A Time to Fight

“Evil rarely comes upon us all at once, and liberty is rarely lost in one stroke.”

Our federal government is out of control. The sprawling government we have today is markedly different from the one bequeathed to us by our Founders, which “was strictly limited in its scope, guaranteed individual liberty, preserved the free market, and on matters that pertain to our private behavior was supposed to leave us alone.” Now is the time to halt the unbridled growth of government power.

Judge Andrew Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court judge that is senior judicial analyst for Fox News, issues a call to action in this article. He begins the article by saying:

“Congress recognizes no limits on its power. It doesn't care about the Constitution, it doesn't care about your inalienable rights. If this health care bill becomes law, America, life as you have known it, freedom as you have exercised it, and privacy as you have enjoyed it will cease to be.”

Before you accuse me of being an evil Fox News ideologue, please note that I still live in the dark ages. I still rely on regular broadcast signals for the rare occasions that I watch TV, having never had cable TV in my home. I’ve never seen Napolitano on TV, although, I once heard him briefly on the radio.

I know that Napolitano is libertarian and I know what his detractors say about him. But the passionate concern for a properly constitutional federal government on display in his article speaks to concerns that I have long had. While the article is mainly focused on the current health care power grab by government, it addresses larger issues as well. Napolitano writes:

“When I recently asked Congressman James Clyburn, the third ranking Democrat in the House, to tell me "Where in the Constitution the federal government is authorized to regulate everyone's healthcare," he replied that most of what Congress does is not authorized by the Constitution, but they do it anyway. There you have it. Congress recognizes no limits on its power. It doesn't care about the Constitution, it doesn't care about your inalienable rights, it doesn't care about the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights, it doesn't even read the laws it writes.”

That, my friends, is the definition of tyranny. Our tyrannical federal government is out of control.

The quote at the top of this post comes from Napolitano’s article. Over time, our federal government has morphed from its original design to become “one big monster government that recognizes no restraint on its ability to tell us how to live. It claims the power to regulate any activity, tax any behavior, and demand conformity to any standard it chooses.”

The current health care bill is a special case because for the first time, the federal government will assume that it has power under the Constitution’s interstate commerce clause (Article 1, Section 8, clause 3) to force you to purchase a personal product “you might not want, or may not need, or cannot afford.”

For those that believe that this would not be too onerous of a price to pay, consider the fact that “If you don’t purchase what the government tells you to buy, if you don’t do so when they tell you to do it, and if you don’t buy just what they say is right for you, the government may fine you, prosecute you, and even put you in jail. Freedom of choice and control over your own body will be lost. The privacy of your communications and medical decision making with your physician will be gone.”

This kind of thing smacks of King George III's actions outlined in the grievances noted in the Declaration of Independence. Now is the time to fight back. We must not tolerate this theft of our freedom. But what can we do? Napolitano urges:

“For starters, we can vote the bums out of their cushy federal offices! We can persuade our state governments to defy the Feds in areas like health care—where the Constitution gives the Feds zero authority. We can petition our state legislatures to threaten to amend the Constitution to abolish the income tax, return the selection of U.S. senators to state legislatures, and nullify all the laws the Congress has written that are not based in the Constitution.”

These sound like drastic measures that have little chance of success. But it may be possible to key into that spark of liberty that lives somewhere in the hearts of many Americans in a way that will set the political class on its heel. This is a fight for the soul of America, for your individual liberty, and for the freedom of your children.

This is not a particularly partisan fight. I agree with Napolitano when he says:

“We do not have two political parties in this country, America. We have one party; called the Big Government Party. The Republican wing likes deficits, war, and assaults on civil liberties. The Democratic wing likes wealth transfer, taxes, and assaults on commercial liberties. Both parties like power; and neither is interested in your freedoms.”

The American system of government was designed to protect our liberties, not to take them away in the name of some collective good. Not to have them meted out by some oligarchy and its army of faceless, unaccountable bureaucratic minions.

This is America. The time has come to fight for our freedoms.

Note to Conservatives: Obama Is a Natural Born Citizen

A contention continues to be expressed among some conservatives that President Obama is not a “natural born citizen” of the United States as required by Article II Section 1 of the Constitution, and is therefore ineligible to serve as President. They note that the President’s father was not an American citizen. They conjure up tales of Obama being born outside of the U.S. and assert that he has no actual U.S. birth certificate.

The claims of nonexistent or falsified birth certificate continue despite the fact that they have been debunked by reliable sources (as explained here) and courts have thrown out as groundless challenges based on these claims. But even if you assume that these people are right and that Obama was born outside of the U.S., it still would not mean he fails the “natural born citizen” test.

No one seriously (or at least effectively) disputes the fact that Obama’s mother was a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth. Wikipedia makes it clear that case law is unsettled about the term “natural born citizen,” but it has long been the practice of the U.S. government to recognize as natural born citizens the natural children of any U.S. citizen regardless of where in the world those children are born.

When I lived in Norway, I knew two families where the wife was a U.S. citizen and the husband was Norwegian. The children born to these families in Norway were recognized as U.S. citizens. They had Social Security numbers and citizenship papers. The sons had to register with Selective Service at age 18. If any of these children ended up living at least 14 years in the U.S. and reached at least 35 years of age, they would not be barred from running for the office of President or Vice President, despite the facts that their father was not a U.S. citizen and they were born in a foreign country.

The weight of evidence is against those that believe that Obama is rendered ineligible to serve as President due to the natural born citizen clause. There are only two ways for these people to achieve their goal of ousting the President from office on this basis. Since the courts have refused (and will likely continue to refuse) such challenges, that leaves only the avenue of impeachment.

Impeachment requires that the House of Representatives create a case and vote to impeach the President. Then representatives selected by the House present the case to the Senate, which must then vote to convict the President. How likely is this to happen, given the current formulation of Congress? Besides, even this method is questionable, because this issue may not rise to the level of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” codified in Article II Section 4 of the Constitution.

Those that claim that the election of President Obama flouts the Constitution’s natural born citizen clause are not on a firm legal footing. They frequently claim that they are trying to save the Constitution when they are simply trying to narrowly interpret the document in a way that pleases them but is not reflected in actual law.

It would be difficult if not impossible for anyone to prove in a way that settles U.S. law that President Obama is not a natural born citizen of the U.S. Those that buy the line that Obama is ineligible because of this and those that go around trying to sell this message off to others are wasting their time and talents, which could and should be used on something actually worthwhile.

Why do I care whether the anti-Obama-ites continue to rage about this non-issue? Because pretty much all of them are identified as conservatives and their rhetoric on this matter serves to discredit the cause for which they purport to stand. They are distracting from real conservative issues. They are giving conservatism a worse name and driving people away when they should be working to attract people to conservative principles. So, please lay off the Obama citizenship thing. It serves no good purpose.