October 2, 2024 • 40 mins
Today we are faced with the phenomenon of political schizophrenia plaguing the nation, as demonstrated by the contradictory choices of electing a president for national interests and a Congress based on local interests.
We'll explore the critical warnings from the Founding Fathers and the historical analysis by Alexis de Tocqueville, highlighting the risks of prosperity leading to constitutional ignorance. The episode meticulously examines the violations of constitutional authority by various federal agencies, executive orders, and legislative actions, calling for a re-evaluation and possible amendments to restore constitutional integrity.
Join us in this comprehensive overview that emphasizes the importance of education, involvement, and remedial actions to safeguard America's legacy of freedom and prosperity. This episode is a clarion call for unity, awareness, and proactive measures to address the constitutional challenges facing the nation today.
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Episode Transcript
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Folks, I'm so delighted to be here with you, and I've been looking forward to this.
This is sort of our kickoff meeting for the fall portion of our program,
and I'm just grateful for all of you coming and all of you being here.
And I know that you had to come at considerable effort and some sacrifice,
but your presence here gives great encouragement to those of us who try to carry on this work.
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Now tonight, because I'm just taking a little while to sort of open up the evening,
I've prepared a little handout here just for fun.
I thought it would be good to have a handout so that we could kind of go through
it and fill in the blanks.
As you know, my study guides are always called the blankety-blank study guides,
and they always have little places for you to fill in. and that primarily is
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to help the memory process.
When you're filling in blanks, you're talking to yourself and that's one half of memory.
It's communication. You can do it by talking to somebody else or you can talk to yourself.
You must communicate in your mind these things that we're talking about or it
somehow or another will fade.
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And so that's the reason for these little study guides that we have.
Now, don't read ahead or you'll know the punchlines before.
So wait for me as we kind of go through and get your pencil out and fill them in as we go.
Because I want to start out with the election that we have just gone through,
the 1988 presidential election.
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A lot of people do not know that this is one of the finest demonstrations I
know of, of the political schizophrenia that the American people are suffering from.
And you'll notice here in the beginning of your outline, I mentioned that,
that we just had our presidential election and it demonstrated that we're suffering
from political schizophrenia. Now, get your pencil ready.
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The majority of the people voted for the president on the basis of what they
wanted for the whole country.
The president, I just have gone through all his position papers,
his major position papers, and they're the things that practically every person
in America generally would wish to have.
There are a few exceptions, but most of the people in their right minds will
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want the things that he said in his position papers.
Now, then we turn right around and elected a Congress based on individual private interests.
And that creates a political phenomenon in Washington that we've got to live
with, because here's what's going to happen.
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Interest is your blank. We will have a president who will be trying to do what
the majority of the American people want, and we will have a majority in Congress
that will be trying to prevent him from doing it.
Now, that's the phenomenon that we've got, because the people that are trying
to get money for all these special interests, they are not going to go for a balanced budget.
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They are not going to go for a lowering of taxes. These are the things that people all want.
But in order to provide private interests, you'll see a conflict going on there.
And I suppose that's an unavoidable phenomenon of political life.
But it's very real. and everybody ought to know that that's what occurs in Washington
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and for a president to come and tell you all the things he would like to do
and that he's going to support should have a little addendum,
a little ancillary clause that says,
if the Congress will let me do it because the action is not in the White House.
The action is in the Congress.
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So that's why you are so important.
When the president is trying to put over a program of reducing taxes,
balancing the budget, cutting the national debt, and so forth,
unless we tell our congressmen we want it and want it very badly,
they'll go right ahead working for special interests for each area,
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community, or constituency.
That's why these seminars become important. That's why you're important.
That's why involvement is important.
Now, the Founding Fathers warned us that we would reach this stage of our evolutionary
development in the United States.
I've collected a whole group of their warnings and published them in the October
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Constitution Magazine for 1987.
So, under A, if you will write, please, Constitution Magazine,
October 1987, and you will read those rather pointed, dramatic warnings that
quite a number of the founders left with us.
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I guess de Tocqueville, Alexis de Tocqueville of France, who wrote two of the
finest volumes on an analysis of what was going on in America,
analyzed what all of them were saying, basically, and therefore I've given it
to you here in three points.
First of all, he said, a constitutional society, such as the founders gave us,
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would make us a rich people, and that's your blank. It would make us rich.
Now, some people say, well, I don't feel very rich,
but I can take you north or south or east or west, and you live with some of
the other people in the world, and you'll know that for many purposes, we are rich,
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although we're having personal difficulties, and we get in the crunches sometimes
as a people comparatively. We are very rich.
And he said a climate of prosperity would lure us away from studying the principles of the Constitution.
In other words, he said, you won't know enough about your formula of freedom to preserve it.
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You'll be so involved in the baubles of freedom.
Prosperity and wealth and material things, you will forget the great value system,
the great method of preserving freedom.
And finally, because of ignorance, he said the American people would begin losing
their freedoms and the Constitution eventually would hang by a thread,
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so to speak. Thread is your blank.
Now, where are we today in this process?
Is it really that critical? Are we really getting to such a point that the things that made us great,
that provides our children with a legacy of freedom as an inheritance that we'd
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want to give them, is that really in jeopardy?
And so I'm just going to go through here a list, an inventory of where we are today. day. Capital A.
Over half of the United States budget is outside the Constitution today.
Over half of all of the money that's being appropriated by the Congress year
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after year is without any constitutional authority.
In other words, appropriations are being authorized by Congress in direct violation
of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution,
which outlines the limited authority given to our government,
and the Tenth Amendment, which says that everything else is reserved to the states.
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Tenth Amendment is probably the most violated section of the Constitution day in and day out.
Capital B, over one-third of the sovereign territory of the 50 states is being
held by the federal government as its own private property.
This is in direct violation of Article I, Section 8, Clause 17,
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where the Founding Fathers outlined what the federal government could own within
the parameters of a state territory.
And I'll say more about that in just a moment. Capital C, nearly all of the
executive orders of the President of the United States are issued in violation
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of Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution,
which says that all lawmaking powers, all legislative powers,
shall be in a Congress consisting of a House and a Senate.
And we discussed that in the Making of America on page 254.
You may be interested to know that a recent study shows that more laws came
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from the executive branch of the government than from Congress.
And of course, coming from the executive branch, that violates Article 1, Section 1.
How many more came? 34 times more laws came out of the executive branch than
the United States Congress.
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You wouldn't have nearly as many laws to worry about.
If Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution was being strictly enforced,
there is no constitutional authority for the federal government to exercise
environmental control over any area within a state unless it involves navigable waters,
federal lands, or interstate commerce.
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Capital E, there is no constitutional authority for national parks.
Now, national parks were originally set up way back in the 1880s,
and they couldn't think of any
constitutional basis for it, so they attributed it to national defense.
They thought maybe it had something to do.
It's the most irrational and flimsy basis for a decision made by the Supreme Court I've ever read.
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There is no constitutional authority for national forests. Now,
this horrifies lots of people.
There are even people here in the state of Idaho who are shocked when you say,
well, you're not suggesting that the state should take over these national forests.
Well, let me tell you the ideal example of how to handle your forest reserves
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is the state of Maine, where 98% of all the forests are privately owned,
and they are the best-kept forests in the United States.
They are harvested in a regular order, replanted, and it is cited as probably
the ideal way to operate the forests of the country and maintain those wonderful resources.
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That's just something to think about. And then, capital G, there is no constitutional
authority for the wilderness areas.
In my own state, they are now trying to set aside another nine million acres of.
And call it wilderness for the purpose of preserving its pristine beauty as nature left it.
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It's mostly sagebrush and rocks and sand, but they want to preserve it.
Now, a lot of people have no idea what happens when a territory is declared
to be a wilderness section. Let me see here.
This is something I wrote recently for one of our publications.
Most Americans don't realize what it means when a state allows huge chunks of
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its sovereign territory to be declared a wilderness area.
It means it is legally proclaimed off-limits to all human habitation.
No roads, no buildings, no mining, no drilling, no grazing, no vehicles,
no commercial activity of any kind.
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In other words, it is proclaimed by federal edict to be an economic desert.
Nine million acres of Utah, which really doesn't have that much land to be setting
aside for that type of thing.
Even hunting is virtually regulated out of existence, and administrators have
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become so fanatical that recently a seriously injured hiker could not be rescued
by an emergency helicopter.
He had to be carried out over miles of rough terrain because they said no mechanical
equipment of any kind is allowed within these boundaries.
It's imperative that every American should become aroused against this series
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of crimes being perpetrated against the Constitution and the people in the name
of environmental protection.
It actually is making the federal government just a bigger landholder than she already is.
On these preempted public lands, which the government now claims is a perpetual
legacy, they now no longer hold public lands as a trust.
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They've now passed the law as of 1976 in which they say it is federal land owned in perpetuity.
On that land are 85% of the nation's crude oil reserves,
40% of our natural gas, 80% of our oil shale, and these are the lands where
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additional treasures of gold, silver,
platinum, and rare metals needed in space development are secreted in unexplored deposits.
Now, one of the reasons that we have our seminars and one of the reasons we
get together this way is so that we have a speaking, ongoing acquaintance with
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the problems of our day and the things that we can do about them.
Because our people have tended to become involved,
as Jim told us a little earlier, the impact that you can have once you know
what the problem is and you see it being considered by your state legislature,
et cetera, the antennas immediately go up and you say, I know somebody I can call.
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There are some things that we can do about this.
I just wanted to share that thought with you because in our states,
particularly Idaho, Utah, in Nevada, it's up to 87% that the government already owns.
This is an atrocious usurpation of property that belongs to the states.
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The amount of territory that the federal government is allowed to occupy,
according to the Constitution, is very minimal.
In most of the eastern states and those that constitute the Louisiana Purchase, it seldom goes above 3%.
3%. And you see in Idaho, well, I don't remember the exact figure.
I know Utah is 66%. It's something comparable to that in Idaho.
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87% in Nevada, 96% in Alaska.
So only 4% actually belongs to the state or will ever belong to the state if
these people have their way.
Now, there is no constitutional authority, that's capital H,
there is no constitutional authority for the United States Department of Education,
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or the Secretary of Education in the President's Cabinet.
As a matter of fact, in their debates, Madison said,
to give the government control of your education is as serious an imposition
on parents and on the children as it would be to give the government control of our churches.
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That's how strongly they felt about it. And there is no constitutional authority
for the Energy Commission, and President Reagan promised that he would have
it completely wiped out if he could, but the Congress would not permit it.
And there is no constitutional authority for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The idea being behind that, of course, that the states probably weren't doing
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a sufficiently good job so the federal government would come in and take it over.
The big question, as Bork would have said, who was up for nomination to the
Supreme Court, where is your authority in the Constitution?
It isn't there. There is no constitutional authority for the Consumer Protection Agency.
We had private consumer agencies and private publications that were prospering
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and doing very well and had large subscriptions until the federal government
got got involved, and they just squeezed them out of existence.
There is no constitutional authority for the minimal wage law.
And a lot of people have not realized that this practically wiped out the apprentice
level for major industry,
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etc., where young people were allowed to come in at a minimal wage to begin
with, a rather low wage, and gradually work their way up.
Industry just could not afford to train these young people at what was called a minimum wage level.
And as a result, the unemployment among young people, particularly among the
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minority, just skyrocketed. And it's still up there.
And there are those now that want to increase it another 30% or so over the next couple of years.
There is no constitutional authority for the Federal Reserve System.
And the only reason that it was adopted was because the private banks who run
the Federal Reserve System promised that if they were given control of our money,
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and allowed to decide how much money would be in circulation and what the interest
rates would be, they would guarantee there would never be another depression,
and there would never be any serious inflation again.
And furthermore, they would keep all the interest rates down very low for farmers
and new businesses, etc., etc.
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As probably all of you know, the one congressman from Minnesota who who rose up in protest,
probably the only articulate, vocal person against the whole Federal Reserve
unconstitutional delegation of authority to a group of private banks to handle our money,
said the founders would have been horrified to learn that you would give this
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much power to any group of men.
They will abuse you. I promise you they will abuse you.
Of course, that was Congressman Lindbergh, who was the father of Colonel Lindbergh
that flew across the Atlantic.
Well, the Congress decided to risk it.
And we've been suffering from it ever since. The new book called The Secrets
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of the Temple, recently published, gives you the terrible,
historical, traumatic impact that the Federal Reserve has had on the manipulating
of the American people and its economy ever since.
And the suffering, destabilization that they deliberately impacted on the people
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in order to achieve their own financial gain.
And then capital N, there is no constitutional authority for our present system of fiat money.
As you know, the Constitution provides that the states are not allowed to pay
their debts in anything but gold and silver.
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I might just mention on the sideline that I hear a lot of people saying we should
return to the gold standard.
Now, the founding fathers saw danger in that. they said it's very important
that you keep both gold and silver in your money system.
And they had our dollar based on 377, 373 maybe it was, grains of pure silver. That was our dollar.
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And gold and the value of everything else was in terms of that silver dollar.
Now, the reason they use silver is because this continent on which you live
happens to be the main resource, or it was then, of silver.
The Aztecs hadn't gotten all of it out, and neither had the Incas.
They hadn't shipped it all over to Spain.
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The idea of the founders was that there was so much silver available that the
price would always be the cost of the mining.
And if the price of silver got up a little high, see, they wanted something
that would be stable, always about the same price.
And if all of a sudden the price of silver began to get high,
miners would go out and start digging it again, and it would pull it back down.
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So they thought that would be a very stable form or medium of exchange.
Now, the bankers wanted gold. Let's knock out the silver. Let's have it exclusively gold.
And they got enough power after the Civil War to get us to move over to a gold
dollar. Now, that was, as you know, very severely resisted in a very famous
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oration called the Cross of Gold Speaks.
It was given in 1898. But we went for the single monetary system of gold.
You can get a monopoly on gold.
And the bankers knew they could get a monopoly on it.
And by wiping out silver as part of our money system and eliminating the bimetallism,
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it It subjected the American people to a monopoly and control that put us in
a terrible depression in 1909,
so frightened the people that they accepted the Federal Reserve System.
And then in 1933, they took all the gold away from our people.
1968, they took even what silver they had.
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So we have really been subject to some tremendous suffering, I would say.
I've lived through enough of it to see a lot of people suffer.
In consequence of the aspiration of these people who induced our Congress to
violate the Constitution when they
created this fiat money and the Federal Reserve System that issues it.
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Capital Q, there is no constitutional authority for the Social Security System.
A private system, we have demonstrated, would be paying the people twice, about twice as much.
They say that the present system is safe. This is an illusion.
It won't be very long before they'll have to raise it again.
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And they keep talking about a trust fund. It does not exist.
All of your Social Security funds are put right into the general fund,
and Social Security payments are paid out of the general fund.
Supreme Court found that in three different cases, and what actually happens
is they keep a bookkeeping account of the amount that's being paid into the
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Social Security fund or on behalf of it,
and they call that trust fund. It doesn't exist.
They have about $100 billion in government bonds that they say is the trust fund.
That's no trust fund. Do you know what a bond is? as an IOU on the American taxpayer.
That's not a trust fund, per se. That whole presentation is fraudulent.
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Now, we do need security toward our old age, but that thing is so politically.
Dynamic, the politicians will not touch it.
But we've already prepared, and I think we have copies of it here tonight,
a social security study that will show you how much better it would have been to go the American way.
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There is no constitutional authority for the bailing out of private banks with federal taxes.
Banks is your blank. There is no constitutional authority for the bailing out
of private corporations such as the Chrysler Corporation.
There is no constitutional authority for the bailing out of bankrupt cities such as New York.
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I watched New York through the years paying garbage collectors more than people with a Ph.D.
Get in any other cities, a very extravagant retirement program,
regulation of housing and taxing on housing so extravagant and high that for
several miles in New York City there were nothing but empty houses,
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empty apartments abandoned by the people who owned them.
They couldn't afford to even own them anymore.
Then when it finally got into a state of bankruptcy, they appealed to Congress
to bail them out, and they did. No authority whatsoever.
Where were the people who were constitutionalists who said, on what basis do
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you bail out all of these people?
You are not the insurance company for the savings and loan, for the banks,
for the cities, and for these other things.
Now we're getting all ready to
bail out the savings and loans that are bankrupt all across the country.
In Utah, without any legal authority whatsoever, our governor sponsored a $30
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million commitment to bail out savings and loans that were not adequately insured.
It looked like the people were going to lose their money. The fact of the matter
is the people put their money in those savings and loan to get the extra 2%
or something, knowing that they were gambling somewhat.
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It was a risk. They knew they were taking a risk. They knew that they didn't
have FDIC backing and insurance.
They went ahead and did it anyway. And our attorney general told our governor,
you have no obligation to take on these losses from the taxpayers.
But the governor sponsored it anyway. And my brother, who was a member of the
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state legislature and about 17 others, went up and resisted and fought it,
did everything they could,
to keep the governor from pushing ahead, but he did.
And it was just typical of the mentality that we have.
He's not a bad man, but, I mean, we're not paying any attention to the law,
the substantive, basic document which should be controlling our lives.
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We've wandered away, and I just want you to remember the founders said that
people will become so rich and so inured from reality with riches and the baubles of material wealth,
they will stop studying what keeps you free and prosperous.
And in the process, you'll lose it.
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Now, we're on the downswing now.
And that's why it's so important that we have these seminars,
we get together, we realize that this isn't something to be taken lightly because
we can do something about it.
Now, just a few more. There is no constitutional authority for foreign aid.
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Some people say, well, we have to do that. Tell me why.
Our foreign aid now, you see, it probably is accumulated up to close to a half
a trillion dollars that we've been giving away to other countries.
I take, for example, Sweden.
Sweden has not had a war for 150 years.
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She doesn't have any of the basic problems we have.
Socialism has choked her economy down to a very mediocre level in her level of prosperity.
She wants us to make it up with money we don't have anymore.
We have become over the years so indebted that we now owe more money than all
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the rest of the countries of the world combined.
All of them. We're the world's biggest debtor, used to be the world's greatest
creditor, and we keep spilling out this money as though we had it. We don't have it.
And here, there is no constitutional authority for membership in the United Nations.
We signed in it as a treaty, with the U.S. paying about one-fourth of the cost
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of an organization that has 160 members.
Lately, we've been balking because most of the United Nations members have all
been antagonistic and hostile to the United States, and anything that we're
trying to do for the good of humanity,
they've been very much subject to the influence of the Soviet Union,
which we hope will soften them now that Glasnost and Perestroika is supposed
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to be in effect as a policy.
We'll have to wait and see. But anyway, the important thing was that when Alger
Hiss presented that to the Senate, only three senators read the treaty.
I didn't read it for three years, and as a lawyer, I couldn't believe the Senate
would have adopted that amazing document that was supposed to be the charter.
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And then there is no constitutional authority for the International Monetary Fund.
No authority for a national bank or an international bank in the Constitution.
And W, there's no constitutional authority for the massive federal housing program.
And in Salt Lake, we had a television program here the other night saying that
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those houses, because the payments were low, the down payments were very minimal,
the people are just moving out of them, abandoning them.
We have whole regions of HUD housing of rather attractive homes that have just
been abandoned, walked away from them.
No sense of accountability or responsibility.
And HUD has lost in the first eight months of this year, as I remember, about $22 million.
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There's no constitutional authority for the Federal Deposit Insurance Company.
In fact, there's no authority for any kind of insurance by the federal government
in the Constitution. Now, maybe we want to have some of these things.
All I'm saying is, then let's get an amendment to authorize it.
It's not in the constitutional structure, substantive structure of our country.
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There is no constitutional authority for graduated income taxes.
As all of you know, we've been opposed, as the founders were,
to any direct tax on the the wealth of individuals.
Assessments that are made against states have to be based on population, not on wealth.
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They knew that you couldn't collect that kind of a tax.
First of all, you couldn't assess it fairly, and then you couldn't assess it
without violating people's Fourth Amendment's rights.
The graduated element that they have introduced is a socialist concept.
It automatically destroyed the whole idea of equal rights and equal justice.
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Because if you get a little extra money, it becomes less sacred than the lower amount that you had.
The whole thing, from a founding father's standpoint, is immoral and unconstitutional.
Some people say, well, you know, the rich ought to pay more.
Well, if you had it 10% and everybody paid the same amount, would the rich pay more?
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Of course they would, because they have more. But they wouldn't feel cheated
then because it would still be 10% like everybody else.
But the moment that you put it 15%, 21%, 32%, they even got it up to as high as 92% during the war.
Then they feel cheated and they feel like the government is their enemy and
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any tactics, cheating, lying, deception is justified because the government
is not being fair to them. capital Z.
There is no constitutional authority for the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management
Act, which gave the federal government permanent and exclusive property rights
to all public lands in each of the states.
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Now, I would give you some more, but I ran out of letters. I just wanted you
to have some ammunition when somebody comes to you and makes this phenomenal nominal statement.
I don't know of any way the Constitution is being violated. I want you to have
this handy and say, well, let me just go through 26.
There are more, but let me just have you listen to 26.
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And many of these things will shock them. And they'll say, oh,
I'm sure there's a basis for that in the Constitution.
Hand them a copy of the Constitution and say, find it, show it to me.
Well, why would the Supreme Court do it if it isn't constitutional?
And that's what we'll just treat very briefly now.
There are several ways that these unconstitutional agencies crept into our system.
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First of all, the Butler case in 1936 on a five to four decision allowed Congress
virtually unlimited power to appropriate money for any agency or cause which
the Congress was considered to be for the general welfare of the nation,
whether it was authorized within the limitations of our Constitution or not.
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Here is the way the Supreme Court reasoned, in violation of all of the reasoning at the convention.
And subsequently, when they tried to set up a bank, and Madison and Jefferson
pointed out what they had said in the convention.
The idea of having a general welfare clause was to require all federal appropriations
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to be for the whole people.
You couldn't do anything for an individual.
You couldn't do anything for a particular profession.
You couldn't do anything for a particular town or a particular region.
Any federal appropriation had to be for all the people because the money came from all the people.
That's what general welfare meant. In 1936, they turned it around and said,
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no, it is not a restriction on the taxing power.
It is a new grant of power. They can do anything that they think is for the welfare of the country.
They went home and thought up all these projects that he was sure would be for
the welfare of himself the next election.
And they began buying votes. And that's what they're doing today.
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Everybody needs to understand the Butler case. Most law students have no idea
what the basis for all of these various social agencies is when they were appealed to in court.
When they were objected to in court, they consistently went back and said the
basis for authority is the Butler case.
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Never do they say it's based on any part of the Constitution.
It's always the Butler case. Every law student ought to know about it.
None of us, I have asked lots of law students, have you ever heard of it? They have not.
They don't say that there's any authority in the Constitution,
but they say on the basis of a ruling by the Supreme Court, these social organizations
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and services are provided.
And then the Interstate Commerce Clause was greatly expanded and abused by both
Congress and the Supreme Court.
The Necessary and Proper Clause in Article I, Section 8 was expanded and abused
by Congress and the Supreme Court.
And then D, war, depressions, and other emergencies, and I've lived through
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several of them, were used to justify unconstitutional activities which were
never adequately challenged because of the crisis at the time they were initiated.
Capital E, simple enabling acts of Congress of maybe one or two pages were extrapolated
by the executive branch into complex and elaborate bureaus and agencies so that
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the executive orders coming out of them,
we measured from one agency alone.
It was about nine feet high.
If you just stacked all the regulations, one on top, about nine feet high,
the original Enabling Act by Congress was a page and a half.
Capital F, in numerous cases, the Supreme Court initiated unconstitutional action,
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which the Congress elected to accept without challenge.
Busing, for example, to achieve racial balance in the schools,
and I could list the 20 or 30 more.
There is a constitutional procedure for the testing and subsequent elimination
of every federal program which is unconstitutional.
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So I just wanted to list this very briefly now as I come to a close.
Capital A, we should challenge the constitutionality of each federal agency.
Capital B, if the agency has merit, but there is no authorization for it in
the Constitution, prepare an amendment to test it through the amending process.
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If it fails to get approval, it will be automatically eliminated.
If it gains approval, it will have a legal constitutional basis for its existence.
Maybe we want some of these things. capital C, we should put a sunset law in
the next appropriation for each agency.
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Any agency which cannot be constitutionally justified and which does not have
sufficient merit to justify a constitutional amendment will be automatically eliminated.
Won't be any debate, won't be any argument. It'll just simply say,
well, unless it will stand up under the amendment process, it's through. It's finished.
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Capital D, give the president the power of a line item veto so that he can eliminate
agencies or projects which are not warranted.
And that is what most governors can do, but the president cannot.
Conclusion. We have not been thus good custodians of the document which made
Americans the first free people in modern time.
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Many parts of the the United States Constitution have been mutilated or shredded.
The answer to this problem is education followed by remedial action.
The National Center for Constitutional Studies is one of the foremost organizations
dedicated to massive education of the American people so that these remedial
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steps can be taken before it is too late.
Now, the reason that I went through this little exercise tonight was primarily
to put into your hands a little summary of where we are today,
because you'll be amazed how many people will object to the general statement
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that our Constitution is deteriorating, and that we're losing our freedoms,
and that we're on the the downhill coast toward an eventual crisis,
very serious crisis in our economy, our social structure, and our political
structure if we don't do some homework and get involved and do some changing.
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I would hope that in the not-too-distant future, we'll have enough Americans
who aren't schizophrenic.
Won't give the president the responsibility of doing all the things we'd like
to see done for the country, reduction of taxes,
balancing of the budget, bringing things under control, and then we'll also
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give that president a Congress who will support him in carrying it out.
People criticize President Reagan because he didn't fulfill his agenda.
They don't know enough about the Constitution to know that the president has
no authority to do anything without constitutional action.
And when they elect Congress that is dedicated to the proposition that they
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will discredit the president and get their own vested interest satisfied with
their constituency and ignore what the president was elected to accomplish,
you have this schizophrenic political situation that we now have.
So that's the job that's out there.
I have found this whole structure of the American-inspired Constitution, an exciting activity.
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An exciting cause, an important investment in time and money.
I don't know of anything that's much greater.
And so, all of you, I love you. I appreciate you.
And I can't tell you how much I appreciate the support you've given us down through the years.
There are 18 years now that we've been and organized, and we exist only because of friends like you.
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And I know that God will bless us if we stay united and grow and become good
students and become involved.
And I want to thank you for coming, all of you, and God bless you, everyone.
Folks, I'm so delighted to be here with you, and I've been looking forward to this.
This is sort of our kickoff meeting for the fall portion of our program,
and I'm just grateful for all of you coming and all of you being here.
And I know that you had to come at considerable effort and some sacrifice,
but your presence here gives great encouragement to those of us who try to carry on this work.
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Now tonight, because I'm just taking a little while to sort of open up the evening,
I've prepared a little handout here just for fun.
I thought it would be good to have a handout so that we could kind of go through
it and fill in the blanks.
As you know, my study guides are always called the blankety-blank study guides,
and they always have little places for you to fill in. and that primarily is
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to help the memory process.
When you're filling in blanks, you're talking to yourself and that's one half of memory.
It's communication. You can do it by talking to somebody else or you can talk to yourself.
You must communicate in your mind these things that we're talking about or it
somehow or another will fade.
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And so that's the reason for these little study guides that we have.
Now, don't read ahead or you'll know the punchlines before.
So wait for me as we kind of go through and get your pencil out and fill them in as we go.
Because I want to start out with the election that we have just gone through,
the 1988 presidential election.
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A lot of people do not know that this is one of the finest demonstrations I
know of, of the political schizophrenia that the American people are suffering from.
And you'll notice here in the beginning of your outline, I mentioned that,
that we just had our presidential election and it demonstrated that we're suffering
from political schizophrenia. Now, get your pencil ready.
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The majority of the people voted for the president on the basis of what they
wanted for the whole country.
The president, I just have gone through all his position papers,
his major position papers, and they're the things that practically every person
in America generally would wish to have.
There are a few exceptions, but most of the people in their right minds will
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want the things that he said in his position papers.
Now, then we turn right around and elected a Congress based on individual private interests.
And that creates a political phenomenon in Washington that we've got to live
with, because here's what's going to happen.
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Interest is your blank. We will have a president who will be trying to do what
the majority of the American people want, and we will have a majority in Congress
that will be trying to prevent him from doing it.
Now, that's the phenomenon that we've got, because the people that are trying
to get money for all these special interests, they are not going to go for a balanced budget.
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They are not going to go for a lowering of taxes. These are the things that people all want.
But in order to provide private interests, you'll see a conflict going on there.
And I suppose that's an unavoidable phenomenon of political life.
But it's very real. and everybody ought to know that that's what occurs in Washington
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and for a president to come and tell you all the things he would like to do
and that he's going to support should have a little addendum,
a little ancillary clause that says,
if the Congress will let me do it because the action is not in the White House.
The action is in the Congress.
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So that's why you are so important.
When the president is trying to put over a program of reducing taxes,
balancing the budget, cutting the national debt, and so forth,
unless we tell our congressmen we want it and want it very badly,
they'll go right ahead working for special interests for each area,
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community, or constituency.
That's why these seminars become important. That's why you're important.
That's why involvement is important.
Now, the Founding Fathers warned us that we would reach this stage of our evolutionary
development in the United States.
I've collected a whole group of their warnings and published them in the October
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Constitution Magazine for 1987.
So, under A, if you will write, please, Constitution Magazine,
October 1987, and you will read those rather pointed, dramatic warnings that
quite a number of the founders left with us.
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I guess de Tocqueville, Alexis de Tocqueville of France, who wrote two of the
finest volumes on an analysis of what was going on in America,
analyzed what all of them were saying, basically, and therefore I've given it
to you here in three points.
First of all, he said, a constitutional society, such as the founders gave us,
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would make us a rich people, and that's your blank. It would make us rich.
Now, some people say, well, I don't feel very rich,
but I can take you north or south or east or west, and you live with some of
the other people in the world, and you'll know that for many purposes, we are rich,
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although we're having personal difficulties, and we get in the crunches sometimes
as a people comparatively. We are very rich.
And he said a climate of prosperity would lure us away from studying the principles of the Constitution.
In other words, he said, you won't know enough about your formula of freedom to preserve it.
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You'll be so involved in the baubles of freedom.
Prosperity and wealth and material things, you will forget the great value system,
the great method of preserving freedom.
And finally, because of ignorance, he said the American people would begin losing
their freedoms and the Constitution eventually would hang by a thread,
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so to speak. Thread is your blank.
Now, where are we today in this process?
Is it really that critical? Are we really getting to such a point that the things that made us great,
that provides our children with a legacy of freedom as an inheritance that we'd
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want to give them, is that really in jeopardy?
And so I'm just going to go through here a list, an inventory of where we are today. day. Capital A.
Over half of the United States budget is outside the Constitution today.
Over half of all of the money that's being appropriated by the Congress year
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after year is without any constitutional authority.
In other words, appropriations are being authorized by Congress in direct violation
of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution,
which outlines the limited authority given to our government,
and the Tenth Amendment, which says that everything else is reserved to the states.
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Tenth Amendment is probably the most violated section of the Constitution day in and day out.
Capital B, over one-third of the sovereign territory of the 50 states is being
held by the federal government as its own private property.
This is in direct violation of Article I, Section 8, Clause 17,
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where the Founding Fathers outlined what the federal government could own within
the parameters of a state territory.
And I'll say more about that in just a moment. Capital C, nearly all of the
executive orders of the President of the United States are issued in violation
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of Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution,
which says that all lawmaking powers, all legislative powers,
shall be in a Congress consisting of a House and a Senate.
And we discussed that in the Making of America on page 254.
You may be interested to know that a recent study shows that more laws came
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from the executive branch of the government than from Congress.
And of course, coming from the executive branch, that violates Article 1, Section 1.
How many more came? 34 times more laws came out of the executive branch than
the United States Congress.
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You wouldn't have nearly as many laws to worry about.
If Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution was being strictly enforced,
there is no constitutional authority for the federal government to exercise
environmental control over any area within a state unless it involves navigable waters,
federal lands, or interstate commerce.
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Capital E, there is no constitutional authority for national parks.
Now, national parks were originally set up way back in the 1880s,
and they couldn't think of any
constitutional basis for it, so they attributed it to national defense.
They thought maybe it had something to do.
It's the most irrational and flimsy basis for a decision made by the Supreme Court I've ever read.
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There is no constitutional authority for national forests. Now,
this horrifies lots of people.
There are even people here in the state of Idaho who are shocked when you say,
well, you're not suggesting that the state should take over these national forests.
Well, let me tell you the ideal example of how to handle your forest reserves
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is the state of Maine, where 98% of all the forests are privately owned,
and they are the best-kept forests in the United States.
They are harvested in a regular order, replanted, and it is cited as probably
the ideal way to operate the forests of the country and maintain those wonderful resources.
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That's just something to think about. And then, capital G, there is no constitutional
authority for the wilderness areas.
In my own state, they are now trying to set aside another nine million acres of.
And call it wilderness for the purpose of preserving its pristine beauty as nature left it.
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It's mostly sagebrush and rocks and sand, but they want to preserve it.
Now, a lot of people have no idea what happens when a territory is declared
to be a wilderness section. Let me see here.
This is something I wrote recently for one of our publications.
Most Americans don't realize what it means when a state allows huge chunks of
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its sovereign territory to be declared a wilderness area.
It means it is legally proclaimed off-limits to all human habitation.
No roads, no buildings, no mining, no drilling, no grazing, no vehicles,
no commercial activity of any kind.
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In other words, it is proclaimed by federal edict to be an economic desert.
Nine million acres of Utah, which really doesn't have that much land to be setting
aside for that type of thing.
Even hunting is virtually regulated out of existence, and administrators have
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become so fanatical that recently a seriously injured hiker could not be rescued
by an emergency helicopter.
He had to be carried out over miles of rough terrain because they said no mechanical
equipment of any kind is allowed within these boundaries.
It's imperative that every American should become aroused against this series
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of crimes being perpetrated against the Constitution and the people in the name
of environmental protection.
It actually is making the federal government just a bigger landholder than she already is.
On these preempted public lands, which the government now claims is a perpetual
legacy, they now no longer hold public lands as a trust.
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They've now passed the law as of 1976 in which they say it is federal land owned in perpetuity.
On that land are 85% of the nation's crude oil reserves,
40% of our natural gas, 80% of our oil shale, and these are the lands where
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additional treasures of gold, silver,
platinum, and rare metals needed in space development are secreted in unexplored deposits.
Now, one of the reasons that we have our seminars and one of the reasons we
get together this way is so that we have a speaking, ongoing acquaintance with
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the problems of our day and the things that we can do about them.
Because our people have tended to become involved,
as Jim told us a little earlier, the impact that you can have once you know
what the problem is and you see it being considered by your state legislature,
et cetera, the antennas immediately go up and you say, I know somebody I can call.
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There are some things that we can do about this.
I just wanted to share that thought with you because in our states,
particularly Idaho, Utah, in Nevada, it's up to 87% that the government already owns.
This is an atrocious usurpation of property that belongs to the states.
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The amount of territory that the federal government is allowed to occupy,
according to the Constitution, is very minimal.
In most of the eastern states and those that constitute the Louisiana Purchase, it seldom goes above 3%.
3%. And you see in Idaho, well, I don't remember the exact figure.
I know Utah is 66%. It's something comparable to that in Idaho.
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87% in Nevada, 96% in Alaska.
So only 4% actually belongs to the state or will ever belong to the state if
these people have their way.
Now, there is no constitutional authority, that's capital H,
there is no constitutional authority for the United States Department of Education,
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or the Secretary of Education in the President's Cabinet.
As a matter of fact, in their debates, Madison said,
to give the government control of your education is as serious an imposition
on parents and on the children as it would be to give the government control of our churches.
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That's how strongly they felt about it. And there is no constitutional authority
for the Energy Commission, and President Reagan promised that he would have
it completely wiped out if he could, but the Congress would not permit it.
And there is no constitutional authority for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The idea being behind that, of course, that the states probably weren't doing
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a sufficiently good job so the federal government would come in and take it over.
The big question, as Bork would have said, who was up for nomination to the
Supreme Court, where is your authority in the Constitution?
It isn't there. There is no constitutional authority for the Consumer Protection Agency.
We had private consumer agencies and private publications that were prospering
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and doing very well and had large subscriptions until the federal government
got got involved, and they just squeezed them out of existence.
There is no constitutional authority for the minimal wage law.
And a lot of people have not realized that this practically wiped out the apprentice
level for major industry,
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etc., where young people were allowed to come in at a minimal wage to begin
with, a rather low wage, and gradually work their way up.
Industry just could not afford to train these young people at what was called a minimum wage level.
And as a result, the unemployment among young people, particularly among the
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minority, just skyrocketed. And it's still up there.
And there are those now that want to increase it another 30% or so over the next couple of years.
There is no constitutional authority for the Federal Reserve System.
And the only reason that it was adopted was because the private banks who run
the Federal Reserve System promised that if they were given control of our money,
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and allowed to decide how much money would be in circulation and what the interest
rates would be, they would guarantee there would never be another depression,
and there would never be any serious inflation again.
And furthermore, they would keep all the interest rates down very low for farmers
and new businesses, etc., etc.
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As probably all of you know, the one congressman from Minnesota who who rose up in protest,
probably the only articulate, vocal person against the whole Federal Reserve
unconstitutional delegation of authority to a group of private banks to handle our money,
said the founders would have been horrified to learn that you would give this
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much power to any group of men.
They will abuse you. I promise you they will abuse you.
Of course, that was Congressman Lindbergh, who was the father of Colonel Lindbergh
that flew across the Atlantic.
Well, the Congress decided to risk it.
And we've been suffering from it ever since. The new book called The Secrets
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of the Temple, recently published, gives you the terrible,
historical, traumatic impact that the Federal Reserve has had on the manipulating
of the American people and its economy ever since.
And the suffering, destabilization that they deliberately impacted on the people
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in order to achieve their own financial gain.
And then capital N, there is no constitutional authority for our present system of fiat money.
As you know, the Constitution provides that the states are not allowed to pay
their debts in anything but gold and silver.
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I might just mention on the sideline that I hear a lot of people saying we should
return to the gold standard.
Now, the founding fathers saw danger in that. they said it's very important
that you keep both gold and silver in your money system.
And they had our dollar based on 377, 373 maybe it was, grains of pure silver. That was our dollar.
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And gold and the value of everything else was in terms of that silver dollar.
Now, the reason they use silver is because this continent on which you live
happens to be the main resource, or it was then, of silver.
The Aztecs hadn't gotten all of it out, and neither had the Incas.
They hadn't shipped it all over to Spain.
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The idea of the founders was that there was so much silver available that the
price would always be the cost of the mining.
And if the price of silver got up a little high, see, they wanted something
that would be stable, always about the same price.
And if all of a sudden the price of silver began to get high,
miners would go out and start digging it again, and it would pull it back down.
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So they thought that would be a very stable form or medium of exchange.
Now, the bankers wanted gold. Let's knock out the silver. Let's have it exclusively gold.
And they got enough power after the Civil War to get us to move over to a gold
dollar. Now, that was, as you know, very severely resisted in a very famous
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oration called the Cross of Gold Speaks.
It was given in 1898. But we went for the single monetary system of gold.
You can get a monopoly on gold.
And the bankers knew they could get a monopoly on it.
And by wiping out silver as part of our money system and eliminating the bimetallism,
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it It subjected the American people to a monopoly and control that put us in
a terrible depression in 1909,
so frightened the people that they accepted the Federal Reserve System.
And then in 1933, they took all the gold away from our people.
1968, they took even what silver they had.
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So we have really been subject to some tremendous suffering, I would say.
I've lived through enough of it to see a lot of people suffer.
In consequence of the aspiration of these people who induced our Congress to
violate the Constitution when they
created this fiat money and the Federal Reserve System that issues it.
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Capital Q, there is no constitutional authority for the Social Security System.
A private system, we have demonstrated, would be paying the people twice, about twice as much.
They say that the present system is safe. This is an illusion.
It won't be very long before they'll have to raise it again.
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And they keep talking about a trust fund. It does not exist.
All of your Social Security funds are put right into the general fund,
and Social Security payments are paid out of the general fund.
Supreme Court found that in three different cases, and what actually happens
is they keep a bookkeeping account of the amount that's being paid into the
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Social Security fund or on behalf of it,
and they call that trust fund. It doesn't exist.
They have about $100 billion in government bonds that they say is the trust fund.
That's no trust fund. Do you know what a bond is? as an IOU on the American taxpayer.
That's not a trust fund, per se. That whole presentation is fraudulent.
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Now, we do need security toward our old age, but that thing is so politically.
Dynamic, the politicians will not touch it.
But we've already prepared, and I think we have copies of it here tonight,
a social security study that will show you how much better it would have been to go the American way.
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There is no constitutional authority for the bailing out of private banks with federal taxes.
Banks is your blank. There is no constitutional authority for the bailing out
of private corporations such as the Chrysler Corporation.
There is no constitutional authority for the bailing out of bankrupt cities such as New York.
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I watched New York through the years paying garbage collectors more than people with a Ph.D.
Get in any other cities, a very extravagant retirement program,
regulation of housing and taxing on housing so extravagant and high that for
several miles in New York City there were nothing but empty houses,
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empty apartments abandoned by the people who owned them.
They couldn't afford to even own them anymore.
Then when it finally got into a state of bankruptcy, they appealed to Congress
to bail them out, and they did. No authority whatsoever.
Where were the people who were constitutionalists who said, on what basis do
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you bail out all of these people?
You are not the insurance company for the savings and loan, for the banks,
for the cities, and for these other things.
Now we're getting all ready to
bail out the savings and loans that are bankrupt all across the country.
In Utah, without any legal authority whatsoever, our governor sponsored a $30
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million commitment to bail out savings and loans that were not adequately insured.
It looked like the people were going to lose their money. The fact of the matter
is the people put their money in those savings and loan to get the extra 2%
or something, knowing that they were gambling somewhat.
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It was a risk. They knew they were taking a risk. They knew that they didn't
have FDIC backing and insurance.
They went ahead and did it anyway. And our attorney general told our governor,
you have no obligation to take on these losses from the taxpayers.
But the governor sponsored it anyway. And my brother, who was a member of the
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state legislature and about 17 others, went up and resisted and fought it,
did everything they could,
to keep the governor from pushing ahead, but he did.
And it was just typical of the mentality that we have.
He's not a bad man, but, I mean, we're not paying any attention to the law,
the substantive, basic document which should be controlling our lives.
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We've wandered away, and I just want you to remember the founders said that
people will become so rich and so inured from reality with riches and the baubles of material wealth,
they will stop studying what keeps you free and prosperous.
And in the process, you'll lose it.
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Now, we're on the downswing now.
And that's why it's so important that we have these seminars,
we get together, we realize that this isn't something to be taken lightly because
we can do something about it.
Now, just a few more. There is no constitutional authority for foreign aid.
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Some people say, well, we have to do that. Tell me why.
Our foreign aid now, you see, it probably is accumulated up to close to a half
a trillion dollars that we've been giving away to other countries.
I take, for example, Sweden.
Sweden has not had a war for 150 years.
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She doesn't have any of the basic problems we have.
Socialism has choked her economy down to a very mediocre level in her level of prosperity.
She wants us to make it up with money we don't have anymore.
We have become over the years so indebted that we now owe more money than all
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the rest of the countries of the world combined.
All of them. We're the world's biggest debtor, used to be the world's greatest
creditor, and we keep spilling out this money as though we had it. We don't have it.
And here, there is no constitutional authority for membership in the United Nations.
We signed in it as a treaty, with the U.S. paying about one-fourth of the cost
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of an organization that has 160 members.
Lately, we've been balking because most of the United Nations members have all
been antagonistic and hostile to the United States, and anything that we're
trying to do for the good of humanity,
they've been very much subject to the influence of the Soviet Union,
which we hope will soften them now that Glasnost and Perestroika is supposed
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to be in effect as a policy.
We'll have to wait and see. But anyway, the important thing was that when Alger
Hiss presented that to the Senate, only three senators read the treaty.
I didn't read it for three years, and as a lawyer, I couldn't believe the Senate
would have adopted that amazing document that was supposed to be the charter.
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And then there is no constitutional authority for the International Monetary Fund.
No authority for a national bank or an international bank in the Constitution.
And W, there's no constitutional authority for the massive federal housing program.
And in Salt Lake, we had a television program here the other night saying that
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those houses, because the payments were low, the down payments were very minimal,
the people are just moving out of them, abandoning them.
We have whole regions of HUD housing of rather attractive homes that have just
been abandoned, walked away from them.
No sense of accountability or responsibility.
And HUD has lost in the first eight months of this year, as I remember, about $22 million.
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There's no constitutional authority for the Federal Deposit Insurance Company.
In fact, there's no authority for any kind of insurance by the federal government
in the Constitution. Now, maybe we want to have some of these things.
All I'm saying is, then let's get an amendment to authorize it.
It's not in the constitutional structure, substantive structure of our country.
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There is no constitutional authority for graduated income taxes.
As all of you know, we've been opposed, as the founders were,
to any direct tax on the the wealth of individuals.
Assessments that are made against states have to be based on population, not on wealth.
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They knew that you couldn't collect that kind of a tax.
First of all, you couldn't assess it fairly, and then you couldn't assess it
without violating people's Fourth Amendment's rights.
The graduated element that they have introduced is a socialist concept.
It automatically destroyed the whole idea of equal rights and equal justice.
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Because if you get a little extra money, it becomes less sacred than the lower amount that you had.
The whole thing, from a founding father's standpoint, is immoral and unconstitutional.
Some people say, well, you know, the rich ought to pay more.
Well, if you had it 10% and everybody paid the same amount, would the rich pay more?
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Of course they would, because they have more. But they wouldn't feel cheated
then because it would still be 10% like everybody else.
But the moment that you put it 15%, 21%, 32%, they even got it up to as high as 92% during the war.
Then they feel cheated and they feel like the government is their enemy and
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any tactics, cheating, lying, deception is justified because the government
is not being fair to them. capital Z.
There is no constitutional authority for the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management
Act, which gave the federal government permanent and exclusive property rights
to all public lands in each of the states.
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Now, I would give you some more, but I ran out of letters. I just wanted you
to have some ammunition when somebody comes to you and makes this phenomenal nominal statement.
I don't know of any way the Constitution is being violated. I want you to have
this handy and say, well, let me just go through 26.
There are more, but let me just have you listen to 26.
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And many of these things will shock them. And they'll say, oh,
I'm sure there's a basis for that in the Constitution.
Hand them a copy of the Constitution and say, find it, show it to me.
Well, why would the Supreme Court do it if it isn't constitutional?
And that's what we'll just treat very briefly now.
There are several ways that these unconstitutional agencies crept into our system.
(32:28):
First of all, the Butler case in 1936 on a five to four decision allowed Congress
virtually unlimited power to appropriate money for any agency or cause which
the Congress was considered to be for the general welfare of the nation,
whether it was authorized within the limitations of our Constitution or not.
(32:51):
Here is the way the Supreme Court reasoned, in violation of all of the reasoning at the convention.
And subsequently, when they tried to set up a bank, and Madison and Jefferson
pointed out what they had said in the convention.
The idea of having a general welfare clause was to require all federal appropriations
(33:13):
to be for the whole people.
You couldn't do anything for an individual.
You couldn't do anything for a particular profession.
You couldn't do anything for a particular town or a particular region.
Any federal appropriation had to be for all the people because the money came from all the people.
That's what general welfare meant. In 1936, they turned it around and said,
(33:36):
no, it is not a restriction on the taxing power.
It is a new grant of power. They can do anything that they think is for the welfare of the country.
They went home and thought up all these projects that he was sure would be for
the welfare of himself the next election.
And they began buying votes. And that's what they're doing today.
(33:58):
Everybody needs to understand the Butler case. Most law students have no idea
what the basis for all of these various social agencies is when they were appealed to in court.
When they were objected to in court, they consistently went back and said the
basis for authority is the Butler case.
(34:20):
Never do they say it's based on any part of the Constitution.
It's always the Butler case. Every law student ought to know about it.
None of us, I have asked lots of law students, have you ever heard of it? They have not.
They don't say that there's any authority in the Constitution,
but they say on the basis of a ruling by the Supreme Court, these social organizations
(34:43):
and services are provided.
And then the Interstate Commerce Clause was greatly expanded and abused by both
Congress and the Supreme Court.
The Necessary and Proper Clause in Article I, Section 8 was expanded and abused
by Congress and the Supreme Court.
And then D, war, depressions, and other emergencies, and I've lived through
(35:03):
several of them, were used to justify unconstitutional activities which were
never adequately challenged because of the crisis at the time they were initiated.
Capital E, simple enabling acts of Congress of maybe one or two pages were extrapolated
by the executive branch into complex and elaborate bureaus and agencies so that
(35:28):
the executive orders coming out of them,
we measured from one agency alone.
It was about nine feet high.
If you just stacked all the regulations, one on top, about nine feet high,
the original Enabling Act by Congress was a page and a half.
Capital F, in numerous cases, the Supreme Court initiated unconstitutional action,
(35:52):
which the Congress elected to accept without challenge.
Busing, for example, to achieve racial balance in the schools,
and I could list the 20 or 30 more.
There is a constitutional procedure for the testing and subsequent elimination
of every federal program which is unconstitutional.
(36:12):
So I just wanted to list this very briefly now as I come to a close.
Capital A, we should challenge the constitutionality of each federal agency.
Capital B, if the agency has merit, but there is no authorization for it in
the Constitution, prepare an amendment to test it through the amending process.
(36:38):
If it fails to get approval, it will be automatically eliminated.
If it gains approval, it will have a legal constitutional basis for its existence.
Maybe we want some of these things. capital C, we should put a sunset law in
the next appropriation for each agency.
(36:58):
Any agency which cannot be constitutionally justified and which does not have
sufficient merit to justify a constitutional amendment will be automatically eliminated.
Won't be any debate, won't be any argument. It'll just simply say,
well, unless it will stand up under the amendment process, it's through. It's finished.
(37:21):
Capital D, give the president the power of a line item veto so that he can eliminate
agencies or projects which are not warranted.
And that is what most governors can do, but the president cannot.
Conclusion. We have not been thus good custodians of the document which made
Americans the first free people in modern time.
(37:42):
Many parts of the the United States Constitution have been mutilated or shredded.
The answer to this problem is education followed by remedial action.
The National Center for Constitutional Studies is one of the foremost organizations
dedicated to massive education of the American people so that these remedial
(38:03):
steps can be taken before it is too late.
Now, the reason that I went through this little exercise tonight was primarily
to put into your hands a little summary of where we are today,
because you'll be amazed how many people will object to the general statement
(38:25):
that our Constitution is deteriorating, and that we're losing our freedoms,
and that we're on the the downhill coast toward an eventual crisis,
very serious crisis in our economy, our social structure, and our political
structure if we don't do some homework and get involved and do some changing.
(38:51):
I would hope that in the not-too-distant future, we'll have enough Americans
who aren't schizophrenic.
Won't give the president the responsibility of doing all the things we'd like
to see done for the country, reduction of taxes,
balancing of the budget, bringing things under control, and then we'll also
(39:13):
give that president a Congress who will support him in carrying it out.
People criticize President Reagan because he didn't fulfill his agenda.
They don't know enough about the Constitution to know that the president has
no authority to do anything without constitutional action.
And when they elect Congress that is dedicated to the proposition that they
(39:36):
will discredit the president and get their own vested interest satisfied with
their constituency and ignore what the president was elected to accomplish,
you have this schizophrenic political situation that we now have.
So that's the job that's out there.
I have found this whole structure of the American-inspired Constitution, an exciting activity.
(40:03):
An exciting cause, an important investment in time and money.
I don't know of anything that's much greater.
And so, all of you, I love you. I appreciate you.
And I can't tell you how much I appreciate the support you've given us down through the years.
There are 18 years now that we've been and organized, and we exist only because of friends like you.
(40:28):
And I know that God will bless us if we stay united and grow and become good
students and become involved.
And I want to thank you for coming, all of you, and God bless you, everyone.
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