Why Lessons of Liberty Are Crucial for Children

By ensuring that our children begin learning these ideas at an early age, we not only impart the protection of the law, but also a sense of civility, strength, and responsibility.

In 2017, the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania released their traditional survey on American civics knowledge for Constitution Day. Out of just over one thousand respondents, 37 percent were unable to name a single right protected by the First Amendment. Nearly four hundred adults were unable to recall religion, speech, press, assembly, or petition. Out of those that were able to name specific rights protected by the First Amendment, the ability to name all five was limited.

Our decline in civics knowledge does not begin when we cross the arbitrary line from childhood to adulthood, but rather in childhood itself from a general lack of education on the topic. Putting it in incredibly distressing terms in 2011, Charlies Quigley of the Center for Civics Education pointed out that,

only 4 percent of all 12th graders … (are at) a level we would hope our future leaders would attain.

Out of all fifty states, forty offer civics as a subject, but only 29 offer a “full curriculum,” which “includes course materials that cover ‘Explanation/Comparison of Democracy,’ ‘Constitution and Bill of Rights,’ and ‘Public Participation,’ as well as information on state and local voting laws.” As such, the responsibility of preserving liberty through the next generation falls to us.

In a previous article, I told a story regarding my own experience as a teenager in which I was stopped and questioned with a voluntary search. I cooperated fully. Following the incident, I was lectured by my mother on the importance of asserting my rights when confronted by the authorities.

By ensuring that our children begin learning these ideas early on we impart the protection of the law, strength, and responsibility.

While opinion was split among readers as to whether or not my mother was correct in giving me such a civics lesson in the car, most readers seemed consistent in their surprise that, at sixteen, I did not know the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. I did not know the laws that were intended to protect me from overreaching authority. I was a distressing statistic….Read More

 

Freedom Requires Restoring Our Republic

Freedom Requires Restoring Our Republic

The United States was founded as a limited-government republic. That meant a federal government with very few and limited powers. That’s what the Constitution was for — not only to bring the federal government into existence but also, at the same time, to set forth its few, limited powers. If a power wasn’t enumerated, then the federal government was not authorized to exercise it. A close examination of the Constitution shows how few and limited such powers were.

Why didn’t the Framers instead use the Constitution to bring into existence a government with omnipotent powers? After all, in this new governmental scheme, the president and the Congress were to be democratically elected. Why not vest them with the power to do anything they deemed necessary and beneficial to the country? Why tie their hands with few and limited powers?

The reason is simple: The American people would never have accepted that type of government. Remember: After the Revolution, the American people had been operating for 13 years under the Articles of Confederation, a type of governmental system in which each state retained its independence and sovereignty. Under the articles, the states had simply come together in a confederation. Under this type of governmental system, the federal government’s powers were so few and limited that the federal government didn’t even have the power to tax.

That’s the way the American people wanted it. The last thing they wanted was a federal government of general, omnipotent powers to do the “right” thing for the nation. Americans were convinced that that type of governmental system would end up being a grave threat to their freedom and well-being…..Read More

Superhighway To Serfdom: The US Tax Plantation By Bill Buppert

Superhighway to Serfdom: The US Tax Plantation by Bill Buppert

Publisher’s Note: Here we are in another deadline for paying the king and country their ”fair share” of honest wages and wealth earned and resources capitalized. Much like the burgeoning welfare state comprising one third of total government spending in 1900 on Union pensions from Lincoln’s bid to crush the entire nation under a Hamiltonian boot that foreshadowed the Bolshevik revolutions in the twentieth century.

Taxes advance barbarism and not civilization.

They promote the notion that death and taxes isn’t necessarily the right sequence if you stand up and refuse to be robbed. All government is based solely on hitting and stealing and rationalizing all forms of anti-social behavior and legalizing piracy and plunder and calling it an enterprise for your own good. I always find it hypocritical when the communist can view taxes as just while at the same time ranting about keeping the full product on one’s labor [thanks DeFo]. Go figure.

Governments are nothing more than sophisticated brigand bands with bad music, colored rags flapping in the breeze and large bands of armed thugs with a license to kill.

We all pay at the peril of our children and grandchildren as we feed the beast that makes life more and more centralized, regulated and less than optimal…..Read More