August 1, 2009 – In the year 1776 Thomas Paine put out a pamphlet that is credited with providing the impetus for our nation’s war for independence from Britain. That pamphlet was entitled Common Sense, and shortly after its publication Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, which outlined the principles upon which these United States were to be governed as a free and independent nation.

On my best day I pale in comparison to the eloquence and composition that Paine possessed, yet my goal remains strikingly similar. All my feeble attempts at writing are directed towards awakening the public to the fact that their government is abusing the powers we have given them, and in doing so they are stripping us of our God-given rights and liberty. Getting back to Thomas Paine, although he is most frequently known for having written Common Sense, he is also the author of many other writings, of which my favorite is The Rights of Man. Paine published The Rights of Man in 1791 in response to a pamphlet written by Edmund Burke which denounced the French Revolution.

Maybe it is my lack of writing abilities, or maybe it is the fact that people no longer care about such things, the fact is that I often feel frustration and a bit of anger towards my fellow countrymen because they refuse to admit, or even consider that I might be telling them the truth. I think Paine may have understood how I feel, because in one section of Paine’s essay he expresses the very essence of what I have been feeling, “When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.”

I too find it difficult to hide my disgust towards my fellow countrymen who sit back and allow their government to trample upon their rights and liberty. I find it mind-boggling that an entire nation of people could care so little for their own liberty that they would allow their government, with their blessing it seems, to walk all over their rights and their liberty.

Yet that is not the only thing that Paine said in his essay The Rights of Man. Although Paine was speaking specifically about the French Revolution, he also spoke in terms that also apply to our own system of government. His essay continued with, “It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing the principles of Freedom to say that Government is a compact between those who govern and those who are governed; but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist, and consequently there could originally exist no governors to form such a compact with.

The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.”

In other words, our government is nothing more than a creature which was created by the people. We, therefore, hold the ultimate power, not the government. To claim otherwise is similar to allowing your hired servant to assume so much power that he becomes your boss, and you become the servant.

It follows then, that if our government takes a single step outside its prescribed power, particularly when their abuse of power threatens our liberty, that we have the right, as explained in the Declaration of Independence, “…to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

In his essay, Paine also wrote, “To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin.” Our government has, as its beginning, the Constitution, which is, as previously explained, a charter of power given to men to represent us concerning certain specific tasks, and nothing more.

I have been trying, rather unsuccessfully it seems, to get people to understand that our government has no powers outside those expressly described within the Constitution.

Maybe people don’t believe what I say because I am just an average guy who never went to college. So in another attempt to enlighten people, I would like for them to read what Paine says about Constitutions.

Continuing from The Rights Of Man, Paine writes, “But it will be first necessary to define what is meant by a Constitution. It is not sufficient that we adopt the word; we must fix also a standard signification to it.

A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an ideal, but a real existence; and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting its government. It is the body of elements, to which you can refer, and quote article by article; and which contains the principles on which the government shall be established, the manner in which it shall be organised, the powers it shall have, the mode of elections, the duration of Parliaments, or by what other name such bodies may be called; the powers which the executive part of the government shall have; and in fine, everything that relates to the complete organisation of a civil government, and the principles on which it shall act, and by which it shall be bound. A constitution, therefore, is to a government what the laws made afterwards by that government are to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make the laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made: and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution.”

Now do you see why I am so frustrated that people do not know what their Constitution says? How can we be expected to bind our government to a set of rules when we don’t even know what the rules are ourselves?

Whenever our government abuses its powers it is forging another link in a chain that will eventually bind us into bondage and servitude. Whether these usurpations of power enslave us by imposing unlawful taxes upon us, or whether they be by infringing upon our rights and liberty, the end result is that we are slowly become slaves to our own servants.

Thomas Paine also wrote about rights and liberty. From his essay we read, “It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect — that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few . . . They . . . consequently are instruments of injustice.”

Those who claim to be American should have been taught these principles in school. Each individual should fully understand these principles, and consider them as being vital to our nations existence, much as the air we breathe and the food we eat are vital to our individual existence.

Our government is not a democracy, where 51 percent of the people can impose their wishes and desires upon the remaining 49 percent. We are a Constitutional Republic in which the majority does have the right to enact law, although only in accordance to the specific guidelines found in the Constitution, and only when these laws do not infringe upon the liberty of one single American.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.”

John Adams said this about majority rule, “That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the whole world.”

Author Ayn Rand states, “The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”

My government has not one shred of authority to strip me of one single right. You as an individual have no right to demand that your government strip me of one single right.

You may not like the fact that I own guns, or that I like to hunt and fish, but I may not like the fact that you listen to rap music, or sit on the couch eating junk food and watching reality television shows.

I have no right to take away your television or your rap music, as long as your actions do not infringe upon my right to do as I please. The reverse also applies, you have no right to take away my guns as long as I am not shooting holes in the side of your house or killing your pets.

The current path our government is upon has only one destination, the total loss of all rights and liberty, yours included. If that is what people want, fine. I find that outcome totally unacceptable and I will fight it to the death if needs be. I refuse to live as a slave to a government that was supposed to have been the caretaker of my rights and liberty.

Therefore, my fellow countrymen, you can pull your heads out of the sand and realize what is happening, or you can remain hidden inside your cozy cocoons, ignoring the truth until it is too late.

That truth is that our nation’s capital needs an enema to cleanse it of the toxic buildup that calls itself our government. Neither the Republicans, nor the Democrats govern according to the guidelines found in the Constitution, which they all take an oath to uphold.

It is only by removing all the corruption, excising the cancer, and returning to the principles upon which our nation was founded, and upon which we became great, that this nation can have any hope of surviving, at least surviving as a land based upon the rights and liberty of its citizens.

I know which side of the battle I am on. The question remains, do you?

Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders and says “OH SHIT!!…. HE’S AWAKE!!”

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?“

~ The Author ~
Neal Ross can be reached for comments at bonsai@syix.com. Visit Neal’s Blog at http://www.zombie-slayer.com/neal