Utah's Republic

Posts Tagged ‘republic’

The Nature of Rights

For many of you this may not be a revelation as it was to me today, but I would appreciate your feedback and any extra insight you may have into this topic.

“We the people.” The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States starts with these 3 words. We sometimes hear the phrase “by the people, of the people, for the people” tossed around but what does it really mean? OK, the people are supreme. That almost sounds like a democracy, doesn’t it? So what does it mean and how does it apply in a republic?

We know that rights come from God. God gave us unalienable rights which cannot be transferred by anyone or to anyone. We have core rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This means we also have a right to self-governance.

For example, if you were in a plane that crash landed on a tropical island and there was a tribe of natives on the island, you would have a God-given right to defend yourself and your property and to pursue a path of happiness (which is probably to make peace with the natives :)), but you would not have a right to demand the natives educate your children or provide you with medical service or build you a house for shelter. That would be charity on their part, but you have no right to force them to do it.

Many of you have probably read Ezra Taft Benson’s excellent treatise “The Proper Role of Government.” In it he describes how government only wields powers we delegate to them. In other words, if I don’t have a right, I cannot endow government with the ability to enforce it for me. Since I have a right to life and property, I can transfer powers to the sheriff to protect my life and property without precluding me from doing what I need to in order to protect my life and property. Likewise, government cannot assume any rights and powers that I don’t possess individually.

Since we as individuals have the rights, we then form government to protect our rights. We can delegate some of those rights to the sovereign state, which then delegates some of them to the federal government. They are OUR RIGHTS which WE THE PEOPLE inherently possess from God. We have chosen to DELEGATE SOME OF THEM to government in a WRITTEN CONSTITUTION because it’s more efficient to have a representative in a constitutional republic handle those things, otherwise we would have a democracy if we had to take care of every issue.

The U.S. Constitution as written by the states (it used to be the united states of America, not the United States of America) has specific powers delegated to the federal government from the states which the feds can handle better than the states such as national defense, coinage, treaties, etc… The powers not delegated were reserved to the states (10^th Amendment). The states have powers delegated to it in their written constitution by the people of their state. What isn’t delegated to the state is retained by the people individually. The states in turn delegate to local government the things best handled at that level.

The Education Question

With this understanding in place, by what right is compulsory schooling allowed to exist in our country?

I do not possess a right to force my neighbor to pay my taxes, to mow my lawn, to educate my children, so how is it that the government has taken a right to itself which the people themselves do not possess. Simply put, it is unconstitutional as well as immoral.

A few months back we discovered Alpine School District had a web page with several offensive quotes including this one:

“Arguments for compulsory education have been based on the idea that the school is the only institution that can counter the accident of birth, guarantee quality of opportunity, and provide objective and fair ways to select and train talented individuals.” (http://www.alpine.k12.ut.us/phpApps/genericPage.php?pdid=777)

Right off the bat you get a sense that something is wrong. The blatant statement of compulsion immediately strikes out at you if you know that to force someone against their will is at best, misguided, and at worst, satanic. It is a violation of moral agency which God gave each of us. Coupled with the phrase “accident of birth” and you start to wonder what type of individual would dream up such a phrase, and then wonder what kind of person would post it on a school district website. (Hint: a follower of John Dewey and a John Goodlad AED Scholar)

If I have no right to walk over to my neighbor’s home and force him/her to educate his/her child, then I clearly do not have the ability to delegate to government a right to enforce compulsory education on my neighbors’ child either. At its core, education by force is a socialistic concept where the elites believe they know what is best for parents and they seek to enact it by force in complete violation of individual’s moral agency.

In Ronald Reagan’s first inaugural address in 1981, he said:

“From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?”

So I ask the question, what does constitutional, non-compulsory schooling look like? Please leave your thoughts below.

If you’ve never watched the republic video linked to in the top right corner of this website, may I suggest you make it a priority to understand there are only 2 forms of government. There never has been a lasting form of government other than a type of totalitarian government, and a republic.

In the scriptures we see various examples of this. Kings wield sovereign rule in 2 ways. Righteous kings (benevolent dictatorship) included King David (Bible) and King Benjamin (Book of Mormon-BOM), and wicked kings included King Ahaz (Bible) and King Noah (BOM) [sidebar: back in 1993 after President Clinton had been in office a year, I wrote a list of about a dozen parallels between his governmental actions and that of King Noah as found in Mosiah 11--it gave me a new perspective for how King Noah may have been a real schmoozer with the people and not just some fat gluttonous fellow as depicted in Arnold Friberg's picture].

We also see conniving individuals in the scriptures who formed what the BOM calls “secret combinations” so they could achieve dictatorships and bring all the people under their power and control. An example of this would be Amalikiah (BOM).

It will be recalled that in the Old Testament, the Lord had given Moses the law and they had a system of representatives to offload the burden from Moses. Someone was appointed over 10, 50, 100, etc… This was a republican form of government. A written law existed and the people had a scheme of representation.

Later, Samuel the prophet gave the people judges but the people found them corruptible so they demanded a king so they could be “like all the nations.” (1 Samuel 8:5). How many people in America today are clamoring for us to be “like all the nations.” Where are “all the nations” today? They are either under totalitarian rule or quickly getting there by use of democracy.

Democracy is a dangerous form of government because it devolves into anarchy over time as the people lack the ability to closely watch all the issues and they begin to only vote for the things that benefit them and not the country. The passing of the 17th amendment was a breakdown of the separation of powers to hold the voice of the masses in check by those specifically put in place to represent the voice of the state (ie. to strip away the protection of states’ rights).

What did it mean when the people in Samuel’s day wanted to be like “all the nations?” The Lord answered that in 1 Samuel 8:7.

“And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.”

Turning to a dictatorship is a rejection of God. Why? Because the primary element in worshiping the Lord is found in the principle of agency, or the freedom to choose. God doesn’t force you to worship him and he doesn’t force people to be good. He lets their own actions speak for themselves. When we choose to do good and charitable things, we are blessed for it. When we do evil, we are cursed. When we choose to have a king, we reject the one true King which is God. We can find many examples in the scriptures of wicked kings leading the people to do sin or bringing them into bondage by government policies or by morally weakening the people to the point that outside forces easily conquered them.

Concerning America, one Book of Mormon prophet wrote:

“Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ, who hath been manifested by the things which we have written.” (Ether 2:12)

I believe our Founding Fathers were divinely inspired to set up a republic in America precisely because that is the only form of government that preserves agency and allows people the freedom to choose to serve God. They rejected the government of the king of England because God is King. Our freedoms have rapidly eroded over the last century the further God has been pushed from public dialog and from our schools.

Concerning democracy, the word doesn’t appear in scripture, but the word republic does appear one time in the LDS canon. Doctrine & Covenants 98:3 states:

“We believe that all governments necessarily require civil officers and magistrates to enforce the laws of the same; and that such as will administer the law in equity and justice should be sought for and upheld by the voice of the people if a republic, or the will of the sovereign.”

There are only 2 forms of government. A republic that is upheld by the voice of a moral people, or a form of a dictatorship. When people lose their morality and their worship of God as king, they embrace destructive government policies which tell them what to do and how to live and as that monster grows, liberty is destroyed.

If any of you would like to read a paper I wrote on why socialism is the devil’s plan, please click here to read my LDS perspective on freedom and agency.

Someone sent me this great clip of John Wayne. Makes me want to watch some of his movies. What a great American.

The Salt Lake Tribune reprinted an article from the NY Times entitled “Why state legislatures should not pick U.S. senators.” The author points out how a wealthy robber barron named William Clark, essentially purchased a senate seat by paying off his state legislature. Actions such as these led to the creation and passage of the 17th amendment which put the election of senators into the hands of the people.

The author correctly points out that this is corrupt politics at its worst. However, he is incorrect in his assessment of the 17th amendment.

When the Founding Fathers created our government, the “checks and balances” we often talk about came because of the conflict designed into the system. Each branch of government has the ability to strike at another branch. The congress with its House and Senate has to pass legislation through both. The Senators used to be appointed by the states to further enhance the conflict so that when House members who were elected by popular vote made promises to the people, they could be held in check by those who were looking out for the State interests and wouldn’t have the same body they were looking out for. Senators were to protect the interest of the states while Representatives were for the interest of the people.

It would have been far better that instead of passing the 17th amendment, we had made it a felony to contribute to a state legislator if you were running for office. If we had done something like that rather than put the 17th amendment in place, we wouldn’t have the outcry for states’ rights these days because the states would still have an advocate in the Congress.

If we would make the world better, let us foster a keener appreciation of the freedom and liberty guaranteed by the government of the United States as framed by the founders of this nation. Here again self-proclaimed progressives cry that such old-time adherence is out of date. But there are some fundamental principles of this Republic which, like eternal truths, never get out of date, and which are applicable at all times to liberty-loving peoples. Such are the underlying principles of the Constitution, a document framed by patriotic, freedom-loving men, who Latter-day Saints declare were inspired by the Lord.

It is highly fitting as a means of making the world better, not only to urge loyalty to the Constitution and to threatened fundamentals of the United States government, but to warn the people that there is evidence in the United States of disloyalty to tried and true fundamentals in government. There are unsound economic theories; there are European “isms,” which, termite-like, secretly and, recently, quite openly and defiantly, are threatening to undermine our democratic institutions.

Today, as never before, the issue is clearly defined—liberty and freedom of choice, or oppression and subjugation for the individual and for nations.

As we contemplate the deplorable fact that within the brief space of one year, ten European nations have lost their independence, that over two hundred and fifty million people have surrendered all guarantees of personal liberty, deeper should be our gratitude, more intense our appreciation of the Constitution, and more strengthened our determination to resist at all costs any and all attempts to curtail our liberties, or to change the underlying system of our government. (“Essentials of a Better World” 698)

Saturday’s convention was a packed house with a strong distaste for the advances of the federal government. As such, my amendment which recognized that article 4, section 4 of the constitution gives the federal government the right to interfere with a state’s business if forces within the state try to subvert republican government, turned down the amendment until a better one could be recognized. I had several people that voted against it encourage me to try again but without that language so we’ll take it up next year at the state organizing convention.

The convention itself was packed. Over 98% of delegates were present and by now you know most of the outcomes. Bridgewater and Lee will face off in a primary with Bennett being eliminated. Rob Bishop sailed through. Philpot squeaked by without the need for a primary and his opponent Matheson will have to go to a primary having failed to get 60% of his party’s vote. Howard Stephenson (my senator and a champion of Alpine school district parents for his work on helping fight fuzzy math) also got through without the need for a primary.

While on Red Meat Radio this morning, Scott in Sandy called in to share how a Republic is more representative of the people than a Democracy. Here’s a simple analogy.

Lets say you have 100 people in your country. In a Democracy, you would need to get half plus one (50 +1) of the votes in an election, or 51.

On the other hand, if you had 10 states in this country with 10 people each (total population again 100), in each state you would need a simple majority again (5+1) which would be 6 votes in an election. This has the potential to give the winner 60 votes (6 times 10 states) which is more than a simple majority of 51 in a Democracy.

Republics therefore, better represent the majority of the population.

Thanks Scott!

I submitted this letter and amendment to the Utah Republican Party for consideration at the May 8th, 2010 state convention. I hope if you are a State Delegate you will support this amendment and help get your fellow delegates to vote for it. Please forward this link to all your fellow delegates.

The proposal is just the part underlined below. The blue paragraphs above and below it are already in the platform and are included below merely to show placement of the new section on the form of government.

*************************

To whom it may concern:

I would like to propose the following addition to the state party platform. My reason for proposing this change is because society today has become so used to identifying with the “democratic” process, that many people now believe our form of government is a Democracy. We are losing a vital piece of our national identity and by virtue of that, losing the most fundamental aspect of protecting our natural rights by no longer teaching our children what a Republic is, and what Republican government is all about.

Educational networks now promote the false notion that knowledge and morals are democratic which leads to moral relativism. The Framers of our Constitution said only a moral people can preserve a Republic. On this ground alone, we must ensure that each generation of Americans has the knowledge espoused in the proposed addition to the platform.

The one concern some delegates may have is the declaration that the Federal government has the right to intervene in a states’ affairs under the condition mentioned.  This was carefully considered by the Framers as they were most concerned about preserving the sovereignty and independence of the several states. They wrote into the constitution a guarantee to the states that they would be able to retain a Republican form of government, because they knew that only a Republic would preserve the rights of the people. Thus they gave permission for Federal intervention to protect the people of a state should their Republican form of government be in jeopardy of being changed.

Sincerely,

Oak Norton,  State Delegate, Highland 7th

State Delegate Co-Signers
-Lowell Nelson, Highland 5th
-Kristen Chevrier, Highland 4th
-Don Baker, Highland 7th
-Larry Hilton, Highland 7th
-Sarah Nitta, Highland 4th

PREAMBLE
We, the Republican Party of the Great State of Utah, affirm our belief in God and declare our support for government based upon a moral and spiritual foundation. We affirm freedom for every individual as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and protected by the Constitution. We believe that citizens’ needs are best met through free enterprise, private initiative, and volunteerism. We support the “Rule of Law” and believe in upholding the law of the land.

THE PROPER FORM OF GOVERNMENT
We recognize that the United States of America is a Constitutional Republic. We recognize that when Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution declares “the United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a Republican form of government,” this simple declaration gives the federal government the right to intervene in the affairs of a state whenever that states’ form of government is in jeopardy of being changed to something other than a Republic. We further recognize that a Republican form of government is one based on: law; representatives elected by the people to exercise sovereign authority on the peoples’ behalf; a system of checks and balances and transparency of operations; and based on protecting the unalienable natural rights of man as given by a beneficent God to protect the freedom and agency of man.

THE PROPER ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
We believe government properly exists by the consent of the governed and must be restrained from intruding into the freedoms of its citizens. The function of government is not to grant rights, but to protect the unalienable, God-given rights of life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

To all those visiting the site and agitated that a bunch of nut job (can’t deny it, it comes with a name like Oak) parents are getting nit-picky over the term democracy, I have written a new page of this site to explain the whole story which cannot be explained in a couple of sound bytes in a news story. It’s much more involved. If you want the whole picture, please check it out here. It’s not just the term democracy, but the individual behind it who says the state has a right to your children and that morality is democratic (determined by a vote).

http://www.utahsrepublic.org/democracy-media-fiasco/

Here’s links to a couple of articles in the media this week.

http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/education/precollegiate/article_dd9e4c33-f27e-51d0-b785-266338310af9.html?mode=story

http://www.sltrib.com/Utah/ci_14797234

One more from the AP:

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=10238942