ENTITLEMENT REDUCTION PLAN TO IMPROVE HEALTH CARE

Some people who know me know that I was a practicing pharmacist and a practicing attorney in my years before retirement. During those early years I worked as a retail and hospital pharmacist, as a marketing legal counsel drug manufacturer, as an executive and legal counsel for the association of schools of pharmacy, legal counsel and congressional liaison for the United States Pharmacopeia, and for an assortment of hundreds of individual clients. I am still a member of pharmacy and bar associations and keep up in some of those areas. Many people do not know that for the last 15 years I have published a newsletter concerning the laws and regulations of dietary supplements, botanical and herbal products plus the emerging science about these products. So I am very well acquainted with the market conditions and possibilities these products can offer to reduce the cost of illness and prevent disease.


  As I have been thinking about the immense Federal government debt in recent months, I have come across some ideas that may provide a way to stop the entitlement creep in the health care area, most specifically in the area of prescription drugs and other similar products. The entitlements that Congress has created to help get themselves reelected are now set to take over all of the discretionary spending of the Federal government.

  Currently we see commentators write about the $15 to 16 Trillion in Federal government debt, made up of $11 Trillion or so of deficit spending and about $5 Trillion of debt to various Trust Funds like the Social Security Trust Fund, the Highway Trust Fund and other federally established Trust Funds. Few people however write about or even understand that these two numbers do not include the amount needed to fund all of the promises the Congress and past Administrations have made for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid plus pensions for Federal employees and a few other items. If the cost of providing what the law has promised to future generations is calculated to give the present day cost of those programs there may be another $105 to $120 Trillion promised that we do not have in the bank or anywhere else.

  This has led Michael D. Tanner, speaking to the Cato Institute recently on the True State of the Union to say that “We are broke. And we cannot pay it back.!”

  If we are to fix this debt problem, large and bold plans must be developed that will change the way we forward fund all of our luxuries onto future generations. It is not fair of us in 2012 to borrow forty cents of every dollar we spend from China and expect the unborn to be saddled with the bill. Politicians will tell you we can get by one more election, then we can take care of the problem. I say we must start now, not later, to get our Federal spending in order.

  For a number of years I have been a member of the Life Extension Foundation, located in Ft. Lauderdale. The organization has a pharmacy, mail order operation, diagnostic labs and a magazine titled Life Extension®. Every issue contains an article about a conflict or road block that the Food and Drug Administration has put up to stop the sale of some product or to demand more proof of effectiveness and safety for drugs that might help some very sick people.

  Now these articles have been collected into a book titled, Pharmocracy, How Corrupt Deals and Misguided Medical Regulations are Bankrupting America – And What To Do About It, by William Faloon. The book (ISBN 978-1-60766-011-8) is available from www.lef.org and Praktikos Books info@praktikosbooks.com. Members of the Foundation can purchase it at a discounted price.

  The book contains information advanced by Faloon since 1998 through 2011. Over the years he has generated several attempts to get Congress to change laws related to FDA controls over pharmaceuticals to a free market system. But success has come bite by bite, not all at once.

  I am blogging about this book because it contains a treasure trove of background information and solutions to problems that have created our growing debt for healthcare. The ideas in the book are not the only solutions out there, but the book needs to be included in the thinking of policy planners and decision makers. We have reinvented too many wheels recently when some answers are staring us in the face.

  What does the free market system look like in the eyes of Faloon?

  In the Preface, he writes: “Pharmocracy provides an irrefutable and rational basis to remove the suffocating compulsory aspect of healthcare regulation and allow free-market forces to compete against government-sanctioned medicine.”

  “This book documents how the free market can provide superior healthcare at far lower prices while better protecting consumers.

  “I fear that disregard of the obvious problems revealed in this book will condemn the United States to a downward spiral with little improvement in human longevity.”

  One explanation of Faloon’s free market system is “Our longstanding proposal has been to change the law so that anyone can opt out of the FDA’s umbrella of ‘protection.’ This approach will allow companies to sell drugs that have demonstrated safety and a reasonable likelihood of effectiveness, which are clearly labeled ‘Not Approved by the FDA.’ Patients who wish can still use only FDA-approved drugs, while those willing to take a risk, in consultation with their doctors, will be allowed to try drugs shown to be safe that are still not approved.”

  “We believe this initiative will result in a renaissance in the practice of medicine similar to the computer technology revolution of the past three decades. In the liberated environment we propose, many lethal diseases will succumb to cures that are less expensive that is presently the case. And greater competition will help eliminate the healthcare costs crisis that exists today.” p. 85.

  Faloon says the main reasons we have a less than effective free market, is that “For more than a century, consumers have been misled into believing the FDA protected them against dangerous drugs. The harsh reality is that the FDA functions to protect the economic interests of the pharmaceutical establishment, while trampling on the rights of Americans to access safer and more effective natural therapies.” P. 99

  The Faloon system would rely heavily on trial lawyers to stop companies from selling drugs making fraudulent claims. The Federal Trade Commission would be given authority over drug claims that it does not have now. The FDA would no longer be an impediment to seriously sick people from getting the latest, even if unapproved, treatment for their problems. Faloon says, “So we have a system in place today in which progressive doctors are persecuted, while those who sell dangerous and often ineffective therapies receive protection and payment from the federal government. People without the financial wherewithal have no choice, since Medicate will only pay what the FDA claims is safe and effective. Conventional medicine’s goldmine will end when Medicare exhausts its ability to pay.” P. 124

  At the end of this 364 page book is a summary of the seven regulatory restructuring changes required to reap the rewards of the free market. “Congress must pass laws that prohibit regulatory agencies (both federal and state) from taking enforcement action that impedes competition, drives up costs, stifles innovation, chills free speech, grants privileges to certain groups that are denied to others, mandates government approval or licensing, and creates wasteful and corrupt bureaucracy.” p. 361.

  This is a lot to do. And there are some problems in my mind with Congress telling the States what they cannot prohibit, since the FDA is based on the Commerce Clause and the 10th Amendment is coming back to life. But the seven areas Faloon mentions are worthy as an outline for what needs to be considered.

  The problem right now is what Faloon recognizes in his Epilogue. He says, “Our government has no idea what’s destroying America’s healthcare system. I doubt any elected official understands more than five percent of what you have just learned in this book.”

  “One reason our political leaders wallow in blind ignorance is that healthcare is only one of hundreds of different issues they are responsible for.”

  We would all be well to elect only Representatives and Senators, as well as a President, who now understand what is explained in this book or pledges to undertake to read it and ask why the healthcare system must remain under all of the current regulation.

WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH ACORN

Things You Need to Know

Acorn or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is still with us and planning for the future destruction of the United States as we know it. On August 30, I received an Email notice from Newsmax that Matthew Vadum had written a new book titled Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers. What the Newsmax Email said about the book intrigued me, so I bought it and read it. I decided that some more people needed to know what is in this book, so you might read it and take action to monitor what ACORN is doing today. I hope after reading these few comments you will also read the entire book and start keeping track of where ACORN is today.

Because of ACORN’s past history of voter registration fraud and other criminal activities, and my work exposing double voters in Palm Beach County, I have become more vigilant than some in monitoring the signals of voting problems. As I read the book, I decided that Floridians, especially the Republicans, need to know what the book says about ACORN activities in Florida. So this is what this essay is all about. I want to share some facts and factors that the book brings to our attention.

Ronald Reagan called ACORN “dangerous” on a radio talk show in 1970. It was after that that ACORN declared war on the Republican Party and began to work with Democrats. Vadum relates that it was Arkansas Governor Winthrop Rockefeller, a Republican, who in 1970 got ACORN into the voter registration business and gave ACORN $100,000 cash to get out the vote in Arkansas. (40) HUD Secretaries Alphonso Jackson, Jack Kemp, and Mel Martinez all worked with ACORN. Even John McCain’s support of ACORN got him into trouble in the third presidential debate in 2008. (49)

Not surprisingly, Vadum writes that “When he was still a Republican in 2008, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, and his chief elections officer, Secretary of State Kurt S. Browning, both rejected McCain’s condemnation of ACORN. When reporters asked the governor if he objected to ACORN being active in Florida elections, he replied, ‘no.’ Browning concurred. Crist also signed into law an ACORN-backed bill that restored the voting rights of more than 100,000 ex-convicts.” (50)

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty was for ACORN and signed a bill funding the organization before calling for the funding to be cut in 2009. Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney signed an ACORN-backed bill that cracked down on the subprime lending industry. (50)

Cloward and Piven came up with the idea to register massive numbers of new voters as part of their strategy to push the Democratic Party to power. They wrote about this in ACORN’s magazine, Social Policy in 1983. (100)

The Congressional Black Caucus was formed in 1971, a year after ACORN, “as a vehicle in Congress for radical left-wing black politicians.” (127) Take note Allen West.

Saul Alinsky liked to taunt liberals. “A liberal is the kind of guy who walks out of a room when the argument turns into a fight,” Alinsky said. To Alinsky, liberals were saps to be manipulated. Alinsky was always able to find guilt ridden capitalists to fund the downfall of capitalism and Vadum names Marshall Field III and Midas Muffler founder Gordon B. Sherman. (132) Vadum says the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) gave money to Alinsky and continues to do so today. (133)

Although Alinsky has rules, these were written later in life. Alinsky’s most fundamental teaching is explained by David Horowitz, according to Vadum, that “radicals have to lie to their opponents and disarm them by pretending to be moderates and liberals.” Deception is the most important arrow in the radical’s quiver. “Radical arsonists such as Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright pose as civil rights activists; anti-American radicals such as Bill Ayers pose as patriotic progressives; socialists pose as liberals,” Horowitz writes. “The mark of their success is reflected in the fact that conservatives collude in the deception and call them liberals as well.” (138) Notice that lies are a main function of Taliban and Islamofacists, too.

After funding problems in 2009 and 2010 brought about by investigative journalists, ACORN Housing changed its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America. (141)

Vadum says, “Alinsky taught the community organizer’s first job is ‘community disorganization’ by manufacturing crises in order to inflame the community. The organizer must “create the issues or problems.” He must “rub raw the resentments of the people of the community” and “fan then latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression.” The organizer must “agitate to the point of conflict” because without friction and controversy “people are not concerned enough to act.” (142)

In Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis at Wellesley College, Alinsky is reported to “have told her that he was the second most important Jew in the history of Christianity.” (147)

Florida ACORN gathered almost a million signatures to get wage increase measures on the state’s ballot in 2004, partly as a strategy to increase low-income turnout for the presidential vote. (254) Miami ACORN got a taste of its own medicine when it stiffed dozens of its 2004 election workers. The canvassers had helped get signatures to get Amendment 5 on the ballot to raise the state minimum wage. During a sit-in in the Miami ACORN office unpaid employees set fire to the office kitchenette and stole computers. (262)

The whole of chapter 13 is about Voter Fraud. In Florida, seven ACORN employees were convicted of voter registration fraud in 2010. Their names are Maurice Childress, Kashawn John, Littovia Rhodes, Carlos Torres, Evangeline Williams, Likevia Williams and Richard Williams. Vadum lists two pages of names of persons convicted of voter fraud from 1998 to 2010. (287)

“In Florida, consultant Joe Johnson stopped working with ACORN because he was concerned the group was not submitting complete registration cards to election officials, In that state, ACORN hired convicted armed robber Mac Stuart in 2003 as a petition signature gatherer, apparently without checking his background. Stuart rose of the ranks quickly and was put in charge of the Miami voter registration drive.” (292)

Matt Stoller, a senior policy advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) ran an online discussion forum, named Townhouse, for Nathan Hendrson-James, director of ACORN’s online campaigns. Henderson-James sent a message to members of Townhouse in February 2010 saying “Last one out turn out the lights and wipe the server.” This was part of an ACORN strategy to dupe Americans into thinking ACORN was shutting down. (330)

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) were demanding a probe of ACORN’s ties to President Obama, but a federal racketeering probe has not started yet in 2011. The Community Action Support Center (CASC) may be a main vehicle being developed by formerly named ACORN organizations. Watch for variations of this name to pop up is the way I read Vadum’s suggestion relative to this new group. (332)

The Vadum book goes on for 350 pages plus useful appendices. If what I have provided here does not excite you to read the book, then think about this information from Matthew Vadum: The Obama Administration is calling for $10.3 Trillion expansion in welfare in 10 years according to the Heritage Foundation. Only $6.4 Trillion has been spent on the wars in the Middle East, but $16 Trillion has been spent on the War on Poverty. By 2015 welfare will reach $1 Trillion a year.

Subversion Inc. is published by WND Books, and can be purchased on Amazon.com for less than $20. ISBN: 978-1-935071-14-3 (2011)

TENTH AMENDMENT APPLIES TO INDIVIDUALS

SUPREME COURT RULES TENTH AMENDMENT
MAY BE USED BY INDIVIDUALS
By William J. Skinner
In a case decided on June 16, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court filed a unanimous opinion in a Pennsylvania case saying that an individual has standing to defend a criminal charge as being based on an unconstitutional statute under the 10th Amendment.

The opinion clears up some confusion about a sentence in an old opinion in a 1939 case where states sued the Tennessee Valley Authority over the right of the Federal government to compete in selling electricity. Tennessee Electric Power Co. v.TVA, 306 U.S. 118. The Supreme Court seemed to limit the 10th amendment to the states.

In the current case, Carol Anne Bond v. United States, Mrs. Bond was convicted of two counts under 18 U.S.C. § 229, a Federal statute, of possessing and using a chemical that can cause death, temporary incapacitation, or permanent harm to humans or animals. She pled guilty with the right to appeal and received a six year sentence.

The appeal went from the U.S. District Court in Eastern Pennsylvania to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The Third Circuit affirmed the decision on the basis of one sentence in the 1939 opinion.

In the 2011 decision the Supreme Court made perfectly clear that there was an individual right to use the 10th amendment as well as a state right to use the 10th amendment. The Supreme Court sent the case back to the Third Circuit to decide if the statute was unconstitutional under the 10th amendment. So the case could return to the Supreme Court.
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Please pass this on to all your attorney friends, especially those practicing criminal defense law, so that they know what has happened. The full opinion is available at: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-1227.pdf.

The dividing line between Federal and State law spheres of operation could be refined over the next several years if the right cases are appealed to the higher courts. This is about more than the enumerated powers belonging to the Federal and the other powers belonging to the states. These other powers now belong to the people, just as the 10th amendment states.

Basic knowledge used by the Founders

THE FOUNDERS STUDIED THESE WRITINGS
In very general terms, the Founders studied ancient Israel and Anglo-Saxon governing principles and systems that are similar in precept and operational structure. They studied the histories of the Greeks, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Europeans and the English. They studied the Bible, especially the Old Testament, and the teachings of Jesus.

There also were significant books that they obtained and studied. Not every one of the Founders read them all, but among the Founders some Founders who applied them to their task of writing the Constitution read all of these. Here are a few of the authors and what the Founders learned from them in a capsule form.

Polybius – 204 to 122 BC. Next to Herodotus and Thucydides, Polybius was the greatest Greek historian. He began writing about the separation of powers doctrine among monarchs, aristocracies, and democracies. He proposed a mixed constitution. He was aware that each of these forms of government carried the seeds of degeneration if they were operated without checks and balances.

Cicero -- 106 to 43 BC. A great political thinker who discovered the Great Commandment of the Jews and Christians that said we should love, respect and obey the all-wise Creator. And Cicero taught that the second greatest commandment was that because justice is impossible except under the principles of God’s law, that the love of fellow man provides the desire to promote true justice.

Sir Edward Coke – 1552 to 1634. An English lawyer who was appointed Attorney General by Queen Elizabeth over the desires of Francis Bacon who wanted the job. Coke prosecuted Sir Walter Raleigh for treason among other high profile cases. Later he was appointed Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas in 1613, a high paying job for the Crown. But he was removed in 1616 and made Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, a low paying job, by John I. The reason for the demotion was his unwillingness to compromise in the face of challenges to the supremacy of the common law over the King. In 1628 he was a Member of Parliament and helped write the Petition of Right that granted habeas corpus and other personal rights that later found their way into the U.S. Constitution and its amendments.

Rev. Thomas Hooker – 1586 to 1647. A non-conformist minister who was silenced by a bishop in England, whereupon he fled to Holland and later to New England. Hooker was one of the writers of Fundamental Orders adopted by Connecticut in 1639 as the first written constitution in modern times. Rhode Island adopted this same document as well and the other original colonies reviewed this when it came time for them to write a constitution. Hooker based the document on the principles recorded in the first book of Deuteronomy and began to use the phrase We the People.

Baron Charles de Montesquieu – 1689 to 1755. Wrote The Spirit of Laws after 20 years of research. The writing took two whole years. His writing was greatly admired by the Founders. He refined the separate but coordinated powers of elements in a constitution and recommended an Executive, Senate, and Peoples Assembly and an Independent Judiciary.

Sir William Blackstone –1723 to 1780. He began the Oxford law school classes in 1753 and his lectures were published in 1765. These were read in America as much or more than in England. Blackstone confirmed the Founders’ wisdom by stating that the Natural Law is the only reliable basis for a stable society and a system of justice. He wrote there are laws for human nature just as there are laws for the orderly arrangement of the universe. Laws for human nature were revealed by God; whereas laws of the universe must be learned by scientific investigation.

John Locke -- 1632 to 1704. A physician who wrote an Essay on Human Understanding and insisted that one could know there is a divine Creator by simply thinking about it. He taught that each person knows he exists and each person knows that he is “something.” A “something” cannot be produced by a “nothing.” It follows that this “something” which arranged and organized everything would be all-knowing to the extent required.

Adam Smith – 1723 to 1790. A college professor in Scotland wrote Wealth of Nations, the first college textbook in economics. This was the watershed between mercantilism and free-market economics. Jefferson said this was an excellent book while many considered it too complex to read.

The idea for this article comes from a book titled The 5000 Year Leap. A basic theme of The 5000 Year Leap is that the current generation is ignoring what the Founders learned and knew as they wrote the Constitution that allowed the United States to be the greatest defender of freedom and the most economically developed country in history. This came about because the citizens were educated to be a part of a manifest destiny to expand these principles by example throughout the world. For the first 125 years, The Founders, ideas of fostering virtue (doing something for the good of the country, instead of always having to have a bigger and bigger salary or more personal power), having citizens educated in the reading writing and arithmetic, plus the basic principles of religion (not denominational creeds), was the way that government would continue to work for the betterment of mankind.

Author Cleon Skousen describes 28 Principles the Founders relied upon that changed the world in his book. A quote is provided from each of these descriptions in the book.
These are:

1st Principle – The Genius of Natural Law. Quoting Cicero, Skousen writes: “The Law of Nature or Nature’s God is eternal in its basis goodness; it is universal in its application. It is a code of “right reason’ from the Creator himself. It cannot be altered. It cannot be repealed. It cannot be abandoned by legislators or the people themselves, even though they may pretend to do so. In Natural Law we are dealing with factors of absolute reality. It is basic in its principles, comprehensive to the human mind, and totally correct and morally right in its general operation.”

2nd Principle – A Free People Cannot Survive Under a Republican Constitution Unless They Remain Virtuous and Morally Strong. Morality was a big issue in 1775-1776. Whether the people were sufficiently virtuous and moral to govern themselves was the single question leading to the final decision to become independent. Franklin said: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” Washington pointed out that the Constitution could survive only “so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of the people.”

Skousen quotes Gordon S. Wood in The Creation of the American Republic to explain: “In a Republic, however, each man must somehow be persuaded to submerge his personal wants into the greater good of the whole. This willingness of the individual to sacrifice his private interest for the good of the community – such patriotism or love of country – the eighteenth century termed public virtue… The eighteenth century mind was thoroughly convinced that a popularly based government “cannot be supported without virtue’.”

3rd Principle – The Most Promising Method of Securing a Virtuous and Morally Stable People it to Elect Virtuous Leaders. Sam Adams said we should not elect public officials if they lack experience, training, proven virtue, and demonstrated wisdom. Madison wrote: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external or internal controls on government would be necessary.” Fed. Papers, No. 51, p.322 Jefferson believed that the best citizens should accept major roles in public life. Jefferson felt it should be the goal of the whole nation to use education and every other means to stimulate and encourage citizens who clearly exhibited a special talent for public service. Samuel Adams and his younger cousin sacrificed their fortunes to serve in politics, which they considered to be the “divine science.” In the early history of the United States public stations were looked upon as an honor rather than a position of profit. Example, for eight years Washington managed to do without the $25,000 annual salary as President as he had done as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces in the Revolutionary War. Franklin saw the possibility of profit from public office as the means of an American monarchy coming about. A provision in the Pennsylvania Constitution said that every freeman should have an independent source of income so that there is no necessity to establish offices of profit. Believing these things, the Founders rejected some fads prevalent in Europe at that time.

4th Principle – Without Religion the Government of a Free People Cannot be Maintained. Many Americans fail to realize the importance the Founders attached to religion and that the Founders also felt religion would be more important in our day as well. In the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 they emphasized the need to teach “Religion, morality, and knowledge…”. Religion was defined as a “fundamental system of beliefs concerning man’s origin and relationship to the cosmic universe as well as his relationship with his fellow man.” Morality may be described as “a standard of behavior distinguishing right from wrong.” Knowledge is “an intellectual awareness and understanding of established facts relating to any field of human experience or inquiry (i.e., history, geography, science, etc.).” Washington commented in his Farewell Address “It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.” The Founders were not favoring a particular religion, but were encouraging the teaching of universal fundamentals that Franklin described as five points of sound religion. De Tocqueville wrote that religion takes no direct part in government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions … but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.” De Tocqueville also noted that the clergy seemed anxious to maintain “separation of church and state,” but they had a great influence on public life. He did not find any clergy in public administration as there were in Europe. The Founders were strong on religious equality – both Christian and non-Christian. Justice Storey wrote later that the Founders left the power over religion to the state governments. This is why the First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

The “wall of separation” that Jefferson wrote about was intended only for the Federal government. Jefferson so stated in his second Inaugural Address.

5th Principle – All Things Were Created by God, Therefore Upon Him All Mankind are Equally Dependent, and to Him They Are Equally Responsible. The Founders were of the same mind as John Locke in his writing that the human mind by itself could not produce a time piece or a lead pencil, as all of these are the product of intelligent design and precision engineering. Locke wrote there are many things we can know about the Creator by thinking about it. An atheist, Locke felt, has failed to apply his divine capacity for reason and observation. Skousen says the Founders considered the whole foundation of a just society to be structured on the basis of God’s revealed law. These laws constituted a moral code clearly distinguishing right from wrong. All religious cultures in the world agreed. Blackstone wrote about it extensively and the Founders read Blackstone. Washington counted 67 incidents during the War where disaster could have occurred but for the intervention of the hand of God. Madison was also emphatic about God’s intervention in the War. This was not an idle gesture as the Founders at the time of the war adopted the motto “In God We Trust.”

6th Principle – All Men Are Created Equal. How can this be true? Only in three ways, says Skousen. They can be treated equal in the sight of God, in the sight of the law, and in the protection of those rights. Jean Jacques Rousseau was teaching that men were designed to be equal in every way. John Adams, while in France, wrote that all men were born to equal rights, but not with equal powers and faculties, equal influence in society, to equal property and advantages through life, is a gross fraud, and a glaring an imposition that was ever imposed on the credulity of people by the monks, by Brahmins, by priests of the immortal Lama, or by the self-styles philosophers of the French Revolution.

Equal rights are to protect the rights of the people equally: at the ballot box; at the public school; at the employment office; at the real estate agency; at the pulpit; at the podium; at the microphone or before the camera; at the meeting hall; at the print shop; at the store; at the bank; at the tax collector’s office; and at the probate court. The United States is a nation of minorities. Many minorities have assimilated before the Japanese, Chinese and blacks had problems. The blacks asked for equal rights at the employment office and things began to change for the better over asking for rights to gratuities. Throughout the struggle to assure equal rights, the Constitution has been amended with the 13th, 14th, 15th and 19th amendments. Inequality is a product of liberty.

7th Principle – The Proper Role of Government is to Protect Equal Rights, Not to Provide Equal Things. The Founders discovered the fallacy of taking from the “haves” to give to the “have nots,” a role of government in Europe. The Founders therefore restricted the role of government to those things that they individually have the right to do. As an example, everyone has the right to the protection of life and property, so it is legitimate to delegate to government the task of setting up a police department. But the government’s job is not to take a car from a man that has two cars and give it to someone without a car. A government that takes from one to give to another is a government that can take anything it wants. The Founders took the view that government could protect the rights of people and ensure that have the right to prosper. Based on their education and the protection of rights, America became the most prosperous country in the world and then became the most generous country. The Founders also had a deep concern for the poor and needy. But Franklin found that some compassion by government made things worse instead of better. By excluding the national government from intervening in the local affairs of the people, the Founders felt they were protecting the unalienable rights of the people from abuse by an over aggressive government. This is why no constitutional authority exists in the Constitution for the Federal government to participate in charity or welfare.

8th Principle – Men Are Endowed by Their Creator with Certain Unalienable Rights. The Founders believed that those rights came directly from God. Therefore they were to remain sacred and inviolate. These rights also are called natural rights. Skousen says, “we may do something ourselves to forfeit the unalienable rights endowed by the Creator, but no one else can take those rights from us without being subject to God’s justice. This is what makes certain rights unalienable. They are inherent rights given to us by the Creator. That is why they are called natural rights.” The Founders did not list all of the Unalienable Rights. The Founders knew a great many natural rights existed, such as the right to self-government, the right to bear arms for self-defense, the right to own, develop, and dispose of property, the right to make personal choices, the right to choose a profession, the right to choose a mate, the right of free conscious. The right to begat one’s kind, the right to assemble, the right to petition, the right to free speech and free press, the right to enjoy the fruits of one’s labors, the right to improve one’s position through barter and sale, the right to contrive and invent, the right to explore the natural resources of the Earth, the right to privacy, the right to provide personal security, the right to provide nature’s necessities – air, food, water, clothing and shelter, the right to a fair trial, the right of association, and the right to contract.

This concept of natural rights was well understood before Blackstone wrote about them eleven years before the writing of the Constitution. . There were three basis natural rights – the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right of private property.

9th Principle – To Protect Man’s Rights, God Has Revealed Certain Principles of Divine Law. These laws are revealed in Holy Scripture. An analysis of the essential elements of God’s code of laws reveals it is designed to promote, preserve, and protect man’s unalienable rights. And divine laws also impose unalienable duties – both public and private. The public duties relate to public morality and are usually supported by local or state laws. Private duties are those that exist between the Creator and the individual.
Skousen lists 20 public and private duties, including the duty to honor the supremacy of the Creator and his laws, and the duty to follow rules of morale rectitude. The Israelites and the Anglo-Saxons practiced reparations to restore victims requiring the violator to make victims whole.

10th Principle – The God-given Right to Govern is Vested in the Sovereign Authority of the Whole People. Royal families did all that they could to establish they governed by the “divine right of Kings” as a grant from God. King Charles II beheaded Algernon Sidney in 1683 for saying there was no divine right of kings to govern. That very year John Locke fled England for Holland where he could say the same thing Sidney said without fear. In 1690 Locke published his two essays on The Original Extend and End of Civil Government. The Founders agreed there was no divine right of Kings to govern. The Founders believed rulers were servants of the people. Anglos-Saxons believed the king was one among equals who could be replaced in any monthly meeting of the tribe. Hamilton extolled the “divine right of the people” and the consent of the people. Madison learned, when the Constitution was sent for ratification, that the people felt the Federal government was being given autocratic authority and he wrote in Federalist Papers, No46, p. 294 that the people must be told that the ultimate authority resides in the people.

11th Principle – The Majority of the People may Alter or Abolish a Government Which Has Become Tyrannical. Locke put the theory in writing and Jefferson incorporated it into the Declaration. The power resides in the majority and the minority has no right to revolt. The Virginia Assembly passed its Declaration of Rights a month before the Declaration of Independence was signed. Section 3 of the Virginia Declaration supports the majority right to rule doctrine.

12th Principle – The United States Shall be a Republic. The founders wanted a Republic because a democracy had never worked for a number of reasons. The Federalist Papers Nos. 10 and 14 argued it was better than a democracy and Madison explained it in No, 39, p. 241 as: “… a government which derives all of its powers from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons hold their offices during pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior. It is essential to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion of a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers might aspire to the rank of republicans and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.”

Skousen points out that “democracy” has been a causality of debates in the early 1900s. One hundred people, including Norman Thomas, established the Intercollegiate Socialists Society on more than 60 campuses in 1905. This organization was to throw the light on socialism. ISS established a snappy slogan, “Production for use, not for profit.” By 1921 the violence in the Soviet Union had given the term “socialism” a repugnant name, so the organization changed its name to “The League for Industrial Democracy.” The propaganda was that all production and resources would become the property of all the people. People learned this meaning of “democracy.” The Federal government defined “Democracy” and “Republic” in the U.S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25. Despite this effort, the schoolbooks and press identified the United States as a democracy and the country lost its identity with the public. Socialism became “democracy” in the minds of the world and this persists until today in most minds. People think the U.S. is a democracy and call it that.

Many people think the introduction of the word “democracy” to describe the U.S. was an attack on the Constitution.

13th Principle --- A Constitution Should Be Structured to Permanently Protect the People from the Human Frailties of Their Rulers. The question at the Constitutional Convention was how to have an efficient government and still protect the freedom and unalienable rights of the people. The Founders thought that leaders needed to be watched, even themselves. Rights are injured when there is the least suspicion. By 1798 Jefferson was writing his lines about the confidence placed in man, saying, “but bind him down by the chains of the Constitution. (Kentucky Resolutions of 1798). Madison saw that human leaders are complex and all have good and evil components. The Constitution was designed to control something that has not changed and will never change – namely, human nature. The Founders also knew that the erosion of Constitutional principles was often so slow the people would not detect it. Madison issued a warning to his state of Virginia when he detected erosion when he wrote his Memorial and Remonstrance in response to Patrick Henry’s ideas that government should support the churches.

14th Principle – Life and Liberty are Secure Only So Long as the Right to Property is Secure. John Locke pointed out that the Earth was given to mankind in common and mankind was given the responsibility to improve it “and use it to the best advantage of life and convenience.” If there were no ownership in property, there would be no subduing the Earth or extensive development of it. Without property rights, the lazy neighbor could move in as soon as the improvements were completed. And a stronger person could take it from that neighbor. Without property rights marauding bands would be running around taking what they want and the remainder of people would be living hand-to-mouth waiting on the next marauders. Property is a projection of life itself. Property rights are acquired when labor adds something to the property. A law of reason makes the deer that the Indian killed as the Indian’s property since he bestowed his labor on it, taking it out of the common right of every one. Redistribution of wealth was unconstitutional until 1936 when the Butler case in the Supreme Court allowed helping the poor and needy under the “General Welfare” clause. Ludwig Von Mises wrote that private ownership of the means of production is a necessary requisite of civilization and material well-being. Only nations committed to the principle of private property have arisen above penury and produced science, art and literature. Who then will take care of the poor? The Founders said in the Constitution that anybody but the Federal government has that responsibility. President Grover Cleveland vetoed legislation to spend Federal money on welfare. Instead he said to rely on the friendliness of our countrymen to take care of the poor.

15th Principle – The Highest Level of Prosperity Occurs When There is a Free-Market Economy and a Minimum of Government Regulation. The Founders were also concerned about economics. The Wealth of Nations came out in 1776 in five volumes. Adam Smith’s ideas about free-markets were first tried in the United States. There were four economic freedoms described: freedom to try; freedom to buy; freedom to sell; and the freedom to fail. The greatest threat to economic prosperity is the arbitrary intervention of government into the economic affairs of private business and the buying public. The government has only four policing responsibilities: to prevent illegal force in the market place to compel purchase or sale of products; to prevent fraud in misrepresenting the quality, location, or ownership of items being sold or bought; to prevent monopoly which eliminates competition and results in restraint of trade; and to prevent debauchery of the cultural standards and moral fiber of society by commercial exploitation of vice -- pornography, obscenity, drugs, liquor, prostitution, or commercial gambling.

Despite free-market economics giving American a boost in prosperity, by the 1900s some lost confidence in it. The populist movement started and big labor unions and agriculture interests advocated that government distributed the wealth. Extensive regulation was sought along with collectivism, socialism, government ownership of industry, and subsidy of farmers. Adam Smith became lost in colleges and was no longer read. Karl Marx became favored until 1929 through 1933 when Roosevelt began the interventionist controls of industry. No one read the Founders books until they went for a graduate degree. Eventually Adam Smith was rediscovered when Ivor Thomas wrote The Socialist Tragedy in 1951 about what socialism has done in Europe and Max Eastman wrote Reflections on the Failure of Socialism in 1962 about what socialism had done to America. Adam Smith was gradually rediscovered to have written about the lost jewels of the Founders’ plan. The Founders had determined to make the dollar completely independent of any power or combination of powers, and gave the powers concerning money to the Congress. But the Founders were coming out of a depression as they wrote the Constitution and a whole series of policy blunders were adopted. The Bank of the United States was set up similar to the Federal Reserve System of today. Jefferson protested. The Bank was allowed three or four times more paper notes than it had assets. Loaning out this money would “boom” the economy, but after loaning the money financiers would call for a “bust” and call in the loans. This pattern has continued for 200 years and sound money policy still has not had a hearing. Financiers built the economy on debt. Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln tried to turn the money system around so that Congress would issue money. When this ideas started to catch on, the London Times complained that the North American “government must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe.”

16th Principle –The Government Should be Separated into Three Branches –Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. Polybius and Montesquieu’s writing helped the Founders realize that there should be a three-headed Eagle with one neck, or a coordinated government. John Adams, relying on his study of politics, the “divine science,” and Montesquieu’s ideas, pushed for separated powers in the Massachusetts Constitution during 1779 upon returning from France. Adams was also successful in getting acceptance of the separations of powers in the U. S. Constitution, but Skousen says he was never able to get acceptance of himself.

17th Principle – A System of Checks and Balances Should be Adopted to Prevent the Abuse of Power. Some members of the Convention wanted the separation of powers so complete that it would not have been workable. And this became grounds for opposing the Constitution. These Founders missed or did not understand the Montesquieu factor to have each department subject to the checks of the other two departments. Madison wrote five Federalist Papers, Nos. 47 to 51 to explain the separation of powers. The checks were designed to protect the will of the people. Pennsylvania tried a Council of Censors who could affix the blame for the problems, but was powerless to fix them. Others suggested that the people be allowed to vote on controversies.

In the end the Constitution made the departments separate to their assigned function, but made them dependent upon one another to be fully operative. The system turned out to be more complex than that envisioned by Montesquieu. Read The 5000 Year Leap for 18 separate checks and balances. Washington in his Farewell Address said these checks and balances were the genius of the American system of government.

Scores of nations have copied the U.S. Constitution, but left out the checks and balances. In those cases the president suspends the constitution and the machine guns come out. The U.S. Constitution still resolves problems peacefully.

18th Principle –The Unalienable Rights of the People Are Most Likely to be Preserved if the Principles of Government are Set Forth in a Written Constitution. Anglos-Saxon Common Law remained unwritten until they converted to Christianity. The Norman Conquest took away English rights and they got them back very slowly until their rights were written down. When the sword was put to King John in 1215, a writing, the Magna Carta, was signed to protect those rights. In 1628 Charles I, under pressure from the people, signed the Petition of Rights. William and Mary signed the English Bill of Rights in 1689.

Such writings in America began with the Mayflower Compact signed in 1620, followed by Rev. Hooker’s Constitution for Connecticut in 1639. There is no mention of the king or soverighn, only “We the People.” Montesquieu had another final word when he recommended that constitutions be written by the many, rather than the few. History demonstrates the final product was stronger than any constitution that might have been written by a single person. And the written document was available for reference rather than a whole bunch of scattered statutes as relied upon in Europe.

19th Principle –Only Limited and Carefully Defined Powers Should be Delegated to Government, All Others Being Retained by the People. Limiting the authority of the government was emphasized at the Convention. One reason the states would not adopt the original constitution was they feared federal encroachment on the rights of states and the people. The first ten amendments were added to place the Anglos-Saxon unalienable rights in the document. Then the Ninth and Tenth Amendments were added to make certain of the limitations they were placing on the Federal government. The Foudners’ experience with corrupt and abusive governments in the past made this essential. The Federal government was supreme in matters where it was given authority, but it was forbidden to invade the independence and sovereignty of the states. Skousan says the Founders felt if the Federal government became dominant that would end local self-government and the security of the individual.

The Founders would have frowned on the 17th Amendment, adopted in 1913, because this took away the right of the states to protect themselves from the Federal government. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson began the progressive movement and the Federal government has gone downhill away from the designs of the Founders since then.

20th Principle – Efficiency and Dispatch Require Government to Operate According to the Will of the Majority, but Constitutional Provisions Must be Made to Protect the Rights of the Minority. The Founders learned that under the Articles of Confederation it was difficult to operate with the requirement that all states approve. Majority rule became a necessity and they studied what John Locke said about that and adopted this kind of voting. The Founders were also concerned about the minority. It always is the newest minority that feels left out. Jefferson wrote that the “minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would oppression.” Skousen adds, “It is the responsibilities of the minorities themselves to learn the language, seek needed education, become self-sustaining, and make themselves recognized as a genuine asset to the community. Meanwhile, those who are already well established can help. The United States has built a reputation of being more generous and helpful to newcomers than any other nation. It has a reputation worth preserving. Once upon a time, we were all minorities.

21st Principle – Strong Local Self-Government is the Keystone to Preserving Human Freedom. “Political power automatically gravitates toward the center, and the purpose of the Constitution is to prevent that from happening,” Skousen explains. The centralization of power destroys liberty and removes decision-making power from the local government to the central. Gradually this numbs the spirit of voluntarism,” Skousen says. Jefferson saw the advantages of the New England wards or townships as the wisest invention by man for self-government. This was based on the Anglo-Saxon and Israeli method of organization. The old English assemblies reappeared in North America as the people remembered how well they worked. Madison continually emphasized the need to keep the Federal government small and to reserve all possible authority to the state or the people. Therefore, the Constitution delegates to the Federal government only the power to deal with issues that affect the whole people of the nation. Jefferson expected the Federal government to be small and inexpensive. The historian John Fiske in his The Critical Period of American History says, “If the day should ever arrive (which God forbid) when the people of the different parts of our country shall allow their local affairs to be administered by prefects sent from Washington, and when the government of the states shall have been so far lost as that the departments of France, or even so closely limited as that of the counties of England – on that day the political career of the American people will have been robbed of its most interesting and valuable features, and the usefulness of this nation will be lamentably impaired.”

22nd Principle – A Free People Should be Governed by Law and Not by the Whims of Men. No rights are secure when men are governed by the whims of men. The Founders believed the law was a rule of action binding on the rulers as well as the people. Locke pointed out that the people have a duty to establish laws. John Adams wanted fixed laws. Aristotle argued for the same and said his teacher, Plato, was wrong to want the people governed by the few. The Founders believed that law would help preserve liberty, but that the law should be understandable and stable. Jefferson felt so strong about this that he resigned from Congress in 1776 to go back to Virginia to rewrite state laws, so that when Independence was won, the people would have a model system of legal principles they could understand and warmly support, Skousen says.

23rd Principle – A Free Society Cannot Survive as a Republic Without a Broad Program of General Education. The colonists in America took on the task of educating the whole population partly because they believed in a “manifest destiny” that was theirs to prepare themselves for an important role in unfolding modern world history. Public education started in Massachusetts in 1647 when the people passed a law that every 50 families must set up a free grammar school. These schools taught reading, writing, ciphering, history, geography and the Bible. The law also required every township with 100 families to set up a secondary school to prepare boys to attend Harvard. John Adams said these programs were to have “knowledge diffused generally through the whole body of the people.” Educational success was due to good school boards.

John Adams, who spent many years in France, said that of 24 million Frenchmen, only 500,000 could read and write. The Founders’ goal was to have all Americans educated. In 1831 De Tocqueville wrote, “In New England every citizen receives the elementary notions of human knowledge; he is taught, moreover, the doctrines and evidences of his religion, the history of his country, and the leading features of its Constitution. In the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts, it is extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a person wholly ignorant of them is sort of a phenomenon.” (Democracy in America, 1:326-327)

As the pioneers went west, they established mores schools. Education always included morality and politics. De Tocqueville said “The American learns to know the laws by participating in the act of legislation; and he takes a lesson in the forms of government by governing. … in the United States, politics are the end and aim of education …. (Ibid. pp. 329-330)

By 1843, Daniel Webster said, “…whatever may be said to the contrary, a correct use of the English language is, at this day, more general throughout the United States than it is throughout England herself.”(The Works of Daniel Webster, 1:102) Skousen says that Americans spoke with genuine eloquence. Sermons and orations by men of limited education reflected a flourish and style of expression that few Americans could duplicate today. Many attributed these abilities to extensive reading of the Bible, which Webster said was a book of faith, a book of doctrine, a book of morals, a book of religion, q book that teaches man his own individual responsibility, his dignity and his equality with his fellow-man.

24th Principle – A Free People Will Not Survive Unless They Stay Strong. Up until recent years, the United States has had super prosperity. Skousen says that only as the Federal government usurped authority (since the 1930s) and meddled in the free-market system economy has the surge of prosperity and high production of goods and services been inhibited. The Founders were convinced that prosperity and freedom would continue if the people remained virtuous and adequately armed. Franklin believed that we must be thoroughly armed and have a strong security before we could ask assistance from Heaven, (Smyth, Writing of Benjamin Franklin, 2:352) In Franklin’s time the people became apathetic and he was disgusted. No man wanted peace more than Washington and no man was willing to risk more in life and property to achieve it. Washington wanted us ready at all times with a plan. Washington did not want us dependent on the policies of other nations. By his fifth address to Congress, Washington has to press the Congress to provide for an adequate defense. His view was, “There is a rank due to the United States among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness….” (Fitzpatrick, Writing of George Washington, 33:165)

Samuel Adams emphasized the moral responsibility of Americans to preserve the heritage of freedom and unalienable rights that the Creator how endowed upon them. He felt it was wicked and unnatural to let the fruits of liberty anguish by neglect of apathy. (Wells, Life of Samuel Adams, 1:504) The Founders passed on a policy of peace through strength, but dependent on virtue.

25th Principle – “Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship with All Nations – Entangling Alliances with None.” Jefferson said this in his first inaugural address. The Founders had a doctrine of “separatism.” This is different from “isolationism” used in recent years. The Founders wanted wholesome relations with all nations, but they wanted no part of sectional quarrels and international disputes. They wanted to avoid alliances with one country that would make them enemies of another, much like modern Switzerland. Response would be made when the Founders were threatened. Washington felt that “The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to is affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.” (Farewell Address)

Washington pointed out that most-favor nation status would open the United States to strong foreign influences, which could subvert the security or best interests of the U.S. Washington laid down his famous policy of foreign relations: “The great rule of conduct of us, in regard to foreign nations, is extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.” (Farewell Address)

Jefferson reiterated these principles after Washington was dead at age 68. The “manifest destiny” doctrine of the Founders made the American separatism different from Swiss neutrality. The American people were responsible for serving as the vanguard nation for the moral and political emancipation of all mankind. Adams said our success was due to Providence and we were to emancipate mankind all over the earth. (Tuveson, Redeemer Nation, p. 25) Madison wrote: “happily we trust for the whole human race, they [the Founders] pursued a new and more noble course.” (Federalist Papers, No. 14, p. 1-4) The Monroe Doctrine was designed to insulate the western hemisphere from the quarrels of European Monarchs.

But after the eruption of World War I, the United States was drawn into the conflict. The Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh (father of the flyer) said that this “internationalism” was a serious mistake. He pointed out we elected a president to a second term because he kept us out of the war. But no sooner was he elected than the propaganda began to get us into the war. “The greatest good we could do the world at that time was to stay out, and that would have been infinitely better for ourselves, for we could have helped the world had we conserved our resources.” (Lindbergh, The Economic Pinch, pp. 233-235)

When World War II broke out we hoped we could stay out of it, but we favored England and France. The Japanese attacked Hawaii. We were in. These veterans are now dying off in 2009.

26th Principle – The Core Unit Which Determine the Strength of any Society is the Family; Therefore, the Government Should Foster and Protect Its Integrity. Back in 1831De Tocqueville wrote: “There is certainly no country in the world when the tie of marriage is more respected than in America, or where conjugal happiness is more highly or worthily appreciated. The Founders felt the Bible established the legal, moral, and social relationships between man and woman. (Davis, The American Search for Woman, chap. 5.) God’s law, in theory, made man first in governing the family, Skousen says, but as between himself and his wife, he was merely first among equals. John Locke’s writings stressed equal responsibility of mother and father in rearing children. (Second Essay Concerning Civil Government, p. 36) Read more in The English People on the Eve
of the Colonization, 1603 – 1630, p. 168).

New studies and information indicate Franklin was not a woman chaser as some earlier authors claimed, Skousen says. He did have an illegitimate son, but raised him honorably and the son, William, became Governor of New Jersey. The stories about thirteen illegitimate children have come from myths. Franklin even tried to dissuade a young friend from taking a mistress in a letter. (Koch, The American Enlightenment, p. 70) Locke wrote about parents’ responsibilities and what a mature adult should know. Locke wrote about children’s responsibilities to parents. Locke wrote that the state should not interfere in legitimate family relations. The family is vitally important to the culture.

27th Principle – The Burden of Debt is as Destructive to Freedom as Subjugation by Conquest. Slavery is the result of debt as it is borrowing against the future. And the creditor must be paid as well. The Founders knew that borrowing in the time of crisis was necessary, but they felt it was a temporary situation that should be paid off as soon as possible. The Founders recognized debt for what it was, a necessary evil. Debts come from splurge spending. They felt debt should be avoided like the plague. Franklin wrote a lot about debt, saying, “Tis hard for any empty bag to stand upright” as Poor Richard.
The Founders’ policy on a national debt was that a debt shared by the whole people makes it no less ominous. They felt we must get out of debt in order to prosper.

Jefferson wrote: “I, however, place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared.” (Bergh, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 15:47) Skousen says the Founders felt that wars, economic problems and debts of one generation should be paid for by the generation which incurred them. Jefferson believed that inherited debt was immoral. The Founders established a policy of paying debts promptly and this was followed until the present generation (2009 and back to the 1930s) when all three branches of the Federal government began overstepping their constitution boundaries. Milton Friedman, a Nobel prizewinner, has demonstrated that all of the unauthorized tasks undertaken by the Federal government proved counter-productive, some tragically so. Today we are spending the next generation’s inheritance. When the “fix” is more spending, the habit continues. Skousen says the problem is primarily a matter of will power – the determination to change.

28th Principle – The United States Has a Manifest Destiny to be an Example and a Blessing to the Entire Human Race. Historians agree that the single most important feature of the settlers in America was their over powering sense of mission – a conviction that they were taking part in the unfolding of a manifest destiny design which would shower its blessings on all mankind. John Adams felt if the American people failed the Constitution it would be treason. John Jay considered America to be a Providential blessing. In Federalist Papers, No. 2, p.38, Jay wrote: “This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence than an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.” Madison concluded in Federalist Papers, No. 14, pp. 1-4-105 that: “Happily for America, happily we trust for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a resolution that has no parallel in the annuals of human society. They reared the fabrics of governments that have no model on the face of the globe. They formed the design of a great Confederacy, which it is incumbent on their successors to improve and perpetuate.”
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This summary of The 5000 Year Leap was written to allow you to get a flavor for what is in the book. Reading the summary will give you a good idea why you should read the book. My hope is that this will encourage the reader to seek more information about the Constitution and work with others to reestablish the virtues that made the United States great in the early years.

If you read this book and make a list the things we do not do today as a people in the United States that the Founders did, you will get a good idea of the list of things we have to change to achieve the Founders’ dreams for us.

It easy to see that in this generation we have taken the easy way out. Divorce is common. One-parent families are common. Government spending for now to be paid later is common.

In the book, The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle That Changed the World otherwise known as Principles of Freedom 101, W. Cleon Skousen has documented how the Founders wrote the Constitution, what they read and studied before writing it, and why it worked.

The result of what the Founders put in the Constitution was a 5000 year leap for mankind that the current generation is squandering. The book is published by the National Center for Constitution Studies, ISBN 0-88080-148-4. www.nccs.net or 208-645-2625. Originally published in 1981, the book was revised in 1991 and 2006 and is now in its 7th printing.

If you want to learn a great deal more than this summary contains, get the book so we can plan together to get out of the Constitutional and economic crisis and mess now enveloping the United States. This article boils down 337 pages to only 15 pages to save you time and wet your appetite for more.

William J. Skinner, B.S. Pharmacy, Butler University, 1960; Doctor of Jurisprudence, Indiana University Law School – Indianapolis, 1965.
Contacts: 561-433-1170. BillSkinnerLW@aol.com

What Do You Really Know About the Bill of Rights

JAMES MADISON and the Struggle for the BILL of RIGHTS
By Richard Lubinsky

The above titled book was published in 2006, so you are already four years behind if you have not read it. But if you get it now, it will be worth your while if you cherish the Bill of Rights like I do. From the opening page to end of the Epilogue there are 264 pages packed with details about James Madison’s work on the Constitutional Convention and the ratification in Virginia and other states, plus the election of Madison to the First U. S. Congress and his more than two year effort to pass the Bill of Rights.

Remember that the Continental Congress was meeting in New York City for several years during the Revolutionary War. James Madison was from Orange County, Virginia, a several day trip to New York and a trip that Madison dreaded because of his long-time illness that comes to light in this book. Madison had a gastrointestinal problem that frequently caused diarrhea and other discomforts that were embarrassing to him during long trips on a stage coach or other conveyance with a couple of other people. For me this was the first glimpse of the personal fortitude that Madison had in dealing with his personal health problems while he was the instigator and daily shepherd of the assembly of the Constitutional Convention, the adoption, the ratification, and the struggle to adopt a Bill of Rights.

The advance praise for the book comes from James Madison organizations and individual historians like Garry Wills, Philip Bigler, Charles F. Bryan, Jr. and David B. Mattern on the book cover. I am confident that if you read this book it will open your eyes to the divergence of views about adopting the Constitution in the first place to the switch by Madison from opposing a Bill of Rights to being the only real champion of adopting the Bill of Rights. This took Madison over two years of meticulous letter writing and personally speaking to hundreds of people.

You will learn that Madison was not a dynamic speaker like Patrick Henry. Madison was a soft voice of reason who preferred to work behind the scenes, but if called upon to address a legislative body, he could hold his own with detail after detail. Madison was particularly good in legislative committees where a few people often recognized his intelligence and deferred to his solutions for the problems under discussion.

The beginning of the book was somewhat dull to me, but essential to understand what was happening during the constitutional developments. I began making notes at page 174 when Madison’s election to the first U.S. Congress was described. Madison detested having to give up his work with the Continental Congress in New York and come home to Virginia to run for office to the House of Representatives. He did not like to ask for votes or do things like make promises. He thought everyone should know what he stood for and accept him for those characteristics.

There were secret political goings-on that prevented Madison from being nominated for the U.S. Senate from Virginia. Some people tried to get Madison to run for Congress in a district where he did not live because those people want him to represent them. Patrick Henry, a former governor of Virginia and an ardent Anti-Federalist, had succeeded in designing districts for the ten Virginia House seats (Virginia was the largest state in the Confederation at the time. Remember it included today’s West Virginia and Kentucky) that would place Madison in a district that Henry thought Madison could not win. Henry was against the adoption of the new Constitution because he thought that the document took too many powers away from the individual countries, such as Virginia. This is the first book that I have read that shows the people of the time flat-out described the states as “countries” and it is obvious to me now that all of the thirteen colonies thought of themselves as individual countries at that time.

But finally Madison was persuaded to come home four or five weeks before the election to campaign in ten inches of snow in the hills and hollers of Virginia. Madison managed to show up in county seat after county seat and talk to the people. Madison was frost bit a little during his travels in the counties of Orange, Louisa, Culpepper, and others, but he won the election over his friend, James Monroe, another individual who needs to be explored more by serious constitutional learners and scholars. Only 44% of the eligible voters came out in Madison’s district that first Virginia election, and in his district Madison was the victor.

Madison and Monroe were so close that they invested in land together and invited Thomas Jefferson to join them in a venture at one time. Madison made more money in land, perhaps, than he did from Congress or his estate at Montpelier. This was another interesting discovery in the book.

In that first election the Sheriffs of each county took down the voters’ preferences orally and made a record. Because of the bad weather, some Sheriffs took votes for three days because it took some hearty souls that long to get to the county seat to vote at considerable risk.

Think of this and contrast it with how easy it is to vote in the 21st Century. We are now coddled, one might say, with our voting machines and fraud prevention systems that sometimes allows double voting, false registrations, and other devious election irregularities.

Another item that piqued my interest was the beginning of Chapter 8 where it is disclosed that New Yorkers wanted to make that city the permanent capital of the United States. I live in Florida in a district where most of the voters are from a single ethnic group who used to live in New York, mostly New York City. My neighbors are democrats and I am a republican, so this struck me as especially interesting. Also my family and I lived in the Philadelphia area for five years during which time I accompanied my three boys and other Cub Scouts to the Independence Hall in Philadelphia where the Declaration of Independence was debated and signed on several occasions. The place still has the ability to produce memories and dreams of the 1770s.

Here is some detail about this time period that I learned from the book that will give you a good example of Labunski’s writing style:

“Even the state’s Anti-Federalists, many of whom had wanted to prevent ratification at the New York convention in July 1788, agreed to approve the Constitution only because Federalists had strongly hinted that the city would likely become the permanent seat of government. Anti-Federalists knew that if New York did not join the union, its largest city would have no chance of hosting the new government.

“New York officials worried with good reason, that Philadelphia would persuade lawmakers to return to that city, which was the home of the First Continental Congress in 1774 and where the Confederation Congress had met for nine years. Representative John Page of Virginia said that New York ‘is not so half as large as Philadelphia; nor in any manner to be compared to it for Beauty & Elegance.’ Benjamin Rush, a prominent Philadelphia physician, who wrote a long letter to John Adams in early spring to remind him of his home city’s many amenities and virtues, including ‘Philadelphia is the centre of the State of the Union: she is wholly & highly Federal.’ Another Pennsylvanian Timothy Pickering, said that ‘In Philadelphia, the Congress will find convenient lodgings & public buildings – provisions good, elegant, plenty & cheap -- & the most extensive libraries adapted to the use of public bodies, that are to be found on the Continent.’ Those libraries appealed to John Adams, who as vice president would be expected to be involved in the selection of a permanent capital. He told Benjamin Rush that “I love Philadelphia quite as well as New York, and the noble Libraries there [in Philadelphia] would be Strong temptation to me.” [footnotes omitted.]

Around page 180 I was interested in the reference to Representative Elias Boudinot from New Jersey as he is another founder I have recently studied and written about in regard to his religious beliefs. Boudinot, earlier under the Continental Congress he was the second president of the Congress when the country only had officers of the Congress. We only had three of those presidents as I understand it. Boudinot told his wife in a letter that when they arrived in this “dirty city [New York City]” -- “The difference of the wholesome Country Air, from the Stench of the filthy Streets was so apparent, as to effect our smelling Faculties greatly.” My own visits to New York City from the 1960s to present day did not exhibit what Boudinot found upon his arrival, so the years have allowed New Yorkers to make appropriate improvements.

I cite Boudinot for another reason at page 220 of Lubanski’s book where it is disclosed that Elias Boudinot was the chairman of the House Committee of the Whole when Madison was introducing the Bill of Rights in August. Someone raised the issue of whether the committee of the whole had to recommend the Amendments to the full House by a two-thirds vote. “The chairman, Elias Boudinot of New Jersey, ruled that a simple majority was sufficient, and his decision was upheld by a vote of the members.” [Footnotes omitted.]

This book covers the complicated story of the adoption of the Bill of Rights from 40 or more amendments to the twelve submitted to the states by President Washington to the final ten amendments ratified and adopted as additions to the Constitution. There were complications throughout the debates over the amendments as to whether they would be incorporated into the Constitution or appended to the end of the document. We know now that the ten amendments were added to the end and the Supreme Court is still interpreting what the founders meant by each Amendment.

You will not waste your time or money reading this story that can lead you to many other wonderful tales and happenstances about the Bill of Rights. If we let our children graduate from college, perhaps even high school, without knowing what is in this and similar books, we have to accept a degree of blame for letting them down.

Oxford University Press, 2006, ISBN: 13: 978-0-19-518105-0 and ISBN: 10: 0-19-518105-0

Congress Needs Regulating

FTC, FDA, IRS, the U.S. Postal Service and the U.S. Attorney for Southern Florida recently in 2010 helped put a hardheaded marketing scammer in jail for 20 years. He was warned before by a Federal court. This case proves that dietary supplements are regulated.

FDA has forced the recall of dietary supplements by several sellers in recent months. Muscle products containing steroids are reported in this issue. The recalls prove that dietary supplements are regulated.

The FDA has used the Federal Courts and U.S. Marshalls numerous to seize dietary supplement products from sellers who violated the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. These seizures prove that dietary supplements are regulated.

Likewise, there are frequent reports that FTC obtains fines against sellers of dietary supplements for defrauding consumers. These fines prove that dietary supplements are regulated.

Activity that is not regulated very much is that of the U.S. Congress, when it passes law after law requiring FDA or some other Federal agency to do something, while failing to provide the money to do the work. The U.S. Constitution regulated what Congress could do 100 years ago, but does so infrequently now.

In 2009 dietary supplements lost NIH’s support for an annual bibliography for research on dietary supplements.

This year the President’s Budget for FY 2011, the first budget that this President had complete control over, does not mention any increase in funding for dietary supplement programs. But this budget proposes spending in the trillions beyond income to expand entitlement and new programs.

In early February 2010, Senator John McCain introduced a bill to amend the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act and the bill does not mention giving FDA or other agencies any money to implement the new amendments, if they are passed. This compounds the inefficiency in government programs.

Funding necessary government programs is harder to do when most of the Federal money is dedicated to entitlement programs. Of course, this shows Congress is incapable of distinguishing the difference between necessary programs and entitlement programs. This discernment is what needs regulating.

The United States government would have adequate money to do what is necessary, if the members of Congress would stop passing spending bills to benefit their own states or districts in order to get themselves reelected 98 percent of the time. Once upon a time this was regulated by the U.S. Constitution, common sense, and decency. But these are no longer reliable!

For articles that explain background on the legal issues related to dietary supplements in this blog go to www.natmedlaw.com where you can read 13 plus years of the author’s newsletters.

FDA Accused of Abuse of Power and Risks to Liberty

If you have not read it yet, get the book, The Rise of Tyranny: How Federal Agencies Abuse Power and Pose Risks to Your Life and Liberty, by Jonathan W. Emord. He lays out what is wrong and gives a plan to correct the abuses and risk causing. After working as a lawyer for the Federal Communications Commission for several years under Mark Fowler and Dennis Patrick in the Ronald Reagan Administration, Emord began a private law practice in Washington, D.C. The publisher is the Sentinel Press in Washington, D.C. Copyright 2008.

Since being in private practice since 1988 when Reagan left office, Emord has taken on a number of First Amendment cases. This book concentrates on the Food and Drug Administration, Drug Enforcement Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services -- all being examples of agencies having combinations of executive, legislative and judicial power given to them by Congress. Emord describes the case law that started this unwise delegation of legislative and judicial powers to Federal agencies and he points out that the Supreme Court of the United States has not found an unconstitutional delegation of powers to an agency since 1935. Thus we have now created almost the exact tyranny that was the cause of the Revolutionary War. Except now we have over 180 Federal agencies instead of King George III.

Emord says the way back to liberty requires Americans to take action because Congress has relinquished the power to govern. The House and Senate do not want to take the heat for hard decisions, so they let the agencies take the heat, while the members spend their time raising money for the next election. You can see this happening every day in the present atmosphere of an unconnected to the voters Washington, D.C. crowd.

Here is what Americans must do. 1) Vote corrupt Members of Congress Out of Office; 2) Enact Legislation to Prevent Congressional Relinquishment of the Law-Making Power; 3) Enact Legislation to Prevent Industry Capture; 4) Enact Legislation Requiring Meaningful Judicial Review; 5) Enact Legislation to Punish Appointed Officials Who Violate the Constitution, Agency Rules, or Commission Enabling Statutes for Personal Gain; 6) Enact Legislation to Protect Americans from Unsafe Drugs; 7) Enact Legislation to Eliminate FDA Jurisdiction Over Health Claims and Structure/Function Claims and Establish New Anti-Fraud Protections; and 8) Enact Legislation to Mandate Due Process in Medicare Part B Reimbursement Cases.

This looks like a tall order that will take some time. But Emord says, "We are at a critical moment in history. Corruption within the government is pervasive and there are virtually no checks on the abuses. We must either reverse the trend toward ruin promptly or stand by as we lose our place as a bastion of liberty, hope, and opportunity for the world." Emord tells us that George Washington (who is that, some of our school children ask?) warned us in his Farewell Address that there "should be no change through usurpation; for through this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."

Readers of this book will become fired up to work toward a restoration of the REPUBLIC that protects liberty.  We have a lot to do, one bite at a time.