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Which United States?

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Which United States?
by Steven Miller

Which United States?

In the 13th Amendment has the phrase “subject to their jurisdiction”. Notice that it is plural. It includes the States of the Union and excludes Washington D.C.

In the 14th Amendment has the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction”. Notice that it is singular. It excludes the States and includes Washington D.C.

“The canon of construction which teaches that legislation of Congress, unless a contrary intent appears, is meant to apply only within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States”
— US Supreme Court in Foley Brothers v. Filardo, 336 U.S. 281 (1949)

“The term “United States” may be used in any one of several senses. [1] It may be merely the name of a sovereign occupying the position analogous to that of other sovereigns in the family of nations. [2] It may designate the territory over which the sovereignty of the United States extends, or [3] it may be the collective name of the states which are united by and under the Constitution.”
– U.S. Supreme Court, Hooven & Allison Co. vs Evatt, 324 U.S. 652 (1945)

The Buck Act extends federal jurisdiction to anyone receiving federal benefits.

Susan B. Anthony was not a 14th Amendment citizen.

“The rights of citizens of the state, as such, are not under consideration in the fourteenth amendment. They stand as they did before the adoption of the fourteenth amendment, and are fully guaranteed by other provisions.”
— U.S. v. Susan B. Anthony, 24 Fed 829 (1873)

U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542:

“The same person may be at the same time a citizen of the United States and a citizen of a State, but his rights of citizenship under one of these governments will be different from those he has under the other.”

The phrase “equal protection of the laws” exists in the U.S. Constitution ONLY in the 14th Amendment.
The Fifth Amendment has phrases “life, liberty, or property” and “due process of law”.
The Fourteenth Amendment has the identical phrases “life, liberty, or property” and “due process of law”.
The Supreme Court, in Davidson v. New Orleans, 96 U.S. 97 (1878), says these mean different things.

Under the U.S. Constitution, according to Vice President Thomas Jefferson in his 1798 Kentucky Resolution, state inhabitants are not subject to federal laws, except for the three crimes mentioned in the Constitution: piracy, treason, and counterfeiting, “and no other crimes whatever”.

He went on to state that federal power to create crimes within States cannot extend further — “(and all other their acts which assume to create, define, or punish crimes other than those enumerated in the constitution) are altogether void and of no force, …”

Read it for yourself: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-30-02-0370-0004

If you are subject to federal laws, you might want to find out why. What did you voluntarily sign that ensnared yourself to legalities that you didn’t understand?

A right cannot be converted into a crime, or a privilege, or taxed

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A right cannot be converted

Miller v. US, 230 F2d 489 “The claim and exercise of a Constitutional right cannot be converted into a crime.”

Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham 394 U.S. 147 (1969).
“Persons faced with an unconstitutional licensing law which purports to require a license as a prerequisite to exercise of right… may ignore the law and engage with impunity in exercise of such right.”

US Supreme Court in Hurtado v. California 110 US 516:
“The state cannot diminish the rights of the people.”

Sherar v. Cullen, 481 F2d 946(1973)
“… there can be no sanction or penalty imposed upon one because of his exercise of constitutional rights”

Rights cannot be taxed. (the power to tax is the power to destroy according to the Supreme Court).
U.S. Supreme Court in Murdock v. Pennsylvania 319 U.S. 105 (1943): “The power to tax the exercise of a privilege is the power to suppress its enjoyment. … Those who can tax the exercise of this practice can make its exercise so costly as to deprive it of the resources necessary for its maintenance. Those who can tax the privilege … can close the doors to all those who do not have a full purse.”

Also in Murdock: “a person cannot be compelled “to purchase, through a license fee or a license tax, the privilege freely granted by the constitution.””

The U.S. Supreme Court on marriage licenses:
U.S. Supreme Court in Meister v. Moore 96 U.S. 76 in 1888 ruled that
“No doubt a statute may take away a common law right; but there is always a presumption that the Legislature has no such intention, unless it be plainly expressed. A statute may declare that no marriages shall be valid unless they are solemnized in a prescribed manner; but such an enactment is a very different thing from a law requiring all marriages to be entered into in the presence of a magistrate or a clergyman, or that it be preceded by a license, or publication of banns, or be attested by witnesses. Such formal provisions may be construed as merely directory, instead of being treated as destructive of a common law right to form the marriage relation by words of present assent.”

U.S. Supreme Court in Regal Drug Co v. Wardell, 260 US 386:

“Congress may not, under the taxing power, assert a power not delegated to it by the Constitution.”

Criminal Law Title 18 US Code 241 – Conspiracy against rights: “If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; … They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.”

choosing new rulers is NOT freedom

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Merely choosing new rulers is NOT freedom.

Richard Henry Lee letter to Samuel Adams, October 5, 1787:

“The people of the United States “contended for free government in the fullest, clearest, and strongest sense. That they had no idea of being brought under despotic rule under the notion of “Strong government,” or in form of elective despotism: Chains being still Chains, whether made of gold or iron.”

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1784:

“elective despotism is not the government we fought for”

“It is not because a part of the government is elective that makes it less a despotism if the persons so elected possess afterwards… unlimited powers”
— Thomas Payne, The Rights of Man, chapter 4, 1791

“the idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights.”
– Thomas Jefferson letter to F. W. Gilmer 1816.

“A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years. Neither are a people any the less slaves because permitted periodically to choose new masters. What makes them slaves is the fact that they now are, and are always hereafter to be, in the hands of men whose power over them is, and always is to be, absolute and irresponsible.”
— Lysander Spooner, No Treason:The Constitution of no Authority, page 24. 1870

“In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Anthropology of Morality in Melanesia and Beyond, The. Anthropology and Cultural History in Asia and the Indo-Pacific.

“In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place; it is the moral duty of individuals to uphold what is right”
— Senator Margaret Chase Smith, June 1, 1950 Declaration of Conscience Speech

Roman voting
Roman Denarius, 63 BC

Property Rights

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Reprinted from The U.S. Constitution, A Reader, Published by Hillsdale College

James Madison, March 29, 1792

This term in its particular application means “that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”

In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces everything to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to everyone else the like advantage.

In the former sense, a man’s land, or merchandise, or money is called his property.

In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.

He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.

He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.

In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, though from an opposite cause.

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.

According to this standard of merit, the praise of affording a just securing to property, should be sparingly bestowed on a government which, however scrupulously guarding the possessions of individuals, does not protect them in the enjoyment and communication of their opinions, in which they have an equal, and in the estimation of some, a more valuable property.

More sparingly should this praise be allowed to a government, where a man’s religious rights are violated by penalties, or fettered by tests, or taxed by a hierarchy. Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right. To guard a man’s house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man’s conscience which is more sacred than his castle, or to withhold from it that debt of protection, for which the public faith is pledged, by the very nature and original conditions of the social pact.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest. A magistrate issuing his warrants to a press gang, would be in his proper functions in Turkey or Indostan, under appellations proverbial of the most complete despotism.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property strictly so called. What must be the spirit of legislation where a manufacturer of linen cloth is forbidden to bury his own child in a linen shroud, in order to favor his neighbour who manufactures woolen cloth; where the manufacturer and wearer of woolen cloth are again forbidden the economical use of buttons of that material, in favor of the manufacturer of buttons of other materials!

A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species: where arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich, and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again applied, by an unfeeling policy, as another spur; in violation of that sacred property, which Heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him, in the small repose that could be spared from the supply of his necessities.

If there be a government then which prides itself in maintaining the inviolability of property; which provides that none shall be taken directly even for public use without indemnification to the owner, and yet directly violates the property which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their persons, and their faculties; nay more, which indirectly violates their property, in their actual possessions, in the labor that acquires their daily subsistence, and in the hallowed remnant of time which ought to relieve their fatigues and soothe their cares, the influence will have been anticipated, that such a government is not a pattern for the United States.

If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights: they will rival the government that most sacredly guards the former; and by repelling its example in violating the latter, will make themselves a pattern to that and all other governments.

James Madison, “Property,” March 27, 1792, in William T. Hutchinson et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison, Vol. 14 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962—present), 266—68. Reproduced with permission of University of Chicago Press—Books in the format Textbook via Copyright Clearance Center.
Reprinted from The U.S. Constitution, A Reader, Published by Hillsdale College

Checkpoints

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Don’t volunteer into a checkpoint.
U.S. Supreme Court US v. Ortiz 422 US 891 at page 896: “A search, even of an automobile, is a substantial invasion of privacy. To protect that privacy from official arbitrariness, the court always has regarded probable cause as the minimum requirement for a lawful search. … [we hold] at traffic checkpoints removed from the border… [page 897] officers may not search private vehicles without consent or probable cause.”
U.S. Supreme Court in US v Martinez-Fuerte 428 US 543
at page 556: “It is agreed that checkpoint stops are “seizures” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.”
at page 559: “Routine checkpoint stops do not intrude similarly on the motoring public ” if they have a way around the checkpoint.
At Page 571: “checkpoints … detain thousands of motorists, a dragnet-like procedure offensive to the sensibilities of free citizens”
US Supreme Court Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U.S. 500 (1964):
“Free movement by the citizen is of course as dangerous to a tyrant as free expression of ideas or the right of assembly and it is therefore controlled in most countries in the interests of security. … That is why the ticketing of people and the use of identification papers are routine matters under totalitarian regimes, yet abhorrent in the United States.”
U.S. Supreme Court case City of Indianapolis v. Edmond 531 US 32 (2000)
“Because the checkpoint program’s primary purpose is indistinguishable from the general interest in crime control, the checkpoints violate the Fourth Amendment.”
US v. Bowman, 496 F3d 685 (2007)
Where, however, “the `primary purpose’ of a roadblock is general crime control” or the “`interdiction of illegal narcotics'”—as in Edmond—”it is unconstitutional.” Id. at 979 (quoting The Supreme Court’s Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 32).
If you are told at a checkpoint that they have a “search warrant” don’t be fooled. Ask to see it. An administrative “search warrant” is not mandatory. It is not a judicial search warrant.
US vs. Minker, 350 US 179 at page 187 explains that an administrative subpoena cannot coerce testimony.
“is a power capable of oppressive use, especially when it may be indiscriminately delegated and the subpoena is not returnable before a judicial officer. . . . True, there can be no penalty incurred for contempt before there is a judicial order of enforcement. But the subpoena is in form an official command, and even though improvidently issued it has some coercive tendency, either because of ignorance of their rights on the part of those whom it purports to command or their natural respect for what appears to be an official command, or because of their reluctance to test the subpoena’s validity by litigation.” Cudahy Packing Co., Ltd. v. Holland, 315 U.S. 357, 363 -364.
The right to protest government snooping is well established.

US Supreme Court, Laird v. Tatum, 408 US 1, page 28:

“This case involves a cancer in our body politic. It is a measure of the disease which afflicts us. … Those who already walk submissively will say there is no cause for alarm. But submissiveness is not our heritage. The First Amendment was designed to allow rebellion to remain as our heritage. The Constitution was designed to keep the government off the backs of the people. … The Bill of Rights was designed to keep agents of government and official eavesdroppers away from assemblies of people. The aim was to allow men to be free and independent and to assert their rights against government. … When an intelligence officer looks over every nonconformist’s shoulder… the America once extolled as the voice of liberty heard around the world no longer is cast in the image which Jefferson and Madison designed, but more in the Russian image …”

Has the Right to self-medicate been abolished?

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Why is socialized medicine so costly?
Answer: socialism. And over-regulation.

Why is it illegal for licensed medical practitioners to recommend natural cures?
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1189938322350712

Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, during the Constitutional debates in 1787:

“The Constitution of this Republic should make special provision for medical freedom. To restrict the art of healing to one class will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic. … Unless we put medical freedom into the constitution the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship and force people who wish doctors and treatment of their own choice to submit to only what the dictating outfit offers.”

Everyone’s right to contract with others to preserve his/her own health is an unalienable right, a “natural liberty which is not required by the laws of society to be sacrificed to public convenience”. (According to Blackstone’s Commentary on the Law. By the way, the Supreme Court considers Blackstone’s Commentary as the received law-of-the-land as it existed when the original states wrote their constitutions.)

The right to self-medicate is as sacred as any other right to self-defense. Everyone is “entitled by the same natural right to security from the corporal insults.” according to Blackstone’s Commentary.

THERE WAS NEVER ANY PRESCRIPTION LAW WHEN AMERICA WAS A FREE COUNTRY.
Government exists to protect rights.
Before the original 13 State Constitutions were written, the ONLY prescription drug law was for slaves. Slaves needed their owner’s permission to take drugs.
When America became a free country, the Constitution abolished the only drug law that existed, even though the slaves were not yet free. Law textbooks said that Slave rights had been “wholly annihilated, or reduced to a shadow” and that the Constitution changed this. (quote is from Tucker’s 1803 Virginia law encyclopedia Book 1, Part 2, Note H “The state of slavery”)
That’s right. Prescription drug laws were too harsh in America, even for slaves.

If you are denied the right to take care of yourself, or require permission from your owner to buy life-saving meds, then perhaps your rights have also been “wholly annihilated, or reduced to a shadow”. If you think that there is a law that restricts drug purchasing, then you are worse off than a slave. Don’t claim to live in a free country if you have never seen liberty.

Summary, so far. Prior to the Constitution, drug prescription laws applied only to slaves. After the United States became a nation, the drug laws had to be removed so that the slaves would have a right to take care of themselves. Prescription drug laws, being unconstitutional, were too cruel to the slaves.

The sacred cow of modern medicine

Prescription laws are consumer protection laws to prohibit corrupt pharmacists from diluting the pure drugs with uncontrolled substances.
A rule of statute construction (especially if there is no legislated “express words of nullity” to prove that a law changed the original intent): Verba debent intelligi cum effectu ut res magis valeat quam pereat Words ought to be understood with effect, that a thing may rather be preserved than destroyed.
The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 required truthful labels and prohibited tampering with drugs before the pharmacists received them. (and this was back in the days where Coca-Cola contained cocaine – when we were a free country).
The Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act of 1938 enacted prescription drug laws to ensure the purity of high-quality pharmaceuticals for those who could afford the pure drugs. I have no objection to pure pharmaceuticals being made available to those who can afford the higher quality. This seems like a perfectly acceptable law.
Prior to 1938 all drugs were available without a prescription. Everyone could self-medicate. From 1938 to 1951 manufacturers of drugs made the determination to require a doctor’s prescription. Fears of lawsuits over side effects were the driving factor in their decisions. No one was denied the right to fight their own diseases, provided that doctors kept them informed of the dangers. If you wanted to damage yourself with full awareness of the likely consequences, then no jury was going to compensate you for your injury.
The Durham-Humphrey Amendment of 1951 set the stage for FDA oversight of [ perfectly legitimate ] prescription drug laws. A seemingly acceptable governmental function.
As you can see, none of the written laws destroyed the “natural liberty which is not required by the laws of society to be sacrificed to public convenience”.
Then States started closing the back door to pharmacies, thereby denying a necessity of life. It was only the enforcement efforts — the misconstruing of legitimate laws — that blocked your right to self medicate.

RIGHT TO SELF MEDICATE
Notice that drug laws are not codified with other criminal laws. There is a reason for this.

This is where you have to do some homework. Your state will have a law that allows exceptions to the drug law. In my state, the law allows possession without intent to deliver: (c) “The following persons … may possess controlled substances … (3) an ultimate user or …”

In 2003 too many people were being released from jail by using the ultimate user defense. So the legislature passed the new law supposedly to clarify the existing law — but used words to make it more confusing. It now allows ultimate user possession of controlled substance if by prescription “or except as otherwise authorized by this chapter.”

Lawyers will try to tell you that there is no constitutional right to defend your health and that the law changed in 2003 to eliminate the ultimate user defense. But the legislature stated clearly in the Act that the law revision “is not intended that this act effectuate any substantive change to any criminal provision…”

Apparently Congress was cautious enough to preserve your rights with this loophole. And judges, at least prior to 2003, also recognized your rights. The problem seems to be with law enforcement and prosecutors who do not obey the law.

 

Delegated Authority Essay

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Delegated Authority
by Steven Miller

Is government your agent? Or is government your master?

Once you take a government benefit, you now have a master. You’ve confessed that you cannot manage your own affairs in life. All men are created equal. Don’t volunteer to be subordinate. Don’t worship a manmade (graven) lord – provider – protector -master.

Delegated Authority — Part 1 (Link)
The U.S. government is delegated authority.

The 10th Amendment says so, as do many Supreme Court cases. The authors of the Constitution did NOT delegate any authority that they themselves did not have. So how did created-equal citizens of “We The People” get any authority to delegate control over others — such as taxing their neighbors’ wealth, or canceling marriages, or restricting commerce, or make zoning restrictions, or requiring you to purchase ID credentials, or taxing property or inheritance?  Answer: They didn’t. (Link)

Delegated Authority — Part 2 (Link)
Did you voluntarily forfeit your rights?

“We The People” who wrote the Constitution, held the truth that all men are created equal.
“We The People” created a government and delegated to their subordinate civil servants the 18 things they would be authorized to do (Article 1, section 8). In turn, government authority controls their inferiors.
Officers of government take an oath-of-office to become inferior to “We The People”. They consent to be governed.
Once they swear an oath to uphold it, they cannot commit mutiny to change it.
If you want to remain equal, — Don’t volunteer to be inferior to the society that created government, who also have a duty to control the creature they inherited. (Link)

Delegated Authority — Part 3 (Link)
The Constitution does not change.

Reinterpreting the words of the Constitution is dangerous. George Washington called reinterpreting a Weapon that will destroy free governments. The founding generation gave us a consistent legal meaning that doesn’t change over time.

Delegated authority — Part 4 (Link)

The created equal Citizens of “We The People” that created government DID NOT delegate to their government any authority that they themselves did not have. So, How did “We The People” delegate to their subordinate civil servants any authority that they themselves did not have?

Delegated Authority — Part 5 (Link)

Usurpation is mutiny against the sovereignty of the people.
Reinterpreting the words of the Constitution is dangerous.

Government Overreach
“We The People” now means nothing to the civil servants who swore oaths to obey our Constitution

All executive orders were pre-approved by Congress.

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Warning: Conspiracy theory alert.
90 years ago today. FDR took office and started making executive orders to shut down the Federal Reserve and close all banks.
Title 12, U.S. Code, chapter 2, subchapter IV, section § 95b. Ratification of acts of President and Secretary:
“The actions, regulations, rules, licenses, orders and proclamations heretofore or hereafter taken, promulgated, made, or issued by the [executive orders of the]President of the United States or the [unelected] Secretary of the Treasury since March 4, 1933, … are [pre]approved” by congress in 1933.
Without any debate or congress even being told about them.
Title 50 is the War Title. You are still under martial law.
HINT: On 27 April, 1961, JFK warned us about a ruthless conspiracy.
There might just be a continuing conspiracy. Franklin D. Roosevelt was a Freemason. Less than two weeks later, March 23, 1933, the German parliament gave Hitler complete authority to make laws without them. (During World War 1, the head of the Federal Reserve bank was Paul Warburg, while his brother Max Warburg was head of the German central bank.)
In a famous 1939 movie, Toto pulls back the curtain and Oz tells Dorothy to ignore the man behind the curtain.
You are still ignoring the man behind the curtain.
Welcome to your Novus Ordo Seclorum.

The “promise” of Democracy

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What is the promise of democracy?
Answer:
Chaos. Corruption. Degenerate savages. The devil’s government.

1. Chaos

In 1836, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in his biography of George Washington:
“Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”

The Founders knew that a democracy would lead to the same kind of tyranny the colonies suffered under King George III.

James Madison, 1787, Federalist Paper #10:

“Democracy is the most vile form of government … democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property: and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
Theoretical politicians who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would at the same time be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions”

Of course democracies are “spectacles of turbulence and contention.” They are only for those who would take the risk of loosing their rights in exchange for the chance to dominate others.

At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph said, “that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.”

John Adams said in his biography of George Wahington: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

Alexander Hamilton:

“We are a Republic. Real Liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of Democracy.”

2. Corruption

If you can vote for benefits, you have a conflict of interest. Forced redistribution of wealth CANNOT recognize individual rights.

Democracy cannot be considered as a form of government. Although it starts as a form of government, it quickly dissolves into corruption. The moment a politician makes a promise, is the moment democracy ceases to be a form of government. To use a public office to grant favors to those who elect you is corruption. It is the very definition of corruption. Go look it up in a law dictionary. DEMOCRACY IS CORRUPTION.

According to John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government section 222 the use of a public office to influence your electors will “cut up the government by the roots, and poison the very fountain of public security…”

3. Degenerate savages.

2150 years ago Polybius wrote a 40 volume History Encyclopedia.

Greek Historian Polybius, The Histories Of the Roman Republic 220-146 BC, Book 6, section 9:

“But when a new generation arises and the democracy falls into the hands of the grandchildren of its founders, they have become so accustomed to freedom and equality that they no longer value them, and begin to aim at pre-eminence; and it is chiefly those of ample fortune who fall into this error. So when they begin to lust for power and cannot attain it through themselves or their own good qualities, they ruin their estates, tempting and corrupting the people in every possible way. And hence when by their foolish thirst for reputation they have created among the masses an appetite for gifts and the habit of receiving them, democracy in its turn is abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence. For the people, having grown accustomed to feed at the expense of others and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others, as soon as they find a leader who is enterprising but is excluded from the houses of office by his penury, institute the rule of violence; and now uniting their forces massacre, banish, and plunder, until they degenerate again into perfect savages and find once more a master and monarch.”

And 2000 years ago Plutarch said “It is truly said that the first destroyer of the liberties of a people is he who gave them bounties and largesse. ”

4. The devil’s government

“A simple democracy is the devil’s own government.” [1], [2]

This must have been a popular saying. This quote is often attributed to several American patriots. Most often to Benjamin Rush, or Jedidiah Morse (the “father of American Geography”), but it was actually written by a Presbyterian pastor.

1. L.H. Butterfield, ed., The Letters of Benjamin Rush, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), 454, quoting John Joachim Zubly, Presbyterian pastor and delegate to Congress, in a letter to David Ramsay in March or April 1788.

2. William Elder, Questions of the Day, (Philadelphia: Henry Baird publisher, 1871) page 175, attributes the quote to Thomas Jefferson.

Valley Forge

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During General George Washington’s eight years of leading the Continental army, the winter at Valley Forge was the most perilous.

On December 19, 1777, the Continental army arrives at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. Their winter quarters would become famous for extreme hardship and misery. Supplies were already exhausted, food was scarce and typhus overwhelmed them. 2,500 soldiers will die; another 2,000 will desert.

“These are the times that try men’s souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
— Thomas Paine, The Crisis.

“Under all those disadvantages no men ever show more spirit or
prudence than ours. In my opinion nothing but virtue has kept
our army together through this campaign.”
— Colonel John Brooks, letter written from Valley Forge, January 5, 1778

They were willing to live free or die.

HOW ABOUT YOU?
Are you even willing to take a Stand?

“Posterity! You will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.”
— John Quincy Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams, April 26, 1777

Painting by Arnold Friberg PRAYER AT VALLEY FORGE