America’s Founding Principles in 250 Words, Including the Title

By Michael D. Robbins
Monday, June 28, 2021

Copyright © 2021 by Michael D. Robbins. All rights reserved.

America’s Founding Principles:

(1) Equality in liberty and law, not equality in outcomes through inequality in liberty and law.

(2) Unalienable God-given individual Natural Rights that no people or government can take away.

(3) No government without consent of the governed.

(4) No taxation without representation.

(5) All power inherently belongs to the people except limited enumerated powers the people voluntarily and revocably delegate to government through a written constitution the people can unilaterally change but government cannot.

(6) The people cannot have all the power and prevent tyranny if government has all the guns. Therefore, the people have the right to keep and bear dual-use arms.

(7) The purpose of government is to protect the people’s liberty. When it fails to do so or violates liberty, the people have the right and duty to alter or abolish and replace their government.

(8) America is not a democracy. America was founded as a constitutional representative republic that protects minorities, to prevent tyranny of the majority in democracies, and tyranny of the minority in monarchies and dictatorships. Article IV Section 4: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government”.

(9) The Constitution requires very many features to constrain, limit, separate, and balance powers to limit concentrations and abuse of power and conflicts of interest.

(10) Liberty is more easily lost than regained. Every generation must learn, teach, and vigorously protect America’s Founding Principles established in the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Federalist Papers.

Notes About This Post

This post was written by Michael D. Robbins as a Letter to the Editor for the July 1, 2021 edition of the El Segundo Herald, a publication of Herald Publications in El Segundo, California. The word count limit is 250 words including the title, which is also written by the letter author. Therefore, there was not sufficient words within the word count limit to go into additional important points, including but not limited to the points below, which will be addressed in additional letters to the editor and/or posts on this website.

This letter was submitted to the El Segundo Herald and Herald Publications with the following note regarding copyright:

NOTE:

I am granting Herald Publications and the El Segundo Herald the right to publish and republish this letter to the editor in print and digitally in any or all of its newspapers and websites, to keep, store, and distribute it in digital or paper backup and archive copies, with attribution of my authorship. I am keeping the copyright for this letter and reserve all rights including the right to publish, republish, distribute, and have published, republished, and distributed or redistributed this letter in print, digital, video, audio, and every other media existing now or in the future. I am working on writing several books and this letter is a derivative work and adaptation of content from at least one of my books. Thank you for your understanding.

Michael D. Robbins

UPDATE:

Thursday, July 1, 2021

This letter was published on page 3 of the El Segundo Herald weekly newspaper in El Segundo, California on Thursday, July 1, 2021 and is also available from the Herald Publications Website at:

El Segundo Herald Newspaper PDF File for Thursday, July 1, 2021:
CLICK HERE to view or download the PDF file for the entire El Segundo Herald newspaper for Thursday, July 1, 2021. (16 pages, 7.60 MB)
CLICK HERE to view or download the PDF file for the entire El Segundo Herald newspaper for Thursday, July 1, 2021 from the INTERNET ARCHIVE WayBack Machine. (16 pages, 7.60 MB)

El Segundo Herald Newspaper Web Page for Thursday, July 1, 2021:
CLICK HERE to go to the El Segundo Herald newspaper web page for Thursday, July 1, 2021.

El Segundo Herald Newspaper Web Page:
CLICK HERE to go to the El Segundo Herald newspaper web page.

Herald Publications Website:
CLICK HERE to go to the Herald Publications web site.

ADDITIONAL IMPORTANT POINTS

By Michael D. Robbins
Monday, June 28, 2021

The states created the federal government through the state representatives of the people. The federal government did not create the states. The states, in creating the federal government, reserved for the states or the people all powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government in the written Constitution. Thus, any power the federal government is exercising that is not in the Constitution, and any expenditure of public funds to exercise powers not delegated to the federal government in the Constitution, is an unconstitutional usurpation of power and misuse of public funds.

The Tenth Amendment, in the Bill of Rights, states:

“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.”

The people delegate, modify, or revoke federal government powers, and create or modify durable features of the structure of and constraints on the federal government that cannot be changed unilaterally by the federal government, by amending the Constitution.

The only legitimate methods to amend the Constitution to change even one word are defined in Article V. They require a very large super-majority of elected state and federal representatives, or of elected state representatives, depending on the method used. They do not involve any non-elected, appointed-for-life judges, certainly not a five-out-of-nine majority vote of non-elected, appointed-for-life Supreme Court justices.

Per Article V, Constitutional amendments are proposed by a two-thirds majority of each house in Congress, or by the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the states to call a Constitutional Convention. Amendments must be ratified by a three-fourths super-majority of the state legislatures, within a specified time period if any, to become part of the Constitution.

Therefore, corrupt judges and justices who ignore the plain language and original intent of the Constitution to effectively amend the Constitution by fiat to advance a political agenda, by issuing opinions from the courthouse, are violating both Article V and the separation of powers in the Constitution. The original intent of the Founding Fathers who wrote and voted to ratify the Constitution is determined from the Federalist Papers, the records of the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention debates, and other historical documents.

Corrupt educators have been teaching – at least since the 1970s – the false claim that the Constitution is a “living breathing document” that judges and justices can “re-interpret” to mean whatever they want, inconsistent with and contrary to the plain language and original intent of the Constitution, because “times have changed”. The Constitution was written by divinely inspired geniuses to be a durable and stable document that intentionally requires very large super-majorities of elected representatives to propose and ratify amendments to it. If times truly have changed that require amending the Constitution, then it should be possible to convince a required super-majority of elected representatives to vote to ratify the amendment. Otherwise, the Constitution should not be amended, and it certainly should not be circumvented or ignored.

In a democracy, the smallest majority can vote away the money, property, and freedom of the largest minority, and enslave the largest majority. The Constitution has many features that make America a representative constitutional republic and not a democracy to avoid a tyranny of the majority.

These include:

(1) Congress is a bicameral legislature, where the Senate (the upper house) has equal representation (two senators) for each state, and legislation must be passed by both houses (the House and the Senate). In the original Constitution, the Senators were chosen by the state legislatures and represented their state government. This important check-and-balance of power between the state and federal governments was eliminated by the Seventeenth Amendment (passed by Congress May 13, 1912 and ratified April 8, 1913) that made the Senators directly elected by the people of their state. Senators serve six-year terms, while the House of Representatives is the more numerous house with representatives apportioned based on state populations and two-year terms of office. All tax and spending legislation must be initiated in the House of Representatives.

(2) The president must approve legislation passed by both houses of Congress for it to become law.

(3) The president has the power to veto legislation passed by both houses of Congress, and a two-thirds super-majority vote in both houses of Congress is required to override a presidential veto.

(4) Treaties must be approved by a two-thirds super-majority of the Senate alone.

(5) The Electoral College gives additional voting power to smaller population states relative to their populations, by giving each state one elector (Elector College vote) for each of its representatives, which are apportioned among the states based on each state’s population and total population, plus two additional electors – one for each of its senators. This enhancement effect was much greater at the time of America’s Founding, when the total population, the total number of representatives, and the number of representatives apportioned to each state were smaller than today.

(5) The Constitution creates limits and constraints on types of legislation that Congress can enact, and Congress and the President cannot unilaterally amend the Constitution. For example, Article 1 Section 8 limits appropriations of money to raise and support armies to a maximum of two years, the term of office for the House of Representatives, which is the more numerous house in Congress with shorter two-year terms of office. Article 1 Section 9 prohibits Congress from enacting ex post facto (retroactive) laws and bills of attainder (that legislate for or against or punish individuals by name). As mentioned earlier, per Article V, amending the Constitution requires a two-thirds super-majority vote in both houses of Congress, or application of a two-thirds super-majority of state legislatures to call a Constitutional Convention, and proposed amendments must be ratified by a three-fourths super-majority of the state legislatures.

(6) Furthermore, Article V has a special protection where no majority of elected representatives in Congress and no majority of state legislatures can amend the Constitution to deprive a state of its equal representation in the Senate regardless of its state population:

“Provided that … no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.”

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution) do not give rights to the people, but officially recognize and protect unalienable God-given individual Natural Rights that every American is born with and that no people or government can take away.

The Ninth Amendment, in the Bill of Rights, states:

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

An important point here is that without God, there are no unalienable God-given rights that cannot be taken away by people or governments. Also, without the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible, “Thou shall not murder”, “Thou shall not steal”, and the rest of the Ten Commandments that govern people’s relation to each other are merely opinions and not commandments from a Supreme Being. Unlike commandments from a Supreme Being, everyone can have their own opinion, and opinions from other sources can be rejected entirely or in part.

  – Michael D. Robbins

Copyright © 2021 by Michael D. Robbins. All rights reserved.