Lifting the Lamp of Liberty
Amid all the patriotic fervor
alerting us to corrupt politics and the encroaching globalist threat that
rightly should concern all Americans, the silence of a particular message
screams for attention while millions of dollars are spent to alarm, alert, and
infuriate the public about what’s wrong. Everywhere we hear the hue and cry.
"The end is near! The evil empire is taking over!"
Who is teaching us the wonderful
laws we should be thankful for in this nation?
Sincere as the alarmists may be,
there is a thundering quiet when one asks, "What are you doing to teach
your children what’s good about America’s legal system?"
For all the flag waving and
constitutional demands to expose imagined conspiracies, who is preparing the way
for future generations by teaching due process and the rule of law?
It’s one thing to complain
about abuses of due process. It’s quite another to take time to teach your
children what due process is and how it can be used to insure that the good guys
win.
It’s one thing to complain
about globalist movements to take over the world, but it takes dedication and
sometimes thankless perseverance to teach your children what the rule of law is
and how the rule of law can successfully defuse centralist policies.
Who is teaching these things?
I don’t hear it.
I hear complaints. I hear
saber-rattling. I hear doomsayers urging us to buy dehydrated food and keep our
weapons lightly oiled. I hear people warning that our constitutional rights are
being taken away by international interests … yet I don’t hear anyone
explaining where those constitutional rights actually came from, nothing about
the philosophies of law that inspired the framers to write the constitution as
they did, not one single word about what we can do to keep our liberties free
from the evil inroads of international imperialism. No. All I hear are
complaints about what’s wrong and very little about what we can do to prepare
the way for liberty to be preserved for future generations. Complaining has its
place, but it is not the solution.
Please don’t get me wrong. I
oppose globalism as much as anyone. I’ve been opposing it openly and actively
for nearly 30 years. I went to law school to learn how to be more effective in
my influence of others. I hate the idea of a global imperialism. An old friend,
Gen. Lewis Walt, USMC Ret’d, told me of his first-hand experiences in Vietnam
and Korea where globalists made decisions that caused his men to be killed
unnecessarily. He wrote in the flyleaf of his book, The Eleventh Hour,
"Never give up the fight." I work for sovereign nations like America,
a nation of States, to share the planet in peace and prosperity under the rule
of law. I see the potential horror of global imperialism quite as clearly as any
who spend their energies warning us.
But, who is going to teach the
children how to preserve our nation?
Who is teaching the children the
fundamentals of our American jurisprudence?
Who is teaching the Rules?
Finding fault alone is not
enough!
Finding fault is only part of the
answer. It’s a good thing to know there’s a fox in the hen house, but if you
don’t know how to get the hens to lay again when the fox is gone, what do you
gain by yelling, "Fox! Fox!"? You may get others to praise you for
being such a watchful farmer, but if you forget the necessities of keeping
chickens (feeding them, repairing the hen house roof, giving them their
medicines, collecting the eggs, keeping away the foxes that come sneaking into
the barnyard late at night) then all your yelling hasn’t really provided the
needed answers.
Anyone can yell, "Fox!"
More is needed.
Warning us of impending danger is
not enough.
Complaining of alleged
conspiracies is not enough.
Someone needs to teach the
American people how to use our marvelous system of law and order to make things
better, to get rid of the fox but also to manage the farm effectively so every
resource is utilized for the greatest possible common welfare. Someone needs to
teach America what America is supposed to be. Someone needs to teach
America how it will be when the American legal system is finally working as it
should – the way it will work once again when we have taught our children how
to use it properly, as it was intended to be used.
We no longer have a philosophy of
law in this nation today. Ask a patriot what he or she believes in, and you’ll
hear the reply, "I believe in the Constitution," but not even a tiny
handful has any idea about the maxims upon which our Constitution was built, nor
do they seem to care. We allow the Constitution to be misinterpreted because we
the People don’t know how it should be interpreted. As a people we know next
to nothing about the principles of law. We have by our own ignorance abdicated
the responsibility of rule, then we complain when our rulers don’t rule us as
we think they should. This nation was designed to be a land of self-rule, but
wise and prosperous self-rule requires that the People themselves know the law
and share a philosophy of law that unites them as a People. We don’t have
that, though millions of dollars are being spent these days to scream ever more
loudly, "Fox!"
We need to teach our children the
maxims that gave birth to this nation.
Finding fault is not enough.
If the doomsayers have their way,
will they close down our courts?
Will they put our legislatures
out to pasture?
Will they empty the Whitehouse
and hang all the governors of our States?
By what will we be governed then?
By laws? Or by a new set of powerful men acting out of their own willpower,
determining for us from on high what is good for each of us? How will we be
better off when the government we have has been destroyed instead of repaired
according to the rule of law and principles of due process our children need to
learn as quickly as possible?
Perhaps the time has come for
patriots to realize that complaining is not enough. Warning the world of the
dangers of global imperialism is not enough. Pointing fingers at corruption isn’t
replacing corruption with sound policy nor encouraging people to learn how to be
good citizens participating in the task of making government safe for the
governed.
Perhaps the time has come to
teach once more the fundamental principles of due process, the rule of law, and
the ancient maxims by which all that you hope for can yet be achieved.
Our nation suffers from mass
neurosis … knowing there’s a problem but being unable to stand together
united as a single force to make the problem go away. We are too much divided.
On the one hand are those like
Chicken Little, running about screaming to anyone who will listen, "The sky
is falling! The sky is falling!"
Another group demands dolefully,
"It’s God’s will. The end is near. There’s nothing we can do."
Still another points its finger
at the shadows and insists, "It’s them! Those people hiding over there.
The moneyed interests. The lawyers. The bankers. They’ve all conspired against
us."
Yet in all this madness there’s
not a single voice of reason that can be heard above the din of doubt teaching,
"When the dust settles, you are still going to need a vision to unite
you."
Why not let ourselves be reunited
by that vision in this very present hour?
Why not be reunited by the
fundamentals that gave birth to our nation in the first place?
Why not reach again to the maxims
of law, the principles upon which our nation was built, teaching these maxims
and their corollaries to our children, lifting a generation of hope to inherit
the wisdom of our forefathers and make the world safe at last through law and
order?
Why do we listen to those who
insist the world must get worse? What is most important to these people, the
welfare of our children or the prophecy their blindness threatens to insure?
Nobody ever made progress by
merely tearing down.
Someone must build again.
It doesn’t take much intellect
to find fault with what’s "out there". There is plenty to find fault
with. There is plenty we need to know about. Horrible, senseless, unnecessary,
dangerous things are going on in the world today, but every one of them results
from the refusal of people to see the truth and teach it to others so we can
stand together united against the falseness that threatens to destroy our peace
and forever deprive us of liberty and the protection of justice.
It’s time for a positive vision
for America!
It’s time to stand up for what’s
right by teaching what’s right and good and honorable and long-lasting and
peaceable and fruitful and functional and prosperous. There is good to stand
for. Let’s stand together!
How about a movement to teach our
children the maxims of law on which all our dreams must ultimately be
established? How about a movement to teach our children how law and order make
peace possible? How about a movement to teach our children the People are
sovereign in each of the States, how state constitutions enacted by the People
control legislatures, courts, and executive branches in Ohio, Nebraska, Florida,
and all the others States? How about a movement to teach how the federal
government is a mandate by the states to provide for a common defense, promote
commerce, and do a number of other useful things it must be maintained to do and
can be required to do once the People know how our system is designed to work?
How about a movement to promote positive press about America? Not just flag-waving rhetoric but rock-solid teachings that
empower the People, teaching people that they can lawfully change government
when leadership gets out of hand, encouraging them to promote peace by learning
the principles of due process, the rule of law, the maxims, and the fundamental
rules of evidence and procedure?
We can do this.
Think of the millions being spent
to advocate rebellion against our nation’s government. What will happen when
some of those millions are diverted to promote public legal education in our
schools and positive articles and books about what’s good about our
system of laws?
This is still the most wonderful
nation in the world. It is the most wonderful not because of its waving fields
of wheat or shining shores. It is the most wonderful because it is predicated on
a set of principles called maxims that promote justice and establish liberty
through law and order, governing the People by their own consent, a land where
knowledge is needed to preserve these principles, a land where public legal
ignorance is our greatest enemy … the conspiracy of darkness that a few
well-placed candles of legal knowledge can quickly disperse!
Yelling, "Fox! Fox!" is
something we will probably always need.
But someone better come forward
soon to teach again the fundamental principles upon which this nation was
founded, or all the yelling and complaining will never bring peace to the hen
house nor keep the foxes at bay for very long.
Lift the lamp higher. Teach the maxims of law.
Teach the children!
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