Judge Napolitano Glenn Beck Constitutional Seminars:

Let's get constitutionally correct, and make it the politically correct thing to do. Judge Andrew Napolitano announced on the Glenn Beck Show yesterday that he is planning to do a Constitutional Law seminar on Fox News. I see this as the next avenue of Tea Parties: We begin to talk about the U.S. Constitution, and what liberty really consists of, in detail, and we keep talking about it.

Judge Andrew Napolitano

Thomas Jefferson said:

"... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed.

The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.

If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.

The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334 (C.J. Boyd, Ed., 1950)

That is an awesome quotation - an awesome thought.

Napolitano is the author of a wonderfully informative book, Constitutional Chaos. I'm looking forward to the seminars as a way to get the conversation started. No dates for the lecture or lecture has been given.

Not everyone is anxious to hear the Judge's ideas, however. It would be naive to think Liberals would be interested in the U.S. Constitution. I found one Liberal site admitting they are "more than a little queasy" at some of the issues Napolitano addressed yesterday:

Freedom of choice and control over your own body will be lost.

More of your hard earned dollars will be at the disposal and tender mercies of federal bureaucrats. It was not intended to be this way.

We can vote the bums out of their cushy federal office

...we can persuade the state governments to defy the Feds in areas like health care where the Constitution gives the federal government zero authority.

We can ask our state legislatures to threaten to amend the Constitution to abolish the income tax, to return the selection of US senators to state legislatures and to nullify, to nullify! all the laws that Congress has written that are not based on the Constitution.

But there is one thing we can't do. Just sit back and take it."

Napolitano has been laying out our politically incorrect abuse of the US Constitution for a very long time. Here's a snippet from the introduction to his book Constitutional Chaos:

What's at Stake in America Today

I, myself, am a strong and fervent believer in Natural Law. The only valid laws are those grounded in a pursuit of goodness. Anything else - like taking property from Person A and giving it to Person B, like silencing an unpopular minority, like interfering with freedom of worship - is an unjust law, and, theoretically, need not be obeyed. St. Thomas Aquinas said only just laws impose an obligation of obedience, because unjust laws are not within the power of the government to enact; and only laws that seek goodness are just. This is the essence of Natural Law. No government may enact laws interfering with our freedoms no matter how popular the enactment.

The positivist would say since the government gives freedom, the government can take it away. The Natural Law says only God gives freedom and the government can only take it away as a punishment for violating the Natural Law, and then only through due process.

To a positivist, the government's goal is to bring about the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people. Under the Natural Law, the only legitimate goal of government is to secure liberty, which is the freedom to obey one's own free will and conscience, rather than the free wills or consciences of others.

The problem today in America - the greatest and gravest threat to personal freedom in this country - is that the positivists are carrying the day. Under their sway, the government violates the law while busily passing more legislation to abridge our liberties.

If we wish to survive the near future with our rights intact, we need to understand the size and scope of the threat. We must also understand its true identity: a government that breaks its own laws. ~  Constitutional Chaos, Judge Andrew Napolitan

 About Natural Law, new President George Washington said:

The foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality; ...the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained..."

A lot of good things are happening in America. We are awaking from a very long and foggy sleep, but it is taking awhile. By now we should be wide-awake - eyes wide open, and our thought processes accelerating and moving into high gear. Let us get on down the road to constitutional correctness - if not in every way, then in every way doable as soon as possible - and certainly with each and every piece of new legislation, and throw today's notion of "political correctness" out the window - be guided by the U.S. Constitution and make it the new political correctness. Who is the definer of what is "politically correct," anyway?

July 1st and 2nd, 1776: Toil, Blood and Treasure Needed

Our Constitution was made for only a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other. -John Adams

Thank you to Andrew Colvin at The Constitution of the United States for the John Adams quote above.

*****

The following is an excerpt from David McCullough's book, John Adams. It takes the reader through the events of the two tense days when the weight of liberty weighed heavily on our Nation's founders. Much was at stake. Every vote counted. The rains pelted down. Caesar Rodney from the Delaware delegation was missing and his vote for the new republic was sorely needed. British warships were just off shore...

July 1st and 2nd, 1776 - John Adams

Monday, July 1, 1776, began hot and steamy in Philadelphia and before the morning was ended a full-scale storm would break....

John Adams: This morning is assigned the greatest debate of all,...A declaration, that these colonies are free and independent states,...May heaven prosper the newborn republic.

At ten o'clock, with the doors closed, John Hancock sounded the gavel. Richard Henry Lee's prior motion calling for independence was again read aloud;...Immediately, [John] Dickinson, gaunt and deathly pale, stood to be heard. With marked earnestness, he marshaled all past argument and reasoning against "premature" separation from Britain.

Dickinson: My conduct this day, I expect, will give the finishing blow to my once great...and now too diminished popularity....But thinking as I do on the subject of debate, silence would be guilt.

Then he sat down and all was silent except the rain...No one spoke, no one rose to answer him, until Adams at last "determined to speak"....Outside the wind picked up. The storm struck with thunder, lightning, and pelting rain. He spoke on steadily, making the case for independence as he had so often before. He was logical, positive, sensitive to the historic importance of the moment, and looking into the future, saw a new nation, a new time,... To [Thomas] Jefferson, Adams was "not graceful nor elegant, nor remarkably fluent," but:

Thomas Jefferson:...[Adams] spoke with a power of thought and expression that moved us from our seats.

...when later that evening a preliminary vote was taken, four colonies unexpectedly held back, refusing to proclaim independence. Pennsylvania stood with John Dickinson and voted no. The New York delegates abstained, saying they favored the motion but lacked specific instructions. South Carolina, too,...voted no, while Delaware, with only two delegates present, was divided.

The missing Delaware delegate was Caesar Rodney, one of the most ardent of the independence faction. Where he was or when he might reappear was unclear, but a rider had been sent racing off to find him. ...Edward Rutledge [moved] that a final vote be postponed until the next day, implying that for the sake of unanimity, South Carolina might change its mind, Adams and others immediately agreed.

For while the nine (9) colonies supporting independence made a clear majority, it was hardly the show of solidarity that such a step ought to have. That night, at the City Tavern and at the lodging houses of the delegates, it was extremely tense. The crux of the matter was the Pennsylvania delegation, for in the preliminary vote three of the seven Pennsylvania delegates had gone against John Dickinson and declared in the affirmative, and it was of utmost interest that one of the three, along with Franklin and John Morton, was James Wilson, who, though a friend and ally of Dickinson, had switched sides to vote for independence.

The question now was how many of the rest who were in league with Dickinson would on the morrow continue to "vote point blank against the known and declared sense of their constituents." To compound the tension that night, word reached Philadelphia of the sighting off New York of a hundred British [war] ships, the first arrivals of a fleet that would number over four hundred. Tuesday, July 2...it appears that just as the doors to Congress were about to be closed at the usual hour of nine 'clock, Caesar Rodney, mud-spattered, "booted and spurred," made his dramatic entrance....Almost unimaginable, he had ridden eighty miles through the night, changing horses several times, to be there in time to cast his vote.

Yet more important even than the arrival of Rodney were two empty chairs among the Pennsylvania delegation. Refusing to vote for independence but understanding the need for Congress to speak with one voice, John Dickinson and Robert Morris has voluntarily absented themselves from the proceedings, thus swinging Pennsylvania behind independence by a vote of three to two.

What private agreements had been made the night before, if any, who or how many had come to the State House that morning knowing what was afoot, no one recorded. Outside, more rain threatened, and at about ten came another cloudburst....New York continued to abstain, but South Carolina, as hinted...joined the majority to make the decision unanimous in the sense that no colony stood opposed....

So, it was done, the break was made...on July 2 , 1776, in Philadelphia, the American colonies declared independence. If not all thirteen clocks had struck as one, twelve had, and with the other silent, the effect was the same.

John Adams...in the privacy of two long letters to Abigail: It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.

Lest she [Abigail] judge him overly "transported,' he said he was well aware of the:

...toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this declaration.

[Wednesday, July 3, 1776]...But there could be no pause. There was too much still to be done. Congress had to review and approve the language of the drafted declaration before it could be made official.

Deliberation of a different kind commenced at once, continuing through the next morning,...when mercifully the temperature had dropped ten degrees, broken by the storm of the previous day. 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.

Seated beside Benjamin Franklin, the young Virginian looked on in silence. He is not known to have uttered a word in protest, or in defense of what he had written. Later he would describe the opposition to his draft as being like "the ceaseless action of gravity weighing upon us night and day." [Thursday, July 4] In later years the excessive summer heat of Philadelphia would frequently figure in accounts of Thursday, July 4, 1776. In fact, the day, like the one before, was pleasantly cool and comfortable.

In Congress, discussion of the Declaration appears to have continued through the morning until about eleven o'clock, when debate was closed and the vote taken. Again, as on July 2, twelve colonies voted in the affirmative, while New York abstained. Again, John Dickinson was absent. It all went very smoothly. Congress ordered that the document be authenticated and printed.

But it would be another month before the engrossed copy was signed by the delegates. For now, only the President, John Hancock, and the Secretary of the Congress, Charles Thomson, fixed their signatures. With passage of the declaration of Independence thus completed, and having thereby renounced allegiance to the King and proclaimed the birth of a new United States of America, the Congress proceeded directly to other business.

Indeed, to all appearances, nothing happened in Congress on July 4, 1776. [Friday, July 5, 1776] ...printer John Dunlap had broadside editions available and the delegates were busy sending copies to friends. [Saturday, July 6, 1776]...the Pennsylvania Evening Post carried the full text on its first page. [Monday, July 8, 1776] The great day of celebration came Monday,...at noon in the State House Yard, when the declaration was read aloud before an exuberant crow.

With drums pounding, five battalions paraded through the city and "on the common, gave us the feu de joie [thirteen cannon blasts], notwithstanding the scarcity of powder,"...Bells rang through the day and into the night. There were bonfires at street corners. Houses were illuminated with candles in their windows. In the Supreme Court Room at the State House, as planned, a half dozen Philadelphians chosen for the honor took the King's Arms down from the wall and carried it off to be thrown on top of a huge fire and consumed in an instant, the blaze lighting the scene for blocks around.

[Friday, August 2, 1776] The actual signing of the document would not take place until Friday, August 2, after a fair copy had been elegantly engrossed on a single, giant sheet of parchment by Timothy Matlack, assistant to the secretary of Congress. Nothing was reported of the historic event.

As with everything transacted within Congress, secrecy prevailed. To judge by what was in the newspapers and the correspondence of the delegates, the signing never took place. In later years, Jefferson would entertain guests at Monticello with descriptions of black flies that so tormented the delegates, biting through their silk hose, that they had hurried the signing along as swiftly as possible.

But at the time Jefferson wrote nothing of the occasion, nor did John Adams. In old age, trying to reconstruct events of that crowded summer, both men would stubbornly and incorrectly insist that the signing took place July 4. Apparently there was no fuss or ceremony on August 2. The delegates simply came forward in turn and fixed their signatures...

Like the others, Adams and Jefferson each signed with his own delegation, Adams on the right, in a clear and firm, plain hand, Jefferson at lower center with a signature more precise and elegant, but equally legible. The fact that a signed document now existed, as well as the names of the signatories, was kept secret for the time being, as all were acutely aware that by taking up the pen and writing their names, they had committed treason, a point of considerably greater immediacy now, with the British army so near at hand.

"The Declaration of Independence has produced a new era in this part of America," wrote Benjamin Rush, [a signer]..."The militia of Pennsylvania seem to be actuated with a spirit more than Roman. Near 2,000 citizens of Philadelphia have lately marched to New York."...

Even those in Congress who had been so ardently opposed, now, by word or deed, committed themselves to the "Glorious Revolution." By July 3, 9,000 troops led by General William Howe had landed on Staten Island, where hundreds of Tories were on hand to welcome them. Howe himself had gone ashore on July 2, the very day that Congress had voted for independence, and in the days following, up the Narrows between Staten Island and Long Island came ever more British sails, including an armada of 130 warships and transports from England....

By mid-August, 32,000 fully equipped, highly trained thoroughly professional British and German (Hessian) soldiers - more than the entire population of Philadelphia - were ashore on Staten Island, supported by ten ships-of-the-line and twenty frigates, making in all the largest, most costly British overseas deployment ever until that time.

By contrast, the American army gathered in defense of New York, digging in on Manhattan and Long Island...Nathanael Greene, wrote to tell John Adams that in reality the American force might number 9,000; and as Adams knew, they had no naval support - not a single available warship or transport.

When, on July 12, with the wind and tide in their favor, the British sent two men-of-war up the Hudson River to demonstrate who had control, there was nothing to stop them. as the huge ships passed upstream, American militia stood gawking onshore, which evoked an angry general order from Washington declaring such "unsoldierly conduct" could only give the enemy a low opinion of the American army.

Early on Thursday, August 22, an exceptionally clear, bright day in New York, the British commenced their invasion of Long Island....wave after wave,...small boats...transports...15,000 English, Scottish, and Hessian troops were rowed across the Narrows from Staten Island to land without opposition on the broad shoreline near Gravesend, eight miles to the rear of the American stronghold on Brooklyn Heights. Contrary to basic military doctrine, Washington had divided his forces between Manhattan and Long Island.

Expecting a second, larger British landing on Manhattan, he remained there, while on Long Island his battalions braced themselves for the assault. But for days the British command under General William Howe made no move in force, not until August 27, when a furious battle was fought to the southwest of Brooklyn Heights....Washington was by then on the scene with reinforcements....

But the inexperienced Americans were outnumbered, outflanked, and overwhelmed in only a few hours. Through the night, under the cover of darkness, rain, and fog, Washington's army had been ferried across the mile-wide East River, through powerful currents, in every conceivable kind of small boat, most of them manned by Massachusetts fisherman - some 9,000 to 10,000 troops...all moving with utmost silence.

Taken from David McCullough's John Adams, (hardback, selected portions of pages 125-163). End John Adams text.

*****

John Adams is an awe-inspiring read. I didn't put it down for days and have read it over several times. The book is much more than the "signing" and the "war" that would go on and on until America prevailed. A last thought about John Adams from the late David McCullough (page 163):

Few Americans ever achieved so much of such value and consequence to their country in so little time. Above all, with his sense of urgency and unrelenting drive, Adams made the Declaration of Independence happen when it did. Had it come later, the course of events could have gone very differently.

America and Israel: Factionalism in a Time of War

Sultan Knish blogging "from NY to Israel" reports daily on the pulse of Israel, the evil behind the hate in the Middle East and the folly of appeasement. When I'm reading Knish, I always feel as though I'm watching the future being played-out, as though I'm on the inside witnessing very personal events... events that will change my life. Today, Gaza has fallen to Hamas, the majority of our Senate is abandoning the rule of law, and Israel awaits its enemies. He has given me permission to reprint one of his posts in its entirety. Get ready to be propelled into the moment.

When Brothers Become Enemies Factionalism in America and Israel in a Time of War

Then none was for a party; Then all were for the state; Then the great man helped the poor, And the poor man loved the great: Then lands were fairly portioned; Then spoils were fairly sold: The Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old. Now Roman is to Roman More hateful than a foe And the Tribunes beard the high, And the Fathers grind the low. As we wax hot in faction, In battle we wax cold: Wherefore men fight not as they fought In the brave days of old. Horatio - Macaulay

The sentiments and the narrative here are of course universal ones-- the virtues, unity and military strength of a nation becoming corrupted by factionalism. The more the factions within a nation hate each other, the more eager they are to battle one another than the enemy. A nation busy fighting itself cannot defeat the enemy. The surest way to victory is to create fifth columns, to divide a nation against itself and set itself to internal bickering. Israel fell both times because it was divided, because factions and kingdoms quarreled against each other, unable and unwilling to unite-- even against a common enemy. The most dreadful reason for that is that they hated each other more than they did the enemy. When George Washington delivered his farewell address warning against factionalism, it was because he had already bitterly experienced the assaults conducted against him by former allies like Thomas Jefferson's faction and Thomas Paine. That factionalism crippled the United States going into the War of 1812, resulting in a near defeat. It escalated and eventually served to worsen and eventually contribute to the Civil War. Factionalism helped delay US entry into WW2. It caused the American defeat in Vietnam. It gave us eight years of the Clinton Presidency which viewed conservatives, not Islamic terrorists as the real threat. Clinton's Democratic successors continued and continue to think that way after 9/11. To liberals the gravest threat that requires their immediate response did not come from Osama Bin Laden-- but from George W. Bush. Despite occasional outward gestures, that has not changed and has instead only grown more so. The Democratic party had become so mired in factionalism that it was incapable of recognizing any threat that did not originate from the Rush Limbaugh show. That deliberate blindness cost the lives of thousands and yet nothing would be learned from that. If Liberals had invested a fraction of the effort into fighting terrorism that they invested in fighting the Republicans-- the cultural war at least would have been won. Instead they have done everything possible to undermine the War on Terror from spreading lies to smearing troops and serving as the PR corps for the terrorists. In Israel the Labor socialists had repeatedly treated Zionists and Nationalists as the real enemy. During the resistance against British rule, their top figures including deceased former Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek, collaborated with the British authorities in informing and even kidnapping and torturing Irgun and Lehi members. During the start of the War of Independence, Ben Gurion ordered future Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin to open fire on the Altalena, a ship carrying a large cargo of arms along with future Prime Minister Menachem Begin-- because he had refused to comply with the socialist leadership's orders to hand over all arms on the ship-- rather than divide them. It was the same old story when Rabin as Prime Minister now-- signed a deal with Yasir Arafat under the aegis of the Clinton Administration-- that set up Palestinian terrorist controlled territories within Israel's borders and treated the settlers with contempt-- even as his police brutally crushed protest rallies. After Rabin's death, the campaign of hatred aimed at conservatives in Israel really took off. Offices belonging to the Likud were smashed and the media did its best to try and paint Netanyahu as being responsible for the assassination. Leah Rabin announced that she would rather that her children marry Arabs than settlers. Even as the terrorism grew worse, Labor socialist Prime Ministers from Rabin to Peres to Barak continued a campaign of hate against the settlers, as if they-- rather than the terrorists these very same governments had invited into the country-- were to blame. That attitude reached its culmination under Sharon and Olmert with the forcible expulsion of thousands of Jews from their home so as to expand the territory of the terrorist Hamas state-- which employed the rubble of those destroyed homes as launching pads for the next wave of rockets pounding Israeli towns and villages. As police brutality against the settlers escalated, the foreign funded peace activists-- who included Olmert's own wife and daughter and son-- engaged in increasingly violent provocations and protests. And the very same government which papered over the worst crimes of the police when it came to settler rallies, immediately shifted into condemnation when soldiers defended themselves against foreign pro-terrorist activists. All the energy directed into internal warfare is energy directed away from national defense. The better the factions within a nation get at fighting each other, the less energy they have for fighting the enemy. "As we wax hot in faction, In battle we wax cold: Wherefore men fight not as they fought In the brave days of old." An army is not merely a tool, it is an assembly of citizens ready and willing to give their lives for a nation. When a nation's government and cultural elites send the message that fighting the enemy isn't worth dying for and is immoral in any case-- that army's morale drops until it becomes increasingly useless. Its generals become political generals just waiting to retire, write their books and perhaps go into politics. Taxes increase as the factions maneuver and work to raise money for their campaigns against each other and to pay off the various sectors of the population whose support they wish to buy, e.g. unions, senior citizens, bureaucrats, minorities. Jobs vanish but this is of little concern to the factions which prefer a dependent citizenry over an active and prosperous one. Immigration expands greatly as one or more of the factions see the new pool of prospective citizens as an appealing new gullible base for their voting pool. Thus Israel's secular governments have imported massive amounts of non-Jewish Russians to balance out the growth of the religious population and ignored assaults and anti-semitic attacks against religious Jews and finally destroyed the homes and economic and family lives of thousands of religious Jews-- with plans to destroy tens of thousands more. In the United States the push to legalize illegal Mexican immigrants is building to a crescendo as many Democrats and Republicans believe that they have the potential to boost the voting base of one side or the other. The distortion of rhetoric has allowed the media to recreate the issue in terms of civil rights and hatred of immigrants-- rather than in common sense legality and illegality. In Europe, socialists increasingly rely on a Muslim voting public and pander to it using populist Anti-American and Anti-Israel rhetoric, while opposing Anti-Terrorist measures in their own countries. Factionalism ultimately destroys and disintegrates a country in the face of an enemy invasion. Islamic terrorists know this quite well, which is why they pander to the left, reciting material from Michael Moore films and forming ties with left wing college professors and intellectuals-- as they successfully exploit our domestic fifth column. In Israel millions from the EU help to fund organizations like Peace Now dedicated to the dismantling of the State of Israel by undermining its national defense and expelling tens to hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes. In the United States millions more pour into the coffers of organizations like MoveOn from overseas funders like George Soros. Factionalism makes a country an easy target for the enemy. A house divided against itself cannot stand. The potential to unite a nation exists by cutting the divisive elements out of the picture and appealing directly to the people. That requires a leadership with great integrity and incorruptibility that can transcend politics and deal fairly with all sectors of society and transcend corporate allegiances and old geographical alliances for a new way. The alternative becomes the inevitable battle Lincoln was forced to confront. Yet Lincoln's America only had to fight an internal enemy. Had the Republic been forced to fight both an internal and external enemy at the same time-- it would not have survived. A house divided against itself cannot stand up to the enemy. It must either unite or be destroyed. Article End Posted by Sultan Knish I also highly recommend today's post from Sultan Knish: The Final Death of the Oslo Peace Plan is Here. Trackback URL for this entry: http://haloscan.com/tb/maggiesnotebook/2444571733348008249 Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson's Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, DeMediacratic Nation, Adam's Blog, The Pet Haven Blog, Stuck On Stupid, Webloggin, Leaning Straight Up, The Bullwinkle Blog, Cao's Blog, The Amboy Times, , Jo's Cafe, Pursuing Holiness, Rightlinx, third world county, Woman Honor Thyself, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, stikNstein... has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Pirate's Cove, Nuke's news and views, Blue Star Chronicles, Dumb Ox Daily News, and Church and State, The Uncooperative Blogger, and Conservative Cat, Leaning Straight Up, Wake Up Americathanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe. Pinged by North American Transportation Trilateral from Right Truth. Excerpt: North American Open Skies Agreement, by Toni and Bear Creek Ledger (cross-posted) Looks like there is a slow chipping away at any of sign of a US border whether it be by land, air or sea. 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