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Expressions of Liberty

A commentary on the governmental respect for natural human rights as expressed by the founders of the United States and how it effects us today. I also show how the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution and other related documents are not dead documents in America today, but merely ignored and misused.

Name:
Location: Champaign, Illinois, United States

I am a classical liberal which is considered a type of conservative in these modern days. I am pro-right to life, pro-right to liberty, pro-parental rights, pro-right to property and a number of other natural human rights.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

How The Fall of States Rights Weakened Democracy In The United States

In a republic system the people elect representatives to perform the duties of government for them. Because each vote has an equal value a citizen's vote has more effect on determining who will represent them when the voter pool is small and less effect when it is large. In the United States you as a citizen therefore have more power to effect your local elections than the federal elections. Since this is so it is to your advantage to endow the lower levels of government with more power than the upper levels. Another advantage of more power at the local levels is that they are more informed about the situation that affects them and therefore better equipped with the knowledge to handle the situation. On the other hand the federal government has more resources to deal with developing situations. There is also need for a federal government in order to form a more perfect union.

These issues were taken into account when the U.S. Constitution was made the law of the land and federal system of government was set up with the federal government balanced against the State government. It was decided that one element of the federal government was to represents the state's rights to rule themselves. This element was the Senate and served as a second filter to laws passed by Congress as well as having other duties such as advice and consent to both political appointees, such as judges, and foreign treaties. All of these have one thing is common and that is reserving to the states the power to rule themselves as the tenth Amendment states.

Now everything appears to have been carefully thought out accept that the Senate does not perform the duty for which they were intended. Instead of protecting a states right to rule themselves they now represent political issues only and therefore fail to guard against the federal government taking power upon themselves that is by rights the states either by judicial decision, legislation, executive order, or treaty and thus weaken the ability of the individual American to control their own political environment.

My hypothesis is that in 1913 when Congress and the states got together and decided to amend the Constitution with two Amendments whose purpose was to strengthen the Federal Government that this imbalance occurred. The Sixteenth Amendment gave the federal government the financial power to influence the states and other nations. It also caused the states to be dependent on the federal government for a large part of their financial needs. The Seventeenth Amendment switched the method of electing Senators from appointment by the state legislatures to direct voting by the citizens of the state and thus removing the control of state government over the excesses of the federal government. Sadly both amendments ended up weakening the ability of Americans to rule themselves.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

All Federal Legislative Powers Are Congresses Not Europe's

I respect John Roberts apparent position on how the federal courts should regard foreign law expressed in the below cite from a CNN article which was contributed to by Bill Mears.

Roberts was unusually candid, saying reliance on international courts "is a misuse of precedent." He added it would be improper to rely on a German judge, unelected by the American people, since "he's playing a role in helping shape policy binding this nation. In foreign law, you can find anything you want" to support your own views, he said.

My objection is twofold. The first is his reliance on precedent. The second is his referring to judicial decisions as law. In the federal government the U.S. Constitution does insist that all legislative powers rest in the hands of Congress.

The Constitution itself mentions Common Law and the rules of common law in the Seventh Amendment so it is obvious that they did not consider the application of common law to be a violation of the separation of powers. I had to look up the meaning of common law and I found out that it could be overruled by statue law. So since that clearly means it is only advise, for if any judge at any level of the court system is convinced that the statue contradicts the precedent then they can overrule the precedent. The courts above them can of course overrule them with the Supreme Court the final decider in any particular case.

Other than the objections I voiced above I find John Roberts response to be in line with the U.S. Constitution since it states the all federal legislative powers are given to Congress and none therefore left over for other countries, states or the Judicial branch.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

John Roberts And The Constitution

Though I am pro-life I am reluctant to endorse John Roberts simply because he is a lawyer. Lawyer look to precedent before they look to the law the precedent is supposed to have judged by. Precedents at the most should be advise and not law as Congress was endowed with all the legislative powers leaving none left over. Lawyers also believe in altering the meaning of the law for their client. This is otherwise known as activism and when practiced by federal judges violates the limits placed on their powers. John Roberts has admitted both actions. I am not surprised that the American Bar Association gave John Roberts their highest rating since they also hold to these two unconstitutional practices as right.

Though reluctant, I do back John Roberts because the alternatives have the same flaws in that they fail to keep their oath to uphold the Constitution. Indications are that John Roberts though a activist may well be a pro-life activist. If this is true then hopefully his activism overwhelms his awe of precedent so he may uphold the Constitution. He would be upholding the Constitution since in the preamble it states that one of its purposes is “to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity”. This follows as there is no way to secure the blessing of liberty for our posterity if you back the deliberate and arbitrarily kill them.

Monday, September 26, 2005

Our Early American Forparents Were Right To Life

The U.S. Declaration of Independence is the founding document of the United States and justifies even the use of armed rebellion against a corrupt government that does not respect the right to life of created human beings as can be seen from the following cite.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security

The right to life that the people of colonial America were so willing to fight and die for was one that unborn children were credited with having according to the law of that time period as you can see from this commentary on the laws of England of that period.

Life is the immediate gift of God, a right inherent by nature in every individual; and it begins in contemplation of law as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother's womb

So our colonial and early American forbearers are pro-life in that they held to the belief that children had the right to life simply because they were human beings and alive. It is the same basic theory that caused them to say the following in the Declaration of Independence .

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

About the Right to Liberty an aspect of what is the Right to Choice, John Locke wrote the following in his Second Treatise On Civil Government.

But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence; though man in that state have an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation
calls for it.

So obviously according to the law at the time the Declaration of Independency, which was based on their knowledge of natural science, the right to choose was not considered sufficient in itself to deprive a owned animal or infant of life. This is the same Declaration of Independence that Abraham Lincoln accused the Supreme Court Justices of being tyrants when the later stated it did not apply to slaves, that Elizabeth Cady Stanton based the Declaration of Sentiments on, and that Martin Luther King, Junior declared promised blacks equal rights.

The U.S. Constitution itself makes consideration for rights that are not enumerated within itself and their importance with these words.

Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

In Conclusion I have shown what is clearly obvious to anyone whom studies law and the history behind it. That being that children within their mother’s womb had their right to life protected by law at the time the Constitution was written and that right was retained for them by the people when the Ninth Amendment was made law. So it is obvious that that right can not constitutionally be denied them even in the effort to protect the his or her mother’s right of privacy. Even knowing that our country has fallen from the high level of virtue for which it stived, it is my hope and desire that the United States changes our ways and once more become true patriots and claim the Spirit for life and freedom that will allow us to stand against the tyranny of legal murder through abortion.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

How The FDA Violates The Seperation of Powers

I was reading an article about the FDA and their decision about whether or not to allow Plan B contraceptives to be sold over the counter and the thought came to me that Congress is the only federal government body to legally have the right to make rules that effect individuals outside their organization. Please look at this cite from the U.S. Constitution to see what I mean.
Article 1 Section 1. All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

So as regulations are legislation how did a executive body like the FDA get to start violating the Constitution with impunity. If the FDA has the power to enforce these regulation they place on the food, drug, and alcohol industries then they would fall under the executive branch, but any regulations would still need to be passed by Congress as is the case with the FBI and federal criminal law. The IRS and other organizations that regulate those outside of the federal organization would be treated likewise. The judicial powers in all cases would of course still be retained by the federal courts.

How Free Can The Government Be With Your Information Property

Offhand when I read how the Freedom of Information Act was used to acquire personal information from the files of the FBI as reported by Randy Herschaft and Larry Mcshane in this Associate Press article featured in the Houston Chronicle, I question the Constitutionality of that action. The Declaration of Independence states it is to secure the right to property and information about a person is their property.

That is why the Constitution protects individuals from unreasonable search or seizer of their person. The exception is public domain information which seems to include all the released information. If the information is slanderous or libelous the government should not release it in respect for the individuals reputation, even if they are dead. This ideal has been violated in this information release . If the FBI has seized confidential records or other property from or about a person they are to be used only for the purpose they were seized for and not release to the general public unless the government has paid a fair value for them as that is what the Forth and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution state. After use the government should destroy intellectual and related property such as x-rays on the government’s media or return other property such as x-rays on the individual’s media as it is not legally theirs unless ownership legally changed to them.

I quickly scanned the Freedom of Information Act and feel reasonable confident of it Constitutionality though it should forbid the release of information of a slanderous or libelous nature. An individual could of course have full access to their own information property provided it did not endanger the ideals enumerated in the Preamble of the Constitution.