We Need Brave Men

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Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Audio and Transcript – People today are risk averse, which is why you hear carping, crying, whining, bitching and complaining when people like me or Tom Woods or Marshall DeRosa or Kevin Gutzman or Jack Hunter or any of us bring up Article V amendment convention and actually say, “This has got to stop and we’re going to stop it right now.  We’re going to have a convention.  Supreme Court, we’re going to smack you down.  It’s over.  Enjoy your little party, Mr. Lebowski because the bums in Congress and in the judiciary are going to lose!”  We’ve lost that.  Other than rekindling it through literature and through study, I don’t know any other way to get it back.  We need brave men.  It was brave men that fought a revolution, wrote an Article of Confederation, brave men that said, “That’s not good enough, let’s do a new thing and call it the Constitution.”  Then brave men said, “Let’s ratify it.” Check out today’s audio and transcript for more…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Bill, you’re next up.  Actually, you’re the only one up here today on Constitution Day.  How you doing?

Caller Bill:  I’m doing good.  Good morning, Mike.  My question, as you can see on your screen, is we haven’t been able to secede in the War of Northern Aggression and we haven’t ever called for an amendment convention to try and abolish this form of government.  I think if we ever did, they’d brand us as a rogue nation or a rogue cell and say we can’t have nuclear weapons.  They’d never let us dissolve the bands between us.  I’m wondering what teeth do the Constitution — is there any Constitution actually left?  Is it a hollowed-out husk?

Mike:  As far as what was ratified, there’s very little left, other than the same amount of articles.  That’s about the only thing you can say is actually left, that we started with seven articles and we still have seven articles, although there are 28 amendments now.  Yes, started with seven articles, end with seven articles.  That is about the extent of it.  We do have head fakes to the three branches: judicial, executive and legislative.  I would submit that the executive and judicial pass as much legislation these days, probably more these days, than the representatives, than the legislative branch, wouldn’t you?

Caller Bill:  Yeah.  These guys are meeting after midnight when it’s something controversial as well.  It really boggles my mind that somehow we’ve let it slip this far.  There’s always been people that have been against the consolidation of power.  It seems now that the Supreme Court and legislative and executive have moved that, how do I put it, the shiny ball of freedom, really close to themselves.  They’re kind of afraid to grab it.  We armed ourselves.

Mike:  Well, we’ve always been armed.  I don’t think that arming ourselves or keeping and bearing arms is a modern invention.  When settlers came to Jamestown, they were armed.  I would say to you, though, that I believe what is missing today that was present in 1861 and was present maybe all the way up until the 1910’s and 1920’s, early 1930’s, before massive industrialization and urbanization occurred, was some remnant of frontier spirit.  As you moved through the industrial revolution and as people began moving to cities and stopped having to feed themselves and clothe themselves and work hard to do these things, and there’s less and less territory, less for man to do here in an exploratory fashion.

The unknown is now not the unknown.  The sciences say that everything can be known, where once before God said you can’t know everything because you’re man and you’re not I.  Now science says if we apply ourselves and spend enough money, you can know everything.  With the end of the frontier spirit, you see the end then of the spirit of adventure and spirit of discovery that would be necessary to bring about an Article V amendment convention, to say, “Hey, we’re brave enough to do this.”  Yeah, it does come with a risk.  So what?  Crossing the Mississippi for the first time had a big risk.  Trying to get to Oregon from Charlottesville, Virginia carried an enormous risk.  Trying to settle the Oklahoma Territory amongst the Indian tribes carried an enormous risk.  Telling Santa Anna and his army to get the hell out of Texas because it’s our republic and not yours carried with it an enormous risk.

People today, Bill, are risk averse, which is you hear carping, crying, whining, bitching and complaining when people like me or Tom Woods or Marshall DeRosa or Kevin Gutzman or Jack Hunter or any of us bring up Article V amendment convention and actually say, “This has got to stop and we’re going to stop it right now.  We’re going to have a convention.  Supreme Court, we’re going to smack you down.  It’s over.  Enjoy your little party, Mr. Lebowski because the bums in Congress and in the judiciary are going to lose!”  We’ve lost that.  Other than rekindling it through literature and through study, I don’t know any other way to get it back.  We need brave men, Bill.  It was brave men that fought a revolution, wrote an Article of Confederation, brave men that said, “That’s not good enough, let’s do a new thing and call it the Constitution.”  Then brave men said, “Let’s ratify it.”

As we said earlier today, the question of what kind of abuse we’re going to take from the general government is not a legal question.  People keep saying it’s a legal — [mocking] “We have to deal with the laws.”  No, this is a political question.  The general government doesn’t have any authority other than that which the people give it.  We are still sovereign, Bill.  If we can get enough of our fellow citizens to acknowledge our sovereignty and to reclaim our sovereign rights, which is to say you only have the authority that we grant you and we’re taking this back and that back, then your Constitution as ratified in June 1788 will have merit today.  How about that, Bill?  Did I explain it well enough for you?

Caller Bill:  That wasn’t too bad.  One of the things that smacks of sovereignty is control of your own moneys.  I fully believe if you just build banks in Arizona, hopefully before our grab for our own sovereignty again, we can become Switzerland.  If you just build the vaults, if you just build the banks, then you don’t really have to work for your money so much.  People come and leave money with the banks in the State of Arizona.  We could become like Switzerland where we could afford our own military to defend our own border.  We’d basically be copying the federal system to become sovereign again.  Part of it is to take control of our own currency.  We’d still have to trade in American dollars, but maybe we add an actual piece of metal into the coinage.

Mike:  I concur, but my message to you was that is a political question.  It’s not a legal question.  The legal authority is most certainly there in the Constitution.  It is a political question as to whether or not the will and courage exists to actually carry it to fruition.  That’s the question.

End Mike Church Show Transcript