What life was like

Ronald Reagan (speech to Phoenix Chamber of Commerce 3/30/1961) warned us that

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

I am now telling you "what it was once like in the United States where men were free".

Imagine what life was like back when America had a Constitution to control government, which does not control people.

Today's Americans have never lived in a free country. Here are some examples of a free nation, so that you might recognize a free nation if you ever see one:

• Thomas Jefferson insisted that State Citizens were subject to only three federal laws. The three mentioned in the Constitution.
• No state could impair the obligations of contracts. (no tax on labor, no minimum wage, no forced payroll deductions, no occupational licenses, no business licenses, no permit to repair your back porch, no dog license, no prescription for drugs).
• Police must carry their own gun if they want to defend themselves or others. It is never a government function to be involved in killing without a trial. It was not until future president Grover Cleveland headed the New York police academy -- which started the policy of government provided guns to police.
• Andrew Jackson survived three duals BEFORE we elected him as President. In his election campaign he ran as "the common man". Yes, the common voter, living in liberty, respects a common man who risks death defending his honor. In a free nation, Andrew Jackson earned enough respect to be elected as a defender of everyone's honor.
• A man's home was his castle. It is his castle to protect him from government. A government officer had to prove that there was a written authorization to step onto a specific private property, or he could be sued "for bruising the grass and even treading upon the soil" [quoted from Supreme Court case, 116 US 627]. Law officers were only peacekeepers responding to trouble, or serving warrants, they had no right to go out and stop people and stir up hatred against government.
• The courts are for the people to use. There were no government prosecutors, except when government was a victim. Anyone could be a prosecutor. The courts were for the people. It was your duty to execute murderers, and put criminals in jail. It was not until 1986 that the Supreme Court ended private prosecutions.
• The jails were for the people to use. Writs of Habeas Corpus could not be issued for people in jail for private prosecutions. Debts must be paid. Bankruptcy was only for government. You were required to be responsible. No benefit for the indolent.
• "The taking of the plaintiff's picture before conviction was an illegal act." Hawkins v. Kuhne, 137 N.Y. Supp 1090, 153 App Div 216 (1912).
• "Compulsory fingerprinting before conviction is an unlawful encroachment ... [and] involves prohibited compulsory self-incrimination." People v. Helvern, 215 N.Y. Supp. 417 (1926).
• Plea bargaining was a crime. Prosecutors could not "overcome the will of another" to fraudulently extort a guilty plea.
• There was taxation ONLY with representation. The tax collector who came to your door was a direct employee of your Congressman. Direct taxes were apportioned among the states by the same proportion of your state's congressmen in congress (Article 1, section 9). JUST IMAGINE WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IN A FREE COUNTRY. Your fair share of this years' budget is $34,700 per taxpayer. And that's not including state and local government budgets. Do you think your congressman would keep his job after his tax collector came to your door?
• And Congress had to balance the budget. Article 1, section 10 prohibits government from emitting bills of credit.
• There were no state marriage licenses. Your church had a duty to confirm that you had a right to contract for marriage. Divorce courts existed to declare as invalid only those fake marriages that never existed. Bastards could not inherit property from either parent.
• It was perfectly constitutional for Vice-President Aaron Burr to kill Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. Even David Terry, CHIEF Justice of the California Supreme Court, defended himself on a dueling field against US Senator Broderick. It was not until 1860 that the country was made safe for the barbaric takeover of our government. Those who have overthrown government now have no fear that you will rise up to defend your honor.
• Today our system is so corrupt we find more than 300 innocent people have been exonerated from prison, of those that made it out alive. Thanks to the Innocence Project.
• Marriage could not be divorced. Marriage was until death they depart. Courts must enforce marriage. This is still true today if you can avoid the traps of the divorce industry. (Hint: Licensed "marriage" is not a marriage at all. If the "marriage" gets questioned in court it must be divorced. Children of licensed marriage belong to the state).
• A wife could not testify against her husband. Matrimony was a holy union-- Christ used the term one flesh -- and government could not interfere.
• A wife could not be arrested, except for murder. Other than for murder, the husband must be arrested for the crimes of his wife. A husband had the duty to control his wife.
• Adultery was a felony that was also the Greatest of all civil injuries. "wherein the damages recovered are usually very large and exemplary." Now it is a right that will not be prosecuted.
• Now we have a system where one bad lawyer can ruin the future for everyone. The doctrine of stare decisis was often ignored, as Justice William Rehnquist observed, "[N]o amount of repetition of historical errors can make the errors true." 105 S.Ct. 2479, 2516 (1985).
• Criminal Defendants could not testify at their trials until Congress allowed it in 1878. Statutes at Large, Volume XX, page 30, Chapter 37
• Wages could not be taxed, except for government wages.
• The laws against barritry punished troublemakers who misused the courts. It was illegal for an attorney to have five court cases pending at any time. These Troublemakers were just not welcomed in a civilized society.
• Interest charges, even of 1%, were illegal They still are, but The US Supreme Court ruled in 1913 that the crime of -- now regulated -- usury is now unpunishable.
• A jury of your peers was a group of 12 people who knew you, and always had the authority to ignore the judge's instructions.
• No one needed an ID card (in fact, the 1803 Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison ruled that the Justices of the Peace in Washington DC could not get government credentials to prove who they were).
• U.S. Supreme Court in Aptheker v. Secretary Of State, 378 U.S. 500 (1964) at page 519: "identification papers are routine matters under totalitarian regimes, yet abhorrent in the United States."
• No one needed a notary public. Your word was good. Since the Civil War, we are now forced back into the same Roman system that has been forced onto the British nobility for the last millennia.
• You had a right to remain silent.
• You knew that the right to liberty was equal to the right to life. "Citizens may resist unlawful arrest to the point of taking an arresting officer's life if necessary" [quote is from Indiana Supreme Court, 136 Ind 306 -- this quote is disputed but I cannot find the case to confirm. There are similar cases throughout the U.S. but this is the most succinct]
• Before 1873 the courts could not seize your assets to pay your debts. (Because your Civil Servants are not your masters.) According to Webster's 1913 Unabridged Dictionary: By the year 1873 "when rules of equity and of common law, in any particular case, conflict, the rules of equity are to prevail". And the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1911 (11th edition, Vol IX, page 727) stated of equity jurisdiction: "The evils of this double system of judicature... ordered that law and equity should be administered concurrently." That's right. Your judicial system was recognized as evil.
• Coca-Cola was made with Cocaine,and you could order opium from the Sears Catalog until some politicians decided that they wanted to impair the obligations of contracts. Contrary to their oaths of office.
• In 1919 everyone in America knew that you needed a Constitutional Amendment to ban a substance. Do we need an amendment to allow government to require prescriptions for regulated drugs?
• THE SUPREME COURT COULD NOT INTERPRET THE CONSTITUTION. Well after the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, which lawyers insist is the "proof" of judicial authority, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Mr. Jarvis dated September 25, 1820 to refute this emerging dangerous doctrine: "To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. ... their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible as the other functionaries are, to the selective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that, to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots."
• Even the Supreme Court said that judges cannot interpret the constitution: Luther v. Borden 48 US 1 at page 52 (in the year 1849):"But the other disputed points in making constitutions, depending often, as before shown, on policy, inclination, popular resolves, and popular will, and arising not in respect to private rights,-... but in relation to politics, they belong to politics, and they are settled by political tribunals, and are too dear to a people ... for them ever to intrust their final decision, when disputed, to a class of men who are so far removed from them as the judiciary; a class, also, who might decide them erroneously as well as right, and if in the former way, the consequences might not be able to be averted except by a revolution, while a wrong decision by a political forum can often be peacefully corrected by new elections or instructions in a single month:"
• Prior to 1906 government attorneys could NOT talk to a grand jury, for fear of influencing them, as for example in U.S. v. Rosenthal 121 Fed 862, and now government attorneys control grand juries.
• Laws controlled government and lawyers, not people. Lawyers in America were once prohibited from charging fees. Everyone had a duty to help their fellow man.
• The Bar Association is barbaric. In 1793 the US Supreme Court acknowledged the Bar's rude and degrading association with feudal barbarism. Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 US 419 at the top of page 449
• All men are created equal. In a free country everyone had an equal right to hang murderers, child rapists (and homosexuals). Tucker's Blackstone, 1803 Virginia: "It is clear, that the right of punishing crimes against the law of nature, as murder and the like, is in a state of mere nature vested in every individual... since all are by nature equal." [This is based on the divine Laws of Nature. The Laws of Nature entitled us to create a government according the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, and no civil servant can question the legitimacy of his office.]
• If you didn't want to execute murders or child rapists, then you could let the government do it for you. According to Blackstone's Book 4 (Criminal Law) introduction: Government must "bear the sword of justice by the consent of the whole community...[even foreign diplomats could be executed] in case they have offended, not indeed against the municipal laws of the country, but against the divine laws of nature, and become liable thereby to forfeit their lives for their guilt."
• People living in remote areas could hang a murderer or child rapist, and then report the execution to the Marshall the next time they were in town. (But they risked charges of murder if the evidence was not clear.) Now, I've been told by a prosecutor that we do NOT even have a right to make a citizens arrest.
• Police must protect you in your safe conduct as you drive without a license. Don't claim to live in a free country if you have never seen liberty. 11 Am Jur, Constitutional Law, section 329, page 1135: "The right of a citizen to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon, by horse-drawn carriage, wagon, or automobile, is not a mere privilege which may be permitted or prohibited at will, but a common right which he has under his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Under this constitutional guaranty one may, therefore, under normal conditions, travel at his inclination along the public highways or in public places, and while conducting himself in an orderly and decent manner, neither interfering with nor disturbing another's rights, he will be protected, not only in his person, but in his safe conduct."

Also see 25 Am. Jur. (1st) Highways, Section 163.




Imagine what life was like when citizens didn't need a business license, and they didn't need to divulge their private business to the government. Imagine what life would be like if you had a right to contract without giving up your other rights.

U.S. Supreme Court:

• "The individual may stand upon his constitutional rights as a citizen. He is entitled to carry on his private business in his own way. His power to contract is unlimited. He owes no duty to the state, or to his neighbors to divulge his business, or to open his doors to an investigation, so far as it may tend to incriminate him." -- Hale v. Henkel, 201 US 43, at page 74
• Headliner summary to The Supreme Court's Adkins v. Children's Hospital 261 U.S. 525: "The right to contract about one's affairs, including the right to make contracts of employment, and to obtain the best terms one can as a result of private bargaining, is a part of the 'liberty' of the individual, protected by U.S. Constitution Amendment 5"
• The term Liberty "... denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint, but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, to establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his/her own conscience... the established doctrine is that this liberty may not be interfered with under the guise of protecting public interest, by legislative action which is arbitrary or without reasonable relation to some purpose within the competency of the state to effect." -- Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 US 390, at page 399
• According to the U.S. Supreme Court in Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742: "Waivers of Constitutional rights not only must be voluntary, but must be knowing, intelligent acts done with sufficient awareness of the relevant circumstances and likely consequences"

"None are so hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe that they are free."
~ Goethe