Below is Judge Napolitano, on Apr 20, 2011, eloquently, breaking down, the break down in personal responsibility, and our Federal Government’s efforts to diminish our individuality. He also discusses the sets of values that factions both on the left and right, historically, through The Federal Government, have been pushing on the entire country.

This is a great monologue!

Enjoy!

–

–

“We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.”

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Emergencies have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.”

– F.A. Hayek

“When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it.”

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it is their interest to go to war. Were the money which it has cost to gain, at the close of a long war, a little town or a little territory, the right to cut wood here or to catch fish there, expended in improving what they already possess, in making roads, opening rivers, building ports, improving the arts and finding employment for their idle poor, it would render them much stronger, much wealthier and happier. This I hope will be our wisdom.”

- Thomas Jefferson

“The States are the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies.”

- Thomas Jefferson

The words “Separation of Church and State,” were a metaphor used by Thomas Jefferson, in his correspondence between himself and The Danbury Baptists, in 1801. His exact words, were, “thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”

These words, by Jefferson, to The Danbury Baptists, were used to demonstrate to them, and confirm, that, Constitutionally, our “Federal” Government was removed, legislatively, from the establishment, and prohibition, of any religion in the United States. Jefferson’s metaphor, not only is nowhere in the Constitution, but even in his letter, the metaphor was never intended to apply to our respective states. He was reassuring the Danbury Baptists that our Federal Government would not, and could not, make any laws that would abridge their religious freedoms.

It is the (Federal Government) Supreme Court, who, nefariously, used Jefferson’s metaphor to lead people to believe that there was no role for even state Governments, in our respective states, in the area of religion.

The Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment, was intended to ‘protect’ our individual rights, in our respective states. In the Everson vs. the Board of Education case, members of the Supreme Court used the case as a way to begin removing some of the state’s and the people’s (First Amendment) religious rights – which, traditionally, would have been a matter for the voters and their state constitutions to address.

Prior to that decision, state and local Governments did have some role, in our respective states, in the area of religion. It was after this Supreme Court decision, that public schools started removing prayer from schools etc. And, this is the same Federal Government that, for the last 30 or so years, many Conservative (likely, well-intended) groups have been working to ‘further empower’ with certain powers that, Constitutionally, have always belonged to, and, should always belong to the states.

Further Reading:
Everson vs. the Board of Education
10th Amendment

Below is a great performance of Roll With The Changes, by Reo Speedwagon, performed by Reo Speedwagon and Styx, in 2000.

Enjoy!

“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace”

- Thomas Paine

“It is better to know the worst, and provide for it, than to delude ourselves with false hope.”

- Patrick Henry

“An unrestrained intercourse between the States themselves will advance the trade of each by an interchange of their respective productions, not only for the supply of reciprocal wants at home, but for exportation to foreign markets. The veins of commerce in every part will be replenished, and will acquire additional motion and vigor from a free circulation of the commodities of every part. Commercial enterprise will have much greater scope, from the diversity in the productions of different States. When the staple of one fails from a bad harvest or unproductive crop, it can call to its aid the staple of another. The variety, not less than the value, of products for exportation contributes to the activity of foreign commerce. It can be conducted upon much better terms with a large number of materials of a given value than with a small number of materials of the same value; arising from the competitions of trade and from the fluctuations of markets. Particular articles may be in great demand at certain periods, and unsalable at others; but if there be a variety of articles, it can scarcely happen that they should all be at one time in the latter predicament, and on this account the operations of the merchant would be less liable to any considerable obstruction or stagnation. The speculative trader will at once perceive the force of these observations, and will acknowledge that the aggregate balance of the commerce of the United States would bid fair to be much more favorable than that of the thirteen States without union or with partial unions.”

- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist # 11)

“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”

- Samuel Adams