Posts Tagged ‘Bill of Rights’

Canada’s crackdown on the freedom convoy proves the genius of The Bill of Rights

Posted: February 24, 2022 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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I am absolutely outraged by Trudeau’s despicable crackdown on the peaceful freedom trucker’s protest.  What I saw unfold reminded me quite forcefully of incidents that are far too common is totalitarian regimes.  That sort of nonsense has become all too common place the past two years. 

Far too many national leaders have demonstrated similar totalitarian tendencies.  Hundreds of millions have had their most basic rights stripped away in the name of fighting a virus with a greater than 99.7 percent survival rate.  Power hungry politicians have seized on this pandemic as the perfect opportunity to amass total control over their populations.

Trudeau’s seizure of the bank accounts of anyone associated with the freedom convoy, the mass arrest of peaceful protestors, and the trampling of peaceful protesters by police horses is most shocking to us here in the United States because Canada appears to be a country very much like the United States.

As similar as Canada appears to be to the United States, it is lacking one key ingredient, our Constitution, with its Bill of Rights.  Canada’s Constitution is only a shabby copy with a very week Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  It is week because it can be so easily tossed aside by a sniveling coward of a Prime Minister who is faced with a peaceful mass protest.

Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms normally does offer some protection for the freedom of speech and the right to peacefully protest.  It is similar to our Bill of Rights.  However, our Bill of Rights cannot ever be set aside, even during an emergency.  A lot of politicians here would be shocked to learn that fundamental truth.  Our Bill of Rights is the very foundation of our Constitutional Republic. 

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is not held in such high regard in Canada.  The majority of Canadians have no trouble with Trudeau’s despicable actions.  In the US only a majority of Democrats are cheering him along

Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms is missing one absolutely crucial right, the right to bear arms.  If Canada had a Second Amendment, Trudeau would not have been able to crush the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa.  Thanks to the Second Amendment it is impossible for an American president to crush a similar protest here.  Our Second Amendment makes it impossible for politicians to strip away our most fundamental rights,  That is why democrats have been trying to do away with the Second Amendment for decades.

With the panic they have caused over this pandemic, Democrat politicians have been far too successful at manipulating the people of their party into surrendering their most important rights.  Recent polls have shown that independents, and even some of the ordinary members of the Democrat party are getting tired of  Covid restrictions.  That is why the restrictions are being lifted in Democrat controlled States ahead of the Midterms.

It the Democrats here still honored the Bill of Rights, and far more Democrats embraced the Second Amendment, none of the restrictions imposed by Democrats would have been possible

Happy 230th Birthday to the Bill of Rights

Posted: December 16, 2021 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Wednesday December 15th marked the 230th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights.  Unfortunately the original meaning and purpose of that document has been so distorted that few of us are aware that the modern understanding is the exact opposite of the original meaning.  Progressives and other proponents of big government and collectivism have constructed many myths and outright lies about the Bill of Rights.  They have used these mistruths to actually strip away and trample on the rights the Bill of Rights was meant to protect.

I thought I would celebrate the anniversary of the ratification by busting some of the most outrageous and harmful lies about the Bill of Rights.

The most common myth about the Bill of Rights is that that document grants us our rights.  That if false.  All of our rights are granted to each and every individual by God.  All of our rights are God-given Natural Rights.  This most famous line by Thomas Jefferson from the Declaration of Independence states this fundamental principle so eloquently:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

The Bill of Rights does not in any way restrain state governments.  I know that that fact may even seem controversial to Conservatives and others on the political right.  That only serves to illustrate just how badly distorted the original meaning of the Bill of Rights has been.  The government created by the United States Constitution is a bottom up distributed federal republic rather than a top down consolidated national government. 

The States are mostly independent nations held together by a weak central government.   Each state constitution has a bill of rights to protect the rights of the people of that state from encroachments by the state governments.  From this exchange that took place during the drafting of the Bill of Rights you can see that James Madison attempted to extend the Bill Rights down to the states and was defeated. 

Over the past 100 years the Supreme Court has allowed the federal government to extend the Bill of Rights down to the states, in direct violation of the Constitution.  This has led to a consolidated top down national government where the states have become mere appendages of the federal government. This has done tremendous harm including Roe V Wade.

It has been maintained by the Supreme Court that the 14th Amendment incorporated the Bill of Rights down to the state level.  They only accomplished this by distorting the plain meaning of the 14th Amendment.  I discuss this in great detail in this article.

The separation of church and state is not found in any clause of the Bill Rights, nor any other part of the Constitution.  That blatantly unconstitutional doctrine was created by distorting the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.  The proponents of the separation and state completely ignore the Free Exercise of Religion Clause of the First Amendment. The two clause together state:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

Those two clauses prohibit the federal government from establishing an official national religion and prohibit the federal government from interfering with the free exercise of religion of every individual’  Thanks to the doctrines of the incorporation of the Bill of Rights and the separation of church and state, religion has almost been extinguished from the public square.  Nativity scenes in town halls, prayers by students at graduations, even candy canes, and so mush more has been banned,

The purpose of the Bill of Rights is to protect the rights of every individual by preventing the federal government from interfering with them in any way.  The Bill of Rights is a hands off for the federal government.  Period. End of story.

How well do you understand the Bill of Rights?

Posted: December 19, 2019 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Sunday, December 15th, marked the 228th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights.  That anniversary got me thinking about how so few on all sides of the political spectrum properly understand this most important protector of our rights.  This is because our elected officials on all levels have distorted the original meaning so much that the current understanding is 180 degrees opposite from the meaning as understood by those that framed and ratified it.  Our abysmal education system, which teaches political correct revisionist history rather than civics, the news media, and our entertainment industry are also to blame.

Here are the most common and most dangerous misconceptions about the Bill of Rights that I’ve encountered.

1. The Bill of Rights grants us our rights, 

People on the right and the left regularly spread this mistruth; most commonly by stating the we have First Amendment rights, or something similar.  This is a dangerous notion because our rights could then be taken away by amending the Bill of Rights or disregarding the actual meaning, which has been done too often.

This quote from the Declaration of Independence tells us exactly where the framers of the Bill of Rights believed our rights come from:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

2. The Bill of Rights applies to the States

It is abundantly clear from the debates that occurred during the ratification of the Constitution, where the states conventions demanded a Bill of Rights, that the purpose of those amendments was to restrain the federal government only.  This is also abundantly clear from the debates where the Bill of Right s was framed, and the debates where the amendments were ratified by the states.  Thomas Jefferson explained this very eloquently when he wrote the first draft of the Kentucky Resolutions in 1798

3. _Resolved_, That it is true as a general principle, and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the Constitution, that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people;” and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, and were reserved to the States or the people: that thus was manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated, rather than the use be destroyed. And thus also they guarded against all abridgment by the United States of the freedom of religious opinions and exercises, and retained to themselves the right of protecting the same, as this State, by a law passed on the general demand of its citizens, had already protected them from all human restraint or interference. And that in addition to this general principle and express declaration, another and more special provision has been made by one of the amendments to the Constitution, which expressly declares, that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press:” thereby guarding in the same sentence, and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press: insomuch, that whatever violated either, throws down the sanctuary which covers the others, and that libels, falsehood, and defamation, equally with heresy and false religion, are withheld from the cognizance of federal tribunals.

Some of the readers of this article might strenuously disagree with the fact that the Bill of Rights does not pertain to the states.  This was done by the framers of the Bill of Rights on purpose because they believed granting the federal government all of that power would result in a gigantic and oppressive federal government.  We have this now because the federal government granted itself unconstitutionally the power to extend the Bill of Rights down to the states. 

The Bill Rights is a hands off list for the federal government.  Our rights are too precious for the federal government to interfere with in any way.  The framers believed that state and local governments were the proper levels to make decisions regarding these rights because the people could better oversee the state and local levels.

All state constitutions have a Bill of Rights which protects the rights of the citizens of that state.  Here is what Clause 13 of the Virginia Rill of Rights has to say about the right to bear arms.  The current governor of Virginia should take note.

That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state, therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

3. The Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the Bill of Rights down to the State and local level

As you can see from the actual text of  Clause 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment, that amendment was never meant to extend the entire Bill of Rights down to the states.  The only clause that was extended was the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment,

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The Supreme Court created the unconstitutional doctrine of incorporation by disregarding the text of the amendment and the transcripts of the debates where it was written and ratified.  Incorporation has resulted in tremendous harm such as the banning of most things religious from the public square,  setting criminals free because of a technicality, and so much more.

4.  The Fourteenth Amendment granted the Supreme Court the authority to overturn state laws involving the Bill of Rights.

Using the unconstitutional doctrine of Incorporation, the Supreme Court single handedly granted itself the power to overturn state laws.  As you can see from the actual text of Clause 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment  “The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”  that power was specifically not granted to the Supreme Court by the amendment, but instead granted to the US Congress through the formal legislative process.  That was because the Dred Scott ruling stood firmly in the minds of those that wrote the amendment. 

The only way to restore the original meaning of the Bill of Rights is by using the internet to educate others.  Please help me do that by sharing this article on social media.  Also, please consider contributing to this website by using the Tip Jar.