News

The Fear Of God Is The Missing Ingredient

3/24/2019

Tom Hoefling

The fear of God is the missing ingredient in our politics today - on the part of the people themselves, and on the part of those they elect to public office who are required to take the oath.

Our system presupposes a just and perfect judgment on our words and actions in the hereafter, as the mainstay against abuses and usurpations in the civic here and now.

Without that healthy dread in our hearts and minds, and in the hearts and minds of our chosen representatives, the whole edifice of constitutional republicanism falls apart.

"Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths?"

-- George Washington

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding."

-- Proverbs 9:10

The judicial oligarchs will take an oath they can't keep -- TOM HOEFLING

12/21/2016

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.

"Or to the people"

2/16/2014

Tom Hoefling:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." -- The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Those who see the corruption and abuse of power that permeates Washington, DC, while ignoring the corruption in our state capitals, are making a terrible mistake.

Tenth Amendment supporters need to take the time and effort to extend the crucial principles and the indispensable logic of that great amendment to the state level. If powers are not granted by We the People to our state governments via our state constitutions, those powers do not legitimately exist. For the states to claim and exercise them is a lawless usurpation and tyranny.

One last thing: No government, national or otherwise, has any legitimate power to violate the God-given, unalienable, equal rights of the individual person. In the case of those rights, governments - all governments - possess only the absolute, imperative duty to defend. Nothing else. Because the fulfillment of that duty is the primary reason all governments, and all government offices, exist.

That assertion is the foundation stone of our national political creed:

"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, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..." -- The Declaration of Independence

John Adams: "A constitution founded on these principles..."

12/26/2012

"A constitution founded on these principles introduces knowledge among the people, and inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming freemen; a general emulation takes place, which causes good humor, sociability, good manners, and good morals to be general. That elevation of sentiment inspired by such a government, makes the common people brave and enterprising. That ambition which is inspired by it makes them sober, industrious, and frugal."

-- John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

Liberty and the People, Artifice or Action?

10/4/2012

"I am commonly opposed to those who modestly assume the rank of champions of liberty, and make a very patriotic noise about the people. It is the stale artifice which has duped the world a thousand times, and yet, though detected, it is still successful. I love liberty as well as anybody. I am proud of it, as the true title of our people to distinction above others; but...I would guard it by making the laws strong enough to protect it."

-- Fisher Ames, letter to George Richard Minot, 1789

"God forbid that we should ever be purveyors of such an artifice. May our actions show consistently that what we strive for is the strengthening of the true moral basis of liberty, and that we are in truth, not just in word, servants of the people."

-- Tom Hoefling, October 4, 2012

Equal Protection for Posterity: The Key to America's Survival

5/24/2012

The Equal Protection for Posterity Resolution

America's Party Platform (Includes the Resolution)

America's Party Leadership Pledge (Includes the Resolution)

Tom Hoefling: I Believe (Includes the Resolution)

George Washington: The Constitution is sacredly obligatory on all

5/19/2012

"The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all."

-- George Washington, Farewell Address, September 17, 1796

James Madison on representative republican self-government

5/18/2012

"If we resort for a criterion to the different principles on which different forms of government are established, we may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior."

-- James Madison, Federalist No. 39

Abraham Lincoln: The people can be depended upon, if given the truth

5/15/2012

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”

-- Abraham Lincoln

James Monroe: "The willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin"

4/28/2012

"What raised us to the present happy state?...The Government has been in the hands of the people. To the people, therefore...is the credit due...

It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty.

Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin...

If we persevere...we can not fail, under the favor of a gracious Providence...My fervent prayers to the Almighty that He will be graciously pleased to continue to us that protection which He has already so conspicuously displayed in our favor."

-- President James Monroe, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817

Tom Hoefling: "Get the principles right and then fixing the process will be easy"

4/23/2012

"We have a political class that has become unprincipled, and they have created a political process that is not of the people, by the people, or for the people. Now, you can try and fix the process without addressing the lack of principle, but, at best, all you're likely to accomplish is to create a more efficient means of tyranny. No, get the principles right, quit compromising them, and then fixing the process will be easy."

-- Tom Hoefling, April 23, 2012

Thomas Jefferson: The people's regular control over their agents

4/23/2012

"If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their government be the measure of its republicanism, and I confess I know no other measure, it must be agreed that our governments have much less of republicanism than ought to have been expected; in other words, that the people have less regular control over their agents, than their rights and their interests require."

-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Taylor, 1816

James Madison: The remedy for annulling the acts of the usurpers

4/10/2012

"What is to be the consequence, in case the Congress shall misconstrue this part [the necessary and proper clause] of the Constitution and exercise powers not warranted by its true meaning, I answer the same as if they should misconstrue or enlarge any other power vested in them...the success of the usurpation will depend on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to the legislative acts; and in a last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people, who can by the elections of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers."

-- James Madison, Federalist No. 44

Ronald Reagan: A wall of spiritual resolve

4/2/2012

"This is the real task before us: to reassert our commitment as a nation to a law higher than our own, to renew our spiritual strength. Only by building a wall of such spiritual resolve can we, as a free people, hope to protect our own heritage and make it someday the birthright of all men."

-- Ronald Reagan

George Washington: "The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty"

3/23/2012

"The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people."

--George Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789

Our Constitutions are the instruments of the people, not of the lawyers

3/21/2012

"Every word employed in the Constitution is to be expounded in its plain, obvious, and common sense, unless the context furnishes some ground to control, qualify, or enlarge it. Constitutions are not designed for metaphysical or logical subtleties, for niceties of expression, for critical propriety, for elaborate shades of meaning, or for the exercise of philosophical acuteness or judicial research. They are instruments of a practical nature, rounded on the common business of human life, adapted to common wants, designed for common use, and fitted for common understandings. The people make them, the people adopt them, the people must be supposed to read them, with the help of common-sense, and cannot be presumed to admit in them any recondite meaning or any extraordinary gloss."

-- Joseph Story, Constitution (5th ed.) 345, SS 451.

James Madison: "Annul the acts of the usurpers"

3/13/2012

"What is to be the consequence, in case the Congress shall misconstrue this part [the necessary and proper clause] of the Constitution and exercise powers not warranted by its true meaning, I answer the same as if they should misconstrue or enlarge any other power vested in them ... the success of the usurpation will depend on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to the legislative acts; and in a last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people, who can by the elections of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers."

-- James Madison, Federalist No. 44, 1788

'Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.'

Tom Hoefling on Government:

"Just as 'good fences make for good neighbors,' good government is mainly about knowing where the legitimate boundaries are, and having the courage to defend those borders forcefully. This is true in terms of the defense of our territory, our security, and our national sovereignty, but it also applies to the sworn duty of all of those in government to equally protect the God-given, unalienable rights of each individual person, from their creation onward, their sacred obligation to stay well within the enumerated powers of our constitutions, and of the role legitimate government must play in balancing the competing rights and interests of the people, in order to establish justice."