In Part 2 of this article, I established that attempting to restore freedom within the current system and union is ineffectual. Freedom’s studier should know the circumstances in which the American colonies seceded from Great Britain in comparison to the circumstances of the States’ plight today. The results should lead concerned persons to conclude that the people of the States have long lived in submission beyond what the founders deemed in conformity to our duty to man and God. America’s comfort, unprincipled character and unwillingness to pledge our lives, fortunes and sacred honor have, in part, created the infatuation to “restore freedom” within the debauched system of the federal government. To restore freedom, the people must act outside the system, just as America’s founding generation did.
Attorney Jonathon Emond wrote an article entitled, A Blueprint For Resurrecting Our Republic, which accurately and diplomatically describes the reasons why, in fact, the people of the States are living in slavery to the federal government and which illustrates that federal bureaucracy operates as the rule of law and not the consent of the governed. Indeed, the title of his article, and ones like it, acknowledges that the Republic has been destroyed. Why else would it need to be “resurrected” if it were not dead? Why else would freedom need to be restored or reclaimed if it were not destroyed?
Erroneously, however, Emond concludes that the answer to this destruction is voting into federal office new politicians, as if even the best carpenters can use rotten wood, rusty nails and disintegrated foundations to rebuild a lasting empire. Not only does this proven-failed solution not comport to the sense and seriousness of our times, but also it does not comport to the manner in which freedom was secured in the first place in the American states. Additionally, it makes a lot of unfounded assumptions concerning the assurances of freedom in the future, the ability of all of American society to be governed under one general government system, the effectiveness of new politicians in the federal government and the timeliness in which freedom can be restored.
Out of the list of six crucially-fundamental encroachments which Emond enumerates, the one which should protrude out of the subconscious of our minds and out of the roots of our spirit is number 3 on his list, “No Taxation Without Representation,” where Emond states:
“Because almost all laws are created by unelected heads of bureaucratic agencies, WE ARE TAXED BUT ARE NOT REPRESENTED IN THE CREATION OF ALMOST ALL FEDERAL LAWS THAT GOVERN US. That taxation without representation violates a primary precept on which the government is based, i.e., that the people are sovereign and that just governments are based on the consent of the governed.” (emphasis added)
Edmond states correctly. Yet, that one could acknowledge this tyrannical encroachment (perpetrated for generations) and still advocate that freedom’s restoration will, can and should be realized through this same illegitimate system reflects a very conflicting understanding. Never forget: “taxation without representation” was the same ominous shadow cast upon the colonies by their mother-country’s tyranny, for which reason the American colonies prepared and executed their resistance to and independence from Great Britain. Let us recall the events clearly for our modern application.
By around the mid-1700s, thirteen colonies had been established under certain authority from the monarch of Great Britain, wherein the people of those colonies formed and created their own local forms of government under their own internal constitutions. However, they were considered the loyal subjects of Great Britain’s government (considered to be the best and freest in the world under their constitution at that time) albeit under its ultimate sovereign authority regarding the political, legal and commercial affairs of the individual colonies.
For all practical purposes, the colonies and Great Britain enjoyed an amiable relationship, until January 1765, when Great Britain passed the infamous Stamp Act, which taxed certain revenue from the colonies. This tax was passed by their Congress, called Parliament, in Great Britain. Parliament acted under the constitutional authority of the British constitution, just as the monarch executed the laws under his constitutional authority.
As the natural response required, the colonies opposed the tax. Yet, “many considered submission in the present state of the colonies unavoidable; and that this was the opinion of Doctor [Benjamin] Franklin himself…The idea of resistance, by force, was no where glanced at in the most distant manner.”[1]
In 1765, the colony of Virginia’s House of Burgesses met to address and petition the concern of the stamp act tax. The men present were of the most virtuous patriotism, spirit and manner. Many of them included America’s founding fathers: Peyton Randolph, Richard Bland, Edmund Pendleton, George Wythe and Richard Henry Lee, who in particular “understood thoroughly the constitution both of the mother-country and her colonies.”[2]
Even still, during that particular assembly, while they considered the stamp act to be unconstitutional and against their natural rights, there was little fortitude to do anything more than to pass resolutions merely stating their constitutional and natural rights as a body-politic and freemen.[3] These colonial resolutions essentially expressed (1) the nature of their settlement of the colonies, (2) the right of the people to tax themselves, (3) the right to govern themselves in their own internal police, and (4) any attempts to regulate and tax the colonies without their consent reduces them to slaves and destroys the British constitution.[4] Even then, these resolutions passed only by a very small majority in Virginia, and did “little more than reaffirm principles advanced…the preceding years.”[5]
After the response of the colonies to the stamp act, Great Britain repealed it, not out of fear but out of strategy. However, “the joy of the Americans, on the repeal of the stamp act, was very short-lived.”[6] Great Britain enacted another tax on the colonies to support the British military which were quartered in the colonies and which were intended to be sent there.
Perhaps even more politically significant, Great Britain continued to assert its “supreme law of the land” constitutional authority over the colonies in every particular regardless of the distinction between internal and external polity and regardless of any laws passed by the colonies to the contrary. To the British government, it was the colonists’ constitutional duty to submit to their lawful authority. Many in the colony agreed–to their prolonging detriment.
See Part 4 for my conclusion on this subject.
[1] William Wirt, The Life and Character of Patrick Henry, (New York, NY, Derby & Jackson, 1857; reprint by Home School Legal Defense Assoc., Purceville, VA, 1998), 61.
[2] Ibid., 67.
[3] Said resolutions were similar to the tenth amendment resolutions which have been passed by a large number of States in the U.S. recently.
[4] Ibid., 75.
[5] Ibid., 76, 77.
[6] Ibid., 95.
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