of my home – the Franklin stove. Another sits on the bridge of my nose as I write this – a pair of bifocals. But this is about Franklin’s greatest invention, one that the lists never mention because it is mere words, not a physical object. Franklin made seven trips to Europe, as a diplomat and scholar. He was welcomed into all the learned societies that existed in Europe then....

Harriet Miers has now withdrawn as a nominee for the Supreme Court. No one of the attacks against her would have been sufficient to cause withdrawal. Instead, she suffered the death of a thousand cuts. Who will be the new nominee, and how will she answer the inevitable attacks against her? Yes, “her.” I expect the President to nominate another woman to replace Justice O’Connor, whose resignation is conditional on confirmation of her replacement. Here’s my prediction of the new nominee’s opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee: Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee: We have now had, in short...

James Madison, father of our U.S. Constitution, must be rolling over in his grave. You see, he forgot to put love in it. By congressional edict, schools and universities across the nation were recently required to spend some time on or around September 17 teaching about the Constitution. That's the date our nation's founding document was ratified back in 1787. Robert Byrd, West Virginia's Ku Klux Klan leader turned Senator, authored the legislation. Byrd's considered something of a constitutional scholar by his congressional colleagues. (Mobsters, no doubt, thought Al Capone an expert on criminal justice.) The law mandates any educational...

[Andrew Chamberlain] post on pork spending reminds me of a story about the Father of the Constitution. President James Madison, in his last act before leaving office, vetoed a bill for “internal improvements,” including roads, bridges, canals, etc. These kinds of programs are ripe for the pork-barrel treatment today. In his veto message to Congress, he said: “Having considered the bill…I am constrained by the insuperable difficulty I feel in reconciling this bill with the Constitution of the United States…The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified...in the…Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised...

Starting this year, every educational institution receiving federal aid must teach about the U.S. Constitution on the September 17 anniversary of its signing (September 16 in 2005...) The requirement is ironic, given that it came from the Senate's leading Constitutional scholar, yet clearly conflicts with the Constitution, and on many grounds. Last year, Senator Robert Byrd (D.-W.Va.) inserted it into a spending bill packed with pork that was blatantly inconsistent with Americans' general welfare, which is the Constitution's rationale. There is nothing in the document that permits the federal government to tell local schools what they can and cannot teach....

Terror Sanitized After the terror attacks in London, a few TV commentators said they would go after those in the media who want to sanitize terrorism. Such bravado may be admirable, but it is a bravado that does not recognize how terrorism has already been sanitized. The leaders of Western democracies have sanitized terrorism because they cannot publicly admit they are helpless to prevent more attacks. Most analysts who study the so-called war on terror could have told you a year ago that there would be a terrorist attack targeting the London subway. Likewise, there are those who will tell...

Monday May 14th 1787 was the day fixed for the meeting of the deputies in Convention for revising the federal1 system of Government. On that day a small number only had assembled Seven States were not convened till, Friday 25 of May, when the following members appeared to wit: viz. From Massachusetts Rufus King. N. York ...

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." - James Madison

With its large print and simple phrasing, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History (or PIG as it cheerfully calls itself) is a fiery polemic aimed at students besieged by the "stale and predictable platitudes of mainstream texts." It is not a comprehensive history of America, but a kind of thematic one; a lot of liberal icons and shibboleths take a beating, and rightly so in many cases. Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations was an unrealistic scheme. Franklin Roosevelt's rhetoric was filled with dangerous "anti-business zealotry." Lyndon Johnson's Great Society was a failure with terrible consequences. Much of the book,...

  "A Republic, If You Can Keep It" by John F. McManus November 6, 2000   Knowing that a democracy is a government of men in which the tyranny of the majority rules, America's Founding Fathers wisely created a republic - a government ruled by law.On Constitution Day, September 17, 2000, President Bill Clinton spoke at the ground-breaking ceremony for a National Constitution Center at Independence Mall in Philadelphia. On that occasion the president remarked that the men who signed the Constitution "understood the enormity of what they were attempting to do: to create a representative democracy." He heaped praise...

AccountingWEB.com - Jan-6-2005 - For the first time ever, the U.S. does not rank among the world's 10 freest economies in the Index of Economic Freedom, published annually by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. The U.S.' score in the 2005 Index did not change from 2004. But improvements in the economies of Chile, Australia and Iceland enabled all three to surpass the U. S., leaving it in a tie for 12th with Switzerland and out of the top 10 for the first time in the 11-year history of the Index.

A couple of years ago I was at an Internet conference and one of the young entrepreneurs who spoke had emigrated from China. He said that whenever his relatives wrote and asked how he was doing, he always told them the same thing: "Why couldn't I have been born in this country?" America has been taking a licking in the world from all the people who think we're arrogant and high-handed in dealing with Moslem terror. Of course nobody treats their own terrorists any differently. China is at war with its own Moslems in its own West, the Philippines has...

James Madison, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton. If they were alive today, they may well be sentenced under the Campaign Reform Act of 2002. While the government is at it, they might also charge them with RICO violations - so immense was their conspiracy. You see, Madison, Jay & Hamilton were the . . .

Lord, Keep our Troops forever in Your care Give them victory over the enemy... Grant them a safe and swift return... Bless those who mourn the lost. . FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time. ...................................................................................... ........................................... U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel...