The Conscience of the Constitution - book by Timothy Sandefur

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  • Minuteman

    Member
    BANNED!!!
    Greetings my fellow patriots, Americans.

    This month I've decided to pick up and read this new book; the subtitle of which is The Declaration of Independence and The Right to Liberty, published by the CATO Institute.

    It appears to be a very well researched and footnoted scholarly reference, of only 160 pages, so it should be a quick read. From the reviews and my first glance at the book, I believe it will be every bit as good or better than the many other CATO publications.

    The bottom line, is that the purpose of the government, OUR government, is to secure and protect our Liberties, not compromise them.

    page 2:

    "Freedom is the starting point of politics; governments powers are secondary and derivative and therefore limited"

    "People are born with Liberty; their rights are not privileges that government gives to them as it pleases. Legitimate government is based on, and bound by their Rights."

    "Liberty is the goal at which democracy aims, not the other way around."


    Did you know that the word democracy is not even in the Constitution, but the word Liberty is.

    Let's read this book together. :)
     

    Minuteman

    Member
    BANNED!!!
    We first came across it in a B&N bookstore, then we requested it through our local library. It's pretty new, so they found it and loaned it from the William & Mary Law Library (interlibrary loan request).

    51borFfUweL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-v3-big,TopRight,0,-55_SX278_SY278_PIkin4,BottomRight,1,22_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg


    This appears to be a book we'll probably want to own so we can read it again later, and loan it out to friends; but asking your local library for it might encourage them to buy extra copies and expose a lot more people to its simple, but important message.

    There is only one mention specifically to the Second Amendment, and that is on page 68.
     

    w2kbr

    MSI EM, NRA LM, SAF, AAFG
    MDS Supporter
    Jan 13, 2009
    1,128
    Severn 21144
    Quote:
    Did you know that the word democracy is not even in the Constitution, but the word Liberty is. UNQUOTE.

    I suspect that is because the Constitution is the document of, by, and for a Republican Form of Government, not a Democracy. The U.S. is a Republic, not a Democracy.

    Too often the words are mixed, or Republic is simply overlooked.

    R
     

    Jim12

    Let Freedom Ring
    MDS Supporter
    Jan 30, 2013
    33,876
    I'll order it.

    Meanwhile, when the President fails to uphold the Constitution, is the Attorney General authorized and supposed to take action, or is it all up to Congress? If the former, can the Attorney General be impeached, or does he serve at the pleasure of the President?
     

    Boxcab

    MSI EM
    MDS Supporter
    Feb 22, 2007
    7,867
    AA County
    Timothy Sandefur is a Principal Attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation. As the lead attorney in the Economic Liberty Project, he works to protect businesses against abusive government regulation. He has won important victories for free enterprise in California, Missouri, Oregon, and other states. He also works to prevent the abuse of eminent domain, having participated in many significant eminent domain cases, including Kelo v. New London. He is the author of three books, Cornerstone of Liberty: Property Rights in 21st Century America (2006), The Right to Earn A Living: Economic Freedom And The Law (2010), and The Conscience of The Constitution (2013), as well as some 45 scholarly articles on subjects ranging from eminent domain and economic liberty to copyright, evolution and creationism, slavery and the Civil War, and legal issues in Shakespeare and ancient Greek drama. He is a… Read more

    More from the Author on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Timothy-Sandefur/e/B001K7PT30/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1397518721&sr=8-1
     

    EL1227

    R.I.P.
    Patriot Picket
    Nov 14, 2010
    20,274
    I'll order it.

    Meanwhile, when the President fails to uphold the Constitution, is the Attorney General authorized and supposed to take action, or is it all up to Congress? If the former, can the Attorney General be impeached, or does he serve at the pleasure of the President?

    Look up John N. Mitchell for your answer.

    On February 21, 1975, Mitchell was found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury and sentenced to two and a half to eight years in prison for his role in the Watergate break-in and cover-up, which he dubbed the "White House horrors".
     

    EL1227

    R.I.P.
    Patriot Picket
    Nov 14, 2010
    20,274
    Thanks for the pointer MM ... You know how much I LOVE reading about liberty. Next to 2A, it's my favorite.
     

    EL1227

    R.I.P.
    Patriot Picket
    Nov 14, 2010
    20,274
    Originalist interpretation

    TownHall review of a new book from Heritage ...
    A Handy Guide to the Constitution is Reissued for Its Birthday

    The originalist school of interpretation is not uniform, and individual scholars with similar approaches will still disagree over many points, but the contributors to the Heritage Guide tried to acknowledge competing originalist interpretations and cited key Supreme Court cases interpreting the clause or amendment at issue even if it departed from the original understanding. Thus, the book is a wonderful resource, especially for those who want a reference guide with a list of leading cases and suggestions for further reading on each clause.

    The second edition of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution is out this week, almost ten years after its first publication. It contains over 200 essays by 114 constitutional scholars. Although the original public meaning of each clause or amendment has not changed (in our view), the contributors note significant new applications or interpretations by the Supreme Court and others, especially with regard to especially with regard to gun rights, religious liberty, campaign finance and other First Amendment cases, civil rights, and Congress’s enumerated powers relative to health care reform.

    For constitutional law and history buffs, the essays on some of the more obscure clauses may be of particular interest for a variety of reasons, including that they reinforce the meaning of other clauses, remind us of founding era concerns (would the national government have quartered troops in our homes but for the Third Amendment?), or helped establish constitutional practices that are important apart from their relevance in court proceedings.

    At $34.36 on Amazon, your order needs another $.64 to qualify for free shipping. It's certainly not a 'pocket guide' like Heritage puts out for free, but it's still a reference worth having.

    The Heritage Guide to the Constitution: Fully Revised Second Edition
     

    Minuteman

    Member
    BANNED!!!
    "Amid the fog of words of the two parties' national conventions, speakers bandy about the names of the Founding Fathers as if they expect their audiences to understand the numerous differences among the Founders' beliefs. When Rand Paul beats up on Alexander Hamilton and his doctrine of implied Constitutional powers by invoking James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, does Congressman Paul himself understand that Hamilton was the founder of the Federalists, forerunner of the modern Republican Party? In fact, Madison and Jefferson fathered the present-day Democratic Party, destroying the Federalists and fostering our winner-take-all brand of politics.

    One of the enduring American myths we cherish is the two-party system. We must have two parties! To have three parties or more is impossible; to have only one, unthinkable. George Washington ran unopposed in the first two presidential elections but ever since 1796, the first election in which there were two competing candidates, Jefferson and John Adams, one political party has always tried to utterly destroy the other. From the outset, American presidential elections have been vicious. They didn't just get that way in the 21st century.

    To begin with, the Constitution did not provide for any political parties. It's not that the Founding Fathers didn't think about them but, to them, even the word "party'' was anathema. They preferred a presidential election, the linchpin of our political system, in which the top vote-getter got to be president; the number two man, vice president. Why would you need parties?

    To the Founders, opposition to the new nation's political leadership meant opposition to the government -- treason. Many of their families, including George Washington's, had fled for their lives from the bloody partisan warfare of the English Civil Wars of the 1640's that ended with King Charles I's beheading. In the ensuing contumacious political infighting, the austere, budget-slashing opponents of free-spending friend of the arts (and numerous mistresses) Charles II were branded "Whigs,'' a derisive Scottish term for curdled milk. Whigs hurled back the word "Tory,'' an Irish word for highway robber, at defenders of the king's lavish lifestyle. Negative references were considered badges of honor and the first party labels.

    During the civil warfare of the American Revolution, the two warring parties adopted these old English labels. Adherents to the American independence movement were called Whigs. The pro-English party, the Loyalists -- the real Tea Party -- was denominated Tories, the "intestine" enemy which had to be purged and cast out.

    So deep went the fear that post-Revolutionary party politics would again degenerate into civil warfare that the Founding Fathers understandably shunned the word party, much less the idea. Scottish philosopher David Hume, learning that his old friend, Benjamin Franklin, was armpit deep in American political intrigues, recoiled in horror. "I am surprised to learn our friend, Dr. Franklin, is a man of faction. Faction, above all, is a dangerous thing.''

    Even when, in 1787, the thorniest political questions of a new nation were thrashed out in secret during the Constitutional Convention, there was no provision for a two-party system. Opposition to the new Constitution, while strong in many states, was so disorganized that it was expected to be short lived.

    Away in France during this reform convention, Thomas Jefferson objected to the lack of any formal provision for a two-party system. "Men are naturally divided into two parties,'' he wrote, "those who fear and distrust the people and wish to draw all power from them into the hands of the higher classes [and] those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise, depository of the public interests.''

    It was obvious to the first president, George Washington, that unless he drew Jefferson into his government, Jefferson would organize anti-federal opposition into a political party. The uneasy honeymoon of the first American political system lasted less than two years. Inside Washington's cabinet lurked the seeds of two quite opposite political parties. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton spoke for the prosperous seaport towns of the North, the banking and commercial interests, the creditors. Jefferson, the perennially debt-ridden man from Monticello, spoke for the South and the West, the farmers, the workers, other debtors. To Jefferson, the Federalists were intolerably aristocratic "monocrats.'' To Hamilton, Jeffersonians were French-style incendiaries who must be kept in check.

    For awhile, James Madison, putative father of the Constitution and major author of the Federalist Papers, upheld Hamilton. But Hamilton's pro-business, pro-banking policies, his coziness with land speculators who were swindling veterans out of their bounty lands, quickly drove Madison into Jefferson's camp. At the end of the First Congress in the spring of 1791, ostensibly on a vacation tour of the Adirondacks and Vermont, Jefferson and Madison decided to launch a political party to oppose Hamilton's, ergo President Washington's, fiscal policies.

    They arranged to hire Princeton-educated journalist Philip Freneau to set up the National Gazette, a Philadelphia-based weekly, to combat the Gazette of the United States, backed by Hamilton and his Federalists. They followed up this first step in forming two distinct political parties by spawning Democratic-Republican Clubs all over America.

    Washington, a thin-skinned chief executive, only decided to stay on for a second term to prevent his lieutenants from, as he feared, splitting the country into two parties. To him, political parties spelled disunion. Eventually, Jefferson and Hamilton both resigned from Washington's Cabinet to lead the two parties' attacks on each other, using anonymous surrogates to write vitriolic columns for their thrice-weekly party newspapers.

    To suppress the challenge of a second party, Washington's successor, Federalist John Adams, signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts, making it a federal crime to criticize the president or his administration's policies. Supreme Court justices became circuit-riding inquisitors, trying, fining and imprisoning some 25 editors and printers who subscribed to the Jeffersonian party line.

    Religious groups blessed their favorite candidates and condemned opponents. In the 1804 campaign, the Congregational clergy of New England ganged up on candidate Jefferson in sermons reprinted in Federalist newspapers, branding him an atheist at a time when four out of five American newspapers were Federalist-owned.

    In his turn, when Jefferson became president he instituted what later became known as the spoils system. With his idea of even-handedness, he dismantled the Federalist Party. He fired half of all federal officeholders, the top half. He kept Federalists only in low-level clerical, postal and customs service jobs. Jefferson effectively deprived the Federalists of any chance of rebuilding a power base by excluding them not only from the federal payroll but from political and administrative experience. The Federalists never won another election. Their party died.

    Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans became Andrew Jackson's Democrats. They held power, except for a single term, for 60 years. And then it was Abraham Lincoln's turn. His new Republicans were ushered into the White House by the nearly terminally-divisive Civil War. To oppose the governing party again became treason, Lincoln's critics rounded up and incarcerated, the writ of habeas corpus suspended. No Democrat would be elected president for another generation. The GOP of Abraham Lincoln held sway, with only two brief interruptions, for nearly 80 years until Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

    Through much of our nation's history, in effect, there has been only one real national political party thriving at any given time in our winner-take-all system. And even though the pendulum swings may be shorter these days, neither party seems to want to relinquish the possibility of utterly destroying the other. Arguably, neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney would be unhappy to take total control of the nation's political power.

    Willard Sterne Randall, formerly an award-winning investigative reporter, is the author of six Founding Father biographies including, most recently, Ethan Allen, His Life and Times, published by W. W. Norton. "
     

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