Preface

LearnTheConstitution And ROAR leads readers on a journey through the originally-ratified U.S. Constitution, from the Framers’ and Ratifiers’ perspectives, from the Preamble through Article VII.

Please note that the amendments are NOT covered herein, except in passing (they’ll be covered in a separate, later-planned study).

Why do conservative-minded or libertarian-leaning Patriots allow election-winners and appointed federal officials to do as they please, even when their actions violate our founding principles and the spirit of the Constitution?

 

Evidently, it’s because we haven’t yet put in sufficient effort, to discover how clever scoundrels have effectively bypassed what the Framers and Ratifiers gave us, that hasn’t changed, beyond the 27 ratified amendments.

 

It’s imperative to realize that members of Congress, American Presidents and Supreme Court justices (individually, or together) may never change the Constitution, nor the allowed federal powers that they may everywhere in the Union directly exercise.

 

Thankfully, members of Congress—the delegates of the individual States who meet together to carry out their delegated duty as a group—and federal officers of the executive and judicial branches—the agents—may never override or overrule the principals—the States—except by the latter’s default.

 

While members of Congress may of course propose amendments, only the States get to ratify them.

 

The inviolable truth of the matter is that everything we face today that is beyond the spirit of the Constitution is but clever fraud, that we may permanently cast off, outside the election process, if we but take the time to discover the hidden source and root cause of The Make-Believe Rule of Paper Tyrants, who absurdly proclaim to be our Political Masters.

 

Americans face but one political problem federally, even as it has a thousand irrelevant symptoms, which is how federal servants may ignore or bypass their normal constitutional parameters, with impunity.  The individual topics of transgressions don’t much matter.

Thankfully, we may cure what we are able to correctly diagnose, but we cannot diagnose what we don’t know.

 

LearnTheConstitution And ROAR teaches the normal case of allowable federal action, so readers know well what is allowed federally, to realize when they are facing abnormal actions.

 

Readers are also given a glimpse of the abnormal case—explaining (using strict construction of the Constitution) how federal servants were ever able to ignore or bypass their normal constitutional parameters with impunity.

 

LearnTheConstitution And ROAR lastly provides readers a foretaste of how we may Restore Our American Republic, Once and For All or even Happily-Ever-After.

 

Get ready to discover your American birthright (or your right as a naturalized citizen), if you’re willing to live up to that promise and potential. 

Author’s Note

LearnTheConstitution And ROAR contains the bound Lessons from the Patriot Corps’ LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear Program Course, that is available in video, audio, or pdf formats.

 

While the LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear Program Course sends out emailed notification every two weeks for a year that a new Lesson has become available (to keep Lessons consistently in front of viewers, without overwhelming them), separately-available for immediate-intake is the Patriot Corps’ LearnTheConstitutionAtYourOwnPace Program Course.

 

Please realize that the content is the same for all three delivery options (the book, the year-long online course, or the immediately-available online course), just laid out and packaged for different consumption preferences.

 

The Patriot Corps’ LearnTheConstitution Program Course—no matter how delivered—teaches the originally-ratified U.S. Constitution, from a strict-constructionist viewpoint, covering the Preamble through Article VII (the amendments will be covered in a separate Program Course).

 

A word on Lesson format…

While the LearnTheConstitution Program Course (Lessons 01-28 [with Lessons 29 and 30 as bonus Lessons]) has a paywall, Lesson 00 (Lesson Zero) covering the Preamble was originally created as a free Lesson, outside the paid course, yet requiring a formal opt-in sign-up to view it.

 

Later, however, I decided to offer another free Lesson (the Introductory Lesson 000) that described the Program Course, that the public could watch—or listen to, or read—without even opting in or signing up.

 

The content of those two Lessons overlapped to a degree, as I wanted some of the information found in the Preamble Lesson to be available in the Introductory Lesson.

 

Later, I decided to offer the Patriot Corps SNIFF Premium Course—originally a paid program—also available to the general public, without cost, so they could catch a glimpse of abnormal federal actions.

 

I then created a separate Overview Lesson (for an introduction to the SNIFF Premium Course), which overview is found at the landing page:

https://www.LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear.com

 

Step #2 at that website address now contains the four-lesson SNIFF Premium Course, to Seek New Information First & Foremost.

The direct link to the SNIFF Premium Course is:

https://www.LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear.com/SNIFF2 

 

While the Patriot Corps’ Program Courses cover the normal case of allowable federal authority, the Patriot Corps’ Premium Courses cover the abnormal cases involving invalid federal actions. 

 

Due to the LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear Program Course (also called Constitution-101) originally being a work-in-progress effort, the Overview Lesson, the Lesson 000 Introduction, and Lesson 00 on the Preamble have ended up containing some overlapping content, but they’re all nevertheless individually-included within this book.

 

For those wanting to avoid needless repetition, I recommend reading through the Overview and all four Lessons of the SNIFF Premium Course, and then skimming quickly through Lesson 00 on the Preamble (perhaps skipping the Introductory Lesson 000 altogether).

 

Please realize however that a little repetition on misunderstood principles goes a long way towards blasting through prior roadblocks and building the proper foundation needed to add additional information later.

 

The SNIFF Premium Course, incidentally, is offered as the Patriot Corps’ shortest explanation of abnormal federal actions, to give Patriots a “jig-saw puzzle box-top” view of how all the separate pieces of the federal puzzle fit together (where everyday federal actions, which appear to violate founding principles supported by the supreme Law of the Land, yet survive [ineffective] court challenge).

 

While the LearnTheConstitution And ROAR book of course contains both the Free Program Course Content and the Paid Program Course Content, a free pdf of the free content portion of the book is readily available for Patriots to read free of charge, to better assess the content of the book prior to purchase.  See www.LearnAndROAR.com for the link.

 

Later-available Premium Courses (created as demand requires and time & budget allow) will look into the abnormal case to a greater extent, to prove true some of the general assumptions provided in the Program Courses.

 

In the meantime, feel free to read some of the public-domain Patriot Corps books, especially Two Hundred Years of Tyranny, Understanding Federal Tyranny, The Patriot Quest to Restore Our American Republic, Dollars and nonCents, and Monetary Laws of the United States, readily available electronically free-of-charge at www.PatriotCorps.org/books. 

In liberty,

 

Matt Erickson

LearnTheConstitution Program Course Overview

Hello, I’m the digital twin of Patriot Corps Founder and President Matt Erickson, here to speak his written words on the lost principles of our American Republic.

 

Our U.S. Constitution may be viewed symbolically as a State-approved map that directs the construction of federal train tracks and authorizes federal trains to stop at approved train stations and permitted railway yards that are otherwise found in the States.

 

The States designed and approved the map which laid out this fictional train system, to accomplish named tasks, while avoiding interference with State and local traffic yet reserved to State highways and local roadways.

 

However, it merely took a strong magnet cleverly applied to the side of the compass that was used to layout and build that railway system, to illegitimately enable railway lines to be built to destinations the States never authorized or intended.

 

To restore the lost principles of our American Republic, we need only learn to read the lawfully-approved map and discover how to identify and remove improperly-applied magnets and recalibrate our compass, so we may return those routes to the States where they belong.

 

Please realize that with train tracks already laid to unauthorized destinations, it matters little who operates or conducts the train, other than changing the time of arriving at destinations never intended by the principals.

 

Which explains the Patriot Corps’ LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear Program Course, to teach the normal case of allowable federal action, by looking through the Founders’ lens, in two 10-to-15-minute Lessons per month, for a year, to learn the originally-ratified U.S. Constitution, from the Preamble through Article VII.

 

This LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear Program Course concentrates on map-reading, but also speaks to compass use, so we may learn to again trust our map and compass.

 

By the way, the Patriot Corps SNIFF Premium Course, available at Step #2 after this video, jumps right in to explain how to identify magnets for removal, as it teaches Patriots to Seek New Information First & Foremost, to get to the heart of the matter, of federal servants ingeniously being able to act like our political masters.

 

A simple test to check the proper understanding of our map and compass may be found by examining the unassuming phrase “Congress of the United States.”

 

The definition you’ve heard your whole life—Congress being the legislative branch of the federal government which enacts U.S. law—rests upon the false assertion that Congress is, in its most basic form, an entity.

 

While that response may sound sufficient, it isn’t—not at all—which a quick look to the Preamble to the Bill of Rights helps prove, as it begins:

“Congress of the United States, begun and held at the City of New-York, on Wednesday the Fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.”

 

Please notice the first eight words, which are:  “Congress of the United States, begun and held.”

 

If “Congress” were a “branch” of the U.S. government—an “entity”—as Americans the country-over falsely presume, then those terms should be able to be substituted and yet have the altered sentence make sense.

 

“Branch of the United States, begun and held,” however, doesn’t make sense.  Neither does “Entity of the United States, begun and held,”for neither entities nor branches may ever be “held,” even if they may be created and thereby “begin.”

 

If the way you personally describe “Congress” doesn’t coincide with its explicit use in the Bill of Rights—or the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, for that matter—perhaps this explains how federal train tracks were ever laid to improper destinations, since these errors have long been with us.

 

Please don’t summarily ignore evidence that shows that faulty understanding of our founding principles lies at the heart of our worsening political condition, simply because it means that we must share some of the blame.

 

Before delving into “Congress,” it helps to investigate the meaning of the phrase—“of the United States”—since the Preamble of the Bill of Rights speaks to the Congress “of the United States.”

 

Pronouns have increasingly been in the public eye, but not for the right political reason, which is to realize that the Framers of the Constitution used plural pronouns to substitute both for “Congress” and “the United States,” despite invalid substitutions later with singular pronouns.

 

For example, Article III, Section 3 lists the constitutional definition for “Treason against the United States,” as consisting “only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies,” giving those enemies “Aid and Comfort.”

 

That the Constitution uses the plural pronoun “them” and the possessive plural pronoun “their,” in the passage to refer back to “the United States”—rather than “it” and “its”—shows “the United States” to be a plural term, referring to the group of individual States who united together for mutual benefit, rather than a singular entity of its own volition and will.

 

The Eleventh Amendment goes even further, when it limits the federal judiciary from being used against “one of the United States” by Citizens of other States or foreign States.

 

That even after ratification of the Constitution, an amendment later concedes to a multitude of “United States”—now 50, just like the Declaration of Independence in its opening line spoke of the “thirteen united States of America,” before the Constitution was ratified—shows that Americans must question their faulty understanding of even basic terms that yet rest upon founding principles.

 

The Thirteenth Amendment also points to the plural understanding of “the United States” as it prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude, except as judicial punishment, “within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” 

 

Article I likewise speaks to a plural understanding of “the United States” when Section 9, Clause 8 says that “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them…” shall accept any present, emolument, office or title from any King, Prince or foreign State without the consent of Congress.  The separate prohibition found in Section 10 that keeps the States from also granting Titles of Nobility in their individual capacities shows that the term “the United States” points to the united capacity of those same States when they act together through their delegates.

 

And, Article II details in Section 1, Clause 7, that “The President…shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.”

 

These passages show the correct plural meaning of “the United States” to be all the States of the American Union who united together under the express terms of the U.S. Constitution, for mutual benefit and common concern. 

 

Strictly speaking, “Congress of the United States” therefore points to the Congress of the States whose individual delegates assemble together in a joint legislative meeting, to carry out their joint business at hand, according to their agreed-upon joint powers.

 

Article I of the Constitution directly refers to “Congress” as a “meeting,” in the words of Section 4, Clause 2, which detail: 

"The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting  shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day."

 

When the Framers of the Constitution substituted the phrase “such Meeting” for “Congress” in this clause, they confirmed the terms to be equivalent.

 

Article I verifies “Congress” to be a “Meeting,” when Section 2, Clause 3 declares:

“The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States.”

 

So let’s substitute the word “Meeting” for “Congress” in the Preamble of the Bill of Rights so we may test if the substitution makes sense.

Since “Meetings” may “begin” and may also be “held,” then “Meeting of the United States” is therefore an acceptable substitute for “Congress of the United States.” 

 

From the passage found in Article I, Section 4 cited a moment ago, we saw that “Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year.”  Here we learn that members of Congress assemble-together in a “Meeting,” which may be reciprocally stated as members meet together in an “Assembly,” which is a common term for a legislative meeting.

 

“Assembly of the United States, begun and held” also makes sense, for assemblies and legislative-assemblies may begin and assemblies and legislative-assemblies may be held.

 

The Constitution also shows three times that members assemble together in a legislative or congressional session, in Article I, Sections 5 & 6, and also in Article II, Section 2.

 

Like “Meeting” and “Assembly,” so too does “Session of the United States, begun and held” make perfect sense, as does “Congressional Session of the United States” and “Legislative Session of the United States.”

 

This brief exercise shows us in three different ways, that “Congress…begun and held” makes sense, only when we understand Congress to be a meeting or assembling of the States together in a joint legislative session of Congress through their delegates.  It reciprocally also shows us that “Congress” never makes sense when viewed as an entity or branch.

 

Why does this matter, you may ask.  It matters because it is difficult to cure what we cannot accurately diagnose.

 

It also matters because if Congress and the United States are not actually entities separate from and superiorto the States as Americans dangerously believe—but merely collective terms referencing individual States acting together for common benefit through delegates—then there can never be an “us-verses-them” political battle between an all-powerful United States and the impotent and separate several States. 

 

The fact is that there is no “United States” without the several States themselves, just as there is no “family” without individual people.

When you finally realize that “the United States” are just the States united together in common Union acting through elected delegates, you won’t again be misled into thinking delegates and agents may ever be superior to the principals.

 

Just as no separate “family” entity exists—instead only a grouping of individual people—neither do the terms “The United States” or “United States of America” formally describe an entity with its own separate existence.

 

There is, however, the Government of the United States, which consists of the executive and judicial branches, with its employed federal officers, who never represent any State of the Union, but who instead are merely the lowly hired guns who carry out the expressed will of Congress acting within members’ delegated powers as described in the U.S. Constitution as ratified by the several States.

 

The idea that federal officers of The Government of the United States—who are but inferior agents to the States as the States necessarily remain the decision-making principals of the compact—may yet dictate to and overrule the States, is The Biggest Lie that Patriots have ever believed to their detriment.

 

Digging deeper, we find that the Constitution doesn’t refer to “Congress” with the singular pronoun “it” as if it were an “entity” or “branch,” either—but instead uses plural pronouns here also.

 

From Article I, Section 4 (Clause 2) earlier cited, recall the passage:

“Congress shall assemble…on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.”

 

By the Framers using the plural pronoun “they”—instead of the singular pronoun “it”— they confirmed the plural nature of “Congress” as the body of delegates of the individual States who meet together under the Constitution. 

 

Article I likewise says—in Section 7, Clause 2—that if the President does not return a proposed bill within ten Days, the same shall be a law, "unless the Congress, by their Adjournment prevent its Return."

 

Article II, Section 2—in Clause 2—says that “Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper," in one of three areas.

 

Lastly, Article II, Section 3 details that the President shall "give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."

 

A deeper look to the Bill of Rights further confirms this plural nature of Congress.

 

Please realize that the Bill of Rights began its life as a joint resolution of Congress.  The second paragraph of the Preamble to the Bill of Rights—after its heading—begins—as does every joint resolution—with the following phrase:

“Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled…”

 

The phrase is similar to the wording used to begin every legislative Act, which says;

“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled…”

 

These recitals found in every legislative resolution and every enactment of American law all confirm that the Senators and Representatives of the several States assemble together in a joint meeting of Congress—they meet together in a legislative assembly; they congregate together in a legislative session of Congress; they convene together in a congressional session—to conduct the business at hand for the Union of States; who united together under the express terms of the U.S. Constitution, for common benefit and mutual advantage.

 

These passages found in the supreme Law of the Land show Congress to be but the federal arm of the American States, operating with and through their elected delegates, as the States remain the principals who drive forward the overarching organizational structure, if they remain up to the task.

 

Neither the delegates of the States themselves, nor the hired federal officers of the executive or judicial branches, may ever overrule or override the expressed will of their principals, except by the latter’s default, whenever the principals—like unfit parents— abdicate their responsibilities and let their delegates and agents run wild, without adequate adult supervision.

 

Thankfully, what matters most isn’t “who happens to be chosen as individual delegates or agents”—that is, who may become train engineers or conductors.  Instead, it’s the delegated federal powers—or where federal train tracks may be laid.

 

The critical point is how federal servants may ever ignore or bypass those directives and seemingly act as our political masters—how federal train tracks were ever laid to unapproved destinations.

 

Since the authorization map hasn’t changed beyond 27 ratified amendments, with many of those amendments not adding new destinations, but simply clarifying where new stations could not be added, we may yet shut down invalid federal train stations.

 

The Article V amendment process proves that only States get to change the map and authorize new federal train stations—never federal servants, no matter their intentions.

 

Thankfully, nothing any federal servant has ever done, has ever changed the Constitution, or their allowed powers that they may everywhere in the Union exercise.

 

Since no train operator or conductor ever gets to change the authorization map, then we can remove unauthorized magnets from the compass and recalibrate it, and verify the allowed train stations by learning the map, and pull up improperly-laid rails or transfer their operation to the States, where non-delegated traffic belongs.

 

In other words, we need only cast off a false rule inappropriately extended over us, which doesn’t take elections or appointments, attempting to choose angels who may exercise unlimited power benevolently.  Instead, we need only individually change our mistaken perceptions and false presumptions, which again brings up the Patriot Corps’ LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear Program Course.

 

In a 10-to-15-minute Lesson twice per month—for as little as $5 per month—the Patriot Corps’ LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear Program Course teaches the originally-ratified Constitution within one year, to teach the normal case of allowed federal action, and introduces Patriots to the clever bypass-mechanism used by federal servants to support The Make-Believe Rule of Paper Tyrants.

 

For more information, please go to www.LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear.com.

 

To make sure you realize it, the important thing isn’t that you understood everything you heard today on your first hearing of it, but only to keep at it, until you do.

 

 

                           

SNIFF Premium Course

Seek New Information First & Foremost

SNIFF Lesson I

Nearly 250 years ago, our fore-fathers mutually pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, to establish individual liberty and limited government in these United States of America.

Tragically, our original course was soon altered by devious men seeking dishonorable gain. But, Patriots today may study the trail of evidence left behind by Paper Tyrants so we may learn to end their Make-Believe Rule.

Here’s a serious question.  If your individual efforts—outside the election process—could make the difference in restoring the Founders’ original vision within your lifetime, how much time, energy and money would you be willing to commit to the worthy effort?

Perhaps you won’t even consider the question, though, because you think the premise that underlies the question is absurd.  After all, who would have the gall to think that we could ever win the political battle we face, outside the election process, no less.

By the end of this brief video course, however, the Patriot Corps is hoping at least a few viewers will rethink that fatalistic perspective, because looking at old problems in a bold new light holds the realistic promise of a spectacular future.

Hello, I am the digital twin of Patriot Corps Founder and President Matt Erickson, here to speak his written words, as we welcome you to this video course known as SNIFF, as we Seek New Information First & Foremost.

The Patriot Corps argues first and foremost that Americans need a new way forward, because the actions we have implemented based upon our mistaken premises aren’t working.

And, that new way forward for us is actually a very old way, for our country—which is to ensure that only named powers are exercised, no matter who wins federal elections or who gets appointed to federal offices.

In other words, instead of concentrating upon voting and elections—Democracy—we focus on our Constitutional Republic, where only named powers may be directly exercised throughout the country, using necessary and proper means.

Therefore, we learn to confine all election winners—and all appointed federal officers—to their sworn oaths to support the Constitution, just like the Constitution says!

We start that process by ending the free pass that we have unintentionally given to those who corrupt our country’s founding principles.  Next, we challenge the clever lies that were told to us a million times to induce us to give in and give up.

Although paper tyrants brazenly declare that we must obey them without question and that they may rule over us without challenge, they are neither all-powerful wizards nor magical genies.

Instead, they are frauds who have distorted the founding principles of American government in order to steal our birthright.  As you can imagine, they’ll stop at nothing, in order to win.

But, we Patriots aren’t powerless.  If we reframe our internal thoughts, we may learn to see through our opponents’ deceit, discovering that lies can no longer bind us, once we investigate things from the proper perspective and finally respond accordingly.

When Americans look at federal actions today, we typically see hundreds of unconnected problems, widespread chaos, and rampant uncertainty.  We don’t know where to begin.

Therefore, the appropriate next step is to make a molehill out of what falsely appears to be an unscalable mountain. The Patriot Corps concentrates on the common denominator—the underlying cause—that is necessarily found at the root of all inappropriate federal actions.

Americans ultimately face but one fundamental political problem, at the federal level.

And, that single political problem federally is how government servants who swear an oath to support the Constitution—which oath necessarily binds them to the Constitution’s terms—have nevertheless been able to ignore or bypass their normal constitutional parameters, with impunity.  Everything contrary to the spirit of the Constitution necessarily rests upon that false base.

Therefore, we concentrate upon the clever means federal servants use to bypass their normal constitutional parameters without consequence, and then end the charade.

As the U.S. Constitution clearly details, changes to it may only be made by the American States, when three-fourths of them ratify formal amendment proposals.

Only the States working together may change the U.S. Constitution and only the States working together may change the allowed federal powers that members of Congress and federal officials may directly exercise throughout the country.  The necessary consequence of these two central parameters is that nothing federal servants have themselves ever done that is outside the spirit of the Constitution, has actually ever changed anything.  Instead, we face only a convincing illusion, that we may learn to see beyond and through, to get back to reality.

The required oaths that all federal servants must take so they may exercise delegated federal power proves their subservience to the Constitution and therefore an utter inability to change it.

It is therefore entirely possible to cast off a false rule that has been inappropriately extended over us and we start that noble effort by learning about and then exposing the devious mechanism used to bypass normal constitutional parameters to the purifying light of day.

Our first step is to examine the highly-unusual exception to all the normal rules of the U.S. Constitution, where the Constitution curiously allows itself to be ignored.

It is not at all uncommon, whenever rules are given, that they apply to a normal case. There is often an odd exception or two, when and where the normal rules simply do not apply.

Well, the U.S. Constitution is no different in this regard, not only in having normal rules, but also having a highly-unusual exception.

The success of federal servants doing as they please rests entirely upon their use of the highly-unusual exception, outside of allowable places, instead of the normal rules, that are everywhere valid.

Of course, they also hide what they are doing, so we don’t easily stop them, because we may cure what we are able to accurately diagnose.

Before looking at the highly-unusual exception to all the normal rules, it is important to realize that 98% of the U.S. Constitution speaks to the normal case.

The normal case involves the division of allowable governing powers, into the named federal powers and reserved State powers.

The prescribed federal authority in the normal case may be broadly described as the Little Powers that may be implemented within the Big Implementation Area.

This wording doesn’t mean to infer that the delineated federal powers are inconsequential; Little Powers instead refers to the named powers that are few in number and specifically written down, as the enumerated federal powers found listed within the U.S. Constitution.

The Big Implementation Area of course refers to the 50 States of the Union—one hundred percent of all American lands.

But, American lands are not all the same kind, even as the Little Powers reach all of them, no matter their type.

One percent of the Constitution speaks to the highly-unusual exception to all the normal rules.

This unusual exception involves unique parcels of land known as the exclusive legislative lands of Congress, where an alternate source of allowable governing authority exists.

The first category of special lands is the District of Columbia.

The second category of special lands includes the many forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards and other needful buildings, scattered throughout the Union, that were often long ago ceded or transferred by particular States, to Congress and the U.S. Government.

Particular States not only transferred to Congress individual parcels of land for special federal purposes, but the ceding State also voluntarily gave up all its remaining State governing authority over each transferred parcel.  This was to meet the specific constitutional command, for Congress to be able to exercise “exclusive” legislation “in all Cases whatsoever” over these soon-to-be-created special federal areas.

What is most important to realize involving this special case, is whatever is governed exclusively by Congress, isn’t shared with any American State.

The critical factor to realize here with this highly-unusual and exceptional case, involving one percent of the Constitution, is that governing powers on special lands aren’t divided into enumerated federal powers and reserved State powers, like everywhere else.

Instead, within exclusive legislation areas, all governing powers have been united or consolidated in Congress.

We may reference the exclusive legislation parcels of Congress as “Little Implementation Areas”—small enclaves governed exclusively by federal authority. These Little Implementation Areas will be covered more fully in the next video, in Lesson II of this SNIFF Premium Course.

The powers available to Congress in these Little Implementation Areas may be generally described as Big Powers.  We’ll address the Big Powers in Lesson III.

Finally, Lesson IV will show how devious men cleverly extended the allowable Big Powers that federal servants may directly exercise in Little Implementation Areas, instead, indirectly throughout the Big Implementation Area, making it falsely appear that they have magical powers to do as they please, everywhere.

Two hundred years of escalating federal tyranny rests solely upon the false extension of special Big Powers that are readily allowable for the Little Implementation Areas, instead, into the Big Implementation Area.

But, because the U.S. Constitution never authorizes the direct exercise of special Big Powers into the Big Implementation Area, we Patriots may ultimately end this false extension of an allowed special authority beyond its authorized and allowable boundaries.

It is appropriate to mention, however, that the Constitution as it is currently worded does not automatically prohibit the indirect extension of special Big Powers into the Big Implementation Area.  Instead, Americans must either consciously stop it in the single case whenever confronted by it or change the Constitution to make it automatic in all cases.

Please join me next for Lesson II, where we’ll investigate the Little Implementation Areas, themselves.

 

 

                                     

                           

SNIFF Premium Course

Seek New Information First & Foremost

SNIFF Lesson II

In Lesson I of the Patriot Corps Premier Course known as SNIFF—which again is short for Seek New Information First & Foremost—I relayed that allowable governing powers in the United States were in the normal case divided by ratification of the U.S. Constitution, into enumerated federal powers and reserved State authority.

The enumerated federal powers in this normal case may be generally described as the Little Powers that may be directly implemented in the Big Implementation Area—throughout the whole Union.

However, in the abnormal case—described by one percent of the Constitution—Big Powers may be directly implemented in special Little Implementation Areas, which areas include the District of Columbia and exclusive legislation area forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards and other needful buildings.

The Great Deception—where it falsely appears that federal servants may become our political masters—may be simply understood as these servants cleverly extending their special Big Powers beyond the appropriate Little Implementation Areas, instead, indirectly into the inappropriate Big Implementation Area.

This behind-the-scenes and under-the-radar false extension of allowed special powers beyond directly-allowable boundaries shows us the path forward, because what is indirectly extended by deception cannot withstand a direct challenge fully brought out into the open.

Americans are being bound in chains by paper tyrants who deviously proclaim the miraculous power to transform their enumerated Little Powers into all-encompassing Big Powers, as if by magic, so they may exercise Big Powers in a Big Implementation Area.

But the U.S. Constitution never authorizes this false extension, even as it is currently worded doesn’t automatically prevent it from happening, indirectly.

As the Constitution is currently worded, citizens must stand up and intentionally do the work ourselves, in each case.

The good news is that we may amend the Constitution to directly prohibit the indirect extension of special Big Powers beyond Little Implementation Areas.

The great news is that we don’t actually have to amend the Constitution, to contain those special powers to named boundaries. But, without an amendment doing it automatically in every case, we will have to be intentional about enforcing it, individually, in each case.

The fantastic news is that we may contain or cast off all inappropriate federal activity that is beyond the spirit of the Constitution, by ending this false charade of deviously extending allowed special powers beyond allowable special, exclusive-legislation area boundaries.

No person who exercises delegated federal authority has ever changed the Constitution.  No person who exercises delegated federal authority has ever changed the allowed powers that they may directly exercise everywhere in the Union.

Therefore, members of Congress, American Presidents and Supreme Court justices, may never change anything that matters.  Nothing they have ever done that is outside the spirit of the Constitution may ever directly bind Americans or the States outside of the Little Implementation Areas.

Remember, only the American States may change the Constitution or the allowed powers that federal servants may directly exercise throughout the country.

Therefore, other than in exclusive legislation areas—right now—all federal actions beyond the spirit of the Constitution may be stopped, discontinued, ceased, halted, withdrawn, ended, axed, and terminated, without an election and without enacting any specific piece of legislation.

We must merely stop allowing the special powers allowable only for exclusive legislation areas to be exercised in the general area, which means that we must stop the false extension of Big Powers beyond the Little Implementation Areas.  Or stated more directly, we must stop the indirect exercise of Big Powers into the Big Implementation Area.

Let’s dive into the Little Implementation Areas, to get a better understanding of them, to learn how to proceed.

The exclusive legislation lands of Congress include first the District of Columbia, which may not, by express constitutional command, exceed an area ten-miles-square in size. Ten-miles-square is 100 square miles, or some 64,000 acres, in maximum size.

Also, within the heading of exclusive legislation lands, one will find individual post offices, federal courthouses, old lighthouses, and other older, historic-use structures, but they do not include the federal “public lands” found in the western States.

Only about one-third of military forts and army bases are found on exclusive legislation lands—most military installations are yet located on lands otherwise governed by the States.

It is true that the States largely take a hands-off policy towards all federally-owned parcels, even those not found within exclusive legislative authority, but that doesn’t mean State authority doesn’t extend over these federally-owned lands that the particular States never ceded to Congress in the individual case.

As the seventeenth clause of the eighth section of the first article of the U.S. Constitution tells us, these special federal areas were created only by “cessions” of “particular States” and the “acceptance” of Congress. 

Particular States ceded or willingly transferred particular parcels of ground to Congress for special uses.  Once Congress accepted the individual parcels, governing authority over these ceded tracts of land passed to Congress, exclusively. Think of the transfer process as a formal treaty between two sovereigns, transferring the ability to govern the area, from one authority to another.

Whereas every State of the Union ratified the U.S. Constitution, and at least three-fourths of the American States ratified all the approved amendments, it only takes one State—the particular States in which a particular parcel of land happens to be located—to give Congress exclusive legislation authority over the ceded tract of land for special federal purposes.

While exclusive legislation powers shouldn’t be relevant outside exclusive legislation boundaries, as long as devious men may indirectly exercise this unfathomable power without challenge means that they will keep using it improperly, until they are stopped.

Lesson IV will cover how clever crooks ever tapped into this source of unlimited power illegitimately, but only because Americans weren’t paying sufficient attention to the only thing that matters.

The future of American freedom rests entirely upon our individual willingness to look behind this particular curtain, so Patriots may discover the spectacular source of a wizard-like power that defies comprehension.

So how does this discussion about Little Powers in the Big Implementation Area and Big Powers in the Little Implementation Areas fit into our present horrid political condition, where federal servants act like our political masters?

The Make-Believe Rule of Paper Tyrants rests entirely upon the devious substitution of the latter Big Powers into the former Big Implementation Area, when no one was looking.

A simple legal sleight of hand falsely appears to transform—within the Big Implementation Area—the allowed Little Powers, ostensibly into Big Powers, as if by magic.

Of course, federal servants can never actually change their Little Powers into Big Powers, not in reality, nor by non-existent magic. Because nowhere does the U.S. Constitution ever allow the direct exercise of Big Powers in the Big Implementation Area.

Federal servants merely bluff their way, using an allowed special power, beyond special area boundaries, improperly.  Of course, they also create confusion, to cover up what they are doing behind the curtain.

Therefore, our first and foremost objective as Patriots must be to understand what is going on behind the curtain and then work to bring it out into the open, to end the charade.  We sniff around until we discover the curtain that is covering it up, pull back the curtain, and then bark like crazy to draw attention to the only thing that matters.

In the 1939 movie classic The Wizard of Oz, a devious charlatan created an elaborate illusion to convince people that he had magical powers.  But after sniffing about and finding the source of the stench, Toto pulled back the curtain and exposed the wizard’s so-called magic as nothing but hot air and a fancy sound and light show.

Our self-professed political masters are equally full of hot air, on all matters exercised throughout the Union, that are beyond the spirit of the Constitution. 

Two centuries of escalating federal illusions are all about creating sufficient confusion to perpetuate a lie, that we may expose, to regain our freedom.

Of course, the crux of the matter is how do federal servants ever exercise the Big Powers even indirectly, in the Big Implementation Area?

This fundamental question will be discussed and answered in Lesson IV. But, first, please join me for Lesson III, where I investigate the Big Powers themselves, that are allowed in the Little Implementation Areas.

 

 

                           

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SNIFF Lesson III

Welcome to Lesson III of the Patriot Corps SNIFF course, where we Seek New Information First and Foremost, as we examine the special Big Powers that may be directly exercised in the Little Implementation Areas that were covered in Lesson II.

Every once and a while, Hollywood gets it right, like The Wizard of Oz.  The magnificent story lets Americans know that we cannot be bound by lies that we adequately expose.

And the lie most-told to Americans that we must expose is the centuries-old doozy, that boldly proclaims that federal servants may increase their own powers, by changing the meaning of words found in the U.S. Constitution.

Upon that absurd lie, rests all other lies.

Patriots would do well to follow Toto’s lead, and actively sniff out the source of the growing political stench.  In that way, we too may pull back the curtain and then bark like crazy to draw appropriate attention to The Greatest Political Lie Ever Told.

Which is why the Patriot Corps has named our premium video courses in the various actions dogs implement, especially when danger exists—to give credit to the little pooch with a small brain who nevertheless trusted his faithful nose to expose the fraud.

All federal actions beyond the spirit of the supreme Law of the Land necessarily rest upon the absurd premise that members of Congress and federal officials may reinterpret words and phrases found in the U.S. Constitution to change their own powers.  This, of course, is the same Constitution that they have already sworn an oath to support, which oath necessarily signifies their subservience to it, and therefore their utter inability to change it.

These make-believe wizards tirelessly promote the lie that the oath that they are required to take isn’t simultaneously binding upon them. But, if it isn’t binding, why don’t they ever refuse to take it, so they don’t live by a double standard that they boldly assert is impotent?

Their oath is required, precisely because it is binding. Therefore, they may ignore or bypass the Constitution only as it already allows.

And, the Constitution only allows itself to be bypassed when actions aren’t meant “for” the whole country, but instead, when special actions are really only meant “for” special Little Implementation Areas.

Indeed, the U.S. Constitution was never meant to limit members of Congress acting within their exclusive legislation capacity within exclusive legislation areas.

The Constitution explicitly details that members of Congress may act exclusively and “in all Cases whatsoever” in the District Seat, even performing actions that far exceed the enumerated powers that members may directly exercise throughout the whole Union.

Besides helping us understand false wizards, Hollywood also helps us understand fictionally-magical genies.

The 1992 animated Disney movie Aladdin said it well, that “part and parcel of the whole genie gig” is “PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER,” but it only comes with an “itty bitty living space.”

The parallel here to real-life is that American “genies” also have “phenomenal cosmic power,” but also necessarily that this special ability only resides within an itty bitty living space. I am speaking of their “bottle,” where they are largely free to do as they please—the District of Columbia and other exclusive legislation parcels—their Little Implementation Areas.

To understand the differences between implementation areas, it will be helpful to step back for a moment.  Let’s begin by dividing government authority into a pie chart.  We can start with the normal case—what we may picture as the government “clock” for the Big Implementation Area, with some “minutes” federal, but most are yet allotted to the States, individually.

The pie chart for the normal government authority for the Big Implementation Area divides American governing power into its two components—enumerated federal powers and reserved State powers. This division occurred by and with States’ ratifications of the U.S. Constitution.

Five “minutes” or so of allowable governing powers are those enumerated within the U.S. Constitution, that members of Congress and federal officials may directly implement throughout the Union—throughout their Big Implementation Area.

This leaves some 55 “minutes” of the “government hour”—a rough estimate more than adequate for our purposes—as the governing power reserved to the American States.

Now the federal allotment of minutes may be changed, to six or seven minutes, for example, or even back to three or four minutes, within and under the amendment procedure outlined within Article V.  The 27 ratified amendments speak to this principle.

As the U.S. Constitution clearly details in the formal amendment process, only the States of the Union are empowered to ratify amendments, just as the American States ratified the U.S. Constitution into existence in the first place.

Federal servants—hired to implement the named federal powers the States allowed members of Congress and federal officials to everywhere exercise—never get to make the decision to ratify changes to the U.S. Constitution.

While members of Congress may propose changes, American Presidents and Supreme Court justices don’t ever get the opportunity to propose amendments, let alone ratify them.

Patriots are cleverly led to falsely believe that federal servants found a way to increase their own powers for the whole Union, like a federal Pac-Man devouring State “minutes,” to change the five federal “minutes” on the normal government clock, to 20, 30, or even 40 “minutes” or more of federal time.

This theoretical process of a federal—or even “feral”—Pac-Man which devours State authority, is wholly impossible, as both the servants’ required oaths and the amendment process readily prove.

Although few Americans realize it, the U.S. Constitution also specifies a whole other time-clock—a distinct, exclusive legislation time-clock—that “tells time” in and for the District Seat.

And the U.S. Constitution specifies that in the District Seat, all 60 “minutes” of every hour are all federally-allotted minutes, at all times, “exclusively,” and “in all Cases whatsoever.” 

Which means that in exclusive legislation areas, members of Congress set the time!  And, not only that, but in the District of Columbia, NEVER do the States get to set the time.  The States in D.C. are powerless to do anything—just like they falsely appear to be, now, in so many situations, throughout the Union.

Well, that inability of the States to impact various federal affairs is itself compelling evidence that all those nefarious actions necessarily involve only exclusive legislation parcels, if we just knew to restrict them. 

Please realize that the 55-“minute” allotment of normal State governing authority in the normal case is guided and directed in each State by its own State Constitution.

The States also must abide by the express prohibitions levied against “States” found in the U.S. Constitution, such as “No State shall emit Bills of Credit” or “make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”

But nowhere is there a State, State-like or District Constitution guiding and directing members of Congress in the exercise of their exclusive legislation authority in the District Seat, for the first 55 minutes of the exclusive-legislation time-clock.

Without any express parameters anywhere existing in D.C. for the exercise of exclusive legislation—like State Constitutions guide and direct the States—means that in D.C. members of Congress MUST MAKE UP THEIR OWN RULES, as they go along.

And, since there’s no type of copyright restriction on the words found in the U.S. Constitution that are otherwise meant for direct exercise throughout the Union, then nothing prevents members or the courts from giving these same words a different meaning, in D.C.!

The supposedly-magical power of federal servants, to reinterpret various words of the Constitution, necessarily limits those new meanings only to Little Implementation Areas—the only places where judges, members of Congress, or Presidents may ever influence matters in such a grand and majestic manner. 

All exclusive legislation rules are made up within and for the Little Implementation Areas, along the way, without any constitutional guidance, like elsewhere State Constitutions provide.  But with so much to do, that is elsewhere performed by States, members of Congress needn’t do everything themselves.  They may in D.C. ask for help.

While the enumerated Little Powers that Congress may directly exercise throughout the Big Implementation Area are vested only with legislative members—because of the requirement for legislative representation—members of Congress may nevertheless in the Little Implementation Areas ask for exclusive legislation help, with their Big Powers.

Please realize that only “States” of the Union send U.S. Representatives and U.S. Senators to meet in Congress.  District residents aren’t represented in Congress, even as legislative representation is the fundamental building block of the Union. 

Without legislative representation existing in D.C., then members may freely ask for exclusive legislation help from alphabet agency bureaucrats of the executive branch, who may in D.C. write regulations held as law.

Members may in D.C. also allow judges to legislate from the bench.  Or, members may create “administrative law judges,” combining the available powers legislative, executive, and judicial in one person.

There isn’t even any direct prohibition against seeking outside help—like from United Nations delegates—in the exercise of exclusive legislation concerns.  As long as Congress approves the delegation of exclusive legislation authority within members’ inherent discretion—except as they are expressly prohibited—then members may get help, from executive or judicial officers, or even foreign diplomats!

Are you beginning to understand just how extensive is this special Big Power that is allowed in the Little Implementation Areas?

If not, consider this.  Since members of Congress and federal officials may directly exercise State-like powers exclusively in D.C.—because of a particular State’s earlier cession—then the Tenth Amendment has no effect in the District Seat!  Indeed, after cession of State authority and land, there aren’t any powers yet reserved to any State in D.C. for the Tenth Amendment to there in D.C. secure!

Please realize that the Tenth Amendment reserves unto the American States the powers the States reserved following their ratification of the U.S. Constitution, except as the State or States later formally give up.

Realize that the Tenth Amendment doesn’t prevent the States from later ratifying new amendments under the Article V amendment process, to give members of Congress or federal officials more powers in a direct and formal fashion, everywhere.

Well, neither does the Tenth Amendment foreclose particular States from ceding all of their remaining governing authority over specific tracts of land given to Congress and the U.S. Government for exclusive legislation purposes, under the Article I cession clause.

After all, how could the Tenth Amendment apply within the District of Columbia, when Maryland ceded not only its parcel of land to Congress in 1791, but also entirely gave up the ability to govern that transferred parcel after Congress accepted it in 1800?

And since only one State ever governs any particular parcel of land, then no other State has any claim over that ceded parcel, either, for any other State to claim a Tenth Amendment reservation of powers, in D.C., either.

Are you beginning to understand just how extensive is this exclusive legislation power, where no State has any governing authority, and where there isn’t even legislative representation, and the Tenth Amendment doesn’t apply?

The Big Powers for the Little Implementation Areas are so extensive, they reach to everything but the few things expressly prohibited.

And doesn’t that sound exactly like the kind of power that federal servants have been wielding, increasingly, over the decades and centuries?

The Big Powers members of Congress may exercise in the Little Implementation Areas are at the opposite end of the political spectrum as the Little Powers that they may directly exercise in the Big Implementation Area.

The Little Powers that Congress may exercise in the Big Implementation Area are the most-limited governing powers on the planet, being only the named powers, implemented using necessary and proper means.

The Big Powers that they may exercise in the Little Implementation Areas are the most-powerful on the planet, reaching to everything beyond those few things expressly prohibited.

Which powers would you expect power-hungry tyrants to exercise, if no one ever calls them out on the false extension of allowed special powers, to stop them?

When Patriots make the wrong arguments, don’t expect tyrants to stop on their own accord and don’t expect the court to argue for Patriots who don’t have a clue what is going on.

Are you starting to understand why Patriots’ inaccurate claims of something being “unconstitutional”—often allegedly for violating the Tenth Amendment itself—are wrong, and that inaccuracy explains why Patriots always fail?

Something cannot be facially unconstitutional—on its face—if one clause allows it, even if that one clause is the special exception to all the normal rules.

It is true that these special actions would be unconstitutional “as applied” beyond the Little Implementation Areas, but that correct challenge is never made.  We must learn to change our strategy and narrow our claims, so we may finally win our legal arguments.

So, how did clever scoundrels ever extend their Big Powers to the Big Implementation Area, that the Constitution nowhere specifies?

Far easier than one would imagine—unfortunately.

We’ll answer that important question in the final lesson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

                           

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SNIFF Lesson IV

Welcome to the final lesson in the Patriot Corps video course SNIFF, short for Seek New Information First & Foremost.

In Lesson I, I introduced the strategy of looking to our country’s founding principles for guidance, which in the normal case only allow the named Little Powers to be directly exercised in the Big Implementation Area.

In Lesson II, I discussed the highly-unusual exception to all the normal rules, for the District of Columbia and other exclusive legislation lands, where Big Powers may be exercised in Little Implementation Areas that we examined, in greater depth.

In Lesson III, I showed how far these Big Powers actually reached, which go so far that they defy comprehension.

In this final lesson, I will show how easy it was for Alexander Hamilton and his main partner-in-crime—U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall—to deviously extend the special Big Powers available for the Little Implementation Areas, indirectly, beyond allowable boundaries, into the Big Implementation Area.

These two devious men and their political heirs only had to use the remaining one percent of the Constitution not-yet-referenced, to throw everyone off-track.

Remember, 98% of the originally-ratified U.S. Constitution speaks to the normal case, of allowable governing powers, good for all American lands.

And, 1% of the Constitution speaks to the special case, of exclusive legislation powers, for exclusive legislation parcels.

Which leaves the remaining 1% of the Constitution not yet referenced, which is Article VI, Clause 2.  This clause not only says that “This Constitution…shall be the supreme Law of the Land,” but it also extends that same supremacy designation—pointing to federal laws that bind the States—to all laws enacted “in pursuance” of the Constitution.

Well, Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 for the District Seat is also necessarily *part* of “This Constitution.”

Therefore, since no words of the Constitution ever expressly exempt this clause from being *part* of “This Constitution” that is the “supreme Law of the Land,” then, by the strictest letter of Article VI, even laws enacted “in pursuance” of Clause 17 therefore also form *part* of the “supreme Law of the Land” that may bind the States through their judges!

At least that is what the Supreme Court held in 1821 Cohens v. Virginia, when defendants didn’t know what was going on, to oppose it properly, to hope to influence the Court’s holding or the States to overturn it, like the Eleventh Amendment did, to the 1793 Chisholm v. Georgia case.

The spirit of the Constitution would naturally exempt Clause 17 from being part of “the supreme Law of the Land,” to allow States the unhindered exercise of their reserved powers, without improper interference from Congress and the U.S. Government.

No laws of any State ever bind any other State, to allow each State full use of its reserved powers. Well, neither should the State-like exclusive legislation powers of Congress ever bind the States, either, for the exact same reason.

But, the strictest letter of the Constitution gives no express exemptions to any part of the Constitution to exempt that part from also constituting the supreme Law of the Land; not even Clause 17.

Therefore, Clause 17 offers devious scoundrels a false color of law—a political safe haven—a sufficient pretext, for falsely exercising an unusual authority that is otherwise yet allowed by the same Constitution, at least whenever no one objects in a proper fashion, calling out the impropriety in an open and direct manner.

Almost by magic, Hamilton and Marshall pitted the strictest letter of the Constitution against its internal spirit, to create an inherent contradiction that has since existed between the two opposing conclusions on this particular topic.

And, Hamilton’s political heirs have exploited that same bypass mechanism, to include everything being done today, that is beyond the spirit of the Constitution.

The crooks’ devious bypass-mechanism does not rely upon “progressive” or “liberal” interpretations of the Constitution, as Patriots falsely claim. Instead, liberal progressives hold the Constitution so strictly that even strict-constructionists don’t understand what is going on.

But, this doesn’t preclude us from proposing and ratifying an amendment to rectify this strife, to finally bring the letter and spirit of the Constitution into harmony, even on this issue. 

Thankfully, full and open exposure may permanently end Hamilton’s devious Government-By-Deception-Through-Redefinition-Scheme, so we may permanently end The Make-Believe Rule of Paper Tyrants, without seeking to elect angels to positions of unlimited powers, who become devils in the exercise of an overabundant authority.

Voting and elections—Democracy—won’t save our Constitutional Republic, of named powers, that may only be implemented using necessary and proper means.  Instead, we must limit the power of each and every person elected or appointed to positions of federal authority.

We begin our work by refusing to listen to the incessant drivel of fraudulent wizards who seek to lead us astray, so they may extend a false jurisdiction over us.  Instead, we start doing our own work.

In four short video lessons, the Patriot Corps introduced you to the devious means used to short-circuit the U.S. Constitution and bend it towards evil, by using the essentially-unlimited powers allowed in the District Seat, beyond District boundaries.

There’s almost no way for you to understand all the ramifications of this newfound information upon your first hearing of it. Therefore, I urge you to continue until you understand the important information.  Simply keep putting one foot in front of the other, along the right path, and you’ll get there, in time.

The Patriot Corps firmly believes that a directed and knowledgeable joint effort, working towards a common goal, will produce greater results, in a shorter period of time.

Therefore, the goal of the Patriot Corps is to build up a corps of men and women, and even children, who work together to achieve a common goal, more quickly and efficiently than one may do working all alone.

Since the hour is late and we’ve been losing precious ground for far too long, the Patriot Corps respectfully requests that you seriously consider becoming a Patriot Corps member so you may learn our country’s founding principles.

The Patriot Corps’ LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear Program Course will teach you the originally-ratified U.S. Constitution within a one-year time frame.

Just go to LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear.com and sign up today, to learn about our country’s founding principles, which remain every bit as valid today as they did 200 years ago, except as perhaps modified by 27 ratified amendments.

The Patriot Corps will take every effort to teach you the information you need to become a more effective Patriot.  Together we can engage in the figurative battle against false wizards and evil witches today, so we don’t have to join together in a literal battle against their flying monkeys, tomorrow.

God blessed these United States of America, and the Republic upon which they were founded, but it’s up to us, to get to work to Restore Our American Republic, under His guidance.

 

Lesson 000: Introduction

LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear Program Course

Hello and welcome to the Introductory Lesson on the Patriot Corps LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear Program Course.

I’m the digital twin of Patriot Corps Founder and President Matt Erickson, here to speak his written words on learning the founding principles of our American Republic that have been all but lost to federal servants who boldly and baldly act as if they are our political masters.

But first, dare to imagine, at least for a moment, a future when members of Congress and federal officials again followed the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution.

Imagine an America where everyday federal actions coincided once again with our founding principles, modified only by the 27 ratified amendments.

Our federal government would be a small fraction of its current size, pursuing perhaps five percent of its current scope.  The States would retain their reserved powers within their borders, without interference from the District Seat.

Congress would be fiscally responsible and we’d face deficits only in unusual circumstances. Debts would fall precipitously and prices would follow, as we returned to honest money and developed additional market efficiencies.

The federal government would once more be supported primarily by import duties, without income taxes, at least as they’re known and utilized today.

Undeclared wars would be a thing of the past as the military ensured our common defense, rather than police the world.  Our borders would be secure, but wouldn’t resemble a prison. Foreign aid would end, helping to curtail kickbacks and graft.

The alphabet agency regulatory bureaucracies would be gone and executive departments would be trimmed considerably.

A pipe-dream, you say?  What if it is instead clearly our American birthright?

And, the best part—What if these lofty goals could be restored, without even caring a great deal about who happens to win federal elections or who gets appointed to federal positions?

Even more absurd, you may perhaps counter?

But, what if the appropriate response to healthy doubts simply begins by asking the critical question:  Why do you find the founding principles of our American Republic unimaginable, even as they are necessarily enshrined within our supreme Law of the Land and to which every federal servant must already swear a binding and mandatory oath, and within the clear outline of our founding document, the Declaration of Independence?

Is it really inconceivable that we’ve simply been tricked, by people who will do or say anything to further their unimaginable wealth and power, especially given that the Constitution has been changed only by 27 ratified amendments?

What if the only thing that stands between you and the America described above, is taking that critical first step in unshackling your mind and starting to question seriously, federal actions that rest upon wild claims of magical powers?

The Constitution, after all, expressly details how the Constitution and the allowable federal powers may be changed, and that is only by three-fourths of the American States ratifying formal amendment proposals.

We Patriots cannot let a lifetime of lies convince us that the quest for liberty is futile, certainly not when the answer may be found by rediscovering our lost principles that were so long ago deviously pushed aside and forgotten, so scoundrels could begin steering us off-course, to feather their own nests.

Sadly, a thousand inconsistencies between everyday political practices and founding principles have led generations of all-too-trusting Americans to accept the political battle as that of struggling to answer in their favor the following question:

“When everyday federal practices clash with our founding principles that are supported by the supreme Law of the Land, which side wins?”

Tragically, even amidst escalating political losses resting but upon the magical powers of unchallengeable wizards, it never occurs to us that we must challenge this false premise, rather than continue placing our faith and effort in a rigged political game.

The question we must instead learn to ask is:

“How may federal practices whichAPPEAR to clash with our founding principles ever be exercised in such a way that they do not actually clash with the strictest letter of the Constitution, so they may therefore continue unabated?”

Asking and answering the right question directs all our future work. 

Thankfully, our founding principles that are supported by the supreme Law of the Land may never be ignored or bypassed by those who implement its named powers, except as the Constitution allows.

And, the Constitution only allows itself to be ignored or bypassed only when the actions in question aren’t really meant “for” the Union. 

Instead, all the political nonsense that we face beyond the spirit and letter of the supreme Law of the Land, that is contrary to fundamental principles of American government, is necessarily allowed only in very special places.

It is imperative to realize that while ratification of the U.S. Constitution divided allowable governing powers within the country into named federal powers and reserved State powers, one clause specifically allows all legislative powers instead to be united or consolidated in Congress.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 specifically allows Congress to exercise “exclusive” legislation for the District Seat and other “like-Authority” exclusive legislation parcels used for forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards and other needful buildings, “in all Cases whatsoever.”

Two centuries of ever-expanding federal nonsense rests entirely upon the exclusive-legislation authority that extends over these special federal enclaves.  But that truth doesn’t mean that any of the nonsense allowable therein is ever directly allowable in 999 other cases, that legally involve also the States, at least when transgressions are effectively challenged.

One must realize that legal arguments cannot be won with objectively-false claims, including the ever-common complaint that extreme federal actions are always unconstitutional—facially unconstitutional—every time they are exercised.

Because one may easily prove constitutional support for special-case, extraordinary actions, whenever one is transparent about it, then it necessarily follows that actions performed under that special case cannot be facially unconstitutional—i.e., then such actions can’t always be unconstitutional—as far too often incorrectly alleged by well-meaning but misinformed Patriots.

As long as the exclusive legislation authority of Congress for the District of Columbia remains in existence, then Patriots must necessarily narrow their legal claims.  Instead, they must learn to proclaim that special case actions are only unconstitutional as applied beyond the District Seat and outside of other exclusive legislation parcels.

The only thing keeping Patriots from discovering how to Restore Our American Republic, outside the election process, is their individual resistance to search for answers beyond their familiarity.

We need only learn to look behind curtains for information that we have yet to learn, to discover that it’s not about who we elect or appoint, or even what is their particular political agenda.

Today we face but one political problem federally, even as it has a thousand irrelevant symptoms—and that is how members of Congress and federal officials have been able to bypass or ignore their normal constitutional parameters with impunity.

Like unrestrained children whose unfit parents may have told them “No” but never really meant it, our federal servants have grown accustomed to misbehaving as intolerable monsters and now seek to become our political masters.

It’s time for citizens individually and the States separately to act like grownups and own up to the responsibility of learning to firmly say “No,” and, resolutely, “No more.”

Our federal goal cannot simply be voting for individuals who make up new rules as they please, pitifully pleading with election winners to act benevolently, but doing nothing when they don’t.  Instead of vainly searching for saints and begging ineffectually with sinners, we must learn to enforce the founding principles of our American Republic, no matter who gets elected or appointed.

If you’re willing to pursue individual liberty and limited government without hesitation, the Patriot Corps offers up its LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear Program Course for your consideration, also called our Constitution 101 Program.

Our signature program consists of a brief, 10-to-15-minute Lesson every two weeks, to cover the originally-ratified U.S. Constitution, from the Preamble through Article VII, within a year. The Lessons are available in video, audio, or written formats, with the latter form containing references, citations and notes.

Both this and our separate Constitution 201 Program Course—which will cover the amendments separately—teach the normal case of allowable federal action, with Premium Courses alternatively teaching the abnormal case.

Emailed notification lets Patriots know when the information they need next is available, which avoids overwhelm by spacing Lessons out so Patriots may digest and ponder important information before adding more, while simultaneously ensuring the worthy goal isn’t forgotten.

Our Founding Fathers mutually pledged to one-another their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, to establish these United States of America—the Patriot Corps is asking you to pledge 15 minutes of your time every two weeks for a year, and as little as the equivalent of five dollars per month, to Restore Our American Republic, Once and For All, or even Happily-Ever-After.

Discover the courage it takes to make your wildest dreams of freedom in your lifetime a reality—to restore the individual liberty and limited government that our forebears paid with their lives and extensive efforts to secure.

Please don’t push off this responsibility to later generations—our freedom may not last that long.  Instead, do your part now, and learn to pass along a legacy of commitment to fundamental principles.

Go to www.LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear.com and sign up today, to learn to become an integral part of a bold new path forward, by learning the God-honoring principles of our past.

While we may ask God to bless again these United States of America, we can be fairly certain that He will expect us to roll up our shirt sleeves and get to work.

Lesson 00: Preamble

Union of States

Hello.  I’m the digital twin of Patriot Corps Founder and President Matt Erickson, here to speak his written words on the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

In a time when a thousand federal practices appear to directly contradict our founding principles, who can blame Americans for feeling overwhelmed?

But, there is hope if the field of search is narrowed down to discover how federal servants do as they please, despite their sworn oaths, which of course signify their subservience to the Constitution.

Which explains the purpose of our Patriot Corps LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear Program Course—to learn the normal case, so we may make sense of abnormal actions and reorient our path, as soon as possible.

Without wasting a moment, let’s begin.

The U.S. Constitution starts off with the Preamble, which answers the general questions of who is doing what, for whom and why.

"We the People of the United States," it begins, before detailing that the Constitution would first be ordained and established “in order to form a more-perfect Union.”

If the Union became more-perfect by establishing the U.S. Constitution, then it necessarily follows, that the Union pre-existed that Constitution.

This fact challenges and ultimately refutes therefore the common misperception that Americans face a strong central power which may everywhere in the country overturn our founding principles and run rampant over allegedly-powerless States, because in that Union of States, the States yet remain the integral centerpiece in that framework.

Refuting the false premise of a federal overrun of the States also discredits all the intertwined political lies resting upon it, allowing us to cast off—even outside the election process—a false rule inappropriately extended over us.

It is proper to follow this lead then, to disprove false assumptions that misdirect our efforts and waste precious resources.

The idea that the existing Union only changed forms by adopting the Constitution is further reinforced when Article VI says that the debts contracted and engagements entered into under the Articles of Confederation, are as valid against the United States under the Constitution, as under the Confederation.

This passage confirms the United States to be the same Union of States, by using only one term to signify the Union, even under two distinct forms of government, even as the debts of the one form wouldn’t otherwise constrain the other, without this section.

The Constitution confirms a continuity of the Union even further. Article VII details that the Constitution was proposed in a Convention of States on:

“the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth.”

The twelfth year of the independence of the United States of America—with September 17^th, 1787 as the point of reference—points to an event occurring between September in 1775 and September of 1776.

All American principles, practices, and documents date the founding of these United States of America, to July 4^th, 1776, with our formal declaration of independence.

With that truth—of the Union of States being the same Union since 1776, except as modified by the spirit and strictest terms of the U.S. Constitution and its 27 ratified amendments—shows the utter folly of the idea that those who bind themselves to its terms so they may exercise its named powers, could ever rule over and overrule the Constitution, that they must swear a binding oath, to support.

Americans doubt the fundamental truth of the States being in the driver’s seat to their peril.

Like the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, the Constitution repeatedly mentions the Union.

Article I requires apportionment of Representatives and direct taxes “among the several States which may be included within this Union."[1]

Members of Congress are given the express power "to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union."[2]

The President is directed in Article II to give to Congress “Information of the State of the Union."[3]

"New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union" by Article IV and the United States shall guarantee “to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government."[4]

Thinking of the Union of States—and its synonymous term, “the United States”—in relation to a family, helps Americans understand the underlying plural nature of both phrases.

Although the Doe family may consist of John Doe, Jane Doe, and little Johnnie and Janie, no separate family entity actually exists.

While individuals may continue independent of a family, never may a family exist without individuals.

The same is true of our Union of States—States may exist outside of the Union, but the Union as structured to this day is incapable of existing apart from the States.

Therefore, the battle is not and cannot be between the United States in their true plural form and the several States, individually, as the next few lessons show, because the former consists entirely of the latter. 

“We the People of the United States” isn’t structurally any different from saying “We the People of the Doe Family”—using a plural term for a group of participating States instead of included individuals.

The opening line “We the People of the United States” isn’t really any different, either, from saying, “We the People, of the Family of States,” or, more strictly, “We the People, of the Union of States,” or—most strictly—“We the People of the States of the Union.”

Although the concept of “the United States” as a plural term doesn’t come easily today, the idea of a singular entity of inherent discretion capable of freely operating throughout the Union is contrary to our founding principles.

The clearest example of “the United States” as a plural term may be found in the actual title of the Declaration of Independence—“The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.”

This reference to a multitude of United States isn’t a fluke tied to the unique factors centering on the Declaration, despite likely protests otherwise.

The Articles of Confederation used the general phrase “the United States,” but then more-accurately defined the term, next listing each State.[5]

When the Paris Peace Treaty—drafted under the careful eye of the victors—concluded the Revolutionary War in 1783, it likewise listed the “United States” but again went on to define the term, as all thirteen States of the American Union.[6]

Article V of the same treaty specifically allowed British subjects who hadn’t borne arms to go to any parts “of the thirteen United States" to obtain restitution of any confiscated properties.[7]  That “thirteen United States” still existed even after formalized confederation, points to the literal constituting of the United States as the individual States themselves, joined together in common Union.

Given this history, it shouldn’t be surprising how the 1787 convention delegates approved the pending Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, as indicated by James Madison, in his Notes of the Constitutional Convention.

The August 6^th draft of the Preamble, as approved by the delegates without opposition the next day, began "We the people of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia…"[8]

The Preamble’s opening line was shortened to “We the People of the United States” by the committee appointed September 8^th to revise the stile and arrange all of the articles approved to date.[9]

The committee didn’t change the effect of the Preamble—indeed, they had no such authority to change anything.  Instead, they merely made its style more concise, while necessarily meaning the same exact thing.

The committee members and House delegates, and the State convention delegates— who were fiercely-loyal to the reserved powers of the States—all understood that no material distinction existed between the August 7^th-approved version and September 12^th revision.[10]

But the clearest refutation against those who misguidedly promote the Constitution as the failure necessarily-causing our current political crisis—by allowing a created entity with inherent discretion the power to roam throughout the Union and do as it pleases—is the Eleventh Amendment.

Ratified in 1795, the Eleventh Amendment to our U.S. Constitution reads, in part, "The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit…against one of the United States by Citizens of another State."

The idea that even after ratification of the U.S. Constitution, there remains multiple United States may be difficult to grasp, but “the United States” simply and literally means the States who united together under the express terms of the U.S. Constitution and the principles of the Declaration of Independence.  This understanding cannot be overstated, as it refutes false appearances otherwise.

Thinking in terms of “the States, united,” should bring clarity to troubled minds.

The next best example of the plural nature of the term—“the United States”—is found in the constitutional definition of "Treason against the United States” consisting “only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their Enemies," giving those enemies “Aid and Comfort.”[11]

The Constitution doesn’t say that treason “against the United States” consists “only in levying war against it, or in adhering to its Enemies," but against them and their enemies.

Article III also details that “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases…arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made…under their Authority.”[12]

Article II directs that the President “shall not receive within that period any other emolument from the United States, or any of them.”[13]

Article I details that “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them” shall, without congressional approval, accept presents.[14]

The last chronological mention of “the United States” where the plural word form was properly indicated was the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment, which declares "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude…shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

But note that just three years later, the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, which begins “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

If “the United States” mentioned in the Fourteenth Amendment still referenced their correct plural meaning, there wouldn’t have been reason to avoid re-using the passage found in the Thirteenth Amendment, “and subject to their jurisdiction.”

But, using everywhere-permissible language would have defeated the hidden purpose of the amendment, which sought to create a backdoor means of binding second-class “citizen-subjects” to a singular understanding of “the United States,” as Congress, the President and the Courts began expanding this false corporate power with abandon.

Indeed, note that while the Thirteenth Amendment merely references places that were subject to the multiple jurisdictions of the Union of States, the Fourteenth instead holds persons subject to a singularly-understood, corporate “United States.”

A new breed of draconian laws, regulations, executive orders, and court opinions soon began being incrementally created, that pushed forward a corporate understanding of “the United States” as “the Government of the United States,” standing distinct and separate from the States it began pushing aside, so it could falsely rule over them.

Today, we ask how could we have gotten so far off our original path.  Well, it took a definitive turn by 1868, when a conceptual seed foreign to the founding principles of our American Union was gingerly planted by the ratification of that Fourteenth Amendment, as it began bearing forth a vile fruit.

Nothing occurring after 1868 could have created the wayward path to tyranny evident by that date, even as later legislation certainly expanded upon it and turned that small path into a major freeway. 

This short examination into the misunderstood term “the United States” saves Americans from squandering time and precious resources critically examining the past century and a half of American history where they won’t find the root, especially through so many vision-obscuring branches.

But, the Fourteenth Amendment was merely the trunk—the primary roots necessarily extend deeper and stem from a previous date.

Narrowing the search for real answers to the first 80 years under the Constitution is pretty good progress though for a 14-minute introductory lesson on the Preamble.

To see how far short, twice-monthly lessons on our founding principles may take you, please go to LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear.com and sign up today.

The important factor isn’t whether you have understood everything said here the first time you’ve perhaps heard it, only that you get on the right path and keep putting one foot in front of the other, until you do.

 

 

Paid Program Course Content

 

 

 

 

Lesson 01: Article I, Section 1

Congress of the United States

Hello, I’m the digital twin of Patriot Corps Founder and President Matt Erickson, here to speak his written words on the U.S. Constitution.

Welcome to Lesson 01 of the Patriot Corps LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear Program Course, also called our Constitution 101 program.  The Lessons are available in video, audio, or written format, at your preference, at the website, www.LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear.com. 

For references and citations, please see the written pdf.

This Lesson is the first of 28 Lessons of the program that explain the originally-ratified Constitution, from Article I through VII.  While the complimentary Lesson 00 covered the Preamble, the amendments will be covered in a separate Program Course.

The two Program Courses seek to teach the normal case of allowable federal action, so Patriots may learn to spot more easily when something is amiss, and have the background knowledge to know where to look to investigate the abnormal case, which will also be covered within our Premium Courses, which include our SNIFF course, where Patriots Seek New Information First & Foremost.

So, let’s dig in and begin to investigate some of the most basic principles of American government, that Patriots ignore, forget or never learn, to their peril. 

First off, ratification of the U.S. Constitution by the several States of the Union divided allowable governing powers in the United States into enumerated federal powers and reserved State powers.

Those enumerated federal powers are further divided into three categories.  Article III of the U.S. Constitution discusses the judicial power given the courts.   Article II covers the executive power conferred on the President.  And, Article I details the named legislative powers vested in Congress, where we begin our study.

Even more important than the specific legislative powers granted within the Constitution itself, however, is the fixed location where they are all vested or permanently lodged.

Article I of the U.S. Constitution appropriately covers that important topic right out of the gate, as Section 1 details that:

"All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives."

Since the U.S. Constitution permanently stores the named legislative powers in “a Congress of the United States,” it is vital to learn what this phrase precisely refers to, because it doesn’t mean what everyone thinks—as an entity apart from the individual States, of a separate and superior government.

If you’ve already watched the LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear Program Course Overview or watched Lesson 00, the term “the United States” doesn’t refer to a corporate entity, but instead explicitly refers to all the States of the American Union who joined together for common benefit under the explicit terms of the U.S. Constitution.

Since “the United States” doesn’t refer to a corporate entity, neither can the term “Congress of the United States.”

Instead, “Congress of the United States” literally means a “meeting of the United States”—the reoccurring assembling together of the individual States of the American Union, who meet through their elected delegates, to work towards their general welfare and common defense.

With “Congress of the United States” literally referencing the “meeting” of the American States who assemble together, can there really be an “us-versus-them” political or philosophical battle between an all-powerful “United States” against the States of the Union?

Remember, a family cannot exist apart from the separate individuals who make it up, even as various family members may bicker between and amongst themselves.

The U.S. Constitution reinforces this direct understanding of “Congress” as the joint “meeting” of the several States, time and again, to anyone paying attention.

For instance, Article I, Section 2 confirms Congress to be a “Meeting,” when Clause 3 declares:

“The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States.”

Article I, Section 4 directly calls Congress a “Meeting” in Clause 2, which details: 

"The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day."

When the Framers of the Constitution substituted the phrase “such Meeting” for the term “Congress” earlier-used in the sentence, they reinforced the idea that both terms have the same meaning.

It is important to keep a simple, literal understanding of “Congress” as the individual States of the American Union who assemble together through their elected delegates in a Meeting.

The directive for Congress to “assemble” at least once per year—found in Section 4 as just cited—further refutes the idea of Congress being an entity or branch, as widely misunderstood, as “entities” do not and cannot “assemble.”

And, even more importantly, neither can entities ever be “held.”

The concept of Congress being held is found within the Preamble to the Bill of Rights, with its opening words:

“Congress of the United States, begun and held at the City of New-York, on Wednesday the Fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.”

Removing the non-essential words from the cited passage makes it easier to understand the critical point here being examined—“Congress of the United States, begun and held at the City of New-York,” or “Congress of the United States, begun and held…” or simply, “Congress…begun and held.”

If Congress were truly an “entity” or simply a “branch,” among equal branches, then surely one could substitute those terms for “Congress” and still have this sentence make sense.

“Entity of the United States, begun and held” or “Branch of the United States, begun and held,” however, don’t make sense.  After all, while entities may begin—by being made, incorporated, or somehow created—they certainly cannot be “held.”

But, replace “Congress” with “meeting” and the phrase yet makes perfect sense—“Meeting of the United States, begun and held.”

“Assembly…begun and held” also makes perfect sense, as does “Session…begun and held.”

Meetings may begin and meetings may also be held; assemblies may begin and assemblies may also be held; and sessions may begin and sessions may also be held.

And, of course, Congress may begin and Congress may also be held, as long as “Congress” is properly understood and appropriately viewed as a meeting or assembling of the States in a joint legislative session.

Since an “entity”—as a thing in of itself—cannot be “held,” Congress cannot mean an “entity” or simply a “branch” of the U.S. Government among other equals, as commonly thought.

The Constitution confirms “Congress” being an assembling of the States together repeatedly, rather than a singular entity of its own will and volition.

In Article I, Section 4 earlier cited, remember the phrasing:

“Congress shall assemble…on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.”

When the Framers of the Constitution used the pluralpronoun “they”—rather than the singular pronoun “it”—the Framers confirmed again the plural nature of Congress as the body of delegates meeting together under the American Union.

The Constitution, after all, repeatedly uses plural pronouns to substitute for “Congress.”

Article I, Section 7, in Clause 2, details that if the President does not return a bill within ten Days, that the same shall be a law, "unless the Congress, by their Adjournment prevent its Return."

Article II, Section 2, in Clause 2 provides that "Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper," in one of three areas.

Article II, Section 3 details that the President shall:

"give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."

Americans overlook to their detriment these passages that point to the plural nature of the legislative governing body.

And, the idea of the States assembling in Congress through their elected delegates—their U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives—is continuously reinforced even beyond these simple passages found within our supreme Law of the Land.

Realize that the Bill of Rights began its life as a joint resolution of Congress. Look to its Preamble, and find in the Preamble to the Bill of Rights the precise wording found beginning every joint resolution of Congress, which all begin:

“Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled…”

The phrasing is similar to the wording likewise found starting out every legislative Act ever enacted, which all begin;

“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled…”[15]

These recitals found in every legislative resolution and every enactment of law verify the elected delegates of the several States of the American Union—U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives—assemble together for their business at hand, and work on named topics of joint concern, within the rulebook which is the U.S. Constitution.

As these passages show, the best and only proper way to understand the U.S. Constitution is to hold its words in an ultra-strict and literal manner.

Realizing that Congress is not a singular entity that is wholly distinct from the States, superior to them, puts an entirely different spin on matters confronting Americans politically at the federal level.

Understanding the true nature of Congress as the direct arm of the American States shows clearly the reason for the fundamental Wall of Separation between Congress and the executive and judicial branches of the U.S. Government.

This truth also necessarily shows that the States of the Union clearly remain in the driver’s seat, being the principals who joined together and created the legal framework for their joint cooperation in particular areas.

It also explains why only members of Congress may enact binding federal legislation for direct exercise throughout the whole Union, because only U.S. Representatives and U.S. Senators speak for the respective States, as they meet together for named purposes under the written Constitution which guides and directs them.

It also shows why federal officers never have any say in proposing or ratifying Amendments, why only the American States may, through their delegates or directly, ever propose formal amendments.

Understanding the true plural nature of Congress—simply being the joint meeting of the States through their designated delegates—helps also reveal the utter absurdity of Supreme Court justices supposedly being able to change federal powers everywhere-exercised in a direct manner, by changing the meaning of words found in the Constitution.

All who exercise delegated federal authority are necessarily bound to their sworn oaths to support the Constitution.  Instead, they may only ignore or bypass their normal constitutional parameters with impunity only as the Constitution allows itself to be ignored or bypassed.

And, the Constitution allows itself to be ignored or bypassed only in and for the highly-unusual exception to all its normal rules—being the District constituted as the Seat of Government of the United States, and other “like-Authority” exclusive-legislation parcels. 

After all, these exclusive legislation areas are not within the normal meaning of “the United States of America,” where normal American governing powers were divided into enumerated federal powers and reserved State authority.  Instead, all governing powers are, in exclusive legislation areas, united or consolidated in Congress.

Join with me in the next Lesson as we begin to examine the Article I powers of Congress.

Lesson 02: Article I, Section 1

Enumerated Powers vested in Congress

Welcome to Lesson 2 of the Patriot Corps LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear Program Course, as we examine the enumerated legislative powers vested in Congress.

It’s important to notice the fundamental difference of wording between Article I of the U.S. Constitution and Articles II and III, regarding delegated power.

For instance, Article III declares:

“The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”

And, Article II is similarly worded, reading:

“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

Both cases refer to “power,” worded singularly, without division.

All of the judicial power of the United States is vested in the courts and all of the executive power of the United States is vested in the President, without intermixing with the executive and judicial powers of the several States.

However, Article I, Section 1 details that:

“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States…”

Article I speaks here to powers, in the plural form, showing first and foremost that the legislative powers in the United States are here being divided.

Section 1 immediately informs us that it is the Congress of the United States that receives the granted legislative powers.

That leaves the legislative powers which weren’t being granted, of course, which naturally remain with the parties that are otherwise granting the named powers to Congress.  The formula of reserving undelegated powers, except as prohibited, was memorialized in 1791 when the Tenth Amendment was ratified.

To know where the rest of the allowable legislative powers remain, we must discover who are the Grantors.

A look to the end of the Constitution, in Article VII, reveals the parties who ultimately make the final decision as to approving the grant of the named powers to the named parties.

The Grantors are the several States, operating through their conventions. 

It was through their ratification of the U.S. Constitution that the individual States of the Union granted to members of Congress their specified legislative powers, and the President his executive power and the courts their judicial power.

When first looking at Article I, Section 1, it is understandable some people may initially think every imaginable legislative power is being given to Congress, since the sentence begins “All legislative Powers…”

However, the next two words easily dispel this false assumption, as one discovers that the words “All legislative powers” are being constrained by the words “herein granted.”

At that point, one must realize that the word “All” was used to prohibit the legislative powers from being exercised by executive or judicial officers.

Indeed, one could write “Only the legislative Powers herein granted, shall be vested in a Congress of the United States” and the substituted wording wouldn’t extend or restrict the enumerated powers actually granted.

Substitution of “All” with “Only” would only make it less-clear that neither the President nor the Courts may exercise legislative power.

The individual States of the American Union individually exercise their reserved legislative powers locally within their geographic borders, and those same States unite together and share the exercise of the named federal legislative powers together in their meeting.

Federal officers of the executive and judicial branches of the Government of the United States never represent any State of the Union, but instead carry out their official duties.

Executive officers execute or administer the laws enacted by Congress, and judicial officers adjudicate cases or controversies through the application of pertinent law to applicable facts.

This fundamental difference between Congress and the executive and judicial branches of the Government of the United States explains why the U.S. Constitution necessarily places a firm divide—a true Wall of Separation—between members of Congress and the hired federal officers of the executive and judicial branches.

This divide is why the U.S. Constitution, in Article I, Section 1, expressly vests or fixes the enumerated legislative powers all and only in Congress.

Article I goes on to expressly name the specific legislative powers being given to Congress.  The predominant list is found in Section 8, which individual powers include the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to borrow money, to regulate commerce, to coin money and regulate its value, to declare war, raise and support Armies, and a few other named powers.

Nowhere is it ever suggested or inferred in our founding documents that American governments ever have rights.

The Declaration of Independence holds it as a self-evident truth that “all men are created equal” and that "they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." 

Men later formed government and gave it delegated powers, the Declaration tells us, to secure man’s unalienable rights, not to become their biggest threat.[1]

That our unalienable rights precede the creation of government and ultimately stand superior to it means that American government may not infringe upon our unalienable rights without violating the very principles upon which it was instituted.

Please realize that everywhere rights are mentioned in our founding documents, they necessarily pertain only to people, never government.

Look at our Bill of Rights—every time you see the word rights used therein, realize those rights belong only to created man.  In contravention, American governments have but delegated powers.

It is no coincidence the Tenth Amendment pointedly speaks to “The powers not delegated” to the United States being reserved to the States; that Article I addresses the enumerated legislative powers granted to Congress; that Article II discusses the executive power vested in the President; and that Article III covers the judicial power vested in the courts.

The devious separation of man’s unalienable rights from him, by falsely asserting American governments also have “rights,” is perhaps nowhere better showcased than by the Second Amendment as it directly speaks to the “right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

Of course, proponents of unlimited government repeatedly assert the Second Amendment’s initial pointing to “the Militia” supposedly means only those persons serving as an official part of the State-regulated militia have the right to keep and bear arms.

Proponents of this invalid theory ignore the plain fact that members of Congress were already specifically given the express power for “organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia” in Article I, Section 8, Clause 16 of the Constitution.

The idea that governments be given a uniquely-human trait—of having unalienable rights—just to arm the militia, when members of Congress were already delegated the specific power to arm the militia would be comical, if it weren’t so serious.

While proponents of unlimited government authority assert that the Second Amendment’s specific wording of the “right of the people” to “keep and bear arms” really means “the right of the government,” what of the explicit pointing to “people” or “persons” in the First, Fourth and Ninth Amendments?”

Are they really going to argue that the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of non-enumerated rights “retained by the people” really means non-enumerated rights are retained by “government?”

What of the Tenth Amendment, which discusses first the “United States,” then “the States,” and then “the people,” even as the “people” are clearly held here apart from “the United States” and “the States?”

Or, is it “governments” that may peaceably assemble, or be secure in their “persons” against unreasonable searches and seizures, by themselves? Or, in this supposed interchangeability between “government” and “persons” or “people,” that private persons may search and seize government property at will?

But, why would some of the amendments of the Bill of Rights write “people” or “person” one moment to mean “human beings,” but supposedly mean “government” in another moment?

The truth of the matter is that the Constitution and Declaration of Independence readily concede American governments have but delegated powers and they both acknowledge that the American people themselves have unalienable rights (and reserved powers).

Therefore, even the popular conservative phrase States’ Rights is an oxymoron—a contradiction of terms.

Instead, it’s better to use the phrase “the reserved powers of the States.”  Although it isn’t as succinct and it doesn’t flow as well, it nevertheless reflects a proper understanding of core principles that Patriots confuse to our peril.

The last topic of discussion in this Lesson is another flawed concept popular in conservative circles—that of “Co-Equal Powers,” nominally between Congress, the President, and the courts.

The argument for Co-Equal Powers asserts that it serves as a prudent check and balance, preventing the improper accumulation of power.  Ignored is its underlying premise that no superior force exists to keep the parties in line.

However, if the three powers may determine the extent of their own authority, what prevents this three-headed hydra from working together for its, or their, supremacy?

Does anyone find the idea of three tyrants battling one another for supremacy to be an inspiring model for individual liberty and limited government?

Perhaps the simplest way to expose the false theory of Co-Equal Powers is to compare the length of Article I of the U.S. Constitution, with the lengths of Articles II and III.

Article I, which again discusses the legislative powers granted to Congress, takes up over half of the entire Constitution, all by itself.

In contrast, Article II—which discusses the executive powers granted to the President—takes up less than a quarter of the words.

And, Article III, which discusses the judicial powers granted to the courts, makes up less than one-tenth of the words found in the U.S. Constitution, as first established, before any amendments were added.

To believe that six times fewer words in the Constitution nevertheless make the judicial branch equal in power with Congress is to believe the specific listing of allowable powers in a government of enumerated authority is largely meaningless and perhaps even irrelevant.

What this false concept really implies—if the court is truly co-equal in power with Congress—is that the 377 judicial words found in Article III must be six times as powerful as the 2,268 legislative words of Article I.

The false doctrine of Co-Equal Powers goes even so far as to assert that the more the Constitution details a particular power, the less power the individual words hold.

If it was true that the powers are co-equal no matter the words which describe them, then Article III could have simply stopped after its first 30 words, saying only:

“The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”

And, if the enumeration of powers were ultimately meaningless, then why not simply give Congress the legislative power, the President the executive power and the courts the judicial power, and then end the Constitution, right then and there?  Which, of course, is precisely the false premise undergirding this tyrannical concept.

Within the U.S. Constitution, there is a strict division of labor—a clear separation of powers—but no “co-equality,” as such.

Members of Congress are given the clear and overriding concentration of power, because only they speak for the States under whom they operate, within defined and allowable parameters.

Shifting an equal amount of governing power over to the executive or judicial officers only promotes the “absolute tyranny” and “absolute despotism” complained of in the Declaration of Independence.

Which is why James Madison promoted ratification of the proposed Constitution, in The Federalist, #51, by saying:

“In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.”[2]

These United States guarantee to every State of the Union a Republican Form of Government, by Article IV, Section 4.  Elected delegates representing their individual State in the meeting of the States work together to enact law within their sphere of allowable federal action, for the general welfare and common defense, leaving all other governing matters to the States, individually.

Such are the founding principles of our American Republic, found in the supreme Law of the Land, that no federal servant may ever stand against, due to their sworn and binding oath to support the Constitution which empowers them.

Next up: A deeper examination into members of Congress and our Republican Form of Government.

 

 

Lesson 03: Article I, Sections 2 - 4

House of Representatives & Senate

Welcome to Lesson III of the Patriot Corps LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear Program Course, as we examine the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.

Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution discusses the U.S. House of Representatives and Section 3 covers the U.S. Senate.

The States are proportionally represented in the House of Representatives, according to their individual State population, relative to the population of the whole Union.

In contrast, the States are equally represented in the Senate.  Each State has two U.S. Senators, no matter the State’s physical size or population count.  With 50 States in the American Union, there are 100 U.S. Senators.

While the U.S. Constitution set the number of Representatives for the very first Congress, it doesn’t specify a given number thereafter, but it does require that each State shall have at least one Representative and, by Clause 3, that:

"The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand." 

The restriction “shall not exceed” pertains to “the Number of Representatives”—one—not “persons”—thirty thousand.  Therefore, this formula places a maximum restriction on the size of the House, preventing the ratio of Representatives-to-population from reaching towards two Representatives-per-thirty thousand persons. 

Since the directive prevents the numerator from getting bigger and the denominator from getting smaller, then the ratio may go towards one Representative for every million people, but not towards one Representative for every thousand.

With 331 million people in the United States as determined by the 2020 census, and 435 Representatives, there is now on average one Representative for approximately every 760,000 people, although the actual proportion varies, especially among the least-populated States.[3]

At current population numbers, having one Representative for every 30,000 people would work out to some 11,000 Representatives—which would obviously be unworkable, not that this stops its adherents.

Within their discretion, Congress in 1911 fixed the size of the House of Representatives at 433, with a provision for an additional Representative for each of two expected territorial admissions to Statehood.[4]

Since Arizona and New Mexico were admitted to Statehood in 1912, 435 members have since served in the House of Representatives, except temporarily when Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the Union in 1959, when they were each also allowed one Representative.[5]

The temporary bump to 437 Representatives was brought back down to 435 when the House reallocated members following the 1960 census.[6]

The primary factor—no matter the ultimate number of Representatives Congress chooses—Section 2, Clause 3 requires their apportionment to distribute them fairly across the Union.

Apportionment starts with an accurate population count, and for that purpose a formal census is performed every ten years. Apportionment is also required of all direct taxes, but there haven’t been any direct taxes levied upon the States since the Civil War.

The 36 heaviest-populated States have more Representatives, than Senators and seven States equally have two Representatives with their two Senators, while the six least-populated States currently have only one Representative.[7]

And, of course, the heaviest-populated States have far more Representatives, than Senators. Under the 2020 census, California presently has 52 Representatives; Texas, 38; Florida, 28 and New York, 26.[8]

The House of Representatives is typically understood to represent the common man and his interests, due to the larger number of Representatives, but also their more-frequent election “every second Year,” as mandated by Section 2, Clause 1.

Senators, however, serve a six-year term, by Section 3, Clause 1.

Every incumbent from either House is thrown out of his or her seat at the end of their respective term, although they may seek re-election.  One third of Senators are up for election every second year as their staggered six-year term expires.

When a new Congress assembles in their first session "at noon on the third day of January" according to the terms of the Twentieth Amendment, Representatives must, in accordance with Section 2, Clause 5, choose their Speaker and “other Officers.”

Clause 5 additionally details that the House of Representatives shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

Although Section 3 originally specified that Senators were to be chosen by their respective State legislatures, ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913 changed the selection process to a direct election by the voters of each State.

Section 3 further details that each Senator has one vote.

Under the earlier Articles of Confederation, the States had been represented by a number of delegates as decided and supported by each State, who together cast but a single vote for the State.[9]

While many conservatives understandably call for the repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment, due to weakened Senatorial oversight as compared with an earlier tighter rein over them by the respective legislatures, no one ever speaks to returning to a one-State, one-vote rule for the Senate, as was found in the Congress of the Confederation.

Each Senator being given his or her own vote dilutes the relative importance of the State, as a State, while simultaneously giving individual Senators a freer reign.

However, it is admittedly easier to maintain a quorum in the Senate, when each Senator has his or her own vote.

The difficulty of maintaining a quorum had presented itself as quite the problem in the Confederation Congress.  For example, the Confederation Congress didn’t meet the minimum requirement of seven States present to conduct ordinary business on 104 of the 216 attempted days of meeting in 1786—a full 48% of the time.[10]

Of course, without a quorum, the continuation of government itself becomes increasingly threatened.  As Chief Justice John Marshall noted in the 1821 U.S. Supreme Court case of Cohens v. Virginia:

"States can put an end to the government by refusing to act.  They have only not to elect Senators, and it expires without a struggle."[11]

The Chief Justice was speaking from a time when the State legislatures still elected Senators, of course, but the effect is still the same.  Without a quorum present, no governing business may be done—no laws may be enacted, budgets approved, or commissions or treaties consented to.

The Vice-President of the United States is designated an ex-officio role as the President of the Senate in Section 3, Clause 3, and empowered to direct the Senate’s business, but only votes to break a tie.

For the last century, however, Vice-Presidents have found other uses for their time, and they now typically only serve as President of the Senate during the count of Electoral votes every four years after Presidential elections, in accordance with the command of Article II, Section 1, Clause 3.

The remainder of the time, the Senate is conducted in its normal affairs by the President Pro Tempore, who is directed to conduct the business of the Senate, in the absence of the Vice-President.

The Senate has by Section 3, Clause 6 “the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” 

Impeachment is the process that charges executive and judicial officers with “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” to seek removal from office, and possible disqualification from ever again holding an executive or judicial office under the authority of the United States.[12]

Section 4 details that Congress may at any time by law make or alter State regulations that determine the “Times, Places and Manner” of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, except that members of Congress may not alter the election places for U.S. Senators.

This prohibition prevented Congress from calling for elections for U.S. Senators at places that were distant from the State legislative seat, when State legislators yet voted for U.S. Senators (when such a power could have been used to fatigue the Legislatures into compliance).

Next up: A deeper examination into the fundamental differences between members of Congress and federal officers.

Lesson 04:  Article I, Sections 5 - 6

Members of Congress v. Federal Officers

Welcome to Lesson 04 of the Patriot Corps LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear Program Course, as we jump right in and begin examining the additional separation between members of Congress and federal officers.

Congress set the date for federal elections within members’ delegated discretion, given them by Article I, Section 4, to “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in the month of November” of pertinent election years, in 1845.[13]

Members of Congress must assemble together at least annually, by Section 4, Clause 2.  The Twentieth Amendment designates members assemble at noon on the 3^rd day of January, even as the amendment gives Congress the power and discretion to specify a different day.

By Section 5 and its repeated references to “Each House,” we see that the House of Representatives and the Senate are both constitutionally considered “Houses.”

Also, by the repeated references in Section 5 to “Each House” and “its members,” both Houses actually consist of “Members,” even as Section 3 directly calls its members, “Senators.”

And, with Section 1 earlier telling us that “Congress” shall “consist of a Senate and House of Representatives,” “Congressman” literally means “a man of Congress,” which therefore actually points both to U.S. Representatives and U.S. Senators.  However, “Congressman,” and now “Congresswoman,” on the streets, have come to casually mean only U.S. Representatives, to simultaneously exclude Senators.

Section 5 details that “Each House” shall “be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members.”  And, importantly, Section 5 also details that “Each House” may not only “determine the Rules of its Proceedings” but also “punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour” and “expel a Member.”

Obviously, if only each House may punish or expel its own members, but the House is directly empowered to impeach and the Senate is to try all impeachments then no member of either House may be impeached by the House of Representatives and then tried by the Senate.

Of course, this understanding follows also the letter and spirit of Article II, Section 4, when it details that only ‘The President, Vice-President, and all civil Officers of the United States may be impeached.”

But, unlike casually meaning to only refer to members of the House of Representatives when speaking of “Congressmen,” it is a grave and fundamental error to ever call members of Congress, “Officers.”  Indeed, if one routinely calls members “Officers,” then it helps hide the serious error when federal officers try and act like members of Congress and falsely legislate in their place.

Even the constitutional oath required by Article VI, Clause 3 lists legislative members clearly apart from officers, both at the State and federal level, keeping them wholly separate, as it details:

“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution…”

Members of Congress are not and cannot ever be officers under or of the United States.  The Constitution, in fact, goes so far as to directly prohibit this practice.

Article I, Section 6 shows just how firmly is this separation of powers, as its pertinent words from Clause 2 detail that:

“no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.”

Being an officer of the United States directly bars that person from simultaneously being a member of Congress.  The same words, of course, would reciprocally prohibit any member of Congress from simultaneously holding any office under the United States.

Obviously, if legally holding a member of Congress as an officer would thereby directly bar them from their legislative seat, then it is wholly improper to even casually refer to members of Congress as an “Officer” or assert that they hold an “Office.”

Article I, Section 2 directly declares that the House of Representatives is composed of “Members.”  Patriots shouldn’t complicate matters beyond that clear designation.

While Section 3 (as covered earlier) expressly details that the Senate shall be composed of two “Senators” from each State, remember that Section 5 speaks to “each House” and its own “Members.”

Article II, Section 3 directly declares the President shall commission “all the Officers of the United States.”  But, of course, the President never commissions members of Congress, because they aren’t officers.

As seen earlier, both the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate are both considered “Officers,” as are the other legislative officers who aren’t also members of Congress, such as the Clerk and Sergeant-at-Arms.

However, legislative officers are not “Officers of the United States” or “Officers under the United States,” or the Constitution would again bar them from their legislative seats the way Section 6 is worded.

But, being legislative officers, the Speaker and President Pro Tempore don’t vote, unless they be equally divided.  The other members of Congress aren’t legislative officers, or neither would they be able to vote, as voting isn’t what officers do, it’s what members do.

To those who assert that members of Congress are interchangeable with federal officers, ask them why Article II had to list them separately, to ensure neither Senators nor Representatives were ever appointed to be a Presidential Elector.  Note, after all, that Section 1, Clause 2 says:

"No Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector."

The holding of members of Congress apart from federal officers in appointing Presidential Electors in Article II parallels their reciprocal treatment in Article I, when Section 3 omits naming them as Clause 7 declares that judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than:

“removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.”

Senators and Representatives had to be named in Article II, because they do not hold an Office.  So, to reach them, they had to be named.  But, members didn’t have to be named in Article II, because they still don’t hold an Office under the United States, and thus they cannot be impeached.

In conformance with Article VI, the very first Act, of the very first Session, of the very first Congress, in 1789, created the simple, 14-word oath to “support” the Constitution, that served the United States well, for 74 years.

However, at the most unstable and divisive time in American history, a new oath was created by Congress and signed into law on July 2^nd, 1862.  For the first time ever, in 1863, members of Congress oddly began swearing to “well and faithfully discharge the office on which [they were] about to enter, so help [them] God,” even as the new legislation nowhere specifically mentioned that it applied to members of Congress.[14]

Whatever is the office that members of Congress have entered since 1863, it is not, was not, and cannot be, an office of or under the United States.

The best way back to our founding principles is to study them intently so they may be applied consistently, making mental note of all contradictions that serve as a trail of evidence to follow at the appropriate time.

The oath taken by members of Congress over the past 160 years of steady political decline—to well and faithfully discharge their office—is a significant piece of evidence that suggests that we have been intentionally steered from our original path, but it also suggests that we may find our way back, by diligently following that trail of evidence back to its rotten source.

Next up: Legislative Bills.

 

Lesson 05: Article I, Section 7

Legislative Bills

Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution discusses the process by which a proposed legislative bill becomes a law, with its first clause mandating that:

"All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills."

The requirement for all revenue bills to originate in the House that is based upon proportional-representation traces its roots back to the American Revolution, when the colonists demanded that taxation and representation be tied together.

Great Britain had severed that historical tradition in 1765, to raise revenue to help pay for the French and Indian War, where George Washington had risen to distinction.[15]

Previously, locally-elected colonial Assemblymen imposed their own laws and internal taxation within their respective colony, even as the Royal governor and his Crown-appointed council exercised colonial administration and Parliament dealt with foreign affairs.

The colonists protested the nefarious 1765 Stamp Act sufficiently that Great Britain repealed it in 1766.[16]

However, on the same day as repeal, King George III and Parliament enacted their Declaratory Act, to declare their ultimate dominion over the colonies, as they asserted the fantastic power to be able to bind the American colonies “in all cases whatsoever.”[17]

In 1767, Parliament pushed forward with the Townshend Act, again placing duties upon the colonists without their consent.  The colonists refused to purchase the taxed goods, even if they had to suffer deprivation without them.[18]

Due to the success of the colonial non-importation agreements, Great Britain repealed all of the Townshend duties in 1770, except on tea.[19]

Parliament kept the tax on tea, to maintain their claimed ability to tax the colonists, but also to continue paying the royal governors and judges out of the tea taxes which proved effective in maintaining officer loyalty in increasingly-turbulent times.

The British diligently sought to find creative means to institute taxes that would take hold.  In 1773, Parliament found their path.  Parliament rescinded their old requirement that mandated a brokerage arrangement on all tea sold in the colonies.[20]  Thereafter, the British East India Company was allowed to bypass tea middlemen and sell directly to retailers.

The East India Company tea—which was taxed but not sold through middlemen—became cheaper than its competitors’ tea, that was still sold through middlemen, even if it was smuggled Dutch tea, without tax.

But, the colonists still largely refused to purchase the lower-priced, taxed tea.  Instead, they began pressuring tea dealers into resigning, and unsold tea began clogging the marketplace pipeline.  Soon, ship captains returned to England carrying the tea they had intended to off-load in the colonies.

In Massachusetts, however, Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to allow ships to leave port without paying the duty owed on the tea as if it had landed.[21]

Of course, this tea largely ended up in the Boston Harbor.

Although a small group of prominent American colonists later offered to pay for the destroyed tea, with a current value today of several million dollars, the British ministry refused to accept payment and move forward.[22]

Instead, one may read about the extensive British-caused injuries and usurpations that followed, in our own 1776 Declaration of Independence, including their single cause, which may be summed up by the passage that:

“The…present King of Great Britain…has combined with others to subject us…to their Acts of pretended Legislation…For…declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.”

At the root of every injury listed within our Declaration of Independence that the Founders submitted to a candid world, lay the horrid British claim as espoused in their 1766 Declaratory Act, of being able to “bind” the colonists “in all cases whatsoever,” without their consent and against their will.

Every injury listed in the American Declaration of Independence was simply but another of a multitude of “cases” where Parliament had sought to implement an absolute power, “in all cases whatsoever.”

Requiring all revenue bills originate in the House of Representatives, where Americans are proportionally represented, best reinforces representation.

Once a revenue bill passes the House of Representatives, it is sent to the Senate, where Senators may "propose or concur with Amendments” as on other bills. In all other cases beyond raising revenue, however, Senators may also originate bills.

But, no matter where any bill originates, Section 7, Clause 2 requires that:

"Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States;”

Proposed legislative bills may become law along one of three paths.

Referring to the President, Clause 2 continues with the first path, as it begins also speaking towards the second, saying:

“if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it.”

So, the first possible route is that the President signs the bill that previously passed both Houses of Congress.

Clause 2 has more to say about the second possible path:

“If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law.”

The process described here is the congressional override of a Presidential veto.  To override, two-thirds of both Houses must approve the final version.

A safeguard is mandated in the case of a congressional override, which additionally requires the logging of the vote tally, as Clause 2 continues:

“But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively.”

Clause 2 ends describing the third route, as it details:

“If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law."

For the record, Clause 3 is similarly-worded, as it discusses orders, resolutions and votes needing approval of both Houses, saying: 

"Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill."

So, Section 7 puts into effect the principle spoken of in the Declaration of Independence, of “Governments” being “instituted among Men,” to secure man’s unalienable rights, where governments derive “their just Powers from the consent of the governed,” who act through their elected representatives, according to their delegated powers.

Thus, the requirement for "Every Bill” passing the House of Representatives and the Senate to go through defined parameters, before it may become law.

If the President approves…he signs the bill, which becomes law according to its terms.

But, if the President vetoes the bill, it takes two-thirds of both Houses to override his veto. Failure to override the vetoed bill ends its life, and it expires without becoming law.

However, if the President doesn’t formally object to a proposed legislative bill, it will in time become law without his signature, unless Congress adjourns before the designated time limit is reached, “in which Case it shall not be a Law."

It is important to consider the ramifications of Section 7 further, for it informs Patriots of the fundamental requirements for all laws.

A bill that passes both Houses will become law, if the President signs it.

If the President vetoes a proposed bill, it cannot be a law unless two-thirds of both Houses override his veto.

A bill that passes both Houses will become law without the President’s signature, if Congress remains in session the ten required days, not counting Sundays. 

But here’s the absolutely-critical point of this Lesson—if Congress adjourns before the President signs a bill in his allowed time, the congressionally-approved bill without the President’s signature “shall not be a Law.”

Since even a bill passed by both Houses can’t become law without the President’s signature if Congress adjourns before the President’s time limit is up, then obviously nothing which isn’t approved in final fashion by both Houses of Congress may ever be a law in these United States of America.

The U.S. Constitution doesn’t designate any means for enacting law which bypasses Congress.

Since the President cannot unilaterally create anything with law-like finality, beyond his named power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, certainly his inferior officers can never do so, either.  That, of course, is precisely why it is called “legislation”—because duly-elected legislators are intricately involved.

So, what to make of the extensive actions taken by alphabet-agency bureaucrats of the various executive departments—such as the FDA, OSHA, or CDC—who issue regulations of their own crafting, nominally held as law?

And, what then of “government corporations” and “independent establishments”—the EPAs, the FCCs, FTCs, SECs, and others of this ilk? 

Are all the directives which those entities implement—even if nominally under generally-worded, broad-based directions first issued by Congress—“law” in these United States of America?

The Government of the United States and the U.S. Courts have for generations certainly enforced them as such, although the June 2024 Loper Bright Enterprises case may have interjected a breath of fresher air.  In Loper, the Court repealed their earlier 1984 Chevron decision, where judges had deferred congressional ambiguity to the alphabet agency interpretations.  The Court has now indicated they’ll hereafter make all discretionary calls themselves, rather than defer to the judgement of the bureaucrats.

But, if the express words of the Constitution mean anything, bureaucratic regulations may never be law, congressional ambiguity or not.

And, of course, since the Constitution means everything—being the supreme Law of the Land—then nothing federal servants may ever do may ever transgress the Constitution.

Remember, the Constitution expressly vests in Congress the named legislative powers, that only members may directly exercise throughout the Union.  These named powers cannot be delegated to executive or judicial branch officials for direct exercise in the Union of States, because of the guarantee of a Republican Form of Government, requiring legislative representation.

Which explains the Patriot Corps ROAR-Path—to first learn so well the normal case of allowable government action, that Patriots understand in a general manner, how normal things relate to one another, so we may later investigate elsewhere a few troubling abnormal cases, to understand how they are put into effect, so we may end the work-around mechanism, Once and For All or even Happily-Ever-After.

Patriots must temporarily ignore various transgressions to our founding principles, until we gain sufficient understanding of normal federal actions.

In the short term, just make mental note of transgressions, for study at a later date and different place.

In the meantime, never for a moment believe that Americans face all-powerful wizards or magical genies who are mysteriously empowered to do whatever they please, wherever they please.

After all, the Constitution is crystal clear as to the status of even a fully approved legislative bill proposed within the enumerated powers of Congress, but Congress adjourned before the President’s time limit expired, and the President simply didn’t sign it—"it shall not be a Law."

Certainly, therefore nothing that bypasses Congress completely, or that is modified by federal officers after it leaves Congress, may ever be a law, not in and for these United States of America—no, not ever.

Next up:  Beginning a look at the enumerated powers of Congress.

 

Lesson 06: Article I, Section 8, Clause 1

Congressional Power

Other than the initial vesting of the named legislative powers in Congress by Article I, Section 1, the next most-significant passage in the Constitution is arguably Section 8 and its specific listing of members’ enumerated powers.

Now there’s probably a theoretical argument out there that the proffered hierarchy gets it wrong.  The argument may assert that from the perspective of the people being governed, the powers nominally exercised over them should be more-important than worrying about who happens to exercise those powers.

But this hypothetical argument errs because it is based upon a pragmatic, modernist perspective, instead of fundamental principles.

Our founding principles only grant federal servants named powers that may be exercised by those vested with the particular type of authority, and thus only our Republican Form of Government serves as an appropriate bottleneck to drop by several orders of magnitude, the creation of new federal statutes.

The pragmatic argument cannot prevent, except perhaps by a majority vote of competent leaders with unquestioned moral integrity, what the Declaration of Independence called the creation of “a multitude of New Offices” and the sending “hither” of “swarms of Officers to harass” the people “and eat out their substance.”

The pragmatic argument can’t challenge either the improper entry of the veritable army of bureaucrats into legislative affairs—from scores of executive departments, agencies, government corporations, and independent establishments—who are needed to implement extraneous federal action on every imaginable topic.

The Constitution, after all, only allows Congress to make law for the whole Union.  Or, “at worst,” it requires Congress to be the last party involved in the making of that law.  Think of Congress in this case requesting the Treasury Department to first issue a report on a topic involving finance, before members decide the issue with finality, for example.

When members of Congress are the last party involved in creating law, suddenly the limited number of Representatives and Senators becomes an absolute barrier to ever-expanding federal action, because the limited number of legislative members may only get so much done, on any particular time-table.

Political fires rage today, only because members of Congress may set them by writing general, broad-based laws on a multitude of topics and then walk away. Members leave to executive officers the creation of a whole host of new regulations and to judges the implementation of “case law,” to conform the general law Congress outlined, to the wide variety of instances found throughout the whole Union on any given topic.

The retort that the Constitution vests the executive power in the President—so it’s his duty to execute the law enacted by Congress and thus do what’s necessary to carry out the general will of Congress in the particular case thankfully fails in its argument.

Because, the Constitution goes so far as even to require Congress, in Article I, Section 8, Clause 18;

“To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

Members of Congress not only enact law on the “foregoing” legislative topics discussed before Clause 18, but this last clause of Section 8 even requires legislative members to enact all necessary and proper laws needed to execute even the executive powers the Constitution otherwise vests with the Government of the United States, the executive departments, and ultimately extending all the way down to individual federal officers.

And, there’s no way on God’s green earth that 435 Representatives and 100 Senators could possibly have implemented all the regulations, orders and decrees, that were issued by tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats, over so many decades on topics extending far beyond the enumerated powers.

Indeed, even if there were already the maximum number of members permissible in Congress, not even 11,000 or so Representatives could have overseen the direct implementation of laws on so many different topics as currently exist federally.[23]

Thankfully, the Constitution prohibits Congress from delegating members’ enumerated legislative authority for the Union, to executive and judicial officers, even as it doesn’t expressly foreclose an indirect false extension of allowed special powers, beyond allowable boundaries.

Even as it is the express duty of every federal officer to uphold the supreme Law of the Land, against anything to the contrary, no one beyond Congress may fine-tune legislation meant for the Union, other than the President with his veto.[24]

Clause 1 starts off the list of enumerated legislative powers found in Section 8, saying:

"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States…"

The power to raise revenue is obviously an important power for any organization, effort or cause, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that raising revenue is first listed.

After all, it is a safe bet, had there been no continuing financial turmoil after the end of the Revolutionary War, that there wouldn’t likely have been a convention and new Constitution, at least at that time, organized in its current form.

Article VI ultimately alludes to the purpose of creating a new Constitution, with greater revenue powers, as Clause 1 says:

“All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.”

The most-pressing need of the convention era was ensuring the debt incurred from liberating the colonists from the yoke of British tyranny could be serviced.

Article VI acknowledges that the change in Form of Government—from the Confederation to the Constitution—wouldn’t void the former’s debts, which would be honored by the latter.

Ignoring the different types of revenue streams for the moment helps one see that the power to lay and collect revenue is integrally tied to the paying the acknowledged debts and providing the allowed services.

This can be seen by examining the most important words of the first part of this clause, which read:

"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes…to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States..."

The Power to lay and collect revenue must therefore be seen as a qualified power—i.e., that Congress may not simply raise revenue for any purpose members see fit.

Members of Congress, for example, are not given the independent power to lay and collect taxes, as they please, “and” then given the separate power to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.

Instead, members are given the power to lay and collect taxes “to pay” the legitimate debts and cover the allowed expenses.

And, of course, the ability to “pay the Debts and provide the common Defence and general Welfare” are not specific grants of independent power, either.

If they were, the explicit enumeration in the remainder of clauses in Section 8 wouldn’t have been necessary.

As James Madison said in The Federalist, #41—the “misleading” idea that Clause 1 grants Congress "an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defence or general welfare" is a confounding "misconstruction."[25]

After all, the indecent proposal excludes “from…meaning” “the clear and precise expressions” which are “denied any signification whatsoever,” while “the more doubtful and indefinite terms” are extended beyond all rational meaning.[26]

Madison writes “Nothing is more natural or common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars.”[27]

Of course, proponents of unlimited federal power today go far beyond the words of Clause 1.

Advocates promoting unlimited federal action act as if the words found in Clause 1 reach not only to the “common defence” of “the United States,” but reach to the “uncommon offense” throughout the whole world.

And, the idea that “the general Welfare” isn’t limited to that which is indivisible between all Americans, but instead reaches to the specific welfare of particular people, even if at exaggerated cost, to the remainder of people, is equally ludicrous.

In the end, however, the explanations offered by tyrants-in-training never matter, but are offered simply to placate troubled minds sufficiently so they will in time accept any inadequate excuse offered and ultimately move on to other matters that they still consider to be winnable. Sadly, in futile attempt to remain relevant, far too many Americans first give up the very thing that could keep them relevant.

Indeed, never accept false premises of unchallengeable authority, for once accepted, no rational basis remains for disputing anything, and an ignoble end will soon be right around the proverbial corner.

Instead, make note of transgressions and revisit them once one gains sufficient knowledge and proper perspective, that finally explains—using strict construction of the Constitution—the horrid secrets of our political opponents’ stupefying success.

From the broadest-based perspective, the U.S. Constitution provides the form and framework for Congress and the Government of the United States to operate. 

Prior to ratification of the U.S. Constitution, the Articles of Confederation performed that job, for the Congress of States meeting during that time.

A comparison between like-worded clauses of these two founding documents is informative.

The Constitution’s tying of the raising of revenue to its disbursement follows the same parameters as did Article VIII of the Confederation, which declared:

"All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defence or general welfare...shall be defrayed out of a common treasury."

And the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution also follows Article III of the Confederation, as the earlier document therein declared that:

"The said states hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other for their common defence, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare."

Recall that the repeated complaint about the Articles of Confederation were their lack of command, including even the inability to lay and collect their own taxes, which inadequacy the Constitution sought to rectify.

Whatever may be said of the aim to provide sufficient government, the same words and phrases—“common defence” and “general welfare”—from two different documents of the same general era, couldn't cause opposing results; impotency in one, but omnipotence in the other.

Some other factor, or factors, necessarily exist, to cause opposing appearances.

Of course, listening to our political opponents tell it, those who swear an oath to support the Constitution may nevertheless change the meaning of its words.

This preposterous claim of unbridled power, of course, must be fully investigated, at the appropriate time and place.

But, that time is not yet, and the place is not here, even as here we will in Lessons 16 - 18 be introduced to the inherent power which serves as the false base of all improperly-extended federal authority.

In the meantime, keep focused on what is true and proper, and learn consistently the normal case.

Once one learns how all the normal pieces fit together, then at a later date and another place one may delve more fully into abnormal cases, which perhaps defy all the normal rules, but they will all necessarily conform to the allowed special exception.

Do not let false appearances cause you to doubt the founding principles of American government that are enshrined and protected in and by our supreme Law of the Land.  Every federal servant is duty-bound to give his or her binding oath to support that Constitution, and they are all powerless to circumvent their fundamental duty, even as they may yet work in its allowed exception. 

Next up:  a deeper look into the claimed power of interpretation.

Lesson 07: Article I, Section 8, Clause 1

Common Defense and General Welfare, Commerce

The idea that those who swear an oath to support the Constitution are yet able to redefine words and reinterpret phrases found in the Constitution, so that they may exercise new federal powers directly throughout the Union, is the most ridiculous work of fiction ever told.

The fabricated boast rests upon the absurd premise that the mandatory oath isn’t simultaneously binding—that those who have signified their required subservience to the Constitution may yet overrule it.

Take, for example, the 1871 Supreme Court’s bragging that 52 years earlier the 1819 McCulloch v. Maryland Court reinterpreted the phrase “necessary and proper”—found in Article I, Section 8, Clause 18—to mean instead only “convenient.”[28]

The 1871 Court effectively said if the earlier court could for convenience support the second bank of the United States, then the present court could likewise support legal tender paper currencies.

But, court opinions contrary to founding principles can never be accepted at face value.  Instead, one must learn to read between the lines, to learn what is occurring underneath the contrived surface.

Take, for example, the 1871 Legal Tender Cases opinion, mentioned above.

Three earlier U.S. Supreme Court cases had already come to the opposing conclusion, including the 1870 Hepburn v. Griswold Court, which went so far as to conclude that the Constitution prohibited legal tender paper currencies.[29]

May allowable federal powers be so easily changed, merely by retiring one judge and packing the court with two new justices predisposed to approving some bold new outcome?

Is there nothing We the People may do, beyond searching for saints to elect, in hopes they appoint angels who may exercise such awe-inspiring power, instead, in a benevolent fashion?

If there isn’t anything else, then tragically the Constitution is as worthless as those who falsely proclaim it to be.

However, if there is far more—as the Patriot Corps asserts—then perhaps it is the pro-liberty faction yet opposed to the Constitution who are the gullible ones.  After all, they won’t even question the exaggerated claims of Paper Tyrants, simply because the scoundrels currently get away with implementing their lies.

Instead of disproving the absurd claims, however, anarcho-libertarians have resigned themselves to accepting “anything-goes-government” until they may successfully reject everything.  But, is the all-or-nothing crowd wise to work towards the same goal of repealing the Constitution as those who push for unlimited power, even if, for opposing reasons?

Now it is certainly understandable why those who push for unlimited federal power want to repeal the Constitution.  After all, if we close down their bypass-mechanism, their false rule terminates overnight, even without changing how Congress and the U.S. Government are currently staffed.

But, why would liberty-minded anarchists ever believe that eliminating the Constitution would promote liberty? After all, not only don’t they have any structural foundation whatsoever to counter our mutual, pro-tyranny opponents who are well-organized, having successfully pushed for unlimited power for two centuries, but the former can’t even explain the false base of supposedly magical powers we all currently face, when magic doesn’t even exist.

The most effective tool in our arsenal against federal tyranny is the U.S. Constitution, bar none.  Patriots need only learn how federal servants may ever bypass or ignore their normal constitutional parameters, with impunity, and then resolutely work to expose that devious loophole to the bright light of day, to close it forever.

Even if it were true that another long-term solution may one-day more-justly supersede the Constitution, enforcing the existing Constitution is still the most-effective and quickest way to cast off improper federal action, without risk, to contain or end inappropriate federal activity.

After all, the Constitution is already the supreme Law of the Land and all who exercise its delegated powers must already swear a binding oath to support it.

Which of the following is the more rational approach?

The first option, the Patriot Corps answers, which is to correct the errant circumvention of the current constitutional order by exposing its devious work-around process, to get, say, 90% of the way towards liberty, without risk, worrying about the final 10% later.

The second option, proposed by anarchists, puts everything on the line and up for grabs, while shooting for an all or nothing response in one fell swoop, without an adequate foundation, seeking a whole new order, which, with history as our guide, would likely make things horribly worse, for another few centuries.

Unfortunately, explaining how our political opponents pull off their spectacular political coup gets complicated rather quickly, even though it only rests on an allowed special power deviously-extended beyond allowable boundaries.

Which is why a guided tour best helps Patriots discover quickly what is being done under the radar and behind the scenes.

And that tour starts with learning well the normal case so abnormal practices don’t too early get in the way and confuse those not yet firmly grounded in founding principles.

Indeed, the gravest political mistake is to believe The Grand Lie that everyday federal practices may ever override our founding principles that are secured by our supreme Law of the Land, that is in turn supported by binding oaths of all who exercise its delegated powers.

Even as the Patriot Corps LearnTheConstitutionInOneYear Program Course covers the normal case of allowable federal actions, Lessons 16-18 will nevertheless cover the fundamental basis for all abnormal federal actions which appear to violate the founding principles of our American Republic.

After all, these abnormal actions are again necessarily-based upon an allowed special power, simply extended in a deceitful manner, beyond allowable boundaries.

The best, shortest explanation of how federal servants ever became our political masters is detailed in the Patriot Corps SNIFF Premium Course, available now.[30]

The longer explanation, which will go into greater detail and showcase a specific example, to prove true the general concept discussed in our Seek New Information First & Foremost Course, is scheduled to be released in 2025, as our GROWL Premium Course, which will examine the devious monetary conversion from gold and silver coin to paper currency.

Or, see Matt Erickson’s public domain books on this topic, including Two Hundred Years of Tyranny, Understanding Federal Tyranny, Patriot Quest, Dollars and non-Cents and Monetary Laws of the United States, freely-available electronically at the www.PatriotCorps.org website.[31]

Another favored phrase of judicial interpretation is found in the Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 power of Congress “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”

The idea that Congress, or the courts, may continuously bring more and more things under the Interstate Commerce umbrella, to federalize even intra-State activity—including the production of goods and supply of services—is another preposterous claim, nominally founded on the supposed power of judicial interpretation.

“Commerce” is a noun that references an exchange or trade, which involves the movement of things from place to place—and its related functions, including the scheduling and coordination of activities affecting the exchange of goods.

“Regulate” is a verb, meaning to make something regular, consistent, and uniform, as also found in Clause 5, where members of Congress are there given the express power to regulate the value of money they coin, to make that value regular, consistent and uniform.

Making “commerce” regular, consistent and uniform doesn’t extend to directly regulating businesses engaged in commerce, let alone regulating businesses merely engaged in the production of things.

From the earliest of precedent-setting court cases, one must realize that the explanations given by the court in support of omnipotent federal powers never admit what they are doing.

Because, if federal justices ever admitted what they were really doing, they would give away their false base of action, which would end their fictitious rule.

Precedent-setting court opinions are indecipherable, not because federal servants are all-powerful, but precisely because they’re not.

Rest assured, if they truly had the legal authority to everywhere do as they claim, their words would be brief, crystal clear and there’d never be any question as to their true authority.

Since they continuously push for ever-expanding authority, precedent-setting cases twist, turn, and convolute those opinions to make opposite situations appear true. 

That’s why it’s up to us to learn to see through their false claims, because their make-believe reign is so fragile that we could end it almost overnight, if we fully understood and finally responded accordingly.

Thankfully, it is within our individual power to learn what we are missing, to work towards casting off all false authority built up over two centuries, without even needing to change any particular person in power or directly repealing any particular law.

We need only seek to make sense of 200 years of utter political nonsense, being able to explain how federal servants may ever ignore or bypass their normal constitutional parameters with impunity.  We may then cast off all invalid law all at once, because it is not actually “for” the Union of States (instead, all invalid law, is only valid for D.C. and other special, exclusive-legislation parcels).

The most effective means to reveal absurd political reasoning to the bright light of day involves extending false claims to their illogical conclusion, as Matt Erickson has shown in “Trapped by Political Desire: The Novel.”[32]

The protagonist of the story, unable to reach his fellow conservatives even after thirty years of trying, decides to take an alternate approach.  He thus nominally seeks to “help” his political adversaries advance their cause, but only as a trap, to expose their devious tactics to the purifying light of day.

The bait?  The promise of extended political terms, achieved by redefining the word “Year” as found in the Constitution, as it relates to political term lengths and election intervals.

If federal authorities may reinterpret “necessary and proper” to mean “convenient,” then surely they could redefine a “Year” to mean a “Decade” or a “Century,” right, and then stay in power for a lifetime?

It’s not like Alexander Hamilton—the chief architect of the omnipotent central government we now face—didn’t expressly call for life terms for U.S. Senators and American Presidents at the 1787 convention, after all.[33]

Under the express constitutional provisions to make or alter the regulations pertaining to the elections of Senators or Representatives, and determining the Time of choosing Presidential Electors, Congress in 1845 designated “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in the month of November” of election years as the day for holding elections.[34]

By the same expressly-named powers, members could within their discretion choose another day or date for federal elections.

The protagonist of the story writes his Political Year Strategy, to recommend Congress choose Leap Year Day as the new date for federal elections.

Members need only thereafter define a new “Political Year” to be “the length of time until the date designated for federal elections again shows up on the calendar.”

With February 29^th designated as the date for federal elections, by members’ claimed magic, this would seemingly turn the four-calendar year timespan between one Leap Year Day and the next, magically into one “Political Year.”

U.S. Representatives—who serve a two-year term—could by this bold new standard theoretically serve two “Political Years,” or eight calendar years, with federal elections coinciding with this same schedule.  U.S. Presidents would likewise by their claimed magic serve four “Political Years” or 16 calendar years, and U.S. Senators, their six “Political Year” term, or 24 calendar years.

But remember, the protagonist’s Political Year Strategy was only a trap, to expose all of Hamilton’s Government-by-Deception-through-Redefinition scheme to the bright light of day, to cast off The Make-Believe Rule of Paper Tyrants, ending 230 years of false political rule.

Because, if federal servants can’t reinterpret “Year” as it relates to term lengths and election intervals, then neither can they redefine other terms found in the Constitution, for direct exercise throughout the Union.

It is imperative to see through the false claims of unbridled power exercised directly throughout the Union.  This means searching for curtains to pull back, to reveal the vile source of the incessant political stench that emanates from D.C., to learn what we are missing, to address it directly, and cast off the false rule inappropriately extended over us.

Next up: the power of Congress to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises. 

Lesson 08: Article I, Section 8, Clause 1

Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises

The second requirement for raising federal revenue is found in Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution, which details:

"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States."

The first requirement was mentioned a few Lessons earlier, which again is the requirement of the apportionment of Direct Taxes, which is first found in Article I, when Section 2, Clause 3 which declares:

"Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers..."

The requirement for the apportionment of Direct Taxes is so important that the Constitution even took the unusual step of repeating it, as Article I, Section 9 details, in Clause 4:

"No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken."

So, the primary rule for raising federal revenue is that Direct Taxes must be apportioned.

And, the second rule is that all Duties, Imposts and Excises must be uniform throughout the United States.

Besides these two primary qualifications, there is also an express prohibition, as Article I, Section 9, Clause 5 details that:

"No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State."

And, there are also some secondary or minority parameters involved.

By Article I, Section 9, Clause 6 provides that:

“No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.”

Indians weren’t initially taxed or counted for purposes of apportionment, by Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, and "all other Persons"— slaves—only counted as “three-fifths” of a person for apportionment purposes.

Taxes or Duties were allowed upon the importation of slaves to $10 each, although all further slave importation was prohibited after 1807.[35]

And, by Article I, Section 7, remember, all bills for raising revenue must originate in the House of Representatives.

Lastly, by Article I, Section 10, there are a few restrictions applicable to the States.

The first is that no State, without the consent of Congress, may “lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it’s [sic] inspection Laws,” even as “the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States.” 

Nor was any State, without congressional consent, allowed to “lay any Duty of Tonnage.”

As the Constitution originally viewed the term, “Taxes” were understood as Direct Taxes levied upon the States, in proportion to their population, in relation to the population of the whole Union.

Duties, Imposts and Excises were forms of revenue indirectly laid, that needed only to be uniform, or consistent in their application, from place to place.

There have only been three periods of apportioned Direct Taxation in the United States.  The first Direct Tax, of two million dollars, was laid in 1798, “upon the United States, and apportioned to the states respectively,” to prepare for a pending war with France that never occurred.[36]

New Hampshire was allotted its proportionate share of the two million dollars of assessed taxes—being “seventy-seven thousand seven hundred and five dollars, thirty-six cents and two mills...”—and the other 15 States at that time in the Union were next allotted their respective proportionate shares.[37]

There were also three Direct Taxes laid during the War of 1812, totaling $12 million, and an annual $20 million Direct Tax laid in 1861, at the start of the Civil War.[38]

The express power of Direct Taxation was seen as a necessary ace up the Legislator's sleeve, essentially to provide sufficient revenue during war or pending war.  It was used as intended, providing revenue only during three different war-time eras.

Although Direct Taxes were laid upon the several States according to their population, the Direct Tax of 1798 was actually assessed “upon dwelling-houses, lands and slaves, according to the valuations and enumerations…"[39]

The three Direct Taxes laid during the War of 1812 also assessed lands, slaves and dwelling houses, but the 1861 Direct Tax was laid only upon land and dwelling houses.[40]

Only dwelling-houses over the value of $100 were assessed in Section 2 of the 1798 Tax, from 0.2% up to 1%, depending upon their value.[41]

The assessment per slave was fifty cents, but infirmed slaves, and slaves over 50 or under 13 years of age, were exempted from assessment.[42]

Taxes laid on the count or quantity, of persons or property, require only tracking their number. Property assessed according to its valuation required much more information to be tracked, to provide for some objective determination of subjective value. 

Due to apportionment, States with a large population base but a small amount of assessed property paid a higher taxation rate, on land.

The varying impact of this form of taxation was often resented by those heavily impacted, as it was plainly visible to all paying it.   Congressmen and Senators seeking re-election did not enjoy being confronted by wealthier constituents who understood what was being done to them, and who was doing the harm. Without surprise, Direct Taxation wasn’t a very popular method of raising revenue with members of Congress who tend to seek re-election.

The federal government was expected to be funded in normal day-to-day operations in time of peace by the misnamed indirect “taxation” power of Article I, Section 8, Clause 1, which again refers actually to Duties, Imposts, and Excises. 

Duties were the chief form of revenue for the early government, from ratification of the Constitution until the Civil War.

The large majority of the Duties imposed in the first era of government were imposed as Imposts. Imposts are Duties laid on the importation or exportation of goods.  Since the Constitution forbids Duties upon exported products, the constitutional meaning of Imposts in the United States are fees laid upon imported goods.  Imposts are synonymous with the term Customs or, more fully, Customs Duties.

While all Imposts are Duties, not all Duties are Imposts, as Duties may be laid upon domestic goods.

When Duties are laid on items according to their value, they are referred to as ad valorem Duties.

When Duties are laid on an item according to its weight, number, or measure, they are specific Duties.

As hereinbefore detailed, the first legislative Act of the first Session of the first Congress prescribed the required oath, as mandated by Article VI of the Constitution.[43]

The second enactment of law was "An Act for laying a Duty on Goods, Wares, and Merchandises imported into the United States" from any foreign port or place, for “the support of government, for the discharge of the debts of the United States, and the encouragement and protection of manufactures.”[44]

The list of imported goods being assessed with Customs Duties was extensive, including distilled spirits, molasses, wine and beer.  To name a few more items, sugar, coffee, cocoa, candles, cheese, and soap were also assessed.  Even boots, shoes, slippers, twine, steel, and nails were included, as was salt, tobacco, snuff, wool, cotton, coal, fish, and tea, but this list is but a fraction of the items reached.[45]

The third Act of the First Congress imposed Duties of Tonnage, which are Duties paid on the hauling capacity of ships.[46]

American-built, American-owned "coasting trade" vessels paid Tonnage Duties but once per year, while all other vessels were subject to Tonnage Duties upon every entry into the ports of the United States.[47]

On March 3, 1791 Congress imposed the first domestically-oriented Duties, upon distilled spirits.[48]

In 1794, Congress enacted four additional domestic Duties, including upon carriages used in the conveyance of persons, on licenses for selling wines, on snuff and refined sugar, and items sold at auction.[49]

Resentment towards the domestic Duties escalated quickly, from tar and feathering of tax collectors and burning of their residences, to even the shooting deaths of a few “rebels.”

The 1794 Whiskey Rebellion wasn’t quelled until President Washington personally led nearly 13,000-militiamen into the heart of the resistance, in Western Pennsylvania.[50]

Animosity grew again, though, with the Adams administration, especially with its 1797 Stamp Duties and then its infamous 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts.[51]

The Duties on snuff and snuff mills were the first to go.  They were first modified, and then suspended in their operation three times, before they were finally abolished in the year 1800.[52]

President Jefferson steered the American government in a new direction with a liberty-minded Congress, who together abolished all domestic Duties effective June of 1802.[53]

However, with the War of 1812 came new pressures for raising revenue, as the internal revenue Acts of old were effectively resurrected, along with a few new methods, besides.

Twelve million dollars of Direct Taxes were laid by three different war-time legislative Acts, and a wide number of domestic Duties were again laid.[54]

Besides the familiar Duties laid upon refined sugar, carriages, licenses for distillers and retailers of wines and liquors, and items sold at auction, new Duties reached household furniture and gold and silver watches, and various goods, wares, and merchandise manufactured in the United States.[55]

But in 1817, President James Monroe and Congress abolished all internal Duties, effective January first, 1818, repealing them within three years of the end of the war.[56]

For the next two generations, no more internal revenue Acts were enacted.  No domestically-oriented Duties or Excises were laid, nor were any more apportioned Taxes levied.

From 1818 until 1861, Congress relied upon external revenue—Imposts—for the vast bulk of the government's limited needs.

Eighty-four percent of all needed federal revenue ultimately came from Imposts, from 1797 to 1857.[57]

Public land sales brought in 10% of the total revenue through 1857, even as it reached 49% of all federal revenue in the year 1836 alone.[58]

Internal Duties and Direct Taxes were but temporary footnotes in the early days of the Republic, as internal domestic Duties between 1791 and 1857 amounted to only 1.35% of total federal revenue.[59]

Direct Taxes during this same period did not even hit 1% percent—they came in at just 0.77% of overall federal revenue during this first era of American government.[60]

Postal revenues and miscellaneous receipts rounded out government collections.

The federal government was limited in scope and largely followed the commands of the Constitution during this time.

Then, of course, the Civil War erupted, and the United States haven’t been the same since.

And the next big hit on the taxpayer pocketbook was the dreadful Sixteenth Amendment of 1913, which allowed the imposition of a uniform, indirect tax—that once upon a time, was more properly called an “Excise”—on all income which had been separated from its “source.”

Only income “derived” from its source—income that has been separated from its origin—may be and is no longer a tax “upon” the source, however.

If a Tax gets laid “on” income, even today, it would still be a Tax upon its source, and thus would still require apportionment.  The Sixteenth Amendment did not remove from the apportionment requirement Direct Taxes actually laid “on” income, it only allows a tax on income without apportionment when that income has been duly-separated from its source.

Next up: Naturalization and Bankruptcies.

 

 

 

Lesson 09: Article I, Section 8, Clause 4

Naturalization & Bankruptcies

Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution empowers Congress, in Clause 4:

“To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States.”

When members of Congress are given the express power to establish uniform rules on named topics, this is done so that multiple parties—States—may consistently carry them out.

When members are intended to carry out the named power alone, the Constitution simply delegates members the named power, such as “Congress shall have Power…To declare War,” for example.

Let’s examine the less-controversial topic first, of the two powers listed in Clause 4.

Members of Congress enacted the first federal bankruptcy law in the year 1800, but repealed it in 1803.[61]  They enacted the next bankruptcy law in 1841, but repealed it in 1843, and they repealed their 1867 law in 1878.[62]^{, [63]}

The first permanent bankruptcy Act wasn’t enacted until 1898, so the scarcity of federal bankruptcy laws in the 19^th century largely left matters to the States.[64]  But, because the States cannot impair the obligation of contracts—by the express prohibition found in Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution—State laws can’t release debtors from their contractual obligations and extinguish debts.

But, early federal bankruptcy laws didn’t reach voluntary bankruptcies anyway, like they do now.  Instead, they were involuntarily brought against debtors by creditors seeking access to debtor assets.

And, in that case, State-based insolvency laws could still protect debtors not only by declaring particular assets off-limits to creditors, but also by keeping debtors out of debtor prisons.

An example of unique State-based exemptions enforceable yet today is Florida’s 100% personal equity exemption in a homestead.[65]

Unlike bankruptcy, where viewpoints and perspectives are primarily divided into two camps—debtors and creditors—the more-controversial topic of naturalization allows a variety of positions, although perhaps not as much as the related topic of foreign immigration.

Unlike virtually non-existent 19^th-century bankruptcy law, federal naturalization laws had extensive impact from the onset.

Section 1 of the March 26^th, 1790 Naturalization Act, for instance, allowed:

“That any alien, being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States, for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof, on application of any common law court of record, in any one of the states wherein he shall have resided...”[66]

From the express words of the Act, one sees that State courts were intricately involved in the naturalization process, as State judges followed the uniform guidelines established by Congress.

The Act required judges to be satisfied that applicants were “of good character” and successful applicants had to take an oath or affirmation to support the Constitution of the United States.[67]

The 1790 Act was the only Naturalization Act to mention “natural born citizens,” applying the term found in the constitutional qualification for Presidents to specifically include “the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States.”[68]

This allowed children born perhaps unintentionally outside of the U.S. to American parents to be considered legally equivalent to children born within the United States.

Children under the age of 21 at the time of their parent’s naturalization also became citizens, as long as they lived in the U.S.[69]

The 1790 Act listed a proviso in relation to children, however, expressly declaring:

“That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident of the United States…”[70]

The 1795 Naturalization Act lengthened the residency term to five years, and also required a formal renunciation of both allegiance and fidelity to former sovereigns, who would be named in the individual renunciation, by title and name.[71]

The 1795 Act further required judges be satisfied that the applicant:”

“has behaved as a man of good moral character, attached to the principles of the constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same.”[72]

The express mention of applicants behaving “as a man” didn’t deprive women from naturalization, although an 1855 Act brought added clarity to the issue, saying that:

“any woman who might lawfully be naturalized under the existing laws, married, or who shall be married to a citizen of the United States, shall be deemed and taken to be a citizen.”[73]

The same 1855 Act further clarified:

“That persons heretofore born, or hereafter to be born, out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, whose fathers were or shall be at the time of their birth citizens of the United States, shall be deemed and considered and are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.”[74]

The 1855 Act again included the proviso:

“That the rights of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers never resided in the United States.”[75]

The 1934 Naturalization Act however extended rights of citizenship to children born outside the United States to U.S. citizen-mothers, even if the father wasn’t a citizen.[76]

The 1934 Act required the citizen-mother, or citizen-father, to have resided in the U.S. previous to the child’s birth and that the child had continuously lived in the U.S. for at least five years immediately prior to his or her 18^th birthday, and, within six months of reaching the age of 21, that he or she take an oath of allegiance to the United States of America.[77]

The 1868 Fourteenth Amendment speaks to naturalization and citizenship, saying:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the States wherein they reside.”

Although two classifications of people appear here to be combined into a common term, this doesn’t otherwise change the eligibility requirements expressly-detailed by Article II, Section 1 for American Presidents, which details in Clause 5 that:

“No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President...”

The only naturalized Americans who met the qualifications for President were those early Patriots who became citizens before the Constitution was adopted.  Foreign-born naturalized citizens were then allowed the opportunity to seek the highest office, in recognition of any risk of life and limb they faced to help secure independence.

While naturalization is a federal topic, immigration of foreigners was historically a State matter.

Article I alludes to this, when Section 9 lists specific limitations on some powers earlier given—which powers, of course, were primarily given in Section 8.  The Section 9 restrictions prevent the reach of a few named powers, as far as the earlier-expressed wording may have otherwise reached, had it not been for the added restriction.

Clause 1, for example, temporarily limited the power of Congress to regulate the commerce of imported slaves, even as it here also mentions migration, saying:

“The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed upon such Importation, not to exceed ten Dollars for each Person.”

By preventing Congress from acting on the topic before 1808, the status quo was allowed to remain—of States deciding the issue—as acknowledged by the phrase, “as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit…”

Even into the mid-19^th century, it was yet quite common for immigrants to pledge themselves as indentured servants, to repay their substantial costs of being transported to America.  The immigrants would enter a private “indenture” for a term of years—typically three to five—to work only for room and board, after which time their immigration costs would be considered repaid, and they’d be free from any continued obligation.

Of course, young boys—even natural-born—were also often pledged as apprentices, to master craftsmen, to learn a trade, and young maidens, as household servants.

In February of 1862, Congress prohibited the so-called “Coolie Trade,” but it wasn’t an Act of immigration.

Instead, the Act was a regulation of commerce, not unlike the 1807 Act which prohibited the slave trade, effective January 1, 1808.[78]

The 1862 Act prohibited entry of Chinese laborers who were otherwise being brought into the U.S.:

“to be disposed of, or sold, or transferred, for any term of years or for any time whatsoever, as servants or apprentices, or to be held to service or labor.” ^[79]

Fines and imprisonment were imposed upon ship owners, masters, and crew, who broke the law, and were citizens of the United States, aboard U.S. registered ships.  The Act even authorized the seizure and confiscation of any “vessel, tackle, apparel, furniture and other appurtenances” involved in the prohibited trade.[80]

Of course, just three years later, the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, which prohibited all slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment of persons duly-convicted of an established crime.

The first congressional Act involving immigration was enacted in 1864, but it encouraged immigration.  The Act established an Emigrant Office and a Commissioner of Immigration, who was authorized to establish a contract process so immigrants could contract to pay their transportation and immigration costs out of future earnings, not to exceed 12 months, with contracts overseen by either federal or State courts.[81]

Immigrants entering the U.S. were specifically authorized by the 1864 Act to enroll for military service “during the existing insurrection” as long as they voluntarily renounced their allegiance to their country of birth and declared an intention to become a citizen of the United States.[82]

An 1875 Congressional Act restricted entry of women from “any Oriental country” who had “entered into a contract or agreement for a term of service within the United States, for lewd and immoral purposes.”[83]

The Act made the importation of Oriental women intended for prostitution illegal, and all related contracts were declared void.[84]

The first substantial immigration Act was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which not only suspended all Chinese laborers from coming to the United States for a 10-year period, but also prohibited State and federal courts from admitting “Chinese to citizenship.”[85]

The Act provided exemptions to the barred entry or forced removal of Chinese diplomats and their staff, and also laborers who were already in the U.S.[86]

An 1884 Act added an exemption for Chinese passengers who travelled “for curiosity.”[87]

And an 1891 Act brusquely excluded from admission:

“All idiots, insane persons, paupers or persons likely to become a public charge, persons suffering from some loathsome or a dangerous contagious disease, persons who have been convicted of a felony or other infamous crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, polygamists, and also any person whose ticket or passage is paid for with the money of another…unless it is positively and satisfactorily shown on special inquiry that such person does not belong to one of the foregoing excluded classes.”[88]

However, the 1891 Act expressly exempted politically-based crimes from the list of prohibitions, allowing the United States to be a refuge for foreign political dissidents.[89] 

Next up:  Coining money.

 

 

Lesson 10: Article I, Section 8, Clauses 2 & 5

Borrowing and Coining Money

A lie told often and long enough will be accepted as truth by most people, when it’s easier to accept than see through it. Take, for instance, the bald-faced lie told since 1862—that paper currency is legal tender in these United States.

Despite 162 years of longevity, what does paper’s wholesale absence during the first 73 years under the Constitution tell us, which was the period during which the Framers and their immediate successors were alive?[90]

After all, it’s not like the Constitution was amended to begin allowing what James Madison called the “pestilent effects of paper money.”[91]

To this day, the Constitution as amended only mentions paper currencies—formally referred to as bills of credit—to expressly prohibit the States from emitting them. 

The Constitution never grants Congress the express power to emit bills of credit, like the earlier Articles of Confederation did, even as the Articles were otherwise considered weak and ineffectual, as Article IX detailed that:

“The United States in Congress assembled shall have authority…to…emit bills on the credit of the United States…”

This passage came after the same Article had earlier specified:

“The United States in Congress assembled shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by their own authority, or by that of respective states …

By this well-conceived passage, the States were individually allowed to coin money according to any uniform standard Congress instituted, not that the Confederation Congress or any of the States ever struck coin, established a mint, or issued resolutions or legislation sufficient to address any needed particulars.

The Articles of Confederation required a supermajority of delegates on these topics, rather than a simple majority of seven States, as Article IX said:

“The United States in Congress assembled shall never…coin money, nor regulate the value thereof…nor emit bills…nor borrow money on the credit of the United States…unless nine states assent to the same…”

And, lastly, from Article XII of the Confederation:

“All bills of credit emitted…shall be deemed and considered as a charge against the United States, for payment and satisfaction whereof the said United States and the public faith are hereby solemnly pledged.”

By these passages, the Articles allowed the Confederation Congress not only to strike coin and regulate its value, but also emit “bills of credit.”

Note that the Confederation didn’t refer to paper currency as “money”—which is an asset known also as the most-liquid store of value—but its opposite, a charge, a liability.

Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution speaks also to bills of credit, but here mentions them only to prohibit their emission by the several States, saying in Clause 1 that:

“No State shall…coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; [or] make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution—in Clause 2—first expressly authorizes Congress to borrow money and then Clause 5 empowers Congress: 

“To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.”

And, Clause 6 continues:

“The Congress shall have Power…To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States.”

At first blush, it may seem reasonable to think that the “Money” mentioned in Clause 5 would include paper currency, given that the Articles of Confederation instead spoke to “coin” struck with an “alloy.”

This would seem to tie with the Constitution’s restriction of empowering Congress only to regulate the American value of foreign “Coin,” but not “foreign Money,” which could then seem to reach foreign paper currency.

Because, if members of Congress ever gave foreign paper currency an American monetary value, we’d import other countries’ monetary debasement practices here, to our ruin.

Thus, it’s reasonable that members of Congress would never be empowered to make foreign paper currency “current” as American “Money,” even as making foreign gold or silver coin “current” as “Money” is safe.

And, lastly, it may also seem reasonable, that without an express prohibition keeping Congress from emitting bills of credit—like the Constitution expressly forbids the States—that this would perhaps indicate that the Constitution allows Congress to emit paper currency for the Union.

Thankfully, however, these false presumptions may be refuted by a full and open investigation, because the Constitution doesn’t allow Congress to debase the “Money” of the Union, even as it doesn’t prohibit debasement, outside of the Union.

Further, as far as both the Constitution and the Articles of Confederation are concerned, not only are “Money” and “Coin” interchangeable terms, but both terms exclude paper currency.

Given these conclusions—supported below and in the next few Lessons—perhaps it isn’t surprising that the 1870 Supreme Court case which prevented paper currency from being held as a legal tender for debts incurred before paper currency was emitted, didn’t refer to paper currency as money, but instead as “a mere promise to pay dollars.”[92]

What is perhaps downright shocking, however, is the fact that the 1871 Supreme Court case which was the precedent-setting case to uphold paper currency as legal tender, curiously referred to it as “the government’s promises to pay money,” saying:

“What we do assert is that Congress has power to enact that the government’s promises to pay money shall be, for the time being, equivalent in value to the representative value determined by the coinage acts, or to multiples thereof.”[93]

Obviously a promise of a thing, isn’t the thing itself, any more than a picture, is either.  While a jug full of water, for example, will help keep a person alive in the desert, a promise or picture of one certainly won’t.  And that explains why the Constitution places a fundamental difference upon money and the promise of money.

Besides not ever referring to paper currency as “Money,” the first Supreme Court case to uphold paper currency as legal tender went so far as to say:

“The legal tender acts do not attempt to make paper a standard of value.  We do not rest their validity upon the assertion that their emission is coinage, or any regulation of the value of money; nor do we assert that Congress may make anything which has no value, money.”[94]

In other words, the Court admitted that their “magic” wasn’t so magical after all, since it couldn’t make something without value, be “Money.”

But, if one thinks about it, that almost seems to make their magic even more powerful.  Because, if a Congressional decree and Court pronouncement couldn’t magically turn paper into money and give it inherent value, then how could the Court still hold paper to be “equivalent in value” with the “representative value” as “determined by the coinage Acts?”[95]

But, don’t yet try and decipher their ridiculous explanations, without first learning how to read between the lines.  Instead, make mental note of proffered nonsense and make sense of it later, once one gains sufficient perspective.

But one can almost always take the Court’s explicit denials of power to the bank.

So, listen carefully when the precedent-setting Court which upheld paper currency as legal tender denies that their actions had anything to do with the Article I, Section 8, Clause 5 power of Congress to coin money or regulate its value, which topics the Court went so far as to expressly declare were “foreign to the subject before us.”[96]

In other words, people who assert paper currency is “money” aren’t even on the right page, for the two matters are irreconcilable and mutually exclusive of one another.

The Court which first upheld paper currency rejected the false claim that currency had anything to do with the express power of Congress to coin money and regulate its value, when the justices said:

“We do not, however, rest our assertion of the power of Congress to enact legal tender laws upon this grant.”[97]

And, anyone still having difficulty realizing that paper currency isn’t “Money” in these United States of America must listen to the Court’s final comment herein cited, which said:

“It is, then, a mistake to regard the legal tender acts as either fixing a standard of value or regulating money values, or making that money which has no intrinsic value.”[98]

The very first U.S. Supreme Court to uphold paper currency overtly declared that it was a mistake to assert legal tender paper currencies are “coinage;” are “Money;” are a regulation of monetary “Value;” or that they have intrinsic value.

Obviously, a deeper dig into paper currency is warranted, to learn what lies beneath.

A great place to start is realizing that the ninth Article of the Confederation authorized the Confederation Congress to regulate “the alloy and value of coinstruck,” even as members also couldn’t “coin money” unless nine states assented to the same.

Seeing that the Articles spoke about alloyed coin one moment, only to mention coining money in the next, shows that the Articles of Confederation held the terms “coin” and “money” to be synonymous terms.

But since the Articles of Confederation specifically detailed that Congress also couldn’t issue bills of credit unless nine states also consented to the same, shows that the terms “money” and “coin” both exclude bills of credit, because obviously there wouldn’t be any reason to repeat the point again that it took nine States to assent to emitting bills of credit, if paper currency was included in the terms “money” or “coin.”

Like the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution also holds the terms “Coin” and “Money” interchangeably, while both terms again exclude “Bills of Credit.”

While Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution empowers Congress “To coin Money” by Clause 5, Clause 6 next empowers Congress to provide for the punishment for counterfeiting the “Securities and current Coin.”

The “Coin” named in Clause 6 necessarily refers back to the “Money” coined in Clause 5.

The difference between the Articles of Confederation which allowed the emission of paper currency and the Constitution which never granted it necessarily stems from the direct listing in the former and omission of any named authority in the latter.

Please realize that in a Form of Government where only named powers may be directly exercised throughout the Union using necessary and proper means, the omission of an express grant of permissible federal authority is sufficient to prohibit it from being performed.

And that is why for the first 73 years of government under the Constitution—before 1862—no paper currency was ever emitted and none tried.

Which is also why the 1870 Hepburn v. Griswold Court could pointedly declare that the Constitution prohibited legal tender paper currencies for debts incurred prior to the passage of the 1862 Legal Tender Act, when the justices wrote:

"We are obliged to conclude that an act making mere promises to pay dollars a legal tender…is inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution; and that it is prohibited by the Constitution."[99]

The U.S. Constitution had to expressly prohibit the several States from emitting Bills of Credit, because that had been a State-derived power, which remained with them, until they gave it up.  And, by ratifying the U.S. Constitution which includes the named prohibition against the States, the States voluntarily gave up that power by their individual ratification.

But, that fact doesn’t similarly mean that the Constitution likewise needs to expressly prohibit Congress from also emitting Bills of Credit for direct exercise throughout the Union, because that would falsely imply that members of Congress somehow have mystical or magical sources of inherent powers, beyond those found in the Constitution.

And that is a very dangerous road to traverse, which is why the U.S. Constitution as originally ratified never travels it.

Now, Article I, Section 9 does provide a brief listing of express limitations on a few Section 8 powers—so they wouldn’t reach as far as their initial grant of authority would have otherwise allowed, without the added restrictions—but that isn’t the same as prohibiting powers never granted.

Not until the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, were there ever any express prohibitions on federal powers never granted.

However, because those declaratory and restrictive clauses were added in 1791—to prevent misconstruction or abuse of federal powers—people not well-versed in constitutional principles may jump to the false conclusion that to keep federal servants contained to the exercise of their named powers using necessary and proper means, express prohibitions must be added, which is false.

Because, it would quickly prove impossible to keep up with each twisted transgression of federal servants modifying their efforts to bypass their expressly-named prohibitions.

But some Patriots may want to argue that this is no different than history already shows.

However, false appearances aren’t truth, even as they may well be initially convincing.

Thankfully, devious actions implemented under false standards may be cast off when appropriately challenged, even as under the altered standard, all actions are authorized until positively shown that they are instead expressly prohibited.

Just as it would be foolish to give up the standard of remaining “innocent until proven guilty” and accept “guilty until proven innocent,” so too is it utterly foolish to accept “inherent powers except as prohibited” over “named powers implemented using only necessary and proper means.”

Of course, Alexander Hamilton sought to implement “inherent powers except as prohibited” at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, though thankfully he didn’t get it, at least for the whole Union.[100]

But, all of our federal political issues stem from Hamilton getting his totalitarian foot in the proverbial door, as his preferential standard of “inherent powers except as prohibited” was made the working standard for the District Seat.

Hamilton simply began deviously extending the allowed exclusive legislation authority of Congress for the District Seat “in all Cases whatsoever” throughout the Union, beyond allowable borders, by deception and trickery, when no one was paying sufficient attention.

But, because that standard isn’t applicable throughout the whole Union, Patriots may pull back the curtain and face The Make-Believe Rule of Paper Tyrants, to cast off allowed special powers, falsely implemented beyond allowable boundaries.[101]

 

Next up:  Coining Money and Regulating Its Value.

 

Lesson 11: Article I, Section 8, Clause 5

Coining Money

When the U.S. Constitution allowed Congress in Article I, Section 9, to lay a tax or duty to ten “Dollars” upon the importation of each slave brought into the United States, there weren’t any American coins in existence, by that name or any other.

This reference actually points to the Spanish milled dollar, a foreign coin at the time which didn’t have direct legal sanction anywhere in the Union.[102]

The first American coins weren’t authorized until the Coinage Act of 1792, but weren’t even struck in silver until October of 1794 and in gold not until July of 1795.[103]

Prior to enactment of the 1792 Coinage Act, each of the 13 American States had their legal money of account yet denominated in pounds, shillings, and pence—leftover from their British colonial days, in one of five standards, with each standard referencing a differing amount of silver.[104]

Trade between States on differing standards necessitated formal exchange rates, made all the more confusing because each of the five standards otherwise all used the same name-designations.

The Spanish dollar’s growing popularity during the pre-Constitution era didn’t rest on its legal sanction—for it had none.  Instead, its unique measure of value drove it forward to become not only the most common market coin in American circulation, but also to serve as the model for our own monetary unit.

While the Spanish pillar dollar achieved a unique status in the United States, it was hardly the only foreign coin later made current as American legal tender money, because of the express constitutional authority of Article I, Section 8, Clause 5 and its secondary power of Congress “To…regulate the Value…of foreign Coin.”

The practice begun in 1793 of giving foreign gold and silver coin a formal American legal tender value lasted until 1857, which lessened the impact of having an insufficient number of American-made coins in circulation.[105]

Foreign gold and silver coins were able to be made current as American money because the critical factor with honest money is a determinable amount of pure silver or pure gold, rather than the nationality of the mint which struck them.

The February 9^th, 1793 Congressional Act to regulate the American value of foreign coin provided that:

“foreign gold and silver coins shall pass current as money within the United States, and be a legal tender for the payment of all debts and demands, at the several and respective rates following, and not otherwise…”[106]

The 1793 foreign Coinage Act went on to specify that:

“The gold coins of Great Britain and Portugal, of the present standard, at the rate of one hundred cents for every twenty-seven grains of the actual weight thereof.”[107]

American monetary value was determined by giving gold and silver coins of differing standards of purity a monetary value strictly proportional to their measured overall weight, of determinable purity, whether the coins were struck domestically or elsewhere.

“Grains,” of course, refers to the smallest unit of weight, including found in the troy weight system that is used for weighing precious metals, where 480 grains are found in a troy ounce and 12 troy ounces make a troy pound.

America’s premier Coinage Act of April 2^nd, 1792 established the ten-dollar American gold Eagle coin with 270 grains of standard gold.  Since its rate was one dollar of value for every 27 grains of standard gold, one sees that the United States initially followed the British gold purity standard, even as monetary value is ultimately tied strictly to pure gold.[108]

The 1792 Coinage Act specified the first American purity standard for gold to be 11/12^ths-fine—meaning 11/12^ths of the mixture was pure gold and one part was alloy (in this case, an alloy of silver and copper).  Eleven-twelfths-fine gold is the same as saying 22/24^ths-pure—which by definition is 22-carat gold—which is decimally-equivalent to 0.9166-fine gold.[109]

Alloys are used to harden the relatively soft precious metals so they hold up better to abrasion during circulation, so they could last many decades with little wear.  But, the higher proportion of alloy, the more overall weight the coin would need to reach its American dollar-rate that is based only upon pure gold in the gold coins and pure silver in the silver coins.

The 1793 Foreign Coinage Act also declared that “the gold coins of France, Spain, and the dominions of Spain, of their present standard” were valued “at the rate of one hundred cents for every twenty-seven grains and two fifths of a grain, of the actual weight thereof.”[110]

With French gold equating to one dollar for every 27.4 grains of its weight—it took slightly-more of the slightly-less-pure French gold to equate to the same American dollar value.

The 1792 Coinage Act established the mint and named the “dollar” as our Monetary Unit and Standard of Value.[111]

It is no coincidence that the clause of the Constitution which empowers Congress to establish our monetary standard is found within the same clause which empowers Congress to establish or “fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.” 

Short measures always cause harm—whether found in a “gallon” of gas, a “pound” of butter, a “foot” of rope, or an “hour” of work.  But, even greater harm necessarily occurs when the monetary standard used for trade in all those measures comes up short.

Which is why, of course, the 1870 Supreme Court held that the Constitution prohibited legal tender paper currencies.[112]

The 1792 Coinage Act established the dollar as a coin of silver with 416 grains of standard silver, with the term “standard silver,” of course, referencing the silver-alloy mixture at its defined purity standard.[113]

The purity standard established for silver coins in 1792 was at the ultra-precise rate of 1,485 parts silver to 179 parts copper, for 1,664 parts in total.[114]

Congress designated this exacting standard—no matter how difficult it was for mint officers to achieve—to follow Section 11 of the 1792 Coinage Act literally, where every part of pure gold was made monetarily equivalent with every 15 parts of pure silver.[115]

With the ten-dollar gold eagle defined to contain 247.5 grains of pure gold, there were 24.75 grains of pure gold found in a dollar’s worth of coined gold struck under the 1792 Coinage Act .[116]

Since the 1792 Act required every 15 parts of pure silver to equal every part of pure gold, multiplying 24.75 grains of pure gold found in the equivalent of one gold dollar by 15, equates to 1,485, which were the exact number of parts of pure silver separately specified for each silver dollar.[117]

No matter how gold or silver coins would be divided, chopped up, or melted, every part of each of them by weight—even at their differing purities—would always be at that required 15-to-1 ratio between gold and silver.

With the silver coin of 371.25 grains of pure silver named as the “Dollar” and gold coins denominated in “Eagles” but given a dollar-equivalent monetary value, Congress literally established the United States on a silver coin standard, along with a gold coin equivalency, effectively creating a bi-metallic coinage standard.

Although conservative and libertarian-minded Americans yearn for a return of and to the gold standard—by which most of them typically mean gold certificates—America was actually established on a silver and gold coin standard.

Gold certificates redeemable in gold are not coin, and thus cannot ever be a true tender in these United States, even as they were intended to be redeemable warehouse receipts for a store of gold coin or bullion.

Gold certificates weren’t even issued before 1862, which was the same year as “greenback” paper currencies without tie to gold or silver were first emitted.

There was never even a 1-to-1 gold-to-certificate equivalency.  Instead, gold certificates were allowed to be leveraged, so that 100% of physical gold holdings allowed 120% in gold certificates.[118]

Silver certificates weren’t even authorized until the year 1878.[119]

Purity tolerances for gold and silver coins were established in 1792, but not tolerances for weight, even as Section 17 ordered the respective mint officers:

“carefully and faithfully to use their best endeavours that all the gold and silver coins which shall be struck at the said mint shall be, as nearly as may be, conformable to the several standards and weights aforesaid.”[120]

Section 18 required annual assays from every separate mass of standard gold or silver which had been made into coins throughout the year.  If the standards for purity were found to be less than one part in every 144 parts, the officers responsible were disqualified from holding their respective offices.[121]

Each coin struck at the early mint was mostly a work of art and its precise weight fluctuated slightly.  Although coin blanks struck heavy could be filed down to weight prior to striking and overly-light coins could be melted and restruck, their weights were less uniform as compared with decades later, when technological advance made striking coins more of a science and less of an art.

Since purity was difficult to field-measure in the struck coins, Congress required the mint officers to go to great pains to ensure it.

Congress was far less strict regarding weight, since weight could at any time be accurately determined with use of accurate balances and precise counter-weights.  Measuring the weight of coins of known purity allowed monetary value to be calculated by weight at any time. 

The first U.S. silver and gold coins weren’t struck with any face value on them, because their intended face value didn’t necessarily represent the coin’s actual lawful tender value. 

The original intent for U.S. coins was that they would pass at their actual weight in their standard of fineness, rather than by “tale”—by their piece count, at their declared value.

Full-weight coins would pass at their stated value, but worn, clipped or improperly-struck coins would legally pass only at their measured weight and calculated value.

The legal value of a dollar coin that was only 99% of its proper weight would be 99 cents; not a dollar.

It wasn’t until mint practices sufficiently advanced that American gold coins had tolerances prescribed for weight in 1834 and silver coins in 1837.[122]

Thereafter, light-weight coins would be pulled from circulation by the treasury and re-struck into full-weight coins by the mint, meaning all coins in circulation were soon of full and accurate weight.

Section 14 of the 1792 Coinage Act allowed for the free coinage of money, for private depositors who brought their own gold or silver to the mint, provided they waited for mint officers to assay their deposit and strike their coins.

Once the mint had sufficient coinage on hand for redemption, the 1792 Coinage Act allowed the mint to offer an immediate exchange of standard bullion at its pure-gold or pure-silver content, for coin of like metal, less a half-percent for the mint.

Section 16 of the 1792 Coinage Act specified:

“That all the gold and silver coins which shall have been struck at, and issued from the said mint, shall be a lawful tender in all payments whatsoever, those of full weight according to the respective values herein before declared, and those of less than full weight at values proportional to their respective weights.”[123]

Nothing was lawful tender money in these United States but coins at their measured weights of standard gold or standard silver, which standard weight had been earlier multiplied by its known purity, to find monetary value.  Nothing was legal tender, but gold and silver coins, at their respective pure-gold content or pure-silver content.

Section 19 prescribed the death penalty to any mint officer who with fraudulent intent sought to make worse the purity or weight of the gold or silver coins, or embezzle any metal.[124]

If mint officers had done then what they have done now for 60 years—striking base-metal coins but giving them an unlimited legal tender value as if they were full-weight coins of silver—they would have upon conviction been hanged by the neck until dead.

Lastly, Section 20 established the official “money of account of the United States…to be expressed in dollars or units, dimes or tenths, Cents or hundredths, and milles or thousandths” with “all accounts in the public offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States…kept and had in conformity to this regulation.”[125]

Next up: Regulating Monetary Value.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lesson 12: Article I, Section 8, Clause 5

Regulating Monetary Value

The 1834 Coinage Act helps Americans understand the full meaning of the power of Congress to “regulate the Value” of coined money.   

The bi-metallic monetary standard effectively established in 1792 had a pitfall, though, being the date when the fixed legal-rate (between the two metals) changed.

A fixed legal parity different from its market rate ultimately proves worse in at least one aspect, as compared with a single-metal standard, because without a fixed legal equivalence, both metals remain readily available for use, anytime a willing buyer and willing seller come to agreement on the dollar-value of coins struck in the secondary metal.

But, whenever the market price of the two metals of the bi-metallic system varies too far from their fixed legal rate, the circulation of the undervalued metal is hampered, because too few people will accept it at a rate higher than its declared legal value.

Before the Constitution was proposed and ratified, Confederation Finance-Superintendent Robert Morris in 1782 recommended a single-metal monetary standard, because if the standard is “affixed to both the precious metals” it “will not give this certain scale,” so “it is better to make use of one only.”[126]

Nearly a decade later, Alexander Hamilton—as U.S. Treasury Secretary objected, saying it was unwise to destroy “the office and character of one of them as money, and reducing it to the situation of a mere merchandize” and equally as damaging to abridge “the quantity of circulating medium” that would occur with a single-metal standard.[127]

Hamilton asserted that both metals could be safely used, as long as inevitable monetary metal imbalances were regulated “with an eye to their average commercial value.”[128]

By keeping the gold-to-silver equivalent-rate regulated to their average commercial ratio, Hamilton argued that the United States could avoid the problems of bi-metallism, while best ensuring an adequate supply of money.

The fixed legal ratio of 15-to-1 instituted in 1792 began to change in the 1820s.  As silver production increased worldwide—relative to more stable gold supplies—the value of gold soon rose in relation to silver some six or seven percent.

Unsure what to do next, Congress failed to act for many years.  The supply of circulating gold dwindled precipitously, as gold was increasingly shipped overseas, where it was appropriately valued, which in turn shifted the American economy toward a unilateral silver coin standard. 

When Congress finally acted, the 1834 Coinage Act did two things.

First, it made the 1792-era gold coins of given purity and weight “obsolete,” removing their “current” monetary status—meaning they were no longer “current money.”

Instead, the 1792-era gold coins in 1834 were treated much like foreign coins.  Congress however gave foreign coins of given purity a specified weight per dollar-equivalent—like one dollar for every 27.4 grains of French gold.  In 1834 Congress instead declared the 1792-era gold coins to be worth a precise legal value per rounded unit of weight—here, 94.8 cents per pennyweight.  A pennyweight is the term describing 24 grains, which is one-twentieth of a troy ounce.

That rate of 94.8 cents per pennyweight meant a full-weight, 270-grain eagle would be worth $10.665 in 1834, at a time when we yet had half-cents.[129]

Declaring the 1792-era gold coins in 1834 to be worth 94.8 cents per pennyweight equates with 1792 standard-gold at $18.96 per ounce and pure gold at $20.68 per ounce, in 1834 dollars.

While the value of pure gold rose in 1834 from its 1792-rate of $19.39 per ounce, that was the explicit and legitimate purpose of the 1834 Act—to re-orient the legal price of gold to its true market rate, relative to silver.

The 1834 Coinage Act left alone silver, which was appropriate, since the silver dollar was the Standard of Value—the unit measure in and for the measurement of value—with everything else of value regulated or adjusted to it.

The second thing the 1834 Act did was to designate a new, lighter-weight $10 eagle, to contain 232 grains of fine gold and weigh 258 grains overall, to continue to offer gold coins at rounded dollar-values for sake of convenience.[130]

Dividing 232 grains of fine gold by the 258 grains of standard gold gives the 1834 gold coins’ purity to be 0.89224.

The differing legal values between 1792 and 1834 eagles—$10.665 dollars and $10, respectively—was due solely to the differing amount of pure gold in each—247.5 grains of pure gold in the former versus 232 grains of pure gold in the latter.

It is important to understand the 1834 Coinage Act because the 1871 Supreme Court intentionally misled Americans about what Congress did in 1834, so that the Court could back an insupportable legal tender paper currency in 1871.

Recall that Alexander Hamilton had argued that using only one monetary metal would destroy the “office and character” of the other as money, reducing the metal not chosen to a commodity (or as he put it, the “situation of a mere merchandize”).

While that may well be true, the U.S. Supreme Court later sought to intentionally deprive Americans of both metals and usher in a fiat paper currency without value.

Obviously, to destroy the “office and character” of only one precious metal is far better than destroying the office and character of both precious metals.

Please do not misunderstand that in 1834 Congress subsidized owners of gold at the expense of owners of silver, as the Court falsely implied but never expressly asserted.  If anything, the 1834 Coinage Act simply removed the prior-subsidy that owners of silver had been indirectly and unintentionally receiving for their silver that Congress allowed to be valued too-highly for too long, by not acting soon enough.

The Framers and Ratifiers of the Constitution never intended that Congress should artificially support either metal at the expense of the other, so it was proper for Congress to bring the legal monetary ratio back to its market parity.

Neither did the 1834 Act ever short creditors their legal due, in gold, as the Supreme Court also falsely inferred in 1871.  After all, it was the debtors themselves who had the legal option to pay their monetary debts due in “dollars” in either metal, since both metals were a full legal tender.

Creditors who weren’t actually due repayment in “money,” but instead due gold by weight and purity, weren’t affected by the 1834 Act (but gold clauses didn’t become popular until after the 1862 Legal Tender Act was enacted, when creditors began to protect themselves from the “pestilent effects” of paper currency, by inserting clauses in their original contracts which required repayment of debts in gold).[131]

The workings of the 1834 Act changed the gold-to-silver ratio from exactly 1 ounce of gold to 15 ounces of silver, to approximately 1-to-16, even as the 1834 Act did not directly specify a legal ratio, as did the 1792 Act.

Three years later, in 1837, Congress changed the purity of both gold and silver coins to nine-tenths-pure, which provided pure gold at its longest-held historical valuation rate of $20.67 per ounce.[132]

Although Congress in 1837 directed that an extra two-tenths of a grain of pure gold were to be put into the ten-dollar eagle—and proportional amounts in the half-eagle and quarter-eagle—no exchange rate was needed in 1837, because Congress simply tightened the allowable weight and purity tolerances established in 1834 while shifting the target weight slightly towards the higher end of the permitted spectrum. 

When the silver standard changed to nine-tenths fineness—900 parts pure silver to 100 parts copper as the alloy in 1837—the number of grains of pure silver in the dollar remained unchanged at 371.25 grains.  Less added-copper dropped the overall weight of the silver dollar from 416 grains in 1792 to 412.5 grains in 1837.

Since the amount of pure silver in the coins struck remained unchanged, no revaluation regulations were needed or established in 1837.

As gold production escalated following the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in California in 1848, the gold-to-silver 16-to-1 market ratio of 1834 began reverting back toward the 15-to-1 legal ratio initially set in 1792.

One perspective of the 1834-change led some people in 1853 to propose again taking out some of the metal undervalued at law, to establish new lighter-weight coins of the same face value.

Except, in 1853, the metal undervalued at law was silver.  But, silver coins were established as the Standard of Value, especially that coin denominated as the primary “unit”—the “dollar.”

Standards, of course, aren’t supposed to change.  When value ratios changed, members of Congress were supposed to leave alone the silver coins, and modify the gold coins.

But what person would want to bring into the mint, $100 in face value of 1834 gold coins, just to get back individually-heavier 1853 gold coins, worth only $93.50 in face value, or bring in $106.95 in 1834-standard gold, to get $100 back in 1853-standard gold?

It is important to realize that silver was coming back into its own in 1853.  The value of silver was rising, in relation to a relative glut of newly-discovered gold, that was dropping the value of gold, relative to silver.

The 1853 Coinage Act ultimately proved to be the beginning of the end for monetary silver, as Congress committed the equivalent of The Original Sin, monetarily speaking, when members removed some 7% of silver from the small silver coins (the half-dollar, quarter, dime and half-dime), but destructively left alone the silver dollar.[133]

While perhaps counterintuitive, leaving alone the silver dollar effectively killed silver as legal tender money, because no longer were all silver coins proportional in weight and value.

For the first time in American history, the 1853 values of silver coins were no longer strictly dependent upon proportional weights and proportional values.  Some 7% of the silver was removed from the subsidiary coins, as their values remained as before, but the silver dollar remained at its 1837 weight, purity, and value.

Silver could not remain our Standard of Value, even at a time when its value was climbing, relative to gold, when coins in silver directly violated the inviolable requisite of a “Standard”—strict and fixed proportionality.

Destroying one standard drives people to alternate standards, every bit as much as if other common measures were ruined, like 14 cups or 7 pints to a gallon instead of 16 cups and 8 pints, respectively. Destroying silver monetarily drove commerce towards gold.

Now, if members had removed the same proportion of silver from the dollar coin, as they had removed from small silver coins, then all silver coins would have remained proportional in weight and value. But, that would have set the bad precedent of always lightening the undervalued metal, which would create other problems.

Members didn’t realize or care that if they had left alone both silver and gold coins at their 1837 weights and purities, but simply given the 1837 gold coins a new regulated monetary value in 1853, they could have kept both metals in circulation, changing the legal value of gold as needed. 

Congress only needed to give up having gold coins with rounded dollar values.

Instead of melting and restriking decades’-worth of gold or silver coins every time their ratio changed, Congress could have fully instituted the silver standard, along with a floating gold exchange rate, with the exchange rate changed as often as was necessary, to keep the two monetary metals in legal proportion to their market rates.

It became obvious in 1853 that it had been far easier politically to remove gold content from new gold coins when the value of gold rose, than to put more in, when its relative value fell in relation to silver.

To lessen their transgressions, Congress in 1853 limited the legal tender status of member’s new, light-weight subsidiary silver coinage, to single transactions to $5.00.[134]

But this shift away from a silver standard, towards gold, wasn’t necessarily detrimental to the financial future of the U.S., if Congress had simply stayed away from paper currency.

Indeed, as large silver deposits were brought online from the Comstock Lode and other strikes in the next few decades, one could even argue that the steps taken in 1853 towards an otherwise more-stable gold standard monetary base was the best thing members could have fortuitously done.

Depending upon the measuring stick used, the United States switched over to the gold standard as early as 1853, although some would peg it in 1873 when the venerable silver dollar of 371.25-grains of pure-silver was discontinued—even as it was brought back in 1878.

But, in the year 1900, Congress officially made the gold dollar “twenty-five and eight-tenths grains of gold nine-tenths fine” our “standard unit of value,” even as Congress made it the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to hold “all forms of money issued or coined by the United States” at “the parity of value with this standard.”[135]

Next up:  Federal Criminal Jurisdiction.

 

Lesson 13: Article I, Section 8, Clauses 6 & 10

and

Article III, Section 3

Criminal Jurisdiction: Counterfeiting, Piracy and Treason

When the States of the American Union ratified the U.S. Constitution into existence, they delegated to members of Congress and federal officials the named governing powers listed therein, while reserving to the States individually, the remainder of the allowable governing powers.

The Tenth Amendment was later proposed and ratified, which placed this fundamental principle within the express wording of the supreme Law of the Land, while also reserving to the people themselves, all powers not ultimately delegated either to federal or State authorities.

Within the named federal powers, the U.S. Constitution designated three federal crimes that remain federal issues no matter where the particular offenses take place; even if they otherwise occur within one of the States of the American Union, even as they would otherwise be—without the named citation—crimes punishable by a State.

The three named federal crimes expressly listed in the U.S. Constitution are Counterfeiting, Piracy and Treason, which are covered by Article I, Section 8, Clauses 6 and 10 in the first and second instances, and Article III, Section 3 in the third instance.

Article III, Section 2 acknowledges a fourth possible federal crime—Impeachment—which may be criminal in nature, as admitted when Clause 3 says that “The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury.”

However, since impeachments involve only political punishment—removal from office and possible disqualification from holding future executive and judicial offices (as opposed to judicially-imposed fines and/or imprisonment)—this potential federal crime needs an asterisk attached to it if or whenever it is included as one of the named federal crimes.

Looking to the first federal Crime Act—enacted into law by Congress and signed into effect by President Washington on April 30, 1790—one sees the federal crimes listed within, which follow this named division.

However, one also finds therein a large class of crimes besides the primary three, such as found in Section 3, which stated:

“That if any person or persons shall, within any fort, arsenal, dock-yard, magazine, or in any other place or district of the country, under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, commit the crime of wilful murder, such person or persons on being thereof convicted shall suffer death.”[136]

And, Section 8 noted with differing wording:

“That if any person or persons shall commit upon the high seas, or in any river, haven, basin or bay, out of the jurisdiction of any particular state, murder or robbery, or any other offence which if committed within the body of a county, would by the laws of the United States be punishable with death…every such offender shall be deemed, taken and adjudged to be a pirate and felon, and being thereof convicted, shall suffer death.”[137]

Obviously, Sections 3 and 8—and their like-worded counterparts—speak to otherwise State-like crimes, such as murder and robbery, but here only those committed “under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States,” which are “out of the jurisdiction of any particular state.”

But—and this is important—these highly-unusual special cases yet follow the strictest letter of the U.S. Constitution.

Remember, in the normal case, ratification of the U.S. Constitution by the several States of the Union DIVIDED allowable governing powers into named federal powers for Congress and reserved State powers. 

But, in the highly unusual case—which we’ll cover in this Constitution 101 Program Course, shortly—governing authority is by Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 otherwise UNITED or CONSOLIDATED in Congress and not shared with any State of the Union.

Since no State has any governing authority within exclusive legislation parcels, then obviously there is no available State governing-apparatus to punish crimes therein committed, including willful murder or robbery, which elsewhere the States would individually punish.

Since no State of the Union has governing authority in D.C. or on other exclusive legislation parcels, then to make such actions criminal matters, someone must there enact legislation as elsewhere would a State.

And, it is the Constitution itself that details that with cessions by particular States and acceptance by Congress, then members of Congress may thereafter govern these special parcels exclusively, even if and when the actions may otherwise be outside their normally-delegated powers, that they may directly and routinely exercise throughout the whole Union.

It is fully appropriate that on exclusive legislation lands, that members of Congress enact criminal legislation even on topics where State legislatures elsewhere enact them.

This “large class of crimes” which wasn’t “mentioned” or “directly referenced” in the Constitution, where the criminal jurisdiction wasn’t “expressly conferred” in an overt, named fashion—but which were yet discussed within the 1790 Crime Act—were those crimes occurring “within any fort, arsenal, dock-yard, magazine, or other place or district of country, under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States” or crimes committed “upon the high seas, or in any river, haven, basin or bay, out of the jurisdiction of any particular state.”[138]

Any theoretical struggle which first appears inevitable is fully resolved without constitutional conflict, by realizing that while the U.S. Constitution expressly lists those three named federal crimes, Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 also speaks to the “exclusive” legislation authority of Congress, where members may act “in all Cases whatsoever.”

And, all these other “Cases” also mentioned in the 1790 Crime Act may be covered therein, because the “Cases” mentioned in Clause 17 are not only civil cases, but also thosecriminal in nature!

Therefore, even while not specifically “mentioned,” “directly referenced” or “expressly conferred,” the U.S. Constitution nonetheless does provide full and sufficient authority to reach special federal criminal jurisdiction on all matters pertaining to exclusive legislation authority of exclusive legislation parcels, because the “all Cases whatsoever” wording inherently includes criminal cases.

However, the 1790 Crime Act perhaps appears to speak to even another type of crime, since nowhere in Section 15 does it use the wording earlier found, which directly points to crimes occurring “within any fort, arsenal, dock-yard, magazine, or other place or district of country, under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States” or crimes committed “upon the high seas, or in any river, haven, basin or bay, out of the jurisdiction of any particular state.”

For example, Section 15 of the 1790 Crime Act provides for the punishment of people convicted for attempting to:

“feloniously steal, take away, alter, falsify, or otherwise avoid any record, writ, process, or other proceedings in any of the courts of, the United States, by means whereof any judgment shall be reversed, made void, or not take effect.”[139]

This apparent dilemma is also easily resolved, however, by realizing that federal courthouses are found on Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 exclusive legislation parcels.

While federal servants may perhaps initially appear to be all-powerful political masters, their extensive discretion necessarily stops at exclusive legislation boundaries, at least when people outside federal enclaves know enough to remain free.

No member of Congress, American President, or Supreme Court justice—or all of them united together—may ever change the Constitution, or the allowed federal powers, that they may directly exercise throughout the Union, period.

Only ratified amendments change the Constitution and only ratified amendments change the allowed powers federal servants may everywhere exercise, and only States ratify amendments.

Therefore, everything maliciously done by members of Congress and federal officials in apparent excess of the spirit of the Constitution over the past two centuries may be contained to exclusive legislation lands, by exposing the devious means of constitutional bypass, that all of those false actions beyond exclusive legislation boundaries necessarily rely upon.

Nothing surreptitiously done beyond the spirit of the Constitution since 1789 by members of Congress, American Presidents and their bureaucratic minions, or Supreme Court justices, can withstand full exposure and the inevitable ramifications of what follows next, which is the complete restoration of limited government and the welcome return of individual liberty and fiscal sanity.

Rational federal behavior may again be at hand, if you individually keep at it, to gain a fuller understanding, and then “bark” like crazy, to draw attention to the only thing that matters—which is how federal servants were ever able to falsely appear to be our political masters, despite their sworn oaths. 

Next up: Post Offices, copyrights, and tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court.

Lesson 14: Article I, Section 8, Clauses 7 - 9

Post Offices and Post Roads, Copyrights and Tribunals

Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the Constitution for the United States of America empowers Congress to “establish Post Offices and post Roads.”

In a personal letter to James Madison dated March 6^th, 1796, Thomas Jefferson asks rhetorically:

“Does the power to establish post roads…mean that you shall make the roads, or only select from those already made…on which there shall be a post?”[140]

Early American history reveals a widespread perspective that the Framers and Ratifiers of the Constitution intended to convey a more extensive postal power than Jefferson preferred—far more.

In the passage that follows, Jefferson not only parenthetically admitted that the meaning wasn’t equivocal, but he also all but acknowledged that his view wouldn’t carry the day as he next wrote:

“If the term be equivocal, (and I really do not think it so) which is the safest construction? That which permits a majority of Congress to go to cutting down mountains and bridging of rivers, or the other which if too restricted may refer it to the states for amendment…?”[141]

Indeed, Jefferson admitted that restricting the power too much would simply push the States to amend the Constitution to reach their intended greater purpose (but at least then it would be more-clearly defined).

Jefferson preferred restricting the postal road power for the same reason that so many people would later complain of public works projects, as they serve as:

“a source of boundless patronage to the executive, jobbing to members of Congress and their friends, and a bottomless abyss of public money.”[142]

But one may catch a glimpse of just how widely-favored was expanding the postal system in an era when travel and transportation were slow and tedious, by realizing that it was two anti-federalists—who later opposed ratification of the Constitution itself—who moved and seconded the adding of the phrase “and post Roads” to the draft Constitution at the 1787 Convention, rather than having only the original proposed wording “To establish Post Offices.”[143]

While Congress in 1789 established the first three executive departments under the Constitution—the Departments of State, War and Treasury—members simply provided “for the temporary establishment of the Post Office” by creating the federal position of Postmaster General and then continued his salary and powers as before “under the resolutions and ordinance of the late Congress.”[144]

While the temporary nature of the Act was set to expire at the end of the next congressional session, this sunset provision was later pushed back several times, until Congress enacted a more-complete postal Act in 1792.[145]

Looking to the earlier-established postal powers under the 1781 Articles of Confederation, Article IX had formalized the congressional power for:

“establishing and regulating post offices from one state to another, throughout all the United States, and exacting such postage on the papers passing through the same as may be requisite to defray the expenses of the said office…”

Under the Postal Act of October 18^th, 1782, the delegates of the Confederation Congress ordained that a “continued communication of posts throughout these United States, shall be established and maintained by and under the direction of the Postmaster General of these United States.”[146]

This continued communication and maintenance of the “due and regular transportation and exchange of mails” extended “to and from the State of New Hampshire and the State of Georgia inclusive”—some 2,000-plus miles of a main postal artery north-to-south—shows that the Confederation Postal System was itself but a continuation of the previously-established Continental Post, from 1775 through to 1781.[147]

This earlier Post traced back to July 26^th, 1775, when the Second Continental Congress resolved to appoint a Postmaster General, over the “line of posts…from Falmouth in New England to Savannah in Georgia,” with a “weekly post to South Carolina.”[148]

With the “line of posts” already extending from north-to-south, obviously this line itself also continued the earlier routes between posts, tying back to the British post.

Benjamin Franklin was in 1775 unanimously chosen as Postmaster General, a position he had jointly-held under the British Postal system, from 1753 to 1774, after serving since 1737 as the postmaster of Philadelphia.[149]

Like many postmasters, Franklin simultaneously printed a newspaper, a tradition evident by many newspapers even today having “Post” in their name.

But newspapers weren’t the only business that the early postmasters concurrently operated; many also operated inns and stables, supplying travelers with places not only to stay and food to eat, but also resupplying horses and even offering carriage services.

And, many of these early services held monopoly privileges, prohibiting competition.

Such was the history of the British postal system in North America, that formally stretched back to 1710, when Queen Ann revised the British postal system and established a formal colonial post in New York, and to the 1600s, less formally.[150]

Members of Congress under the U.S. Constitution enacted their first “real” Postal Act on February 20^th, 1792, with Section 3 designating:

“That there shall be established, at the seat of the government of the United States, a general post-office. And there shall be one Postmaster General, who shall have authority to appoint an assistant, and deputy postmasters, at all places where such shall be found necessary.  And he shall provide for the carrying the mail of the United States, by stage carriages or horses, as he may judge most expedient…and to superintend the business of the department, in all the duties that are, or may be assigned to it, and also to direct the route or road, where there are more than one, between the places above established, which route or road shall be considered as the post road.”[151]

The 1792 Postal Act empowered the Postmaster General to reinvest postal profits into the building of post roads, by entering into contracts for up to eight years, “for extending the lines of posts, and to authorize the persons…so contracting, to receive…according to the rates by this act established, all the postage which shall arise on letters, newspapers and packets, conveyed by any such post; and the roads, therein designated, shall, during the…contract, be deemed and considered as post roads.”[152]

Section 1 designated “as post roads”—“From Wiscassett in the district of Maine, to Savannah in Georgia, by the following route…” as it next named some fifty cities north-to-south in the line of posts, before naming three times as many cities in various cross-posts or branch routes along the path.[153]

Section 4 also authorized private contractors and their agents “for carrying the mail.”[154]

The postage on letters ranged from six to 25 cents, depending upon the distance carried, with an additional premium if carried by sea.  Double or triple rates were allowed for double and triple weights—while packets were rated as if they were four letters, for each ounce of packet weight.[155]

Newspapers by Section 22 received subsidized delivery rates of one cent, or one and a half cents, depending if they were carried up to 100 miles, or over.[156]

Section 17 covered postal theft by any person who “shall rob the mail” or steal “out of any post-office,” who upon conviction, could suffer death.[157]

Section 16 also prescribed the death penalty upon conviction for any postal agent who shall “secrete, embezzle or destroy any letter, packet, bag, or mail of letters, with which he shall be entrusted, or which shall have come to his possession, and are intended to be conveyed by post, containing any bank note, or bank post bill, bill of exchange, warrant of the treasury of the United States…”[158]

Recall that the Constitution names only three federal crimes—Counterfeiting, Piracy, and Treason.

But in the 1792 Postal Act, one discovers that the death penalty was imposed for various postal crimes, like the 1792 Coinage Act, which prescribed the death penalty for debasing with fraudulent intent the current coins of the United States.[159]

Of course, Article I, Section 8, Clause 6 of the Constitution specifically prescribes the named criminal authority for punishing the counterfeiting of current coin.  The same clause however mentions counterfeiting the securities of the United States, to which the 1792 Postal Act indirectly spoke, involving letters containing federal securities.

The counterfeiting clause can’t reach robbing the mail beyond those letters and packets containing securities, however, even as robbery of a Post Office or the mail within Post Offices could easily be covered by Article I, Section 8, Clause 17.

Post Offices were and continue to be found on exclusive legislation grounds that were ceded by a particular State to Congress as part of the “other needful Buildings” category of lands, where members of Congress are expressly given “exclusive” legislation authority “in all Cases whatsoever,” which “Cases” include criminal cases.

There seems in the instance of unceded post roads to be a significant gap in named criminal authority, since no clause appears to cover postal crimes occurring outside of Post Offices not involving securities.

But, this is where the unique postal power itself comes into play.  Early American history supports holding the enumerated power of Congress to “establish Post Offices and post Roads” as reaching further than strict constructionists would expect.

The 1710 British law which formalized the British post covered postal crimes, even though it too merely “established” the Post Office.

In 1767, Great Britain extended the post to the Isle of Man, using the specific and readily-familiar wording “to establish Post Offices and Post Roads,” which likewise included extensive enforcement of postal crimes. ^[160]

After the Second Continental Congress appointed Ben Franklin Postmaster General on July 26^th, 1775, Franklin appointed William Goddard as surveyor, whose appointment marks the beginning of the American postal crime division.[161]

When the 1787 convention delegates proposed the power of Congress to “establish Post Offices and post Roads,” they understood that this power reached the activities carried from the British system, as practiced under the Continental and Confederation Postal Systems of 1775 and 1782, which included punishment of postal crimes.

There was essentially no debate at the State ratification conventions over the power of Congress to establish post offices and post roads, including the continuing punishment of postal crimes, at least as the confederation government last pursued.

In other words, the constitutionally-expressed power “To establish Post Offices and post Roads” doesn’t need the “necessary and proper” wording of Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 to fill in by supposed implication the power to punish postal crimes.

In fact, if anything, that the power of Congress to “establish Post Offices and post Roads” reached so far helps explain why so many States preconditioned their ratification of the U.S. Constitution upon the understanding that Congress would soon propose a Bill of Rights, to provide some express and general protections against the reach of government with extensive postal powers.

In other words, the Bill of Rights isn’t necessarily a set of blanket prohibitions against powers never granted within the Constitution, as Alexander Hamilton proposed in The Federalist #84, but it includes named limitations on powers that were elsewhere delegated, much like the Article I, Section 9 limitations on Congress itself.[162]

Especially relevant would be the First and Fourth Amendments—with freedom of speech and secure papers (including those transported by mail), barred from examination except by court order.

And, the Fifth Amendment’s protections against being compelled to witness against oneself, against the taking of property without due process, and eminent domain requiring “just compensation,” including any property taken for post roads, also vital.

The Sixth Amendment’s criminal protections and the Eighth’s protections from excessive fines, bail, and cruel & unusual punishments, all come into play with the postal powers and the investigation of postal crimes.  Indeed, postal crimes are much more likely to affect every-day Americans than the other named federal crimes which would be so uncommon they wouldn’t have likely impacted the ratification debates.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution separately empowers Congress to secure for limited Times to authors and inventors “the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

Under this power, Congress authorizes the issuance of copyrights and patents.

Copyright law today automatically protects works made for hire—such as movies that involve many paid participants, including actors, writers, directors and producers—for 95 years after initial publication.  This means that copyrighted works made in 1928 didn’t enter the public domain until 2024.

Works made by single individuals are protected for the life of the author, plus 70 years.  When multiple authors or inventors are partners without any of them being hired, the copyright protects their work to the last survivor, plus 70 years.

While the Constitution itself created the Supreme Court of the United States, Article I, Section 8, Clause 9 specifically empowers Congress “To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court.”

The inferior court judges likewise hold their office “during good Behaviour,” just like their Supreme Court counterparts, as acknowledged by Article III, Section 1.

Next up:  Declaring War, the Land and Naval Forces and the Militia

Lesson 15: Article I, Section 8, Clauses 11 - 16

Declaring War, Land and Naval Forces, and the Militia

If not for the fact that the United States has for generations fought wars never formally declared—from the Korean and Vietnam Wars to Iraq and Afghanistan and other skirmishes less involved—the express power of Congress to declare “War” should be a simple power, even with its grave implications.

The simplicity may be seen in resolutions declaring war, such as against the Imperial Government of Japan in 1941, for example, which consisted of only 133 words.[163]

In his 1796 Farewell Address, President George Washington admonished the United States “to steer clear of permanent Alliances,” warned us "against the mischiefs of foreign Intriegue,” and recommended we guard “against the Impostures of pretended Patriotism.”[164]

In his 1801 inaugural address, incoming President Thomas Jefferson similarly spoke about “honest friendship with all nations,” but “entangling alliances with none.”[165]

Unfortunately, American Presidents and members of Congress for a very long time now have ignored the earlier sage advice.

As the Declaration of Independence acknowledges, these United States of America hold mankind “Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.”

Absent declared war, our fore-fathers sought to be friendly with other nations, even as we always defended ourselves against individual acts of foreign aggression, without needing to wait upon Congress to authorize our appropriate defense.

Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution readily acknowledges this principle of self-defense even for individual States—whenever they are “actually invaded” or “in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay”—even as the individual States are otherwise by this same clause expressly prohibited from engaging in war on their own accord.

Except for self-defense, the States delegated their individual power to engage in war to all of the States of the Union assembled together in Congress.

One-third of the legislative powers found enumerated in Article I, Section 8 cover the war-related powers of Congress, in Clauses 11 through 16.

Whenever members declare war, the President as Commander-in-Chief is given authority to wage war to its intended successful conclusion.

With the war powers arguably involving the weightiest and most fearsome tools in the Constitutional toolbox, one would expect the prescribed constitutional process to be strictly followed, without fail, every time, to best-ensure all hands work together toward the same approved goals.

Any other course of action invites discord, as two or more sides on the same team begin to develop and oppose one another politically, thwarting attempts of remaining united to fight only our enemies.

As divisiveness grows, proper constitutional process succumbs to the slow, merciless death of political expediency, miring the country in escalating political confusion, which translates into chaos and uncertainty.

Although it may first appear that the President is given extraordinary discretion whenever members of Congress don’t overtly declare war but otherwise condone his prolonged unilateral military actions, the lack of a formal declaration long-term also ties the President’s hands, because he never receives the full measure of constitutional authority to conduct war successfully to make peace on the most-favorable terms.

Instead of pursuing a unified military strategy under a single commanding voice, meddling influences accumulate in non-declared wars, with too many cooks in the kitchen otherwise destroying even sound recipes.

It wasn’t then without expectation to see the fall of Saigon after the ignoble end of the Vietnam War, for example, or the hasty last-minute pull-out in Afghanistan after a generation of shifting results, leaving allies behind in-country, directly in harm’s way. 

That the Afghan debacle left some 80 billion dollars’ worth of advanced weaponry behind was made worse only by the same American government working tirelessly to disarm Americans at home.

When federal officials arm our enemies abroad but work to disarm We the People at home, Patriots must realize that those holding the reins remain our biggest threat.

When federal servants subvert their purpose—which the Declaration of Independence informs us, is to secure man’s unalienable rights—and instead pursue their own devious ends to obliterate citizens’ rights, Patriots must wake up from their slumber.

While Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the U.S. Constitution empowers Congress “To declare War,” it also provides members with the express power to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal” and to “make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.”

Letters Marque grant to captains of private armed ships—typically on a voyage-by-voyage basis—to conduct war on the high seas on behalf of the country, while protecting any captured privateers by having them treated and held as prisoners of war, rather than hanged as common pirates.[166]

Reprisals offer the captain and crew their “prizes”—known also as “bounty” or “booty”—in the form of captured vessels, furnishings, tackle, and freight, which require approval in admiralty prize courts, under formal rules.[167]^{, [168]}

Members of Congress are by Clause 13 empowered to “provide and maintain a Navy,” and, under Clause 14, to “make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.”

The States—fearful of standing armies—limited the appropriation of money for raising and supporting armies in Clause 12 to two years, to restrict man’s harmful tendencies toward military conquest, from having too ready of a hammer, thus always looking for a nail.

While the regular army and navy fall under Clauses 11-14, the citizen-soldiers of the militia stand apart, in Clauses 15 and 16.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 15 of the Constitution empowers Congress:

“To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”

Clause 16 continues on the topic and empowers Congress: 

“To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.”

Under these two clauses Congress on May 8^th, 1792, enacted the Militia Act, which stated that: 

“Each and every free able-bodied white male…of the age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years…shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia.  That every citizen so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball...”[169]

By this law, Congress mandated private gun ownership for “every citizen so enrolled and notified,” for a gun of sufficient bore and capability to wage war and defend the country.

Please note that with Clause 16 expressly empowering Congress “to provide for…arming…the militia,” the militia as an armed body of men does not rely upon or need the Second Amendment for their arming, since the amendment also speaks only to “rights.”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident” the Declaration of Independence tells us, that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed…”

The Declaration by this passage informs anyone paying attention that American governments only ever have delegated powers and, further, only American people ever have rights.  Thus, whenever “rights” are discussed in the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution, they always pertain to individual people.

It’s no coincidence, after all, that Article I speaks to the legislative powers granted to Congress, Article II speaks to the executive power given the President, and Article III the judicial power vested in the courts.

Whenever federal servants intentionally violate government’s fundamental purpose—which purpose is to secure man’s unalienable rights—they contravene the reason for government’s existence and thus break their delegated trust, which in turn removes any source of legitimacy they may ever have for the Union.

By Article I, Section 1 and by Article I, Section 8, Clause 11, the Constitution specifically “vests” the power “To declare War” with Congress, fixing it therein.

With such delegation resolutely placed in their hands by the principals of the compact (the States) members of Congress therefore cannot redelegate this named power elsewhere.  Members cannot redelegate a power delegated to them, to American Presidents, for example, and certainly never to foreign nationals who cannot even begin to meet the qualifications required of federal servants, including required oaths.

So, just how was the U.S. Senate ever able to ratify the United Nations Charter in 1945 in the first place, that President Harry S. Truman could later cite to unilaterally commit U.S. air and sea forces to Korea?[170]^{, [171]}

And, likewise, how did Congress in the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution effectively delegate to President Lyndon Baines Johnson the ability to decide matters of war in Vietnam, without a congressional declaration of war?[172]^{, [173]}

Like all other instances of constitutional bypass, far easier than one would think, unfortunately.  Thankfully, what is easily bypassed may be easily rectified, because it only requires Patriots to awaken from their stupor and then stand and be counted.

As the Declaration of Independence openly declares and readily affirms, the free and independent States in 1776 had “full power to levy War” and “conclude Peace,” otherwise, we’d still be British subjects.

Only by their ratification of the U.S. Constitution—which contains Article I, Section 10, Clause 3—was that war power removed from the individual States, except for their immediate and pressing self-defense.  And—by the express delegation in Section 8, Clause 11—was the power to declare war given over to the Union of States meeting in Congress.

However, one must realize that the express prohibitions against “States” in Section 10 do not apply to the District of Columbia, because the “District” is not a “State.”

Therefore, besides having their delegated Clause 11-named power to declare “War” for the Union of States (which cannot be redelegated [because that named power is by the Constitution vested wholly with Congress])—members also curiously have a separate ability to declare and engage in war on the District’s behalf, because by Article I, Section 8, Clause 17, members have all the powers available to the States that the States originally had, before those States ratified the Constitution, where and when those States delegated some named powers and gave up other named powers.

Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 also prevents “States” from entering into agreements with foreign powers.

But, express prohibitions applicable to “States” again do not similarly bind the “District” Seat.  Members of Congress may therefore—under their exclusive legislation authority—enter into agreements with foreign powers on their own behalf (at least when the States don’t object properly).

And, since only “States” elect members of Congress, please realize that there isn’t even legislative representation in the District of Columbia, and, neither is the “District” guaranteed a Republican Form of Government, under Article IV, Section 4 (since again, the “District” is not a “State”).

Which means that there can be no real crime nor foul if, in D.C., members of Congress delegate their exclusive legislation authority for the District Seat (which includes its own war-making powers), elsewhere—like with the American President.

Without an express prohibition keeping members of Congress from ever delegating their exclusive legislation power to declare war or from ever delegating exclusive legislation power to enter into agreements with foreign powers, then members may— under their power to act “in all Cases whatsoever”—enter into treaties with foreign powers, and delegate exclusive legislation powers to foreign delegates, including members’ exclusive-legislation war-making power, to the U.N. Security Council. 

Given the shocking extent of raw power readily available to members of Congress in the highly-unusual exception to all the normal rules of the U.S. Constitution that is found under the seventeenth clause of the eighth section of the first article for the Seat of Government of the United States, it is high-time for an extended examination into the most-powerful of all clauses of the U.S. Constitution, bar none.

Next up:  The exclusive legislative powers of Congress, under Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution for the United States of America, the source of all evil befalling this worthy country which has long been on a tragic course of decline.[174]

 

 

Lesson 16: Article I, Section 8, Clause 17

Exclusive Legislation Authority I

Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the U.S. Constitution discusses the highly-unusual exclusive-legislation power of Congress, for the District Seat, and “like-Authority” exclusive-legislation parcels scattered throughout the Union, and used for forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards and other needful buildings.

Clause 17 reads:

“The Congress shall have Power…To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the consent of the Legislature of the State in which the same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings.”

Given the fundamental importance of this clause, which clause and importance are overlooked entirely—even in an age when nothing else explains the tyranny we face at the hands of those who swear an oath to support the Constitution—it is appropriate to start with the underlying reason the Framers sought to create an exclusive-legislation-jurisdiction federal seat in the first place.

Following the successful conclusion of the Revolutionary War, the States were free but largely broke, as the war debts loomed heavy over the new States.

Vendors who had supplied the war effort went unpaid.  The foreign loans taken out by Congress were delinquent.  And, while the Revolutionary War soldiers had been sent home, their backpay was long overdue.

In June of 1783, a small group of roughly 70 ex-soldiers from Lancaster, Pennsylvania marched on the Confederation Congress whose delegates were meeting at the Pennsylvania State House—later known as Independence Hall—in Philadelphia.

By the time the men reached the City of Brotherly Love, their number had swollen to approximately 400.

The so-called Pennsylvania Mutiny had a lasting effect on Congress, even as none of the men ever initiated any violence.

The intimidated delegates applied to the Supreme Executive Council of the State of Pennsylvania for protection, but the council refused aid, perhaps fearing that if they called-out the militia, they’d likely only amplify the number of protestors, as the pool of men who could be called out would simply be other ex-soldiers who were also owed backpay.

Growing increasingly nervous, the helpless and humiliated delegates soon fled to Princeton, New Jersey, but they would not soon forget the humbling circumstances they had faced.

When many of those same men returned to Philadelphia in May of 1787—to attend the Constitutional Convention—the events four years earlier were still plenty vivid, not even dwelling on the more-recent 1786 Shay’s Rebellion, which was even fresher in their minds.

During the Convention which composed the draft of the proposed Constitution, James Madison on August 11^th formally proposed “a central place for the seat of Government.”[175]

Seven days later, on August 18^th, Madison submitted nine powers to the Committee of Detail, for additional consideration for being integrated into the named powers of Congress, the fourth proposed power being:

"To exercise exclusively Legislative authority at the Seat of the General Government, and over a district around the same, not exceeding “a number of” square miles (to be determined); the Consent of the Legislature of the State or States comprising the same, being first obtained."[176]

Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina, next proposed eleven additional points, including his first:

"To fix and permanently establish the seat of Government of the U. S. in which they shall possess the exclusive right of soil & jurisdiction."[177]

On Wednesday, September 5, the first part of Clause 17—relating to the District Seat—made its way to the floor, and the proposal was by the whole convention agreeably inserted into the proposed draft of the Constitution, “Nem Con,”—which is short for the Latin phrase “Nemine contradicente;” which means “without any man being contrary to the proposal.”

The second portion of Clause 17—relating to forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards and other needful buildings—was separated from that earlier vote, because delegates were concerned with the current wording.

Once Massachusetts delegate Rufus King moved to add the phrase, “by the consent of the Legislature of the State…”—which was seconded by Gouverneur Morris of New York—the second portion of Clause 17 was also agreed to, again without dissent by any man.[178]

The outcome of Madison’s recommendation for Congress to be empowered exclusively over a federal seat—rather than being at the mercy of any single State for protection—is, of course, today known as Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the U.S. Constitution.

A unique federal city created out of cessions by particular States wouldn’t be beholden to any individual host State for protection or any other reason.

Of course, without any State authority remaining within the District Seat to enact local legislation therein needed—as the States elsewhere normally enact—obviously, this throws off the normal federal-State arrangement, entirely.

Since someone must yet provide these State-like powers if they are yet to be exercised, the U.S. Constitution vests them in Congress, but ignore as irrelevant, any delegation members may give to local government—such as a mayor and city council—because the Constitution vests these exclusive legislation powers in Congress, where the “buck” always starts and stops.

Please realize that the whole purpose of the District Seat was to establish a unique federal area, free from State influence, authority and control, so the federal government could govern and protect itself, without State influence.

But, with the primary complaint against Congress and the U.S. Government today being that members and federal officers act as powers unto themselves, answerable to no one, not even the States who otherwise remain the principals of the Constitutional Compact, doesn’t anyone think that it is wise to examine that place made explicitly for that purpose, to discover how or if it serves as the base of special authority simply extended in devious fashion beyond allowable boundaries?

In other words, it is not that unusual federal powers can’t ever be performed, as widely claimed, but it is simply that special powers aren’t supposed to be exercised beyond the exclusive legislation parcel borders.

There are several major differences, that make Clause 17 unique and even opposite from all other clauses found in the Constitution.

It is imperative to understand these differences, to begin realizing just how unique is this special power, that provides members of Congress and federal officials an alternate source of awe-inspiring authority to exercise, that has nothing to do with the normal clauses of the U.S. Constitution, which apply in normal circumstances, even as normal circumstances are seldom practiced today, and exclusive legislation actions fill the federal agenda.

The first major difference in Clause 17 is that “Congress shall have Power… To exercise exclusive Legislation, in all Cases whatsoever.”

This phrase shows that the power to exercise legislation in the District Seat is found exclusively in Congress, and not only in the occasional case, but “in all Cases whatsoever.”

In every case that comes up (solely) within the District Seat, members of Congress may exercise legislative powers, exclusively.

These words clarify that following cessions by particular States and acceptance by Congress, that afterwards no State of the Union has any governing authority within the District of Columbia, ever.

It is vital to realize the necessary implications of this unique situation.

For Congress to be able to exercise exclusive legislation, in all Cases whatsoever, means that in the District Seat, all governing powers have been here united or consolidated in Congress.

This is important, because in the normal case—regarding all other clauses enumerated in the Constitution—all governing powers in that normal situation were by ratification of the U.S. Constitution divided into enumerated federal powers and reserved State authority.

The second major difference is the peculiar and unique way this special power was actually transferred to Congress.

Before investigating deeper this abnormal case of transferring allowable governing powers, it is appropriate to again cover the normal transfer process.

The normal powers Congress and U.S. Government available for direct exercise throughout the whole Union came from the States’ individual ratifications of the U.S. Constitution, i.e., from the enumerated powers that the States explicitly gave up, to members of Congress and federal officials, that are found listed in the U.S. Constitution.

It was by and through the Article VII ratification process, after all, that all the States of the Union soon ratified the U.S. Constitution within their borders, on their own timetable.  Article VII, of course, delineates that:

“The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution, between the States so ratifying the Same.”

While it took the ratifications of nine State ratifying conventions before the Constitution could take effect, the words “between the States so ratifying the Same” acknowledges that no State could ever be bound by the U.S. Constitution, but by its own accord.

By these words, each State could only be bound by its own decision, in giving up named powers, to the delegates of all the States who would meet together and enact law according to their named powers, using necessary and proper means.

New Hampshire became the ninth State to ratify the U.S. Constitution, on June 21, 1788. With that trigger, the States meeting under the earlier Articles of Confederation set aside a date in March of 1789 to begin meeting under the U.S. Constitution.

By the time the scheduled date rolled around, two more States had ratified the Constitution, bringing the ratification total to 11 States.  The following March, those 11 States began meeting together and began establishing government under the U.S. Constitution.

It was not until November 21, 1789 that North Carolina became the 12^th State to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

And, it wasn’t until May 29, 1790 that Rhode Island became the last of the 13 original States to ratify the U.S. Constitution and soon began to meet in Congress.

These last two States—prior to their individual ratifications—were independent nation-States.

Before their ratification, none of the new laws of the United States enacted by the first 11 States had any effect in those two independent nations, and trade between these two independent States and any of the United States involved import duties as with other foreign nations.

The final two States of the original 13, that joined the Union after the other 11 had already joined, had nothing to do with the first enactments of law before their individual ratifications and arrival to Congress.

For instance, North Carolina and Rhode Island had nothing to do with choosing the first President or initially setting up the Supreme Court.

Within the originally-ratified Constitution, Article V establishes the procedure by which the States acting together may change the allowed federal powers.

Article V specifies that to change the Constitution—and thus change the allowed federal powers that members of Congress and federal officials may everywhere in the Union directly exercise—that at least three-fourths of the States existing at the time of ratification must ratify formal amendment proposals proposed by two-thirds of Congress or two-thirds of the States meeting in a convention called for proposing amendments.

There have only been 27 amendments ratified to date, which are binding upon all of the States of the Union, even on those States that didn’t individually ratify the proposed amendment, themselves.

With the normal mechanisms for transferring powers, described by the Article VII ratification and Article V amendment processes, in the next Lesson we’ll examine the unique transfer process described in Article I.