Gov. Rick Perry stated at the outset of his presidential campaign that he is running for president based on his principles and leadership accomplishments, not his oratorical skills. Media focus on his debate missteps deliberately ignores Perry’s record and charisma.

Six months ago discussing Perry’s possible candidacy, a top conservative leader privately said, “Rick is a great leader. But he’s not a greater debater. And he knows it. The question would be whether he overcomes it.”

Technology regularly creates new challenges for presidents. Debating skill was a non-issue for many consequential presidents, but some are trying to make it an automatic disqualifier for the Texas governor.

America’s third president—Thomas Jefferson—was a lousy public speaker. He was literally a genius, and his singular eloquence as a writer is seen in his prose in the Declaration of Independence and other writings.

But Jefferson was no speaker, so much so that he only gave a couple speeches in his entire two-term presidency. He was so bad that he fulfilled his constitutional requirement to give an annual State of the Union by sending a written document to Congress.

The media would pan Jefferson’s radio and television performance today. Does America regret electing such a lackluster orator?

(more…)

More than 50 years after Sam Cooke first sang about his educational deficiencies, many American teens “don’t know much about history.”  Or so their latest test scores suggest.

Only 12 percent of all 12^th graders are “proficient” or “advanced” in U.S. History according to the 2010 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP).  And less than half of all high school seniors display even a “basic” knowledge about American History.

The latest NAEP scores for civics are almost as bad:  Less than two-thirds of all seniors show a “basic” understanding of our system of government.  And a 2010 study commissioned by the American Enterprise Institute concluded that “civics, once the cornerstone of public education, has fallen off the radar” as teachers have felt increasing pressure to show progress in other areas.

That many educators today give considerable attention to other subjects would not disturb America’s founders.  While we tend to think of them largely as political figures, America’s founders recognized that there are many higher and grander pursuits in life than those in the political realm.

This no doubt explains why the scientifically-curious Ben Franklin went outside in a thunderstorm with his kite – and why the educationally-minded Thomas Jefferson had his gravestone identify him as the founder of the University of Virginia, but not as the third president of the United States.

(more…)

The world seems to be coming apart at its seams. We are facing real threats that resemble the great plagues of the past. This plague is targeting the foundations of society as opposed to the people who make it. Great Britain is being throttled by rioters as London has become a city of chaos. We are witnessing a global meltdown in the financial markets and the only thing that looks to be clear at this point is that a new world order will emerge once the old one gives up the ghost.

Countries such as Russia and China are clamoring for the US dollar dominated-era to end. The latter of the two is in a good position to take advantage of US vulnerabilities. Back in 2009, there was a concerted effort by rich nations such as France, China, Russia, and Japan to move away from dealing in dollars for the price of oil. It was really just pecking blows from lightweights – considering US economic hegemony – as opposed to a knockout blow. However, in my limited powers of observation, the US’ legs are as wobbly as anytime before. The momentum, if you want to call it that, does seem to be moving away from the US in light of our economic and financial woes toward a yet to be announced global realignment.

It is easy to be fatalistic when faced with so many uncertainties. The US is losing credibility along with its place in the world as the sole superpower. Consider the fact that we aren’t being removed from that lofty pedestal from the machinations of another, but, rather, our fall is by our own doing; and it becomes even more depressing.

Our government has spent every cent it has taken in and then borrowed an additional $14 trillion. Take a minute for that to seep in. Our politicians promised and voted in programs it could not afford. Voting constituencies lapped it up. Our national debt became excessive and is now a catastrophic danger. Our government ignored proper funding for the interest on the debt. Instead we borrowed more against our debt. The result, obviously, was that creditors lost confidence in their investments and government securities were hardly secure. The party is ending but it goes much deeper than that.

(more…)

The more I hear people criticize Governor Rick Perry for saying New York’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage was “their business,” the more I want to put a “Perry 2012” bumper sticker on my car. And when that criticism continues, because he also said things like “that is fine with me” and “that is their call,” I actually wonder if we understand freedom at all.

Honestly folks, do we have the courage to be free?

After all, Perry is only saying what he’s been saying for years, and what Thomas Jefferson spelled out in the Kentucky Resolutions (1798).  Namely, that states enjoy a sovereignty that allows them to make decisions apart from the federal government and apart from the consensus of other states.

Perry bases these statements on the Tenth Amendment, which clearly states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” While this amendment does many things, one of the most important things it does is set clear limitations on the power of the federal government. It also demonstrates that our Founders believed every power not explicitly “delegated” to the federal government belongs to the states, “or to the people.”

Does Perry agree with same-sex “marriage”? Certainly not: which is why he supported an amendment to the Texas Constitution that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman in 2005.  But Perry understands that just as Texas had every right to define and protect traditional marriage within their borders, so too other states have the right to foolishly undermine that same institution within theirs. (I think New York’s decision was stupid, but the expression of freedom doesn’t have to be smart in order to be legitimate.)

(more…)

Virginia’s Former-Governor George Allen again rises to defend Right To Work and the principles of liberty embraced by our Founding Fathers against attacks from the Obama Administration and the acquiescent U.S. Senate.

It is time for all freedom-loving people to stand up against the forces of tyranny that have taken hold of numerous government agencies such as the NLRB. It is time that elected officials and candidates for office to declare their positions for or against individual liberty. If for liberty, then they must act to oppose the tyranny of forced unionism and its suppression of the individual. (For Governor Allen’s full Op-Ed in Politico click here.)

President Thomas Jefferson defined the sum of good government as, “a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

Those words are the uplifting principles of a free society.

Unfortunately these principles are being ignored by the powers in Washington.

(more…)

When Thomas Jefferson warned his peers (and his posterity) about the threat of expansive governments, he said, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.” In other words, the habit of looking to a government to meet our wants can be very costly because governments big enough to satisfy those wants are too large to control. In the end, all the goodies such a government provides come at a price too high: the price of freedom.

And although Jefferson issued this warning two centuries ago, many citizens in blue states like Connecticut and New York may think them strangely contemporary. And the reason they might think this is because politicians in those two states are openly pushing legislation that will control, if not take away all together, said citizens’ ability to exercise their God-given, 2^nd Amendment rights.

For example, in New York, S.B. 2994 is currently making the rounds in that state’s senate. Not only will this legislation require gun owners to register every gun they own with the state, it will also charge them an annual per-gun fee for every gun they own. Moreover, gun owners will even have to tell the government where they store their guns when not in use.

Now think about this: the justification given for S.B. 2994 is that it will enable New York officials to “come a step closer to identifying…illegal firearms.”

Hmmm….  I wonder how many owners of illegal firearms will be complying with S.B. 2994 should it pass? I’d say there’s a better chance that owners of legal firearms will get a knock on their door at some future date, when the government that knows how many guns you own and where you keep them decides it’s time to get those firearms off the streets too.

In Connecticut’s legislature, Bill No. 1094 – “AN ACT BANNING LARGE CAPACITY AMMUNITION MAGAZINES” – has been proposed.  If enacted, this bill would not only ban the sell of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, but would also make it a felony for a gun owner to have one. (That’s right – a felony.)

(more…)

Although last year’s midterm elections dealt Democrats a devastating blow at the federal level, what has liberals reeling now are the ramifications of power Republicans accumulated on the state level as well. Just consider their reaction to the union-adjusting policies of the newly elected governors in Ohio and Wisconsin (John Kasich and Scott Walker), and it’s evident that the outcome of November 2010 continues to be more than many Democrats can handle.

Yet the key battleground for a clash between the political status quo, which is always good for Democrats, and an active conservatism, which is always good for liberty, looks like it may take place hundreds of miles away from either Kasich or Walker, in a state that still symbolizes the strength and courage of the Wild West: namely, Montana.

Yes, it’s there that the battleaxe of Tea Party conservatism is crashing down with a boom on liberalism, progressivism, and every other “ism” that threatens to the limit the intrinsic (and inalienable) rights of the citizens in that state.

The Associated Press (AP) recently bemoaned the fact that Republicans emerged from the November 2010 elections with a  “supermajority in the Montana House.”  Which means they now control both chambers in that state. This also means that words like “nullification,” phrases like “states’ rights,” and theories like Thomas Jefferson’s description of the union of states as a “compact” are not only spoken in the legislative halls, they are shouted from the rooftops. (Jefferson’s view on the nature of the union, best set forth in his “Kentucky Resolutions,” is that states do not look to the federal government for the cause of their existence rather the federal government exists because the states chose to delegate certain powers to it.)

In Montana, they are trying to right the ship by restoring a constitutional balance of powers that constrains the federal government’s habit of infringing on the rights of the people.

(more…)

Since June 21, 1788 when New Hampshire became the required ninth state to ratify the US Constitution, the seventeen enumerated powers specifically granted to the federal government in the Constitution have slowly expanded to allow central government involvement in virtually all aspects of life in America.  Thomas Jefferson, were he among us today, would call for a second insurance of the Declaration of Independence.  The expansion of those powers resulted from broad interpretation of the Constitution’s commerce clause and general welfare clause for the stated purpose of promoting societal good.  Jefferson warned us about this in his writings with, “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”

This gradual erosion of our liberty has only surfaced because of the unsustainable financial support necessary to fund an ever increasing role of government in our lives.  Newly elected Republicans in the 112^th Congress recognized that the financial structure of our nation is at the brink of collapsing under the weight of government that has grown too large for its citizens to support.  They are pressing for deep cuts in spending, but are getting pushed back from President Obama and Democrats whose ideology is rooted in central authority control.  Even if successful, the $100 billion in cuts for the remainder of the 2011 budget, called for by the Republicans, will do little when staring at a projected deficit for 2011 of $1.5 trillion.  This deficit will push our national debt to a level that will threaten our ability to fund our military.  It can spark an inflationary cycle that will spike the cost of food, energy and other commodities resulting in hardships for all citizens and for businesses, which would fail creating higher unemployment.

The Treasury Department is forecasting that our national debt will reach $19.6 trillion by 2015.  If our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grows at a respectable annual rate of 3.5% over that same period, it will reach $17.7 trillion by 2015, trailing the debt by almost $2 trillion.  Mr. Obama’s recent proposal to cut $1.1 trillion in deficit spending over the next ten years, while the debt is forecast to increase by more than $5 trillion in only five years, is laughable at best and a cruel diversion to mask the truth at worst.  Can you imagine running your family household by planning to spend more than you anticipate your income to grow for ten years?  You would be bankrupt and that is exactly where our nation is heading.

The clash between our federalist style of government (where the states and the people have the power) and an all powerful central government will drive the debate in the 2012 Presidential Election.  However, we need to deal with the financial crisis now.

(more…)

The time is now and the moment is at hand.  We must deal with the run-away spending of our federal government before our compounding debt drives us all into forced servitude for generations to come.  There is little doubt that our growing indebtedness is a clear and present danger to our liberty.

The events in Tunisia and Egypt are warnings to us in the United States that prolonged unemployment, few opportunities for achievement and over taxation to support the excesses of government are the precursors to chaos.  We are seeing that for an educated people who have played by the rules and have the burning desire to prosper, such conditions are exactly what Thomas Jefferson described to the Virginian historian Samuel Kercheval in his July 12, 1816 letter, “We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”

Jefferson went on to describe the choice that the people must make between “Economy and liberty or profusion and servitude.” He continued with,

“If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the miss-managers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence.”

Jefferson’s conclusion read with the backdrop of recent events in Northern Africa should shock us all into reality, “Then begins, indeed the bellum omnium in omina.” His Latin phrase means “the war of all against all.” Our nation is on the brink and I will explain.

(more…)

So now a new group has appeared claiming to eschew all political labels. Appropriately, they have taken the moniker “No Labels.” A closer examination of this group, however, seems to indicate that this is about as artificial as artificial can get.

The “No Labels” approach is inherently contradictory. Simply by creating the group and giving it a name, it has been labeled. Now we have Republicans, Democrats, and No Labelers. While it claims to be inclusive, it seems to attract primarily those to the left of center, whether Democrats or Republicans. The thing is, they don’t consider themselves left of center; rather, they place themselves squarely at the center and conclude that anyone not of their ilk is a “wingnut.” In fact, one of this group’s founders, John Avlon, wrote a book using that term.

I think it’s also instructive that this movement, such as it is, arose only after Republicans took back the House, made gains in the Senate, swamped governorships, and dominated state legislatures in the November elections. Why all of a sudden the need for a centrist party? Obviously because the Republicans did so well—and they must be stopped.

This effort is probably not going to make much of a dent in American politics. The idea that there are no “sides” in political debate is fanciful. Even the Founding Fathers had to face up to that. The Constitution, as originally written, did not take into account the development of political parties. There was this high hope that statesmen would govern for the good of all. Yet during Washington’s administration, we divided into Hamiltonian Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans.

(more…)

On Fox News Sunday, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer spoke of his dissenting decisions in the several Second Amendment cases that he heard as a Justice. He told host Chris Wallace that he thought that James Madison only included the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights as a sop to the states and Breyer insisted that historians agreed.

In essence, Breyer was saying that Madison was not interested in an individual’s right to gun ownership and self-protection and for that reason his dissenting opinions against that individual right accorded well with what the founder’s thought on the issue.

But Breyer’s assumption that a citizen’s right to bear arms is not sacrosanct and his following contention that the founders would agree seems to ignore much of the history of the era not to mention the precedents in law and the historical record upon which the founders relied to define their political ideas — including Madison.

Of course, it is a bit ridiculous to take one lone founder’s words and assume that it represents the opinion of all of them. It is quite easy, after all, to find quotes from any particular founder that in no way reflected even a minority opinion of the day. For instance, Thomas Jefferson once advocated that all laws be dumped every few decades so that the next generation could start over with their own ideas unencumbered by past generations. Even Madison thought that idea was absurd. Hamilton found that many of his most dearly held financial ideas left his fellows cold. John Adams thought that we should call the president “your majesty,” an idea that earned him much derision. And Poor Richard himself, Benjamin Franklin, once proposed that each galaxy had it’s own “God” that ruled in his own sphere meaning that there were infinite gods for infinite galaxies. Not every idea the founders had were gems, to be sure.

Still, Madison spoke with most of his contemporaries, not outside them, when he considered the meaning of the Second Amendment.

It is certainly true that the founder’s chief interest in creating the Second Amendment was to serve two important roles. One was to create a citizen army, a militia that could be called upon to defend the nascent nation. The second was to prevent the necessity of a large standing army, a body that most of the founders feared. Based on a clear reading of history, the prevailing opinion of the day was that a standing, powerful army served the forces of tyranny far more often than it served those of liberty. Consequently they wanted to figure out a way to make sure that the U.S. Army was small and too weak to threaten the citizenry.

This fact is what Breyer pointed to in order to prove his contention that Madison was not concerned with an individual’s right to own firearms.

(more…)

Have this year’s negative political ads really “taken dirty to a whole new level, as CNN’s Anderson Cooper frets? Is a “return to civility…a relic of a bygone era,” as President Barack Obama laments?

Er, not exactly.

If anonymous political speech, the other widely decried villain of this political season, helped found the United States, attack ads are as American as apple pie. If you fancy yourself a patriot or a history buff, you will most certainly approve this message, which is taken from statements made by, for, and against the nation’s founders. For historical sources, go here.

(more…)

Between February 27, 2009, and today we learned something.

We learned that this administration is bent on subverting republican government. Article IV of the Constitution — and its guarantee of a republican form of government — means nothing to Obama, the Congressional majority, and Obama’s Supreme Court appointees. Obama rules by decree. Elena Kagan’s okay with banning books.

November 2 is our last chance to stop the free fall into tyranny.

In many states, including my home state of Missouri, passions rage in advance of the August 3 primary. I understand. To a degree, I helped enflame those passions by launching a tea party in February of last year.  But that was before we fully understood what’s going on in Washington—before we realized that Barack Obama and the Congressional Democrats (not to mention Woody Allen and Ed Schultz) believe in tyranny.

On August 3 and November 2, I will follow the advice of the wisest man I every met, William F. Buckley Jr. Buckley’s rule for picking a candidate was simple: “Always support the rightward-most, viable candidate.” I would ask the same of everyone whose advanced the cause of liberty in the past seventeen months or longer.

Some good, sincere people want to tear down candidates they believe are less than ideal.  In some election years, I’m inclined to do the same.  But not this year. Not with what we know.

(more…)

When they teach American government and the history of the early American republic, political scientists and historians have a puzzle to explain. There is, within the American constitution, no mention of political parties. And yet it is impossible to make sense of American politics in and after the early republic without reference to parties. Moreover, the parties that did emerge in the United States bear only a faint resemblance to the parties that existed in England and on the European continent prior to the American civil war and even less to the parties that exist on the other side of the Atlantic today.

The two puzzles are related. It is true that the Framers of the Constitution had no liking and made no provision for organized political parties, and it is also true that all of the early Presidents made at least a half-hearted attempt to transcend partisanship. It was not until Andrew Jackson that we got our first unequivocally partisan President. It is also true that the partisan divide that emerged in the 1790s was viewed by both sides as something temporary and regrettable. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison formed a party, which in time they called the Republican Party, to counter what they considered a conspiracy on the part of George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, and in response he formed a party to counter what he considered a conspiracy on their part. Absent the conspiracy, or in the eventuality of its defeat and disappearance, the American republic’s first partisans expected the parties to wither away.

In this presumption, as Martin van Buren came to realize, they were wrong. Given the separation of powers, it was virtually impossible to govern in the absence of partisan alliances. But the very structure of American government – in which Congressmen are elected by particular constituencies located in particular places and look to that locality for re-election, and in which Senators represent particular states and are no less sensitive to local concerns – subverts partisanship and promotes a species of moderation as well. Only the President sees the Union from the perspective of the whole. When Tip O’Neill remarked that all politics is local, he spoke in a fashion perfectly appropriate to his situation as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

We must, then, view political parties from a double perspective.

(more…)

Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal:

What followed was a list of grievances that made the case for separation from the mother country, and this part was fiery. Jefferson was a cold man who wrote with great feeling. He trained his eyes on the depredations of King George III: “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns. . . . He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compete the work of death, desolation and tyranny . . .”

Members of the Congress read and reread, and the cutting commenced. Sometimes they cooled Jefferson down. He wrote that the king “suffered the administration of justice totally to cease in some of these states.” They made it simpler: “He has obstructed the Administration of Justice.”

“For Thomas Jefferson it became a painful ordeal, as change after change was called for and approximately a quarter of what he had written was cut entirely.” I quote from the historian David McCullough’s “John Adams,” as I did last year at this time, because everything’s there.

Jefferson looked on in silence. Mr. McCullough notes that there is no record that he uttered a word in protest or in defense of what he’d written. Benjamin Franklin, sitting nearby, comforted him: Edits often reduce things to their essence, don’t fret. It was similar to the wisdom Scott Fitzgerald shared with the promising young novelist Thomas Wolfe 150 years later: Writers bleed over every cut, but at the end they don’t miss what was removed, don’t worry.

(more…)

The Constitution of the United States of America is a remarkable document.  It is eloquent in its simplicity, clarity and in its power.  It revolutionized (first in America, and then throughout most of the western world) the relationship between those who are governed and those who govern.  It has served as a governing template for much of the democratic western world.

Every federal office holder swears allegiance to the Constitution, not to any leader, not to any party, not to any political philosophy—only to this document, which is the foundation upon which our form of government is based and against which all legislation and judicial actions are measured.  The President vows to do his job faithfully and, to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

And while there is no way of divining what today’s crop of leaders would have thought of the Constitution had they been present at the founding when it was first circulated prior to ratification, we have our doubts whether many of today’s ruling class, including President Obama, would have found common cause with Washington, Adams (John), Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton or Jay, all of whom loomed so large on the emerging American landscape.

This speculation is not intended as criticism of our political leadership or of the president.  Many great American patriots who were present at the founding opposed ratification of the Constitution.  Indeed, such American icons as Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, George Mason and James Monroe, were resolutely opposed to ratification of the Constitution, so wary were they of concentrated federal power. Time has, of course, demonstrated the remarkable wisdom of those who fought for ratification and the value of the gift they bequeathed to us all.  The question raised by this essay, however, is posed as the basis for discussion of whether a document written so long ago, which lays out with simplicity certain fundamental rules and relationships, can truly guide this nation 221 years later.

(more…)

Nearly every election year, a series of analysts and candidates suggest to American voters that the election that year may be the most important of its age.  In retrospect, few can argue that the election of Obama has not been momentous.  The midterm election of 2010 may be a turning point as well – especially for American business.

For decades, American business has wined, dined and lobbied the American politicians. Some have sought preferential tax benefits for themselves or their industries.  Others have sought preferential regulations or corporate welfare for the same reasons.  Still others feed the alligator that is government in hopes that it will be kind to them in the future while it consumes others today.

Perhaps no greater example of the latter mentality exists in California.   Year after year, business interests donate millions of dollars to Democrats in the hope that they will act reasonably.  The coup de grace of which was the 2002 election for Governor between then Governor Gray Davis and challenger, and business man, Bill Simon.  Under no uncertain terms, Simon campaigned on lower taxes and regulations.  Davis offered record deficits and coming tax increases – not to mention an ever increasing regulatory burden.  Incredibly, Big Business gave to Davis three to one over Simon.  They did so because they did not give Simon much of a chance and they wanted to curry favor with Davis – hoping he would be kind to them when he won.

Without a doubt there were two losers in that election.  Simon lost by less than 5 points (far closer than business imagined) and California businesses now face the highest combined tax and regulatory burdens in American history.  In other words, California businesses have received a very poor return on their investments into California Democrat politicians – so much so that California’s desert neighbor, Nevada, leads the nation in new business development.

(more…)

“Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!”  Those words first voiced in 1815 by Captain Stephen Decatur Jr., America’s first post-revolution hero and, to this day, the youngest Captain ever commissioned by the US Navy, should be on the mind of every American President and every American Secretary of State every waking hour.

Though condensed and trivialized over time to the over simplified, “My country right or wrong,” and ridiculed by those who are embarrassed by patriotism, Decatur’s words, we believe, revealed a prescient understanding that future leaders of the then still very young republic would be called upon to make difficult decisions if the unique quality of American Liberty was to be preserved…decisions that could drastically impact the lives of many Americans.  Decatur also understood that while mistakes might be made from time to time, as long as the mission was the preservation of liberty and freedom, the republic deserved the support of the people.

We don’t believe Decatur was being cavalier and we don’t wish to be either.  He had seen war up close and personal, having commanded an incredibly heroic raid at Tripoli harbor that the legendary British Admiral Horatio Nelson, later called “the most bold and daring act of the age.”  Decatur had been dispatched, along with the newly established First Marines, by Thomas Jefferson to the shores of Tripoli on the Barbary Coast in support of what may have been the most important and long enduring foreign policy decision since the birth of the new American nation.  America would protect its interests, any place, any time and at any cost.  Defending liberty has always required determination and a clear sense of purpose.  Often its cost would be high.  Thirty-five American servicemen were lost on the Barbary Coast as the young nation first asserted its right to sail the high seas anywhere in the world.

A century and a half later John F. Kennedy made the same point when he pronounced, “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Nothing ambiguous about Jefferson’s policies, or those of James Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy or those of most any other American Administration up until the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 when Jimmy Carter’s vacillation and lack of resolve caused foreign leaders to doubt America’s willingness to defend its interests even in the face of an act of war against it.

(more…)

Civil rights.  Inalienable rights.  Human rights.  Animal rights.  Individual rights.  Group rights.  God-given rights.  Sacred rights.  Natural rights.  Positive rights.  Negative rights.  Children’s rights.  Parent’s rights.  Patient’s rights.  Property rights.  Personal rights.  Basics rights.  Fundamental rights.

Just what is a right?  Can some rights be more basics or fundamental than others?  Which is more important, a basic right or a fundamental right?  Do the rights of the many outweigh the rights of the few?  Are rights absolute?  One could assert whole new kinds of rights and then argue about where they fit in among all the other rights.  How about essential rights, or core rights, or perhaps preeminent rights?

Definitions of the nature and origin of rights vary widely – from a gift from God, to one of Thomas Jefferson or James Madison’s tenets, all the way down to “a good thing” – but these disputes can be left to theologians and historians and scatterbrains.  Let constitutional scholars debate the fine points of original intent or understanding (of each delegate?  or the drafter of a particular clause?  or the Convention as a whole?  or Congress?  or the ratifying state conventions?).  What really matters is how rights function within our constitutional system.

A person saying he has the right to XYZ, for instance, is saying that regardless of what other people want, he must have XYZ and society must give it to him.  To admit there is such a right is to accept that the opinion of the majority on his having XYZ is meaningless; it is to accept that your opinion on the issue is meaningless, too.  As anti-democratic limitations on the scope of majority rule, rights are like provisions of the Constitution.  Indeed, they are one and the same, because in a practical sense – the only sense that matters – a right is a government policy that must be so regardless of majority will.

(more…)

Today, in 1803, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France.