Pursuing Truth Is What Drives My Historical Work

The Pursuit of TRUTH Should Always Drive You

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “I received an email yesterday from a listener who had posted my “Incorporation Doctrine for Dummies” essay on his site and had been trying to defend it.  Then some guy weighed in who claimed to be an expert.  [mocking] “This Church character is a radio host.  He doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.  He ought to pick a history book up every now and then.”  The gentleman then proceeded to just regurgitate all the phony justifications for using the 14^th Amendment to incorporate the Bill of Rights, which can be shot down in a paragraph, which I did.”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  It ought to be apparent that there is no fix that is in the offing here, if you think our government is out of control and you no longer wish to live under it.  Your options are being narrowed down.  It is the fault of the imbecility and ignorance of your fellow citizens that the options that are at their disposal are not at their disposal.  All that we can do to remedy that is educate, patiently educate friends and family.  That’s all we can do, which is why I republish books like Is Davis a Traitor; or, Was Secession a constitutional right previous to the war of 1861?

I received an email yesterday from a listener who had posted my “Incorporation Doctrine for Dummies” essay on his site and had been trying to defend it.  Then some guy weighed in who claimed to be an expert.  [mocking] “This Church character is a radio host.  He doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.  He ought to pick a history book up every now and then.”  The gentleman then proceeded to just regurgitate all the phony justifications for using the 14^th Amendment to incorporate the Bill of Rights, which can be shot down in a paragraph, which I did.  Then I forwarded his missive to Professor Gutzman, who just laughed, “Gee, never saw that one coming, LOL,” or something to that effect the good professor replied.

Folks, this is one of the things that drives me to continue doing some of the things that I do.  It certainly can’t be for the financial rewards, because there aren’t any in making some of these docudramas and documentaries, going to great length and expense researching them, which takes an extraordinary amount of time.  It’s all there for you to consume or pass on to friends and family.  Regardless of whether you do so or not, I’m still driven to produce them.  One of the reasons why is because there’s just something in my mind that cannot rest, I become restless, when a mistruth — especially if it’s an historical one that is easily corrected — is propagated and repeated over and over and over again as if it’s some kind of gospel, when in fact it is nothing more than the latest perversion of what the actual truth is.

The 14^th Amendment and the use of it is one of the ones that drives me the most nuts.  Perhaps I never should have read Raoul Berger’s Government by Judiciary book.  Then maybe I wouldn’t have this thought.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have read many essays written by the great historian, Forrest McDonald.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have read those two chapters in Professor Gutzman’s Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution.  Maybe I shouldn’t have interviewed Professor Gutzman thirty times on the subject and reached the same conclusion every time.  Ditto that for half a dozen times for Professor Woods, Professor DeRosa, Professor Livingston, Professor McClanahan, all PhD’s.  But others’ embrace of this stuff and then their cartoon caricature-like defense of it, that’s just the way it comes across to me.  It’s unsettling because in too many instance and on too many subjects, far too many people are willing to accept as what they believe to be true something because they like or have been told that they should like or approve of the person who is doing the speaking or the writing.  I don’t ever want to be judged like that.

If I am ever proven incorrect, I’m happy to correct the record because I like actually knowing the truth.  I know this comes as a shock to some of you when you send your little screeds of hate mail.  [mocking] “If you ever bothered to look at X, you would know that Y.”  It may surprise you to hear that I actually, if I didn’t look at X, I will go and look at it.  And if I conclude that it equals Y, I’m a happy guy.  You know why?  That means I’m not running around babbling off mistruths, urban legend, rumor, and outright lies.  It is my most fervent wish, for you that listen to this program or visit the site on a regular basis or correspond, that we should all conduct our affairs like that.  [mocking] “You’re not open for criticism, are you?”  Criticism in what form, that I mispronounced a word or that you don’t agree with the amount of time that I gave a caller?  Save it.  Criticism in the form that I think you erred on a fact and here’s why, politely and respectfully done?  Sure.  We should all always be open to that because that’s the only way that we can ever actually pursue the truth.  You have to pursue it.  Sometimes the historical narrative will not fit the cube — sometimes it’s a round peg that won’t go into the square hole or a square peg that won’t go into the round hole.  It won’t fit and you can’t make it fit.  I’ve started dozens of opinion pieces and just canceled them because what I was looking for couldn’t be proven.  I’m not going to write it then.  Instead of just making it up, which many people would have done anyway, I just bail on it.

FOLKS, a message from Mike – The Project 76 features, Church Doctrine videos and everything else on this site are supported by YOU. We have over 70, of my personally designed, written, produced and directed products for sale in the Founders Tradin’ Post, 24/7,  here. You can also support our efforts with a Founders Pass membership granting total access to years of My work for just .17 cents per day. Thanks for 17 years of mike church.com! –Mike

The reason I bring this up is for a couple of things.  Number one, the question about the 14^th Amendment and incorporation always bothers me because we spend so much time on the subject and the snarkiness of the gentleman who was the inquisitor.  Number two, I am informed, no names to be mentioned, but I am informed yet again, while I’m minding my own business, not harming or attempting to harm anyone — on an evening, my email starts to erupt.  Twitter feed starts to erupt.  Facebook notifications erupt, although it happens in far less quantity than it used to, and maybe that’s indicative of what I’m about to say.  I get alerted that someone is talking about you on radio right now and he’s not being favorable to you and I don’t understand why.  The subject matter was secession.  One of you, probably one of you, called a radio host in particular and mentioned that secession was an option.  Of course, the caller was informed that he was some form of a knuckle-dragging, Neanderthal ignoramus and didn’t know what he was talking about.  There was some host on satellite radio who I hear is a nice guy and why don’t you call and talk to him about it?

What bugs me about this is that the historical record is pretty clear on this.  As a matter of fact, the recent historical record is pretty clear.  We don’t have to go back that far to see the United States and the American government telling people in far reaches of the world what they ought to do is secede, but don’t tell that to anyone in an American state.  Here’s the other thing, if you’re looking to cure some of the problems that plague our political discourse inside many of the several states out there, and if you have a divergence of opinion from upstate to downstate to the point where nothing can be done and things that are badly done are usually done by the federal government and you’ve been informed there’s nothing you can do about it, federal judges have ruled, which is not the case and not the way it should be, what is your remedy?  What is your alternative?

Your alternative is to, as those people in Colorado did in the last election, choose to form your own polity.  All right, fine.  We can’t get our way with you.  You’ll obey every federal edict handed down.  We’ll form our own state.  We’ll, by definition, in our constitution, say that we reserve the Tenth Amendment right to tell you to go pound sand.  No, we’re not going to accept your edict.  What precisely is wrong with that?  The dividing of states is provided for in the U.S. Constitution.  It’s obvious that the framers knew and probably hoped that that would happen as things got out of scale.  You can look shortly after the Constitution is ratified, the people of western Virginia going: We don’t want to be in cahoots with you guys anymore.  We’re Kentuckians.  We want our own country.  Of course, the Virginians say: Hey, man, that’s a great thing.  Have at it.  Draw your constitution up.  Ask little Jimmy Madison to present it in the Congress and they’ll give you one.  They’ll make you a state.  This is not even an issue here.  Anyone that would deny this is denying the actual historical record.

The same thing applies.  People that settled in Kentucky settled there as a result of a compact entered into with the State of Virginia.  They wished to alter the terms of the compact, make their own political entity, call it Kentucky.  Fine.  Tennessee was made out of North Carolina in a similar fashion.  I could go on and on.  Why would anyone who was a founder at the time or was in that generation and drafted the Constitution, why would any of them have thought that the same thing couldn’t happen with the general union of states?  The fact of the matter is that they did.  The historical record is so littered with the attempts of it, the references to it, the encouragement that it should be resorted to.  It is a joke.  You are a historical laughing stock if you deny that.  That’s not me talking; that’s the historical record talking.

It just bothers me that a pursuit of the truth — I don’t just wake up in the morning and go: You know what?  I want to be ostracized by other radio hosts.  That’s what I want to do.  I want them to make fun of me and call me a liar.  What a wonderful day that would be.  That’s not why some of us do these things.  We do them because we desire the truth.  We desire to know.  We desire to know what our actual rights are, not what some Supreme Court justice has ruled that they are.  I want to know, when something was ratified, what it meant.  That’s what the meaning of the law is.  We used to have lawyers that used to bind themselves to that, not anymore, though.  Now that judges are legislators, they’re the ones that get to tell us what the law means, or what it allegedly meant when it was ratified.

Because it was bugging me, I just wanted to be clear and state for a watching world why I say and do and act upon, plow my time, energy, money, and invest all time, energy and money into some of these things.  It’s not because I do any of the things ascribed.  It’s all about pursuing the truth.  That’s it.  The truth is wonderful.  As a famous Nazarene once said: The truth will set you free.

End Mike Church Show Transcript