(The Subsidiarity Times) Last month, talk show host Jason Lewis gave a very interesting perspective on America’s structure of government during his radio show when he revealed to his listeners that the Founding Fathers of the United States adopted the Principle of Subsidiarity in founding this nation.
“What the framers saw was the idea of being governed by a far-away monarchy as untenable. They did not like being told what to do especially by one family, one person, one throne; but not only that because it was across the pond (Atlantic Ocean). ‘What are they telling us?’ So they adopted the Principles of Subsidiarity that said: ‘Look, local government is best’. And (also) as Madison said and Hamilton as well, the best way to govern a country this large, America was going to be a larger proposition then Great Britain, would be the principles of republicanism, where you divide the majority into a bunch of different jurisdictions and then you let those local jurisdictions decide. Rather then have the national government decide for all of the jurisdictions.”
Mr. Lewis is correct in his analysis. The Founding Fathers believed that they should govern themselves in their own jurisdictions. That was the primary reason they opposed the Stamp Act and the other taxes and regulations that Great Britain attempted to impose on the American colonies in the years leading up to the American Revolution. Plus, building off that experience of a national government trying to dictate their laws, taxes and regulations, it was one of the primary reasons that the Framers clearly stated in the United States Constitution that all powers not clearly granted to the Federal Government in the Constitution were to be reserved expressly for the states.
“This could start at the local level. Why do we allow party or gang symbols and names on an election ballot? Turn them into Political Action Committees, the same ways that teachers union, the firemen, whatever, they could still endorse; but they do that by design. By putting the name Republican or Democrat next to the candidate, you don’t even have to know who the candidate is; if you are conservative you go in and look for Republican, if you are liberal, you go in and look for Democrat. If they remove all that, well then it is imperative to the voter then: ‘What does John Smith stand for?’”
This proposition followed a joke that Ventura shared with Wilson where he proposed that a law be made whereby every political candidate would be required to wear a NASCAR racing suit adorned with the names/symbols of all of his sponsors so the voters could then become informed voters and so know who “owns’ each particular candidate.
Further on in the interview, Ventura revealed some rather interesting facts about his own campaign for governor and his term as governor in Minnesota. He first revealed that he pulled off the impossible by getting Republicans and Democrats to unite together to oppose him during his last year as governor.
“Who else in the country can accomplish that today? Nobody” said Ventura, referencing the gridlock currently going on in Washington D.C.
Ventura then added a couple more fascinating facts “Let me go back to my campaign for a minute. I never took over fifty or a hundred dollars. I didn’t take any PAC money from any special interest group; and get this, here is what the media doesn’t want the public to know about my campaign in Minnesota: I only raised three hundred thousand dollars to become governor. So I bet I am the only elected official in fifty years in a major election, Governor, Congress, anything like that, who actually made more money doing the job then what I spent to get it…and because I didn’t take special interest (money), I am also the only governor or whatever in my four years, I never met with a lobbyist once.”
He is running in a district where Republicans have not won since 1960, but that does not deter former Marine Chris Fields (R-MN) from believing he can replace incumbent Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) in Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District and so join the other 434 U.S. representatives on Capitol Hill in January 2013.
“(The) campaign is going good, we have a lot of support” said Fields in an interview with New Agora journalist Professor Wall, “the interesting part of the people that support Chris Fields is this: they’ve ranged from all spectrums of the political world. We have Democrats, hardened Democrats, because frankly they are not very satisfied with Keith Ellison and the things that he has been doing, the grandstanding in Congress, his lack of legislative achievements and so they are in our camp; and then we have social conservatives that are in our camp because I am a strong pro-life candidate and we also have Ron Paul supporters and I’m a liberty loving guy like all of those guys and so our support is very deep and very wide. In fact, last month alone we raised thirty thousand dollars which is a big deal for a congressional campaign of this size in the toughest district for Republicans to win in.”
Fields said his motivation to run was twofold. Part of his motivation came from his experience growing up as the impoverished child of a very young mother (she had three children before she was twenty) which left an imprint on him and has helped him understand the struggles of so many of today’s Americans. The other part came from his twenty-one years of service in government as a United States Marine. Those experiences, said Fields, evoked a very strong sense in him of what he could do to turn things around.
In current events, when asked for his opinion on Ron Paul’s “Audit the Fed” bill currently going through Congress, Fields emphasized that it would not be a quick process to bring the end of the Federal Reserve about, but that he supports ‘the thrust of (Ron Paul’s) argument which is: “we need accountability.”’
“I think that’s where his bill is aimed: at getting more accountability with our economic policy and I would be a huge supporter of that alone” said Fields.
“We would have to take a look at the legislation (in favor of internet freedom), but I did not support SOPA” said Fields
“What I am concerned about with internet freedom” he continued, “is that it has to remain open, it has to remain accessible to everyone, to bloggers and to the wide range of Americans who want to be able to express themselves. What is truly concerning to me is when you have, whether it is the recording industry or some of the other industries that are lined up against (internet freedom) and they want to control the voice, they want to own the internet so to speak. That really doesn’t sit well with me and it shouldn’t sit well with a lot of Americans.”
Chris Fields converses with potential supporters as part of his bid to win the congressional seat in Minnesota's 5th House District
In regards to the prospective indefinite detention of Americans thanks to certain clauses in the NDAA law, Fields stated that, while the clause was, in a sense, ambiguous and many had tried to reassure Americans that the law would not be used or construed that way, he still could not have supported it.
“With the NDAA, no I could not have voted for that, with that statement in there. There was one statement that could be construed as ‘Americans could be held, detained’; President Obama had a signing statement saying ‘Hey, this in fact not what we are going to do’, this is not a road his administration was going to go down, but the fact that its in there just leads me to believe that some clever lawyer somewhere could potentially use that and that is enough for me not to support that bill. I don’t want to give those folks the ammunition to restrict American liberties and our due process because that is what this goes to: our due process.”
Fields expressed even stronger concerns about the use of drones on American soil. “I’m particularly concerned about drones and here is why:” said Fields “A couple of weeks ago a drone just crashed in Maryland and Maryland is a pretty big state, but my experience in the military is that we usually test out equipment out there on the West Coast in Nevada in the big desert, so that wouldn’t have raised my eyebrow; but the fact that it crashed in Maryland, like what sort of testing were they doing out there? What was this drone’s mission in particular? Was he going around picking up signals from everyday Americans? We need to know more about that and the fact that this administration has used drones so extensively in the War on Terror, it is a system that can be ripe for abuse.”
Following up his opinions on these issues, Fields emphasized that, unlike Ellison who seems to choose his battles based on the administration in power, he would rather vote for what was right than follow the party line.
“I’m not interested in the Left or the Right so to speak, its about what is right for me and what I see (as the difference between) myself and Keith (Ellison) is ‘Hey, I want to be someone that focuses on what is right and I don’t care who the administration is’; if its President Romney, no, I get to oppose his use or abuse of drones; or you know, this NDAA, I don’t care who put that bill forward, you know, you have to have some sort of integrity and that’s what our political system is missing right now.”
Upon being asked for his stances on some of the main social conservative issues as well as Obamacare, Fields re-emphasized his pro-life roots, especially being born to a fifteen year old mother, and added “I am Pro-Life from cradle to grave with no exceptions and you know what, I am pretty unapologetic about that.” He did go on to add however that he was not a single-issue candidate and that he felt that the country has more pressing concerns which must be solved before a constitutional amendment banning abortion could be constructively addressed and have any hope of becoming law. Speaking on Obamacare, Fields expressed grave concerns about the Federal Government intervening in healthcare and said he would prefer state and local authorities taking control of their own situation in regards to addressing any healthcare problems. Fields also added that he felt the marriage issue would be best settled by the people at the state level in the referendums currently being voted on rather then judges.
“With Keith, you know what you’re going to get” Fields said of Ellison, “Keith has been in office since 2006 and not much has gotten better in the lives of many of the people in the district. Minneapolis is home to the largest achievement gap in education between black and white students and with regard to unemployment we still have the largest unemployment gap between blacks and whites in the entire country. That is an embarrassment and I would say this: In the age of Obama and with a representative like Ellison, that should not be the case. Minneapolis and the fifth congressional district have not gotten the focused attention they need. Keith is out talking about a lot of national issues, you name it, everything from Syria to Palestine to Citizens United, this guy is all over the map and what we don’t have here is focused attention; and what we aim to do is provide focused attention, not focusing on the issues that are friendly to Left or issues that are friendly to the Right, but focusing on what is right and what is right for the fifth congressional district. We need to get private enterprise in here and we need to start making investments, not just government investments, which is exclusively what Keith talks about almost, but we need to get private dollars, we need to make ourselves more attractive economically so that we can get new Fortune 500 (companies) to grow. We have a lot of Fortune 500 companies, but we don’t have a lot moving here and that’s what we need to begin to do.”
With Boisclair, Fields commented that: “(I) read some of his stuff, I understand he is pretty strong on the (Pro-)Life issue and I applaud him for that but beyond that we have not seen a whole lot of information with regard to where he stands. If you are going to be strong on the (Pro-)Life issue but then continue to support some of the other drastic environmental pieces of legislation that the Democratic Party has put out, like being opposed to the Keystone Pipeline and things of that nature, well then you have the difference there. So you have to backup what you’re talking about with a strong agenda that gets people back to work and in particular addresses the achievement gap in education as well as the unemployment gap.”
Concerning his political future, Fields was asked if he would consider running for the Republican nomination to challenge Senator Al Franken or Governor Mark Dayton in 2014.
“Well right now we have to focus on what is on our plate and so me pontificating on what I am going to do the day after the election is probably not where my focus needs to be. And one of the things that voters are going to understand about me is that I am incredibly focused and incredibly disciplined. And that is probably a product from me being in the Marines but probably not insofar as, coming from the South Bronx in New York City, there is a whole lot of ways to get yourself distracted and turned around and so that you go all off of course in terms of making yourself successful in life. (I) been able to avoid those distractions and so I think in the political sense here I can avoid the distraction of thinking about tomorrow and focus in on what is important for today.”
The Supreme Court’s appalling 5-4 ruling upholding the poorly named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has thrown down the challenge to the American people. The people of America proclaimed the motto of the Gadsden Flag “Don’t Tread on Me” through the Tea Party for the last five years and the Federal Government, speaking through the majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s decision, has responded accordingly: “Oh yeah? Stop us then.” With that answer from the Federal Government, the second coming of the American Revolution has come closer to reality.
If one thinks back to the original American Revolution, that movement also started over two vastly unpopular laws. First, there was the Stamp Act of 1765. That law required every individual to pay for a government stamp on almost everything, from legal documents put together by lawyers to playing cards and dice used by sailors. It would be followed in 1766 by the Declaratory Act which decreed that Parliament had the “full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America in all cases whatsoever.” These acts were the closest thing to taxing and regulating behavior the modern world would see from a government until the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The acts ignited a firestorm of protests from the colonists. They were outraged at the prospect of being taxed and over-regulated by a government a long way away which knew very little about the colonies and refused to see the misery that their taxes and regulations would inflict upon them.
Today in America we are seeing a similar wave of anger against the act which has come to be known as Obamacare. In this act, which became law on March 23, 2010, all American citizens are required to either purchase health insurance or be taxed. To uphold the law under the Constitution in the June 28, 2012 Supreme Court decision on the law, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the federal government has the right to tax American citizens for any reason whatsoever. In making this decision, Roberts and the liberal justices on the Supreme Court have opened a Pandora’s Box. This law is going to hit every citizen of America and everyone is either going to have to pay more money for a limited-choice, government-sanctioned healthcare plan or see their taxes skyrocket higher every April. The Supreme Court Decision, by decreeing that the federal government can tax Americans for anything at all, has, like the Declaratory Act, given the federal government the power to regulate human behavior at any level and they do it by taxing you, just like the Stamp Act.
The gauntlet has been laid down ladies and gentlemen. Furthermore, the states are responding. Since the indefinite detention of American citizens without trial was made legal in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, several states have responded by introducing bills to nullify the NDAA, which means that that federal law will not be effective inside that state’s borders. Now, it has been proposed to nullify Obamacare at the state level and already several states have introduced legislation to do just that. This action is very similar to how the colonies responded to the Stamp and Declaratory Acts. They refused to pay the taxes and to effectively implement this refusal, they enacted a nation-wide boycott of British goods in order to avoid paying the taxes. It was, effectively, nullification of British laws by the American colonies.
So how is this leading to a second American Revolution? Just watch and wait. Once the states’ nullification measures begin to take effect and Obamacare and any other laws which are nullified prove to be unenforceable, the federal government will be forced to either let the states get away with those measures or they will have to move troops in to force the state governments to obey federal laws. If they choose the latter option (which seems likely), then expect the situation to really get out of control. The federal government already seems to be preparing for this in having the military drill inside American cities. If they implement military takeovers of the states and their local governments, one might expect history to repeat itself and events which took place in a British-occupied Boston and in the small towns of Lexington and Concord in 1775 will repeat themselves in one or more of America’s fifty states which will lead to the states rising against the federal government in a Second American Revolution to re-enforce the principles of the Founding Fathers. Only this time, the cry of warning from those seeking freedom will not be “The British are Coming!” but: “The Feds are Coming!”
