Blog Posts
The following blog posts are free introductory lessons in support of reading our textbook, American Popular Sovereignty, A Guide to Restoring Participatory Government and Achieving Remedy, as part of our online course teaching us how to create good government.
In these lessons, we will be reviewing the definitions of legal and political words to support our reading comprehension. For example, throughout this course of study, the word public means governmental, and the word private means non-governmental.
If you enjoy feeding your mind with good quality political education and truly want to improve our nation's social, political, and economic relationships, please join our movement by subscribing to our newsletter, purchasing American Popular Sovereignty, and enrolling in our online course.
When, Why, and How Public Corruption and Unconstitutional Policies Became a Major Problem In America
When our Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution, they were concerned the central government they had just created might abuse our civil rights, so they added the first Ten Amendments. This Bill of Rights attempted to protect the civil rights embodied in our traditional English common law participatory governmental institutions, including public militias, grand juries, and petit juries, but failed to articulate and protect the institutions themselves. This oversight occurred because, in the late 1700s, nobody was attacking these institutions, thus the issue of needing to defend them did not arise.
Over one hundred years later, Congress passed the Militia Act of 1903 (32 Stat. 775), which established the National Guard as a subset of our public militias and codified the circumstances under which the Guard could be federalized or brought under the central government’s control.
Congress offered our state governments funding if they went along with this scheme. By 1906 most of our state legislatures responded by reducing the functionality of our public militias to so-called ‘state defense forces’, allegedly as a cost-cutting measure.
Up until this radical change in public policy, our local public militias had performed a vital role in protecting the integrity of government by conducting elections and protecting citizens’ access to a grand jury when possessing knowledge or evidence of public corruption.
When we lost the full functionality of our public militias, we also lost control over the integrity of our juries, elections, and representative government. Public representatives took over the job of conducting our elections and attorney prosecutors appointed themselves as the gatekeepers of our grand juries, which no longer conduct independent investigations and prosecutions by presentment.
These changes in how our government operates precipitated the rapid rise in public corruption and unconstitutional policies that began in the early 1900s, resulting in the Federal Reserve Act, entry into World War I under false pretenses, the Great Depression, the Social Security Act, IRS misapplication of federal employment taxes to private sector workers from the end of World War II to the present day, the Savings and Loan Crisis, the 2000s Mortgage Crisis, the Great Recession, an enormous national debt, and the rise of the Marxist administrative state that is stealing away our wealth and ruining our access to the American Dream.
Over the last century, these and other unconstitutional policies have doubled our cost of living and halved our quality of life. As recently as the 1960s, a young couple graduating from high school could afford to marry, buy a house, and raise a family on one outside income. But today, it takes two full-time jobs to pay the same bills. Because the husband's pay from full-time work is no longer enough to support the family, the wife must also work an outside job, which competes with her role as a homemaker, thus the whole family suffers.
If we are serious about eliminating public corruption and reversing unconstitutional policies, we must reverse the changes to our government that facilitate them. We can do this by adding a Declaration of Political Rights to our county public charters that corrects the defects in the Constitution and lays a proper legal foundation for exercising our authority to hold our representatives accountable to our public will.
Amending our county public charters is far easier than trying to amend the Constitution. Upgrading our county charters is also desirable from the perspective that our society sorely needs to restore participation in local government due to the many social, political, and economic benefits that we are currently missing out on.
Some of these benefits include:
- Working together to make political decisions that improve our communities
- Making local public policies that we can force upwards to the state and national levels of government
- Conducting trial-by-jury impeachment of representatives whenever they refuse to comply with our public will
- Exploiting the numerous opportunities that are available for local economic development
As we abate public corruption and reverse unconstitutional policies, our cost of living will go down and our quality of life will improve.
IRAC, a useful legal analysis tool
- Issue
- Rule
- Analysis
- Conclusion
In preparation for assuming our proper role as the ultimate policymakers guiding our government and controlling its outcomes, we the people need to develop strong legal and political analysis skills.
A useful tool supporting our ability to make competent legal decisions is called IRAC. Lawyers routinely use IRAC while conducting legal analysis, and judges routinely use IRAC while rendering judicial opinions or resolving cases or controversies where the rights or duties of the parties are in dispute.
We the people can benefit by using IRAC while making public decisions concerning issues of law, policy, or adjudication. We can also benefit in our private lives by applying IRAC to everyday decision-making.
Issue
An issue can be anything from considering what to have for dinner, determining why an infant is crying, whether someone is telling the truth, or determining the crux of a judicial case or controversy.
Identifying the real issue in a conversation or argument empowers clear communication, mutual understanding, agreement, resolution of conflict, and harmonious relationships.
Rule
A rule is a standard for conduct. Conduct is how a person behaves. Law is also a standard for conduct, which often refers to a set of rules or principles designed for governing behavior on a larger scale. In adjudication, the applicable rule is often referred to as ‘the law of the case’.
Analysis
Analysis typically involves applying the rule to the facts. In adjudication, legal analysis typically involves applying the law of the case to the material facts as supported by evidence on the record.
Conclusion
A legal conclusion made by a judge or a jury typically involves stating the rights and the duties of the parties in accordance with the applicable rule or law as a means to resolving a case or controversy. In everyday life, a conclusion can facilitate choosing appropriate behavior after identifying the issue, considering values, and weighing the available options.
Throughout our course of study on how to create good government, we will be using IRAC as our go-to legal, policy, and political analysis tool.
A practical example of applying IRAC
On this website's home page are two political issues we can analyze using IRAC.
Issue
The issues raised are:
- How can we make public policy for our representatives to follow?
- How can we hold representatives accountable to our public will?
Rule
We the people of the United States inherently possess the public powers and authority make public policy for our representatives to follow. We make public policy directly through the ballot initiative process, and indirectly through our public representatives.
We possess the ability to enforce representative accountability to our public will through our traditional English common law participatory governmental institutions, including public militias, grand juries, and petit juries.
Analysis
Prior to creating a central representative government under a national constitution, the American colonists governed themselves for over 150 years through their English common law participatory governmental institutions, including public militias, grand juries, and petit juries.
When our Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution for the United States, they were concerned that the newly formed central government might abuse their civil rights, so they added the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution that we call our national Bill of Rights.
The Bill of Rights attempted to protect the civil rights embodied in our English common law participatory governmental institutions, but failed to articulate and protect the institutions themselves. This oversight has allowed rogue representatives to get away with undermining our participatory governmental institutions to the extent that they no longer perform their vital roles of protecting the Constitution and enforcing our political rights, civil rights, and public will.
This situation makes it necessary for we the people to restore and modernize our participatory governmental institutions. The best way to achieve this objective is by amending our county public charters to include a modern declaration of political rights. This approach to remedy will have the same net effect as amending our national Constitution to correct the deficiencies in our national Bill of Rights, but is much easier to achieve. It is also preferable because we need to restore and modernize our county governments anyway.
In the context of a modern bill of rights, we the people will be empowered to use the ballot initiative process on the county and state levels of government to make public policies for our representatives to follow, and then use our juries to impeach them whenever they refuse to comply with our public will. This approach to governing will give our public representatives a strong incentive to serve and protect our interests over and above special interests.
Conclusion
We the people of the United States can lay a proper legal political foundation for direct policymaking and holding our representatives accountable to our public will by amending our county public charters to include a declaration of political rights. Upon this solid political foundation, we can then use the ballot initiative process to make public policies for our representatives to follow, and use our juries to impeach them whenever they refuse to comply with our public will.
The following is an example of a draft declaration of political rights supporting these measures, which is suitable for adding to our county and state public charters:
Declaration of Political Rights
We the People of the United States do hereby declare the following political rights, which are inviolable:
- Maintaining our English common law participatory governmental institutions on the county level of government, including public militias, grand juries, and petit juries, to serve and protect our public and private rights.
- Holding public capacity, sovereign authority, jurisdiction, qualified immunity, and legal standing whenever we participate in government through our public militias, grand juries, or petit juries.
- Maintaining a bicameral legislature in each state to balance representation of urban and rural interests, with representation by population in the assembly and equal county representation in the senate conforming to the principle of ‘one county, one vote’.
- Conducting public elections by our county public militias with paper ballots and true and correct count of the votes cast by verified citizen voters.
- Making public laws and public policies through the ballot initiative process.
- Establishing standards for public conduct through the ballot initiative process.
- Enforcing standards for public conduct through our public militias, grand juries, and petit juries.
- Holding elected and appointed representatives accountable to the public will.
- Conducting independent grand jury investigations and prosecutions by presentment.
- Conducting grand jury judicial review of cases or controversies involving an alleged violation of the Constitution or a civil right.
- Conducting grand jury investigation and prosecution for impeachment against corrupt or incompetent public officers, employees, or agents, followed by trial-by-jury impeachment proceedings against the accused to remove public capacity and qualified immunity.
- Conducting trial-by-jury restitution proceedings against impeached persons who misused or caused the misuse of public funds.
- Conducting trial-by-jury divestment proceedings against impeached persons who acquired ill-gotten gains through the misuse of government.
- Conducting grand jury investigation and prosecution for treason against any person who acts to undermine the integrity of our justice system or our public elections, including abusing artificial intelligence software to impersonate humans in connection with political decision-making, followed by trial-by-jury treason proceedings against the accused.
We will be working together to refine this draft declaration in our online course before we begin lobbying our county supervisors to add the declaration to our local county charters. In this context, we will also be developing a declaration of civil rights as part of an overall modern bill of rights.
Our declaration of civil rights template will not only do a better job of defining our civil rights than the first Ten Amendments to our national Constitution, but it will support (local) state court jurisdiction over our civil rights. The reasons for this approach to creating proper legal remedy will be explained in our online class.
The Five Pillars of Western Civilization
- Families
- Freedom
- Democracy
- Opportunity
- Limited Government
Families
Traditional families honor marriage, fathers, mothers, children, and relatives. Honor means to esteem highly. Traditional marriage is the union of two families contributing a bride and groom and sharing all their property. In law, everything is property, including persons, places, and things, which creates the legal basis for property rights. Traditional families are our historical source of social security.
Freedom
The essential principles of freedom are private property, sphere sovereignty, religious tolerance, and separation between church and state. Sphere sovereignty means that individuals, families, businesses, churches, and other organizations are the top authority over their property and private affairs, including their bodies, thoughts, speech, actions, and associations.
Democracy
The essential principles of democracy are sphere sovereignty and popular sovereignty. Democracy means ‘people rule’. Popular sovereignty means that the people, collectively, are the top authority in government. In a democracy, the government is both intellectual and physical property belonging to the citizens.
Opportunity
The essential element of economic opportunity is the ability to engage in commerce supported by free markets and capitalism.
Limited government
Limited government means that the purpose of government is to serve and protect our interests in family, freedom, democracy, and opportunity, without overburdening us with excessive taxes or regulations. Good government upholds these principles in its policies, laws, rules, regulations, practices, and procedures.
Western civilization seeks to unify all people around these five core principles. In harmony with these principles, the United States' official motto is E Pluribus Unum, a Latin phrase meaning ‘out of many, one’. These principles are the foundation of traditional American values.
Throughout our course of study on how to create good government, and in actual practice as proactive citizens, we will be using the five pillars of Western civilization as a reference for declaring our political and civil rights, and for making public policies, laws, and political decisions.
A Brief History of Western Political Philosophy
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