A Sovereign State Is Its People, Not Its Government

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – A state is a collection of sovereign people.  A state is not — you live in Philadelphia.  When your legislature or assembly meets in Harrisburg, that is not the state.  That is the elected representatives of the state.  The state is the people.  The people are the sovereign.  The only other way this works is when the king is the sovereign.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Looking at the Twitter feed, David Behrens wishes to let me know that “your production of Patrick Henry’s ‘Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death’ speech always gives me chills.”  Well, David, you ought to see it in action in my movie Road to Independence the movie.  Get it on DVD.  If you think listening to it is grand, you ought to see Henry deliver the speech.  I am always amazed at how many people I run into who don’t know there is a film made about the actual drafting of the Declaration of Independence.  It’s a drama.  It’s not a documentary.  Road to Independence is a drama and it’s very entertaining.  Check it out at MikeChurch.com or Amazon.com.

Speaking of Patrick Henry, we were talking about militias in the last hour and the first responsibility of the citizen is to be a member of that militia, to defend the republic.  I dashed over to my handy dandy desk guide and found the Virginia Ratifying Convention debates, which I have.  I was word searching for the words militia and Patrick Henry.  This is the first instance it comes up in the ratifying convention, and boy it’s a whopper.  I will post this today on the website so you can forward this around to your Second Amendment friends and those that fear the end of days as brought on by President Obama.  I’d like to clarify that and say it’s not brought on by Obama, he’s just the last actor.  He’s in the last act of the play.  Many have gone before him that have made his tyranny possible.  From Patrick Henry:

[reading]

I am convinced they mean nothing serious.  What are the rights which they do not propose to secure — which they reject? — for I contend there are many essential and vital rights which are omitted. One is the power of direct taxation. Gentlemen will not even give this invaluable right a place among their subsequent amendments. And do gentlemen mean seriously that they will oppose us on this ground on the floor of Congress? If Virginia thinks it one of her dearest rights, she need not expect to have it amended. No, sir; it will be opposed. Taxes and excises are to be laid on us. The people are to be oppressed, and the state legislature prostrated. Very material amendments are omitted With respect to your militia, we only request that, if Congress should refuse to find arms for them, this country may lay out their own money to purchase them. But what do the gentlemen on the other side say? As much as that they will oppose you in this point also; for, if my recollection has not failed me, they have discarded this also. And shall we be deprived of this privilege? We propose to have it, in case there shall be a necessity to claim it. And is this claim incompatible with the safety of this country [Mike: When he says country, he means Virginia. He does not mean America. He means Virginia.] — with the grandeur and strength of these United States? If gentlemen find peace and rest on their minds, when the relinquishment of our rights is declared to be necessary for the aggrandizement of the government, they are more contented than I am.

[end reading]

Mike:  In other words, he wasn’t buying any of Madison and George Nicholas’s tripe about how there’s going to be federalism and the new government can never overstep its bounds.  It will never come in here and try to regulate your arms, Mr. Henry.  No, that power is left to you guys.  Is it?  Was it?  Levi is in Philadelphia next on the Mike Church Show.  Hello, Levi.

Caller Levi:  Hey, Mike, how you doing?

Mike:  Good, thank you.

Caller Levi:  I just wanted to say, about all these topics we’re talking about this morning, this is what I tell my buddies all the time, I say the problem with the federal government is that they have a monopoly on government.  There’s a reason why the states have their own constitutions.  There’s a reason why each state has its own governor and legislature, for competition amongst the states in government.  If the federal government incorporates and enforces the Bill of Rights for the states, then there is no avenue for the states to keep their sovereignty.  That is the precise reason why the states are supposed to enforce the Constitution against the government, not the other way around.  If the federal government enforces or incorporates the Second Amendment against the states, there is no more failsafe to keep that competition going.

Mike:  True.

Caller Levi:  I’m an old Navy vet, seven years in the Navy.  I was a submariner and spent a year in Afghanistan.  I took my oath many times.  Not once do I remember saying I swear to protect and defend the national government.  I was to protect and defend the Constitution.  All these people need to realize that.  The competition is of the utmost importance, not the national government.

Mike:  That’s what Bruce Fein said in our Article V Amendment Convention show back in 2010.  He said federalism is competition for good government and that’s why you want it.  That’s why men fought so hard for the preservation of the states and their roles and capacities in the formation of the new government in 1788.  With the 17^th Amendment, the final nail was driven in the coffin.  There is no representation.  The states lost everything.  When the 17^th Amendment was ratified, it was really over then.  The Constitution was rendered moot because the states would have no check whatsoever.  There’s a democratic check every six years, but the democratic check only serves the purpose of regulating the preferences of people who view themselves as Americans, not as Texans; people who view themselves as Americans, not Louisianans; people who view themselves as Americans, not Pennsylvanians as are you.  The order of things and the structure of power is now totally one-sided.  Now almost everything has something to do with the national legislature.  Now almost everything is touched by the national legislature.

Again, you have to tell your fellow citizens, who may not understand or have never been taught this principle, what a state is.  A state is a collection of sovereign people.  A state is not — you live in Philadelphia.  When your legislature or assembly meets in Harrisburg, that is not the state.  That is the elected representatives of the state.  The state is the people.  The people are the sovereign.  The only other way this works is when the king is the sovereign.  Then the king can say: I have all the power because God gave it to me and I’m going to let you peasants have 30 percent of it.  You can have your House of Commons over there and pretend to make suggestions to me that I am supposed to wisely consider, and in some instances act upon, but I get to call the shots.  I get to make the rules around here.

In the American system, that’s the exact opposite.  It’s the people that are supposed to hold all the power.  That’s why the discussion of what you just brought up and we just talked about is so invaluable.  If you had 20 million people that would swear their lives, sacred honor, and fortunes to protect and defend, our little conversation of the last five minutes and five seconds, you wouldn’t have many of the governmental problems you have today.  You’d still have the societal ills and civilizational ills.  Of course, we’re human and those will always be around, but you wouldn’t have the structural, governmental, civil problems that we seem obsessed over and are convinced they are the worst in the history of man.  You need to keep doing exactly what you just did.  Pick the phone up and don’t call me, call your neighbor.  Go to a barbecue.  Go tell him what you told me.

Caller Levi:  I try every day, Mike, I promise you that.

End Mike Church Show Transcript