1 Corinthians 10:29 Conscience, I say, not thine own, but  of the other:
for why is my liberty judged of another man’s conscience?

Why is it that the newly energized liberty movement has only enjoyed marginal support amongst the so-called religious right? In the early days of the Ron Paul 2008 presidential campaign I can remember thinking that Dr. Paul is one of the first liberty centered candidates who will be a slam dunk with this faith based segment of the Republican Party. After-all, a grandfatherly figure married to the same woman for more than fifty years; A pro-life OBGYN who delivered over 4,000 babies, and a military veteran who is an outspoken advocate of the Christian Just Theory of War seemed like the Christian Coalition Super Candidate. However the Ron Paul R[evol]ution failed to produce overwhelming numbers of faith based supporters within the rank and file of the GOP.  As someone who has always considered himself to be a cultural as well as a fiscal conservative, I was anxious to understand why my brothers & sisters of faith were not on the same page as me.

I began by taking a close look at my own personal transition from a faith and religion centered political philosophy to a liberty and freedom focused philosophy. Did this transition make me a believer in moral relativism? Did it weaken my faith in God? Certainly not, but it did cause me to re-examine the proper role of government when it comes to cultural, religious and moral issues. And I believe it is here where the real conflict and disconnect between the two groups lies. To illustrate, consider three issues where traditional religious right conservatives and liberty minded activists usually part ways: Drug Legalization, Gay Marriage and Prayer in School.

Drug Legalization
It is generally agreed upon by both the religious right and liberty activists that the use of drugs causes more harm than good. And it is also agreed upon by many in both camps that an individual who is engaged in drug use is acting immorally. Furthermore both groups see a need, perhaps even an obligation, to work to minimize this activity in our society. The conflict only arises when one group (the religious right) favors using the force of government to minimize drug use while the other group (liberty activists) stand in opposition to such an approach.

Gay Marriage
Most people of faith believe the institution of marriage is a sacred institution that should be preserved in its traditional form of a one man, one woman lifelong committed union. Many (not all) liberty activists share the same view. The conflict again arises when one group (the religious right) favors using the force of government to enforce this belief while the other group (liberty activists) is opposed to any and all governmental interference in the institution of marriage.

Prayer in School
Most people of faith believe that if we as a society had a greater focus on God and spirituality via public prayer we could improve many of our cultural problems.  And again many (not all) liberty activists share the same view, but are in conflict when they are told that the force of government should be used to promote this behavior. There does however seem to be a consensus from both groups that the force of government should not be used to prohibit such behavior.

When it comes to each of these three issues, the behavior being regulated by government does not directly impact the freedom and liberty of anyone besides the individual whose behavior is being regulated. Yes, drug use many times leads to behavior that impacts the freedom and liberty of others – but it is possible for the behavior in and of itself to affect no one but the person choosing to engage in the behavior. And the moment it does cross the line, most everyone is in agreement that the force of government is acceptable to remedy the injustice. In the case of gay marriage it could be argued that over time a prevalence of gay marriage would weaken the traditional family, but the fact is that when two people choose to call themselves married it has no direct effect on the freedom and liberty of anyone else but themselves.  And in the case of prayer in school, the person who chooses not to pray is the only one being directly impacted by a government regulation forcing them to pray. So the central question is whether or not the use of government force is justified in promoting moral behavior or prohibiting immoral behavior.

Aside from the effectiveness and obvious lack of constitutional authority for government to delve into these issues, you should consider the inconsistencies in regulating moral behavior. There are seven deadly sins, but yet the religious right is not advocating using the force of government to reduce gluttony, greed, avarice or lust. Why not? I mean if the general premise behind laws against drug use, gay marriage and laws mandating prayer in schools is righteous, why not make laws that will promote all moral behavior and prohibit all immoral behavior? I think the answer is obvious. This is not the proper role of government. It is the role of individuals, families, Churches, charities, civic organizations etc. to promote “good behavior” and hopefully raise the standards of moral conduct in our society.  Faith is not the foundation of freedom – individual liberty is the foundation of freedom.

When I first moved from a faith and religion centered political philosophy to a liberty and freedom focused philosophy I felt a little guilty because it seemed as though I was downplaying the importance of the culture war in today’s society. I was no longer in the same political camp as groups like Focus on the Family, The Christian Coalition or Huck’s Army. I know I shared many of their ultimate goals but I was just no longer comfortable with their approach or with their willingness to use government as a means to an end.  However, I still feel that there is no more pressing issue facing our nation than promoting a moral culture. Capitalism, Free- Enterprise, Individual Liberty, and even a constitutionally controlled federal government will ultimately fail in an immoral and decadent society.  I have since reconciled this conflict by fully understanding the proper channels to achieve progress in both liberty and faith. I have also come to the realization that there is a natural home for the religious right within the liberty movement and that understanding the proper roles that Faith and Liberty serve in our society is the first step to increasing the ranks of both.

John Stevens
RLCNEF Chairman

by Alan Stang
March 20, 2009

For many years, the people’s attention in the Battle for America has been directed toward the federal government and its offices. Candidates stand for the House and the Senate. Patriotic groups publish voting records of incumbents. Considerable time, effort and money are expended in support of candidates for President. After decades of such commendable activity, the record shows it is an utter failure. The danger to the nation is worse than it ever was.

For many of those years, Republicrud bosses whined that if the people would only give them control of the federal government, they would undo Democrud damage and restore Free Enterprise. Finally, the people gave it to them. Remember? The Republicruds controlled the House, the Senate and the Oval Office long enough to turn the country around. What happened? The Republicruds made our problems much worse. Their spending made the profligate

drunken sailor look like Scrooge. They deserved it when the people kicked them out. They lost all credibility.

Yes, there is Dr. Ron Paul. But Dr. No is a political aberration. Time and again, he stands alone. He has neither men’s room problems nor woman problems. He doesn’t take congressional retirement. He actually returns “money” (computer entries) to the federal treasury. He proposes abolishing the Fed and the income tax and replacing them with nothing. In foreign affairs he suggests that we mind our own business. Imagine! But, again, he is an aberration.

Why? Certainly one reason has to be that we ship the successful congressional candidate off to the District of Corruption. However good the new congressman may have been when he or she boarded the plane to the District; he is subjected to intoxicating blandishments when he arrives in the enemy camp.

Soon, he succumbs to the blandishments, maybe even making himself blackmailable, and begins to vote as the party boss says, without even reading the bills. Instead of representing the people of his congressional district in the District of Criminals, he represents the D.C. to the C.D. He or she now is one of the boys or the girls. It has happened hundreds of times.

So, if the long, heroic effort to elect federal legislators has failed, does there remain any governmental Horatius who can stand in the gap; who can lead the Battle for America and restore the Constitution? There is. Lock and load, mount up and prepare for the return of the sheriff.

My guess is that in the minds of many Americans the sheriff is an antiquated figure who lives in the movies. In the older movies he is the hero; he is Gary Cooper in “High Noon,” awaiting the train that will bring killer Frank Miller back to town. In the new ones, he is the southern sheriff, even bigger than Rosie O’Donnell, sneering, sadistic, racist, violent, etc. He has no modern relevance.

But now here comes Sheriff Richard Mack, elected and re-elected in Graham County, Arizona, where he served for eight years. During his tenure, three federal agents came to a meeting of Arizona sheriffs and told them in certain terms how they would be dragooned as unpaid federal bureaucrats and administer the new, federal Brady gun registration law.

The law was named of course for Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, who was severely wounded in the immensely suspicious attempt to assassinate the President. Since then, Mrs. Brady has become a leader of the campaign for Nazi gun confiscation. I don’t know whether she was as crazy before the shootings as she is now. Just one more increment of lunacy and they would have to lock her up.

Richard Mack and the other Arizona sheriffs at the meeting rebelled. Sheriff Richard says the language he heard – in which he did not participate – could not be repeated in the presence of genteel Christian ladies, so we can’t tell you here what the sheriffs said. But Sheriff Mack did take the government to court. He sued the United States, and Sheriff Jay Printz of Montana joined him as plaintiff.

On June 27th, 1997, the sheriffs won; in Printz v. U.S. (521 U.S. 898) the U.S. Supreme Court struck Brady down. Associate Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the ruling for the Court, in which he explained our system of government at length. The justly revered system of checks and balances is the key:

“. . . The great innovation of this design was that ‘our citizens would have two political capacities, one state and one federal, each protected from incursion by the other’” – “a legal system unprecedented in form and design, establishing two orders of government, each with its own direct relationship, its own privity, its own set of mutual rights and obligations to the people who sustain it and are governed by it.” (P. 920)

Scalia quotes President James Madison, “father” of the Constitution: “[T]he local or municipal authorities form distinct and independent portions of the supremacy, no more subject, within their respective spheres, to the general authority than the general authority is subject to them, within its own sphere.” The Federalist, No. 39 at 245.

Again and again, Justice Scalia pounds the point home (page 921): “This separation of the two spheres is one of the Constitution’s structural protections of liberty: ‘Just as the separation and independence of the coordinate branches of the Federal Government serve to prevent the accumulation of excessive power in any one branch, a healthy balance of power between the States and the Federal Government will reduce the risk of tyranny and abuse from either front.’. . .” Gregory, 501 U.S. at 458.

He quotes President Madison again: “In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.” (P. 922)

No one could make this any clearer. The primary purpose of the Fathers was to prevent someone from grabbing all the power. When that happens, they knew, the result is arbitrary, confiscatory, government, the kind Tom Jefferson described in the Declaration of Independence. We would call it totalitarian.

Madison explains: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” Federalist No. 48, February 1, 1788.

To prevent that from happening, they divided the power. First, they divided the federal power into three parts: the executive, the legislative and the judicial. They would bicker among themselves, so that no one of them could seize all the power the Constitution grants to the federal government.

The Founders divided the power even more. They set the limited power the Constitution grants the “general authority,” Madison’s term for the federal government, against the vast residual powers of the states. Each sphere of government, state and federal, would be supreme in its own sphere. Neither could control the other. Each protects itself from intervention by the other. Each has its own laws and rules.

Madison says this: “Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.” Loc. Cit.

What does all this mean today in the Battle for America? Sheriff Mack says it proves that the sheriff is the highest governmental authority in his county. Within that jurisdiction – inside his county – the sheriff has more power than the governor of his state. Indeed, the sheriff has more power in his county than the President of the United States. In his county, he can overrule the President and kick his people out. Remember, the President has few and limited powers.

What? The sheriff can do that? He’s not just a character in a movie? That’s right. Not only can the sheriff do that; sheriffs have already done that, more than once. Most Americans are not aware of that because lying, conspiracy scumbags like Rush Humbug, Shallow Sean Hannitwerp and Hugh Blewitt (a lawyer) etc., haven’t told them.

Remember, the office of sheriff has a pedigree so long, we are not positive about when it was created. We think it was in the Ninth Century in England. We do know that each land district, or “shire,” was governed by a “reeve.” The sheriff of Nottingham became famous. At first, the king appointed them. With few exceptions, our American shire reeves are elected by the people.

In 1997, in Nye County, Nevada, federal agents arrived to seize cattle that belonged to rancher Wayne Hage. The sheriff gave them a choice: skedaddle or be arrested. They skedaddled. The cows stayed where they were. Wyoming sheriffs have told federal agencies they must check with the respective sheriff before they serve any papers, make any arrests or confiscate any property.

In Idaho, a 74-year-old rancher shot an endangered gray wolf which had killed one of his calves. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sent three armed agents to serve a warrant. Lemhi County Sheriff Brett Barslou said that was “inappropriate, heavy-handed and dangerously close to excessive force.” More than 500 people turned out for a rally in the small towns of Challis and Salmon to support the sheriff and the rancher and to tell the federal government to back off.

While Richard Mack was sheriff of Graham County, Arizona, a bridge washed out. Parents had to drive twenty six miles to get their kids to school half a mile across the river. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wouldn’t fix it. First they had to do an “environmental impact study,” to replace a bridge already there. They were in no hurry. The study would take a mere ten years.

The people’s suffering reached the board of supervisors. The board voted to dredge the river and fix the bridge. The feds warned that they would be fined $50,000 per day if they tried. The supervisors hesitated. Sheriff Mack promised them and the workers protection and pledged to call out a posse for the purpose if necessary. They built the bridge and the Corps of Engineers faded. The board never paid a dime.

So the long dormant spirit of America is reviving. The states are beginning to adopt Tenth Amendment resolutions, using powers they have always had. The people are restoring our long unbalanced constitutional system. There is something “blowin’ in the wind,” but it isn’t what Bob Dylan thought it was. Recently, Sheriff Mack addressed 570 people in Fredericksburg, Texas. He reports that the reception was “beyond fantastic.”

What can you do? For once we are not just complaining. There is a plan. I do not argue that you should forget about Congress. Not at all; if you see an opportunity there, take it. Always remember that right now it is run by people like Barney the Bugger of Taxachusetts, who will be elected by moronth in hith dithtrict until he dieth of AIDS.

Most of the time, when you approach your congressman, you come to complain. In the new crusade, you will approach your sheriff and tell him that he is not only handsome, charming and overwhelmingly masculine, but also that he has powers he may not be aware of. You have come to tell him what they are and to back him up. My guess is, when you tell him that, he will not kick you out.

Tell him you expect him to return the courtesy when the Nazis come from the District of Criminals to get the guns. Tell him you are ready in a minute to serve under his direction in a posse. He will not move to Washington and be corrupted. He will stay there with you. Show him the ten orders the Oath Keepers will not obey. The Oath Keepers are retired and active duty military and police. Their web site is oath-keepers.blogspot.com. The first order they promise to disobey is an order to disarm you.

Put him together with Sheriff Mack. You will find him at sheriffmack.com. His telephone numbers are 928 792-4340 and 928 792-3888. Bring the sheriff to your town to speak. He will explain all this. Invite your own sheriff. At the meeting I attended, the local sheriff and chief of police were there and loved what they heard. No one dislikes hearing how important he is.

What if your sheriff is stupid or a federal factotum? That is what you will find in many big cities. I once interviewed Los Angeles County Sheriff Peter Pitchess, who said no one should have a hand gun. I asked him how a five foot lady alone in bed could defend herself from a rapist. Realizing he was perilously close to making himself look even dumber than he did usually, Pitchess conceded she could have a long gun.

I brightened. A street sweeper isn’t really the best weapon for close quarters, but it would give the lady a chance. Unfortunately, Pitchess added the word, “unloaded.” I asked him what that five foot lady with an unloaded shotgun could do against a six foot rapist. A police captain sat beside Pitchess during the interview. His job was to extricate Peter from the jams he persisted on getting himself into. The police captain extruded a barrage of miasma. It was effective. I did not get an answer.

In such cases, says Sheriff Mack, move to a county where the sheriff is receptive. Many more will be. For instance, in Texas there are 254 counties. Each has a sheriff. If it is feasible to do so, run for sheriff yourself. Even your wife will be impressed when she sees you with a hog leg on your hip and a star on your vest. Imagine the intense joy of meeting IRS Communists or BATFE Nazis at the county line and denying them admission.

The Battle for America will be decided in your county at your front door. If you act now, later you will not need to “fill your hand.”

It has been interesting to witness the confusion amongst conventional politicos as groups like The Campaign for Liberty and The Republican Liberty Caucus begin to exert more and more influence over today’s political discourse. Members of these groups are fighting for issues and taking positions that don’t seem to fit neatly into the traditional left or right boxes. I recall hearing a long time Republican Party loyalist accuse one of these activists of being a “left-wing Obama supporter” because they questioned the GOP’s support of the Patriot Act. On another occasion I witnessed this same activist being mocked as a “right-wing extremist” by a long time member of the Democratic Party for suggesting that the federal government should have no involvement in the issue of health care.   How can the same political activist be both “left wing” and “right wing”?

It seems that in 2009 politics, the “left” or “right” label is determined by where you stand on issues in relation to where the Republican and Democratic Parties stand on those issues. Oppose the Patriot Act, question the constitutionality of the war in Iraq or oppose government involvement in the issue of gay marriage and you will find yourself on the wrong side of the GOP and therefore labeled a “leftist”. However, oppose a federal health care bill, support the elimination of the federal Department of Education or speak out against the progressive income tax and you will be at odds with the Democratic Party and likely lumped in with the “right wing extremists”.   The problem with this approach to politics is that rarely is the question asked why the parties hold their positions on various issues. And even rarer is an actual discussion or debate on the reasons for holding those positions.

Members of groups promoting liberty do not fit into the conventional Left/Right paradigm.  When an issue is presented to a liberty activist, the first question is not where does my party stand on this issue, but rather what position protects the freedom and liberty of the individual. In looking at the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, Gay Marriage, Health Care, Education and Taxes, one must first have a clear understanding of individual rights, where they come from and the proper role of government. The Declaration of Independence clearly spells out the fact that our rights come not from man but from our Creator. And the United States Constitution clearly spells out what authority the federal government has in relation to those rights. It is from these two documents that all political issues should be discussed, debated and acted upon.

Does the federal government ever have the authority to violate the right of an individual to be secure in their person and possessions from search and seizure without probable cause? The answer is no and therefore the liberty position on the Patriot Act is to oppose it.

Does the Constitution give the Legislative Branch of the federal government the ability to transfer its authority to Declare War to the Executive Branch? The answer is no. And would allowing the federal government to violate its contract with the people potentially threaten the liberty of all individuals?  The answer is yes and therefore the liberty position on the Iraq War has been to oppose it.

Is the federal government given any authority by the constitution to define or regulate the institution of marriage? The answer is no. And would allowing the federal government to violate its contract with the people potentially threaten the liberty of all individuals?  The answer is yes and therefore the liberty position on the issue of any gay marriage regulation (pro or con) is to oppose it.

Is the federal government given any authority by the constitution to impose laws or to regulate the delivery of health care? The answer is no. And would allowing the federal government to violate its contract with the people potentially threaten the liberty of all individuals?  The answer is yes and therefore the liberty position on federal health care legislation is to oppose it.

Is the federal government given any authority by the constitution to impose laws or to regulate education? The answer is no. And would allowing the federal government to violate its contract with the people potentially threaten the liberty of all individuals?  The answer is yes and therefore the liberty position on funding a federal department of education is to oppose it.

Does government taxing the fruits of one’s labor threaten the freedom and liberty of all individuals?  The answer is yes and therefore the liberty position on income taxes is to oppose them.

These concepts are pretty simple for those who get involved in politics for the purpose of ensuring that government protects the liberty of the individual. To those who complicate politics by focusing on things like party loyalty, personal ambition or political personalities, understanding exactly what it is you stand for can be a little more difficult. When you are not looking at issues based on a fundamental set of principles you will often times open yourself up to weak arguments or even worse, hypocrisy.

Understanding liberty and applying it to all political issues is a liberating and empowering experience. You no longer have to feel uncomfortable when asked your position on an issue because you will no longer have to worry about making the party line fit with your own personal logic.  You won’t have to defend the inconsistencies coming from party “leaders” or political personalities. In essence “The truth sets you free”.

Yes a good understanding of the concept of liberty will change your scale from one measuring Left vs Right to one which measures Freedom vs Tyranny. And that is the only measurement that should matter in the fight for liberty.

John Stevens
RLCNEF Chairman