Posts Tagged ‘individual freedom’Hope For Financial FreedomSunday, February 7th, 2010by Timothy Baldwin
The financial system our federal government created in 1913 and thereafter maintained has created nothing but iron chains around the hands, feet and necks of the states of America. Unfortunately, most Americans do not understand the unconstitutionality and dangers of this system (mostly because of a lot of brainwashing over the years). When politics begin to affect the wallet, however, many Americans all of a sudden become politically active and “righteously” indignant. This sadly reveals that principles of truth are not priority. But if a person even cares about America’s history, principles of freedom as accepted by our forefathers or the natural and revealed laws of God, he has to admit that one of the most fundamental elements of freedom is financial freedom. These fundamentals confirm the right of individuals to work in exchange for other items contracted for by the engaged parties, to reap all the benefits and rewards of his labor, skill and intellect without the unjust or unauthorized interference of anyone else, including government. Our Declaration of Independence categorizes this natural right as the “pursuit of happiness,” meaning property, which money certainly is. Despite financial freedom being considered a natural right, our federal government has ignored this right and principle of freedom; and today, it controls virtually every aspect of money, starting with money’s very creation (i.e. printing) through the inaptly-named, Federal Reserve System (created in 1913 by Congress). But the idea of this system did not come from our forefathers. In fact, based upon the principles of individual freedom, self-government and limited government, our founders rejected the federal government’s power to print money by giving only this power to Congress in Article 1, Section 8: “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.” Moreover, States agreed (by ratification of the U.S. Constitution) that they would only be limited as follows relevant to money and currency: “No State shall…make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.” Since 1913, the federal government has been perpetually acting unconstitutionally; and today, States are forced to violate the U.S. Constitution and accept fiat money as tender in payments of debts. Even a shallow scan of America’s history reveals that our founders and ratifiers considered the constitution to be worth nothing more than fire starter if Congress had the power to print money and create a fiat monetary system. Consider of a few of our founders’ position on the money system we have had since 1913 (citing from, George Bancroft, History of the United States of America: From the Discovery of the Continent [to 1789], Volume 6, [New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1890], 301–303) (Emphasis added):
“This is the interpretation of the [Article 1, Section 8] clause…History cannot name a man who has gained enduring honor by causing the issue of paper money.” Ibid., 303. Contradicting these sound lessons and mandates of human history, the U.S. Constitution and natural law (meaning, the value of commercial exchange should have actual value, not pretend value), the federal government has for nearly 100 years operated under a fiat financial system, printing money out of thin air, being backed by nothing of substance, increasing the federal debt, causing inflation, decreasing the value of our contracted-for work, diminishing our future investments, and jeopardizing the lives of millions (just to name a few). Do you think that a country is living in freedom when this takes place?! The very implementation and structure of the Federal Reserve System is corrupt, considering the most basic principles of a free society, as it puts the power of the fiat money market into the control of a few unelected and uncontrolled people. The danger of this system was recognized immediately by financial experts after its implementation. Consider what Professor John Holdsworth observes in 1914: “It is obvious that a board clothed with such powers can exercise an enormous influence either for good or ill upon the new system. Success or failure…will depend largely upon their ability, wisdom, and tact.” John Thom Holdsworth, Money and Banking, 6th Edition, (New York: Appleton, 1914), 353. Is the definition of “oligarchy” coming to mind? The creation of our Constitutional Republic was to place the power of securing individual natural rights under the constraints of a fixed constitution into the hands of many who would be affected by its abuse: that is, the people and their agents! The federal system was entirely a check and balance upon all powers in the federal government: checks by the people directly, checks by the other branches of federal government, checks by time itself and checks by the state governments. Yet, the Federal Reserve System literally removes one of the most fundamental natural rights (property) from the control, oversight and power of the people and of their closest representatives (Congress and the State governments). America’s monetary system is without a doubt despicable, unnatural, fraudulent and dangerous. So, what is our federal government going to do about it? What have they done since 1913? Nothing! I believe we can say with certainty they will continue their legacy. Sure, we know Congressman Ron Paul (and maybe a few others) has attempted to make a difference in this area (See, H.R. 4683, The Free Competition in Currency Act of 2007). God bless him for his lone-wolf efforts. However, even with a Republican-controlled federal government from 2000 to 2008, nothing has been done to bring the Federal Reserve into accountability and responsibility, much less to termination–all this after nearly 100 years of this corrupt system being woven into the fabric of our states and even the entire world. We can say with assurance that putting our hope in the federal government to control the monster it has created is misplaced. It is disgusting how the federal government usurps the delegations and trusts of its power, violates the principles and limitations of the constitution, does nothing to reverse the usurpations and expressly revert these powers back to the states and the people. Still, every year, they expect that we vote for them and look to Washington D.C. for the answers to our problems. What a racket of tyranny! Yet, most take the bait. I would not trust them with taking caring for my dog. There is, however, an alternative solution–one that our founders expected in cases of federal usurpations: the STATES. What has to be concluded here is that since the federal government does not possess the power to create this fiat system, it of course has acted unconstitutionally since 1913, depriving individuals, the people and the states of the powers they retained under the ninth and tenth amendments of the U.S. Constitution. Being sovereign, the states have the power to do what their constitutions give them power to do in this regard. As a result, the States must take courage to use of their inherent sovereignty: they must be energized by the force of truth, the fire of freedom and the passion of the people. The state governments must recognize this: we, who demand justice, demand that our states retake powers that rightly belong to us, terminate powers that have wrongly been usurped by tyrants, and create within our borders a free and independent system of finance and commerce. The States must recognize and proclaim once again that,
Freedom for a Change Until the States become capable of monetarily sustaining themselves as sovereign states are supposed to, the federal government has nothing but incentive to keep the States enslaved to a worthless, fiat system of slavery, which only feeds the power of the federal government with each print of a fiat dollar bill. When the States become monetarily strong and independent, hope for financial freedom will once again return to our States. The question is, which States are willing to protect freedom for their citizens. Tim Baldwin is an attorney who received his Juris Doctor degree from Cumberland School of Law at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. He is a former felony prosecutor for the Florida State Attorney’s Office and now owns his own private law practice. He is author of a soon-to-be-published new book, entitled FREEDOM FOR A CHANGE. Tim is also one of America’s foremost defenders of State sovereignty. See his website. Copyright (c) 2010 Timothy Baldwin
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http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2010/02/07/hope-for-financial-freedom/ Glenn Beck, States’ Rights, and the Myth of the Libertarian DictatorWednesday, February 3rd, 2010by Josh Eboch For all their professed love of reason and logic, libertarians can be damned unreasonable sometimes. Consider this post from the blog Live Oaks on the supposed injustice of the Tenth Amendment:
I will be the first to admit that Glenn Beck is very confused about some aspects of liberty and federalism (particularly involving Abraham Lincoln), but he has this part exactly right. Unfortunately, the fear of local despotism is a common and misguided complaint of libertarian opponents to the Tenth Amendment movement. Many of them seem to think that because certain people in certain states might favor programs that run counter to the philosophy of individual liberty, the entire system of divided sovereignty that was put in place by America’s founders should be scrapped. But, if they refuse to trust home rule and it’s obvious the current system is a disaster, these libertarians would leave us with nothing more than the vague hope of some spontaneous and radical shift in public consciousness. That, or the rise of some benevolent dictator willing to impose his or her vision of individual freedom nationally from D.C., whether the voters want it or not. Which, as a political strategy, is nothing short of absurd. It often takes more than well-reasoned theory to change someone’s mind, and it always takes power to impose someone’s will, even if that will is liberty. Unless the people demand their freedom from the bottom up, by gaining control over their local and state governments, the corruptible power that must be centralized in order to enact (and enforce) a liberty agenda from the top down would no doubt immediately be co-opted for something completely different. In fact, it is a fundamental flaw of otherwise good constitutionalists like Ron Paul that they even seek the presidency; an increasingly imperial office that should be castrated through neglect, not further aggrandized. It is precisely because ignorant or malicious voters so often support government-sponsored looting of their neighbors that decentralized power is critical. Human beings are flawed, and even with the best of intentions may engage in behavior that is irrational or dishonest. However, the smaller the geographic or economic area that can be affected by a single misguided administration or policy, the more likely it is that enough citizens can be educated and motivated to fix the problem. Or that they can physically relocate their tax dollars to a more suitable environment. The entire point of freedom is to protect the right of someone else to do something you think is stupid, or even wrong. Otherwise, when the winds of popular opinion shift, who will protect your right to do the same? That holds true for individuals composing units of government as well. We must respect one another enough as Americans to allow the citizens of each sovereign state to decide for themselves the size and scope of government they desire. Those states that choose wisely will prosper, while those that choose poorly will suffer the consequences, and have to learn from their mistakes or perish. Based on what we know about the free market, it is simply not credible to claim that decentralizing the federal government’s current power monopoly through the Tenth Amendment would turn America into 50 isolated tyrannies or fifedoms. In reality, spurred on by the information revolution, a return to robust federalism would quickly unleash the cleansing forces of market competition on our stagnant political economy. And what libertarian could argue with that? Josh is a proud “tenther”, freelance writer, and activist originally from the Washington, D.C. area. He is a blogger for TAC’s Tenther Grapevine and the State Chapter Coordinator for the Virginia Tenth Amendment Center.
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JBS Overview of AmericaSunday, January 3rd, 2010Once strong and prosperous and known as a refuge for those fleeing tyranny, America appears to be on the wrong “track”. Now, our freedoms are disappearing and our prosperity waning because of our departure from the principles on which all this liberty and prosperity was built. Reductio ad Racism: Godwin’s Law and the 10th AmendmentSaturday, December 19th, 2009by Josh Eboch Anyone who has ever participated in an online discussion forum knows that, sooner or later, all political debates are reduced to analogies of Hitler or Nazism. This self-evident fact of human existence is unofficially known as Godwin’s Law. But for those of us who believe in the Constitution, specifically its Tenth Amendment and the spirit in which it was ratified, there is another law; one that says, sooner or later, all debates will be reduced to charges of intolerance, racism, or some variation on that theme. Call it DiLorenzo’s Law. Ostensibly, these charges are leveled because “states’ rights” and the Tenth Amendment have been used in the past to justify gross violations of basic individual freedom and liberty. Which is absolutely true. From slavery to Jim Crow to poll taxes, there is no question that state governments in every part of the country have legislated in discriminatory and harmful ways against their own citizens. But it is also important to realize that bad laws and regrettable history do not themselves discredit the decentralized, federalist structure of our Constitution. Rather, they are an indictment of bad government and its limitless potential for harm; prime examples of the injustice that inevitably results from arbitrary power. Which is exactly why a strong Tenth Amendment remains so vital. It would be foolish to think we can trust the federal government to act in accordance with freedom at all times, any more than we can trust the governments of each state to do so. Just ask the Sioux and the Cherokee. Or Japanese-Americans in 1942. The best protection for liberty is a stiff and dynamic political competition between the states, and between states and the federal government, that allows for ideas to flourish or die on their merits. In that way, Americans cannot ever become permanently trapped by authoritarianism at any level. However, for such competition to exist, states must retain their power to act as sovereign political units. That includes the ability of voters to judge for themselves through their elected officials the constitutional limits of federal authority within a given state, nullifying those laws that exceed Congress’s enumerated powers. When, as is the case today, five justices on the Supreme Court are allowed to impose their expansive view of central authority on the entire country, they are just five federal foxes guarding a hen house of 300 million taxpayers. That is why, in order to protect its citizens from federal usurpation, the ultimate tool of each sovereign state must be its power to leave the Union altogether. Without that power to withdraw their consent, voters are nothing more than human cash machines residing in administrative fiefdoms of the central government. But try explaining a concept as basic as “consent of the governed” to the average statist, and you will almost certainly be told that America already settled this question in 1865. Except force of arms cannot settle questions of natural law, it can only postpone them. Given that the Constitution itself was ratified as a voluntary contract between the states for their mutual benefit, with no Perpetuity Clause or binding third party arbitration, the citizens of the southern states (the vast majority of whom did not own slaves) were not only morally, but legally, justified when they chose to void their participation in 1861. (Maybe even more so than the original slave-owning colonists had been in their secession from Great Britain in 1776.) And while a desire to preserve the system of chattel slavery clearly did play an important role in the South’s decision to secede, it is really a case of doing the right thing for the worst possible reasons. Only sheer ignorance or intellectual dishonesty would lead someone to claim that support for the legality of peaceful secession is still tantamount to support for slavery. (Ever heard of Quebec?) They are two completely separate issues. But, rather than acknowledge his total lack of constitutional authority to prevent any state’s peaceful secession, potentially saving 600,000 American lives, President Lincoln “preserved” the formerly voluntary Union with the bloody force of his federal boot heel. And did lasting dictatorial violence to the very Constitution he had sworn to protect. It was not until later that history sought to hide these facts, ascribing to a cynical politician and inveterate racist the ironic moral camouflage of “Great Emancipator.” It is due largely to the dichotomy between Lincoln’s words and his actions, and to the crucial distinction between secession’s legality and slavery’s injustice, that people still hold such conflicting opinions and beliefs regarding one of our nation’s most complex and painful eras. And why those who call for state sovereignty now often find themselves accused of racism, or in the awkward position of attempting to rationalize the inexcusable. The truth is that the confusion on both sides is wholly unnecessary because American society has changed permanently, and for the better, since the days of Lincoln. Far from seeking to perpetuate a rigid class system or forced servitude, today’s New Federalists come in every skin color and desire only to be left alone by the federal government, to conduct their lives and businesses as they see fit. They no more need to defend slavery or segregation to support state sovereignty than peaceful Muslims need to defend terrorism to support Islam. Despite some disgusting perversions, the Tenth Amendment, indeed our entire Constitution, has always been fundamentally about maximizing individual freedom through the greatest possible decentralization of corruptible power. Just as no reasonable person today would condone enslaving another human being, so none of us could reasonably believe that power sufficient to coerce the obedience of 300 million people can ever be trusted in the hands of 537 self-serving politicians and nine unelected bureaucrats. Before we can regain our national spirit of self-determination, Americans of all political stripes will have to better understand their own history, taking from it what is right and noble, while leaving behind what was not. Freedom is always a risk in the future, but it’s time we made peace with our past. Josh is a proud “tenther”, freelance writer, and activist originally from the Washington, D.C. area.
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