Tom Hoefling
Originally published on November 19, 2016

We are all CREATED equal by God at the moment of our conception. This is self-evident. At that precise moment of time God has declared His divine intent, which is to bring a unique individual human person, made in His image and likeness, into physical existence. From that moment onward, until natural death, His command, "you shall not murder," fully applies.

Our national creed, as expressed so well in our national charter, the instrument that brought this nation into existence, perfectly conforms to this understanding:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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..."

The U.S. Constitution, the supreme law of our land, in its wording, has also always fully conformed to God's stated intent in this matter. In that great document's original statement of purpose, it was made crystal clear that all were to be protected in their God-given rights, including those persons who were not yet born, or even as yet conceived, i.e. posterity.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union (that is the union of ALL), establish Justice (that is justice for ALL), insure domestic Tranquility (that is peace and tranquility for ALL), provide for the common defense (that is the defense of ALL), promote the general Welfare (that is the welfare or well-being of ALL), and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves (that is ALL of us who are now living) and our Posterity (that is ALL who are yet unborn or unconceived), do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The first round of amendments to the Constitution, which we call the Bill of Rights, in its wording conformed fully to God's will and command as well, specifically in the Fifth Amendment, in which it was made explicit that no innocent person could - at least legally, legitimately - be stripped of their God-given, unalienable right to live.

"No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law."

In the wake of the terrible civil war which nearly tore our national union apart - a war that was fought, whether everybody wants to face that fact or not, over the intrinsic rights of persons, and the intrinsic obligations of states to respect the intrinsic rights of all persons - the Fourteenth Amendment was debated, passed, and ratified. This amendment not only reiterated the protection for every person which was already required by the Fifth Amendment, it also made quite explicit the absolute obligation each of the states has to provide equal protection for the right to life of every human person within their jurisdictional bounds.

"No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

All fifty of our state constitutions not only acknowledge God as the Provider of all of the blessings of our liberty, they recognize the unalienable rights of all persons, and require equal protection for those rights, beginning with the right to live.

My state's constitution:

"WE THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF IOWA, grateful to the Supreme Being for the blessings hitherto enjoyed, and feeling our dependence on Him for a continuation of those blessings, do ordain and establish a free and independent government, by the name of the State of Iowa...All men are, by nature, free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights - among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness."

By far the greatest threat to the existence of our republic came from those who would dehumanize, depersonify, some portion of humanity, and strip them of all of their rights. The ultimate destruction and demise of many great nations throughout history can be traced to the injustices brought about by the abject failure to recognize and respect the God-given rights of all.

The dehumanization, the depersonification, of any portion of humanity can only lead, inexorably, to hell on earth.

If all are not equal before the law, the rights of none are any longer secure.
Do you see your precious rights as an American slipping away, one by one?

Do you see your country slowly but steadily being destroyed around you?
You would have to be willfully blind not to see it.

Do you care enough about your children and grandchildren, your posterity, to do what it takes to save this great republic for them, as our forebears fought to save it for us?

Then you must do whatever it takes to reestablish respect, in principle and in practice, for the supreme right of the unborn child, the God-given, intrinsic, unalienable right to live.

Before it is too late. 

Tom Hoefling

At the conclusion of the American Revolution, when King George III of Great Britain heard that General George Washington would resign his commission to a powerless Congress, he reportedly told the American painter Benjamin West: "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."

Years later, Washington willingly gave up power again when he left the presidency after only two terms, even though there was at that time no constitutional barrier to him serving as many terms as he wanted, or, more properly, as many terms as the people would be willing to give him. In his case, of course, that probably would have been as many terms as he wanted.

George Washington set the example for the peaceful transfer of power in the United States of America, an example that has been followed perfectly for more than two centuries.

Until Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is nothing like George Washington. In fact, he is the exact opposite of George Washington.

It's crystal clear that Donald Trump was willing to do literally anything, up to and including the unleashing of a violent insurrectionist mob on the Congress of the United States during the conclusion of the presidential electoral process, to prevent the peaceful transfer of the power of the presidency to the candidate who clearly defeated him in the 2020 election, Joseph Biden.

Donald Trump is not the greatest man in the world. In fact, he is the worst man in the world. He is the worst man, by far, to ever step foot onto the public stage in America. No one else is even close.

The Senate must convict Donald Trump and block him from ever holding any public office ever again. It's absolutely necessary.

If the Republicans refuse once again to uphold their oaths and convict Trump, they will go down in history as feckless, unprincipled, oath-breaking fools - like Trump, utterly unworthy of their high offices.

###

Tom Hoefling

Almost none of those who will be sworn into office next month in Washington, DC understand what sort of government we are supposed to have under our Constitution. They think we live in a judicial oligarchy instead of in a republic with required constitutional checks on arbitrary, illegitimate power.

Why is this so?

Because almost none of those who elected them understand what sort of government we are supposed to have under our Constitution, and even among those who actually know, a large percentage of them are willing to sacrifice morality and constitutionality on the altars of abject fear and perceived political expedience.

They say that a fish rots from the head down, and in America the sovereign body of the people are the head.

Tom Hoefling

Yesterday I was asked by a new friend for my thoughts on Limited Government.

My response:

I have a simple three part test of all laws and public policies:

1) Is it right?

2) Is it constitutional?

3) Is it absolutely necessary?

Much of what our federal government does today fails all three parts of the test.

Most of what our federal government does today fails to meet one or more parts of the test.

We have to get back within the bounds of morality, constitutionality, and common sense or this great republic cannot possibly survive.

Self-government in liberty cannot be preserved and delivered to our children and grandchildren unless we soon return to the basic principles America was founded upon.

Tom Hoefling

The plumb line and level allow the builder to build according to the laws of nature which were enacted by nature's God.

Would you hire a builder who scoffed at the use of the plumb line and level?

Would you hire a builder who didn't even own a plumb line or a level?

Of course not.

So, why in the world would you support a politician who pays absolutely no mind to God's laws, or the laws of nature, or the obligations of his sacred oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States?

It's a fair question.

"Moral, constitutional, republican self-government in liberty cannot possibly co-exist with socialism, with Islam, with the homosexual agenda, or with the practice of human abortion. One absolutely precludes the other, sooner or later.. Pick a side, because it is an existential fight to the finish, whether you like it or not."

-- Tom Hoefling

As part of an ongoing discussion we have been having with certain influential national conservative Christian leaders concerning the dangerous, destructive fallacy of judicial supremacy, my wife Siena penned the response below. It is so good, and so important, that I asked her permission to republish it to a wider audience. I hope and pray that every reader will give serious thought to what she is saying. -- Tom H.

xxxxx,

As we take the time to sort out the implications of the ongoing state-by-state attack on marriage, with the courts the primary culprits, I believe that most of us are still in the learning phase when it comes to the powers of the executive and legislative branches to check the judiciary. 

Given the importance of the matter, anything and everything should be constitutionally explored to preserve our good inheritance for future generations. 

Our federalist system was designed to preserve that inheritance as long as possible. When a state takes a blow in a manner destructive of its constitutional institutions, the federal government is most especially obliged to act.

We cannot lose sight of Article IV in the U.S. Constitution. Section 4 requires that the states (and the people) retain the ability to make laws to govern themselves.  We read:

"The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government[.]" 

This means, for instance, that an oligarchy of any sort is prohibited in the states.  None but a state-by-state republic is permitted or guaranteed.  And we know the word "guarantee" is a legal term, that carries with it the expectation of power and obligation to enforce the promise made.  

The federal government is the body charged in Article IV with direct obligatory oversight, as an extra layer of protection to liberty, in order to secure the ability of the people in each state to make laws in their republic.

No branch of government anywhere, whether at the state or federal level, has the constitutional authority to impose oligarchical rule upon the body of the people.  Nor does the Constitution tie our hands, or the hands of the chief executive and legislature, when the states are under attack. In its full context, Article IV, Section 4, explicitly names the executive and legislative branches as the chief instruments charged to provide ultimate protection to the states, to fulfill the purpose of federalism in the Constitution: 

"The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence."

When it comes to judicially-imposed radicalism, the Founders did not leave us without recourse. The federal government, in particular the executive and legislative branches, is bound by contract to make good on the republican guarantee of Article IV.

We are designed to be a nation of law, not of caprice.  And "we the people" fought a revolution against tyrannical caprice just for the opportunity to make law in harmony with the laws of nature. If we look more closely at the legal instrument our Founders created, we see that they did not leave us unprotected.  All we have lacked in modern times is the election of individuals who are wise and courageous enough to uphold their oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

For liberty,


Siena Hoefling

P.S. On the question of federal involvement in marriage, you may take a look at the Utah Enabling Act of 1894, in which Congress required the prohibition of polygamy for statehood. The Act fulfilled the obligation of Article IV, Section 2, to put the new state of Utah on equal footing with the original states.  Article IV, Section 2, requires: "The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states." 

Civil recognition of marriage between a man and wife is one of the primary privileges of a civil society.  Inescapably, the federal government has the authority and duty to safeguard the exercise of that privilege for every state, in order to constitutionally "insure domestic tranquility."  
For domestic tranquility's sake, the federal government maintains the power to oversee a singly exclusive form of marriage in all of the states, to thereby defend for posterity the natural obligations owed by parentage.

P.P.S. No matter its use, the word "domestic," Latin for "house," is inseparable from the idyllic concept of family life: father, mother, child.  Even in the national sense, the word "domestic" alludes to family. As Webster's 1828 dictionary puts it, "Domestic . . . 4. Pertain[s] to a nation considered as a family."  So it is that domestic violence hits us closest to home.  I cannot help but think of Article IV, Section 4, in the context of abortion: a domestic violence in the closet possible place--the womb. 

Tom Hoefling

May 24, 2014

Today Iowa Right to Life didn't endorse me for Governor in the June 3rd Republican primary. Which is no surprise, since I didn't fill out their candidate questionnaire.

Why not?

Because their language told me right up front that I couldn't possibly earn their endorsement, even though I've spent the last two decades as an uncompromising right-to-lifer, in political battles all across the land.

In order to answer their questions "correctly," I would have had to agree to support legislation that I know to be immoral, unconstitutional, illegal, and futile. Lawless "laws" that, in effect, end in "and then you can kill the baby," which grant express permission to commit most abortions, despite the fact that God forbids murder, without exception, and even though our Constitution explicitly and imperatively REQUIRES equal protection for the right to life of EVERY PERSON, in every jurisdiction in America. IT’S NOT OPTIONAL.

There are only two scriptural, moral, constitutional, legal, and political arguments against the practice of human abortion: 1) The God-given, unalienable, nature of the individual right to live, and 2) the absolute obligation borne by all officers of government, in every branch, at every level, to provide equal protection under the law. Those two all-important principles also happen to be the basis for the rule of law in America, and for our form of republican, constitutional self-government. Destroy those principles, as permitting abortion, any abortion, does, and you have obliterated the foundations of our American claim to liberty.

The bills that continue to be forwarded by IRTL, and their parent organization, National Right to Life, which they were asking me to agree to, surrender those arguments right up front.

Of course, they had no problem endorsing my opponent, Governor Terry Branstad.

Again, I’m not at all surprised. But here’s the problem with continuing to cede a “pro-life” label to politicians like Mr. Branstad: In order to write a truly pro-life bill, one that actually fulfills the explicit, absolute requirements of the Iowa and the U.S. Constitutions, that all persons be protected equally in their God-given, unalienable right to live, you have to erase Terry Branstad's, and Iowa Right to Life’s, entire "pro-life" legacy from the Iowa Code.

I know. I helped craft Tom Shaw's House File 138, which meets the moral and constitutional test of a true pro-life bill. In addition to rightly identifying the unborn child as a person, its language scrubbed all the unconstitutional Branstad/IRTL code sections that permit abortion.

Of course, the Branstad Republican establishment consistently insisted on burying HF-138 in sub-committee, while pushing even more unconstitutional "pro-life" legislation, so that they could then go out again and pretend to their naive pro-life constituency that they are doing something to stop this American holocaust.

Wake up, people. Read your own constitutions, and start demanding that those who represent you fulfill the primary purpose and duty of their offices, which is the defense of the supreme right of every single individual human being, the right to live.

"We're winning!" - Tom Hoefling

WND

Bob Unruh

“Our Creator, not government, gives to all people ‘unalienable’ natural rights,” the opinion asserts, arguing that state laws protecting children after birth also cover the unborn.

The concurrent opinion by Chief Justice Roy Moore, who once fought the state over the display of the Ten Commandments, says: “As stated by James Wilson, one of the first justices on the United States Supreme Court: ‘Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is divine.’”

Moore noted the “first right listed in the Declaration as among our unalienable rights is the right to ‘Life.’”

“Blackstone wrote that ‘[l]ife is the immediate gift of God, a right inherent by nature in every individual; and it begins in contemplation of law as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother’s womb,’” he wrote.

The case at hand dealt with a woman, Sarah Janie Hicks, who was charged after her newborn tested positive for drugs. She had pleaded guilty to a count of violating Alabama’s chemical-endangerment statute. Her conviction was affirmed.

“We … hold that the use of the word ‘child’ in the chemical-endangerment statute includes all children, born and unborn, and furthers Alabama’s policy of protecting life from the earliest stages of development,” the majority opinion said.

The non-profit Liberty Counsel, which represents pro-life organizations, submitted a brief in the case.

“In an age where some judges do not know the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, or do not even care, finally the Alabama Supreme Court springs forth with a ray of light,” said Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel.

Staver said the opinions by Chief Justice Roy Moore and Justice Tom Parker “are well-reasoned, grounded in history and natural law, and completely demolish the fallacies of the U.S. Supreme Court’s abortion decisions.”

“One day soon the United States Supreme Court’s abortion opinions will come toppling down like a house of cards,” he said. ‘Then we will look back at history like we now do with Nazi Germany and wonder why our generation was so blind to the personhood of the preborn child.”

The 8-1 decision affirmed the position adopted by the court a year ago. In that case, Ankrom v. State, the court ruled the term “child” includes the “unborn child.”

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/protection-for-children-includes-unborn/#MUqKKDDz5dg0DGIj.99

Tom Hoefling

December 31, 2013

Recently, we got the news that Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, has set up a new political action committee in our state, in preparation for the 2014 and 2016 elections, for the purpose of advancing his anti-Right to Keep and Bear Arms agenda. I know I speak for many Iowans when I say to him, simply, “Go back to New York.”

In Iowa, we generally go out and shoot WITH our neighbors, not AT them. That’s because we understand the value of innocent human life, and that guns are nothing more than the physical tools, the implements, we need for defending ourselves, our families, our property, and, ultimately, our liberties and rights.

Gun violence, and violence overall, is nothing more than a symptom of the moral breakdown of a people and a society. It has little to do with which physical objects are available to commit those criminal acts. Take away the guns and an immoral, violent people will bash each others’ brains in with a rock.

No matter how much Mr. Bloomberg brags in the press about how safe it is in New York City, as compared to other big cities in America, our murder rate in Iowa is miniscule compared to his hometown, or Chicago, or Detroit, or Washington, DC, the places with the most draconian, unconstitutional, restrictions on the people’s gun rights.  Most of our Iowa counties go decades without a single incidence of firearms-related murder, despite the fact that we are quite well-armed here, thank you very much. On a merely pragmatic level, why in the world would we listen to him?

More importantly and to the point, our Iowa Constitution asserts quite explicitly, right out of the gate, in Section One of our Bill of Rights, that:

Our most sacred and important rights are not open to negotiation or compromise, because the word INALIENABLE  means something:

Our state motto remains:

There are still large numbers of us who mean that. Any Iowa political figure that is foolish enough to find common cause with Bloomberg will almost certainly suffer a crushing political defeat, no matter how much money he expends on their behalf. And every prospective 2016 presidential candidate who comes courting in the months and years ahead will find that their political fortunes are completely dependent on whether they side with him in this matter, or with We the People of Iowa and our natural, God-given, inalienable rights.

I’ll close with the wise words of one of the most distinguished New Yorkers in history, who understood exactly what the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is, in fact, all about:

Tom Hoefling is a Republican candidate for Iowa governor in 2014. You can check him out at http://www.tomhoefling.com.

If you agree with Tom Hoefling, and are committed to the preservation of our most important liberties and rights, please join the Iowa Leadership and Accountability Project today! We need you! http://www.tomhoefling.com/join-ilap.html

"Without justice being freely, fully, and impartially administered, neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our property, can be protected. And if these, or either of them, are regulated by no certain laws, and are subject to no certain principles, and are held by no certain tenure, and are redressed, when violated, by no certain remedies, society fails of all its value; and men may as well return to a state of savage and barbarous independence."

-- Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

"Other nations have received their laws from conquerors; some are indebted for a constitution to the suffering of their ancestors through revolving centuries. The people of this country, alone, have formally and deliberately chosen a government for themselves, and with open and uninfluenced consent bound themselves into a social compact. . . .

"Our Union is now complete; our Constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties: We may justly address you as the decemviri did the Romans, and say: 'Nothing that we propose can pass into a law without your consent. Be yourselves, O Americans, the authors of those laws on which your happiness depends.'”

-- Samuel Adams, On American Independence, 1776

"A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government."

-- Alexander Hamilton, Essay in the American Daily Advertiser, 1794

"Temporary delusions, prejudices, excitements, and objects have irresistible influence in mere questions of policy. And the policy of one age may ill suit the wishes or the policy of another. The constitution is not subject to such fluctuations. It is to have a fixed, uniform, permanent construction. It should be, so far at least as human infirmity will allow, not dependent upon the passions or parties of particular times, but the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever."

-- Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

“With respect to the two words ‘general welfare’, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.” “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined . . . to be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce." "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

-- James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution, fourth U.S. President

“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”

-- Thomas Jefferson, third U.S. President

“Mr. Speaker: I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has not the power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member on this floor knows it. We have the right as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money.”

-- Congressman Davy Crockett

“I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity.”

-- President Franklin Pierce

Tom Hoefling

The "pro-life" "Republicans" in the U.S. House, at the behest of the National Right to Life Committee, are slated to take up a bill today that would codify permission for certain professional killers to murder paraplegics, or to kill any person for that matter, if they are first given enough morphine to make sure that they don't feel any pain.

Okay, not really.

But they are offering legislation that is just as capricious, illogical, unreasonable, unconstitutional, and immoral. They are forwarding the "Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act" (H.R. 1797). This legislation recognizes the personhood of the child in the womb, and then specifically allows abortionists to kill them, if the child has not yet reached a certain stage of human development.

But the constitutional criteria is not whether or not someone can feel pain. It is whether or not they are a PERSON.

"No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law." - the Fifth Amendment

"No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." - the Fourteenth Amendment

I will never support any politician who supports the codification of this sort of lawless law. I have so pledged, as has everyone I most closely associate myself with politically.

Every argument in favor of this bill is Utilitarian, not moral or constitutional, by the way. And I am not a godless Utilitarian. I am a Christian.

And Utilitarian fixes don't work anyhow. Not only are they wrong, in the long haul they always prove to be an abject defeat, not a victory. Because to buy into them, you have to first surrender all of the moral, constitutional, and legal principles that argue against the heinous practice of killing babies.