Principled Policy Blog

Wow! We’re in the second session and we can tell this is going to be a FANTASTIC conference! We have had a rousing speech on reimposing limits on government through enforcing the limits already existing in the US Constitution given by former Libertarian Party candidate for president Michael Badnarik.

Now we’re being informed on the implementation of sustainable government at the local level through “social justice environmentalism” on the left and “public-private partnership” on the right coming together to synthesize a new kind of unlimited governance that works it way out to the state, local, national and finally international levels of government.

There has been a wealth of eye-opening information on how to recognize and expose the use of sustainable development to seize and abolish the ownership of private property, impose new taxes, generally obliterate personal liberty and force citizens to return to a 19th century lifestyle by grossly overburden use of modern technology with regulation and taxes. The current speaker is Michael Shaw. Shaw is also giving a detailed exposition regarding how so much of the individual agenda items in sustainable development violate specific sections of the Constitution.

You can still see the whole conference, in its entirety by signing up for the “Live Stream” of the conference. Just follow the link to 2010 Freedom Action Conference and clicking on the “Live Stream” button at the top of the page. Still only $29 for the whole conference

Many of you have probably received this email or some variation of it-

Governors of 35 states have already filed suit against the Federal Government for imposing unlawful burdens upon them. It only takes 38 ( of the 50) States to convene a Constitutional Convention.

This will take less than thirty seconds to read. If you agree, please pass it on. For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they didn’t pay into Social Security, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform that is being considered…in all of its forms. Somehow, that doesn’t seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law. I truly don’t care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving must stop. This is a good way to do that. It is an idea whose time has come. Have each person contact a minimum of twenty people on their Address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise. In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one proposal that really should be passed around.

Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution

“Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States .”

You are one of my 20.

Because this is starting to get wide circulation it’s time to deal with the idea that a new constitutional convention is a good idea. It isn’t. It’s a ghastly idea.

Let’s look at in detail to try and see why. First, let’s make it clear that the sentiment behind this effort is completely understandable if not laudable. The fact is that we live in an era of rapidly worsening governmental crisis and many are desperate to find a remedy for the crisis. There are media-savvy radicals who desperately want the opportunity to change our current form of government by removing the limits on the power of the Federal government and eliminating the state governments, centralizing all power in the hands of an unrestricted national, as opposed to truly federal government. They have eagerly zeroed in on the desperation of conservatives to “get their government back” and have worked nearly non-stop to come up with a strategy of fooling them into getting done what they by themselves could not- get a new constitutional convention called.

These radicals know they are in the minority and also know that the only way they can get what they want is to devise a way to get the very people who should be rallying to defend the Constitution to  demand that a new convention be called. The lever these radicals are using is a governmental crisis caused  by completely ignoring the limits already set by the current Constitution.

This proposed amendment deals with forcing Congress to live by the same laws that are foisted on the public by lawmakers who exempt themselves from many of the  effects and penalties of these laws, which obviously makes them a tyranny. There are other proposed amendments making the rounds. A notable recent effort has been made to push state legislators to call for a constitutional convention for the purpose of passing a balanced budget amendment. Obviously, both these amendments have desirable goals. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that the conservative individuals behind these efforts have been  taken in by carefully developed arguments that seem to  imply that a limited constitutional convention, “shackled” to dealing with only one or at most a few amendments. One group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is telling, falsely, state legislators that a “strongly worded” state resolution would “force” Congress and the delegates to a new convention to keep within the bounds of the state resolutions. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The fact is that once a convention is called, it completely out of the control of any legislative bodies. This is undeniable, based on previously set legal precedents from the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. That convention was bound by “strongly worded” Congressional and state resolutions, 12 of them, to amend the Articles of Convention, and ONLY amend the Articles. The first act of that convention was to vote to operate in complete secret. The second act of the convention was to agree to discard the Articles and write a new constitution.

Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Warren Burger, when asked about what would happen at any new constitutional convention by Phyllis Schlafly said-

I have also repeatedly given my opinion that there is no effective way to limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda. Congress might try to limit the convention to one amendment or to one issue, but there is no way to assure that the convention would obey.

Burger was obviously in a position to know.

Sadly, the level of historical and constitutional scholarship on our side of the question plays into the hands of the radicals. Note for instance this part of the email-

Governors of 35 states have already filed suit against the Federal Government for imposing unlawful burdens upon them. It only takes 38 ( of the 50) States to convene a Constitutional Convention.

What’s wrong with this statement? It only takes 34 states (2/3 of 50) to call a new convention. It requires 38  states (3/4 of 50) to ratify amendments to the Constitution. With this sad lack of understanding of the mechanics of the Constitution is it any real wonder that conservative supporters of a new constitutional convention don’t know that precedents were set by the first convention that allow the current constitution’s ratification procedure to be completely bypassed and a new one set? Or that there is absolutely NO constitutional requirement that the states even be INVOLVED in a new convention, beyond calling for it?

We’ve amended the Constitution 27 times. Some for the better and some for the worse. NOT ONCE have we had to resort to a constitutional convention to get one passed. That’s an irrefutable fact.

Now there is an exhaustive case to be made against many of the arguments in favor of a new constitutional convention. We can’t do that in this article, but we can do it in a series of articles. That’s going to happen here over the next few weeks.

If you get a copy of the email at the top or something like it, do a “reply all” with a link to this article and help inform a fellow conservative. He’ll thank you for it.

We can also do it in a teaching type situation. Want to know more? Then get to Valley Forge, PA this coming weekend for the 2010 Freedom Action Conference where Chuck Michaelis, Vice-chairman of the Institute for Principled Policy, will present a strong case refuting the arguments in favor of a constitutional convention. You can attend this conference for as low as $100. That’s an incredible price for 3 days of priceless information and networking opportunities.

Can’t get there but want to see the presentations right from your computer? Follow this link, 2010 Freedom Action Conference, and then click the “Live Stream” button at the top. That will get you access to both the live event and the digital archives for an extended period. That only costs $29!

Our friends at the Chalcedon Foundation pointed us to an article which is an excellent analysis of the effects of the federal bailout program on the thinking of a portion of the populace who desperately need REAL information on the way economies actually work in a free society.

This article, written by Jon Rector the director of a homeless mission in Chattanooga, TN, provides insight into the tremendous damage done by politicians who are more interested in pandering for votes in the short-term than taking the proper steps to fix the economy permanently.

The problem is really analogous to a quack who puts a band-aid on a tumor and calls it cured. The cure is an illusion and will be far worse when the tumor grows. Worse yet, the quack then convinces others that his miraculous cure is the only real treatment for the disease.

But that’s exactly what Congress and the last two presidents have done with the economic bailouts (they’re not the original, but they are the most recent perpetrators of these economic con games). They’ve placed a band-aid on the galloping tumor of the collapsing economy and claiming that creating tremendous new debt to cover the tumor of the old debt was really the only cure.

But the real damage they’ve done is in perpetuating complete falsehoods about how the economy and government are supposed to work. Please read the article to get the details.

And if you read it and still don’t get it please think about attending the 2010 Freedom Action Conference

“Conservatives who genuinely believe in limited government are not generally exposed to the Hamilton who at the Constitutional Convention called for a king-like permanent president and who subsequently dedicated himself to undermining the limits on governmental power laid out in the very Constitution he championed in the Federalist Papers.”  This quote from page 171 of the book Hamilton’s Curse is a bit of an understatement, as most Americans, conservative and otherwise, are generally exposed to the results of Hamilton’s efforts in our government, our systems of education, business and finance, to name but a few.  The bowl of Hamilton’s poisoned fruit is spilling over with plenty.

As a matter of fact, the 1930′s saw the implementation of Hamiltonian ideology in a key area:  education.  Charles Beard, et.al., introduced the “economic basis” theory of government, which has since poisoned generations of students, policymakers and jurists with this pernicious theory.  This “economic basis” theorem is pure Hamiltonian, and is a consequence of the shift that happened in this country from 1913 onward (with the implementation of the income tax and the Federal Reserve laying the groundwork for a wholesale restructuring of our form of government.)

DiLorenzo lays out the case for the interface of big business interests supporting big government intervention programs (think the Bush/Obama “stimulus” packages and your on the right track); a laundry list of federal “welfare” to business interests that caps out at a neat $90 billion per year.  Other studies have shown it to be greater than that in some instances.

Couple this with a “justice” system at the federal level (Supreme Court) who from 1937-1995 couldn’t find a single piece of federal legislation to be unconstitutional, and you get the complete Hamiltonian package of an “energetic” government with the “fuel” of commercial interests to drive it onward.

This is an amazing record for a body that routinely passes unconstitutional legislation (and did during that period too).  The key to this amazing record is a wildly broad reading of the interstate commerce clause which basically posits that pretty much any form of human behavior has relationships to interstate commerce, and can therefore be regulated by federal statute.

So what are some of the fruits of this poisonous philosophy of “government uber alles?”  Here’s just a representative sample of the results:

–the use of federal grants to states as a control mechanism to kill states rights (think ‘highway funds’ or ‘crime prevention grants’ and you see the link);

–the use of the Incorporation doctrine (through the 14th Amendment) to apply the strictures on the federal government through the Bill of Rights to the states as a restriction on state sovereignty;

–adoption of the “higher law theory” of jurisprudence:  allowing the courts to sidestep the rules of the Constitution in order to apply novel legal (but extra-constitutional) theories;

–the use of executive orders by the President to control or seize power, thus allowing the Executive to act as dictator;

–manipulation of the monetary supply by the Federal Reserve in order to create economic instability as a precursor to radical shifts in power through legislative enactments;

–attaching citizens to the federal government, tying bondholders and others to a primary interest in the growth of government.  Woods illustrates it this way: “According to economist Gary Shilling, 52.6 percent of Americans in 2007 received significant assistance of some kind from the federal government.” and;

–creating an international mercantilist empire, the needs of which lead to agressive expansions of military force and presence.

These are just some of the ways the fruit of Hamilton’s philosophy has ripened (and rotted on the vine).  Woods sums up the chapter’s theme:  “The final characteristic of empires, according to Morley, is that they are sold to the public in grandiose terms about spreading blessings for all mankind, when in reality their main purpose is to allow those who pull the strings of the empire to accumulate money and power.”

Hamilton would be proud of seeing the modern results of his efforts.

The American Revolution (incorrectly so-called, at least between 1775-83) didn’t end with the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Once the British were defeated the real American Revolution, the internal battle over the form of the American government would take, began. The real revolution was fought between conservatives (the deliberately mis-named “Anti-Federalists” whom we will refer to as the “true federalists”), who originally wanted to retain but amend the Articles of Confederation and a group of nationalists (whose press-savvy leadership adopted the misnomer “Federalists” who we refer to in this article by their true view- “nationalists”) who desperately wanted to eliminate the state governments as sovereign entities and tried to use the Constitutional Convention, unsuccessfully, to do it. Just to clarify- there were Federalists who were true federalists, mostly in the south. That’s why we use the term “nationalists” instead of “Federalists” to differentiate these two groups using the same party label.

Since the nationalists had failed to eliminate the state governments at the convention they devised a plan under the leadership of Alexander Hamilton to subjugate them by adopting a new constitutional hermeneutic clearly not supported by the text of the document. The hermeneutic they adopted said, in effect, whatever authority is not expressly forbidden to the federal government by the Constitution was permitted to it, including the powers reserved to the states and to the people alone. And the method they chose to impose this hermeneutic on the new federal government was to pack the judiciary branch with its adherents.

The battle to subjugate the states see-sawed for 126 years. From splits over a national bank and foreign policy during the Washington administration to Jefferson’s “revolution” of 1800 to the War of 1812, the Monroe Doctrine, Jackson’s “Tariff of Abominations,” the nullification and secession crises, battle over the Bank of the United States, the Missouri Compromise, the Mexican War, “Manifest Destiny,” the Kansas-Nebraska Act, “Bleeding Kansas,” the Dred Scott decision, the “Secret Six,” John Brown’s raid and state treason trial were all merely the warm-ups to the real showdown between nationalists and true federalists over the Constitution and its proper interpretation- the War Between The States. The military victory of the nationalist northern Union over the federalist southern Confederation seemed to answer the question of constitutional interpretation and the nature of the Union by force. But questions answered by force of arms are rarely actually settled.

Even after a victory by force of arms the nationalists realized that there still existed in the language of the Constitution elements of state sovereignty and stiff controls on the growth of size in the federal government in the form of the minting and value of money and restriction of direct taxation (like income taxes). Nationalists knew that those parts of the Constitution that covered these restrictions intact could not be pushed aside by nationalist judicial reinterpretation, something Thomas Jefferson warned against -

Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.

Nationalists knew this because even a Supreme court packed with their cronies simply could not create by construction an argument that made explicit prohibition of direct taxation impermissible. That was demonstrated when the Supreme court declared the first two federal income taxes unconstitutional in 1872 and 1896. They just couldn’t get the job done by simply declaring they had the power to pass a tax and attempting to justify it by manipulating the meaning of the clear words of the Constitution.

Nationalists also knew that they had to stop the 10th amendment to the Constitution from being used to stifle federal usurpation of state and local authority as had been done before 1861. The only way to accomplish this was to remove the state governments’ representation in the federal Congress. They had to strip the authority to choose Senators from the state governments and place that authority in the hands of a more easily manipulated body with a short memory and nationalize it as much as possible. They were creating a super-representative with a term length guaranteed to keep the average voter from remembering that a Senator was a profligate tax-and-spender for the first 4^1/2 years of his term, especially if he supported some showy but meaningless legislation that allowed him to claim that he had been a “true fiscal conservative” his whole term (sound familiar?) during the final 18 months of it.

Last but certainly not least, nationalists understood that their grip on power would be tenuous and their ability to manipulate the populace would be limited without complete control of money and credit. They needed a national bank with the ability to nationalize interest rates and a fiat money supply which could be inflated or deflated to help manipulate voters, especially around presidential election years.

DiLorenzo explains in this chapter how all of this was accomplished within the span of a single year- 1913. He also explains that this was not the result of recent “progressive” tinkering as some historians have claimed but the result of deliberate and concerted efforts by men dedicated to accumulating and centralizing power in a national government at the expense of state and local governments over more than a century.

He also explains that the movement has had several incarnations during that period. Hamilton and his followers were advocates for a high tariff to “protect infant American industry” and an American form of Mercantilism.

Later, Henry Clay modified Hamilton’s vision into his “American System” of corporate welfare for road and canal building (which bankrupted several states, including Lincoln’s Illinois) and other “vital” industries, a national bank to “create credit” for these schemes and centralization of power in Washington, especially the power to tax.

Lincoln, calling himself Clay’s political heir, then further modified and implemented Clay’s system by claiming that the federal government had the “right” to keep states from seceding from the union by force of arms, thus stripping the 10th amendment of any real meaning, and tacitly claiming that it was necessary for northern corporate welfare that southern tariffs continue to be collected. Since he no longer had southern revenues to pay for the war to coerce them back into the union, he forced a graduated income tax (including withholding) through Congress claiming that it was constitutional because it was an “indirect direct tax,” making a mockery of the constitutional prohibition against direct taxation without apportionment.

I have included some media to illustrate what is meant about how nationalists think about the Constitution. Especially illustrative of the ultra-nationalist “living document” theory of constitutional interpretation is this conversation between Judge Andrew Napolitano and Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) on the constitutionality of the federal health care law. Napolitano is taking the strict constitutional constructionist position (and dropping the ball on federal intervention in education matters).

In this article, Republican party “big tent” proponent, self-titled “conservative” and  naturalized American citizen born in Canada, David Frum, completely fails to make the case that the health care law is somehow constitutional. He does, however, expose his position as a nationalist in the Hamilton-Webster-Lincoln tradition as described earlier by adhering to the arguments stemming from the constitutional position described for that group of thinkers.

By the late 19th century it became clear to nationalists that they still had one obstacle in their path; the Constitution. The language in certain sections of the constitution simply could not be adequately de-constructed by re-interpretation and changes HAD to be made.

Hence the concerted efforts by nationalists to get the 16th and 17th amendments passed. Unfortunately, there was such a complete lack of understanding among the citizenry of what money and its purpose and function were, let alone the constitutional restrictions connected with the coining of it and the regulation of its value, that there was very little protest when the Federal Reserve System, a privately owned and operated national banking system, was created by law in complete violation of the Constitution, in the same year that the 16th and 17th amendments were finally passed. Thus, the last vestiges of the original American Republic  disappeared in a single year. The Revolution of 1913 completed what was started in 1861-5. The conversion of the United States from a federated republic of autonomous states ruled by law under a Constitution which limited the powers of the federation government to a single government entity free from limitations of its power by decree of its own courts and driven by the “will of the people” as manipulated by government/media for the “common good.”

DiLorenzo explains how this all took place in the course of a few short months and what the devastating results have been in the years since.

This Just Announced!

The director of the Institute For Principled Policy and the CEO of Principled Consulting, LLC Barry Sheets will be  teaching a session at the 2010 Freedom Action Conference on the subject of “Running a Grassroots Political Campaign on a Shoestring.”

This is just one of the many sessions that will be held at Valley Forge. DON’T MISS IT! Follow the links to FreedomActionConference.com, and register for the conference today to get the Early Bird registration discount.

Are you looking for a chance to network with other freedom activists? Are you looking for answers to questions on a wide-range of liberty issues? Do you want to meet, converse, pick the brains of, and mingle with experts in those widely diverse areas where the battles for the return of liberty are being hotly contested?

Then you need to register for and attend the 2010 Freedom Action Conference in Valley Forge Pennsylvania on August 12, 13, 14, 2010.

So who are these experts, anyway?

Well, how about Dr. Thomas Woods, author of the new bestseller Nullification? How about William Jasper, editor of The New American magazine? How about Sheriff Mack, an expert on the rights, responsibilities and power of the local Sheriff? An important topic in the era of a revival of thinking about the 10th amendment, no?

The Institute For Principled Policy is a co-sponsor of the 2010 Freedom Action Conference and at least one of our board members, Chuck Michaelis, Vice-chairman of the institute and the Director of Camp American, will be joining with Larry Greenley of the John Birch Society to discuss the dangers of calling a new constitutional convention.

There are several GREAT options for registration.

Full conference registration is $270/$480 per person/couple and includes meals, breaks and a 1-year subscription to the DeWeese Report

There is a “Diet Plan” that DOES NOT include meals that costs $100 (you get banquet attendance but no meal or drink)

For students there is a $40 registration that DOES NOT include meals (student ID required)

There is a single day registration for any single day of the conference that DOES NOT include meals for $50

There is a banquet only registration that is $105

There is a registration for the reception for Tom Woods that is $20

There is also registration for display tables (includes full registration for 2) for $350

Please join us for what may well be THE most important conference of the year-

FreedomActionConference.com

The video below is a humorous look at the European economic crisis, sometimes called the PIIGS Crisis (Portugal, Ireland, Italy Greece, Spain lending their first letters to the acronym). It’s actually very funny in an extremely unsettling way. Have a look and judge for yourself. From the Australian comedy team Clarke and Dawe.

What’s not so funny is that the question that is asked repeatedly- “But where is the money coming from?”- is THE pivotal question of the day.  Since most economists are Keynsian it is assumed that these countries economies MUST be bailed out in order to keep the world economy from falling like dominoes. But of course that presupposes several things. The primary presupposition is that “failure is not an option.” Well, of course it’s an option.

As any mortgage payer can tell you, if you can’t make your house payment the mortgage company will take it away from you. Well, at least that was the case in the recent past. Many branches of government are now attempting to make it possible for mortgagees to keep their houses without bothering to make the payments. No one is even bothering to try to make any kind of rational argument for why government should interfere with the mortgage contract in favor of the borrower at the expense of the lender. The arguments are all purely emotional, playing on the natural feelings of pity (and as we will demonstrate in a moment, envy) in the listener. But the facts are that it is dangerous and counterproductive to not allow failure. That is because, eventually (paraphrasing Margaret Thatcher) you run out of other people’s money. This principle is exactly the same for governments as it is for individuals and families.

The consequences of failure for families is bankruptcy and damage to the ability to borrow money. This is not necessarily a bad thing because it forces the individual or the family to do what it should have done in the first place; to buy only what is needed and to save for special expenses and pay for them in cash. This can wreak havoc on families who have come to expect to live the “good life” on credit and can lead to marital strife and, often, divorce.

The same can be said for countries, except that citizens of bankrupt countries who have come to expect to live the “good life” in the form of “cradle-to-grave” care with guarantees of food, clothing, housing, transportation, etc. paid for by the public treasury filled in large part by taxes levied progressively against the more productive members of society, rather than by the proceeds of their own labor. As these nations begin to exhaust the capital available from their more productive elements to pay for the support of the less productive elements of society, they have no choice except to either borrow from nations which do still have capital available or default on all obligations. The latter can be accompanied with threats against neighboring nations of impending unrest leading to civil war or  revolution which could cross borders into neighboring nations also on the verge of economic collapse.

The now obvious danger lies in the second major presupposition which is that that there is some large (Marxists and some Keynsians believe inexhaustable) pool of capital somewhere that can be tapped for these bailouts. The nurturing of this idea breeds an attitude of entitlement to the fruits of others’ labors. That is, the successful must be forced to bear a large portion if not the lion’s share of the burden for those who are not successful or refuse to try to become successful because they have no incentive to do so.

This is usually sold as the more “fortunate” being required to support the “less fortunate” but of course that begs the question. What makes some more “fortunate” than others? Usually it’s a combination of wit, the ability to calculate risk, proper timing, management savvy, knowing the market, filling a need, etc. The word “fortunate” implies that there is luck involved. None of the things listed describing the “fortunate” include luck as a factor, do they? That’s because it’s hard work to make a fortune. But it’s very easy to convince people who had nothing to do with creating the wealth that they are somehow entitled to a piece of the pie that was baked by someone else.

So, after an indefinite period of governments artificially “creating” wealth by inflation (actually a form of confiscatory taxation) and seizing more and more of the capital that would otherwise invested by the wealthy in order to create even more wealth in the private sector we find that there isn’t anything left to confiscate for redistribution. As Gary North demonstrates in this article “There Is No Money,” once that point is reached, and we’re getting dangerously close to that precipice, there is nowhere to go but default and that spells the end of the welfare state gravy train.

Of course, we here in the United States are not in any way inoculated against what is going on in Europe. We owe China billions,  if not trillions, for the US bonds they hold. Yet we have pledged huge amounts of money, over $108 billion dollars, to bail out central banks worldwide. Forty billion dollars of that is going to Greece so that they can continue to provide cradle-to-grave care for a people who have come to expect to be carried by their government whether or not they work. Don’t even try to convince them they should sacrifice by becoming more productive.

Since many of these loans are from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) they must theoretically be repaid for the member states to be able to continue to be eligible to continue to borrow. Let’s ask a question then. Who do you suppose would loan you money at all, let alone at a high interest rate, if you disclosed that not only were you had spent 14%  more than you made last year and that when you already had a personal debt that equaled more than 115% of your entire yearly income and were expecting to spend significantly more than you make this year? No one who had even a rudimentary sense of mathematics would. And yet this is where Greece, and several other countries in Europe stand currently. And this doesn’t include Central and South America, Africa or Asia, each of which have countries at least as bad off.

And so we ask- Where is the money coming from?

It is another beautiful day here on the shores of Lake James in northern Indiana, and Camp American is in full swing.  Dozens of campers, along with a number of adult counselors and staff are into the flow of camp life.  Many of the campers are returning for their second, third, fourth or more years of participating in Camp American.

A normal morning at camp consists of an early wake up call, flag raising and morning devotions, a hearty breakfast cooked by the volunteer kitchen staff, and then campers (and many of the staff and assistants) are given three class lecture periods on the Christian history of our nation and our founding documents, are familizarized with the Constitution and how it applies in American life, taught about existing and new issues in the culture that can impact them (and that they can impact), and given tools to be able to apply their learning “in the real world.”

The classes are being taught by some well-recognized names in their fields:  Tom DeWeese of the American Policy Center, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America, Dr. Michael Coffman of Environmental Perspectives, Pastor David Whitney of Institutes on the Constitution, Charles Michaelis with the Institute for Principled Policy, and Barry Sheets with Principled Policy Consulting.

Camp wouldn’t be complete without camp activities to keep the young ladies and gentlemen exercising their bodies as well as their brains, so Camp American provides many opportunities for recreation, including basketball, volleyball, skiing, tubing, rollerskating, go kart racing, and bowling to name a few, as well as organized “camp games” to allow for the competitive spirit to be nourished.  The week wraps up with the “Constitution Game” a three-hour exercise on how to take hypothetical (and often times real-world) situations and find the Constitutional warrant or prohibition on the situation.

Your correspondent had the opportunity to teach the campers on two subjects:  Biblical and Constitutional tools to analyze policy, and a workshop on how to read and analyze legislation.  These classes encouraged a great deal of participation from the campers, which helps them retain the information.�

Camp American is a wonderful opportunity to equip the next generation to engage in the fight for liberty under law.  Consider having your 12 and up child be a part of Camp American 2011!

“I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.”- Otter in Animal House.

The opening line of the story on the Fox News website is the first indicator of  the depths of nit-wittery that some are willing to engage in to draw attention to some issue they clearly haven’t thought through to its logical endpoint.

A British endurance swimmer summoned the peak of his powers to become the first person to swim under the summit of Mt. Everest, Sky News reported Sunday.

Needless to say, this was an incredibly dangerous stunt.  According to the article

He came close to drowning during test swims for the event amid bouts of altitude sickness on the Pumori Lake, which sits 17,000 feet above sea level.

Why would someone undertake such an incredibly dangerous stunt? Unlike athletic attention hoarders of old who did “adventurous” things because they were a challenge, not to mention potentially lucrative if the effort was successful, this dare-devil ostensibly has a higher purpose in mind. As Mr. Lewis Gordon Pugh (the swimmer, known as the “Human Polar Bear”) put it-

“I have seen glaciers in the Arctic, the Alps, Central Africa, Antarctica and the Himalayas — and it’s the same story everywhere,” he said.

“Most glaciers are melting away. The glaciers in the Himalayas are not just ice. They are a lifeline — they provide water to approximately two billion people.”

Did you catch that? “The glaciers in the Himalayas are not just ice… They provide water to approximately two billion people” Yes, indeed they do. And how do they provide water to those two billion people? BY MELTING!

The same as they have every spring for thousands of years since the glaciers first formed.

Yeah, yeah, we know. His point is that there is more melting now than in the recent past. Apparently, Mr. Pugh is completely unfamiliar with (or in denial about) climate records that indicate that glaciers worldwide have advanced and retreated, more dramatically and at much more regular intervals than science once thought. There have been warm periods where they did not exist at all and cold periods where they covered vast expanses of the continents. Man didn’t cause these advances and retreats, just as he is not now causing them.

But, of course that admission would make his effort completely pointless, wouldn’t it? Mr. Pugh has a faith in anthropogenic global warming and no form of proof to the contrary can shake that faith. Furthermore, Mr. Pugh has chosen to become the modern day equivalent of a Flagellant, a fanatical sect of Christians who would ritually whip themselves in public until they bled as a form of penance; it was a particularly nasty form of mortification of the flesh.

This author has no information regarding the state of Mr. Pugh’s faith or his lack of it. But we would be willing to wager that Mr. Pugh would treat the stories of the Flagellants with derision and contempt, judging them as ignorant religious fanatics. Perhaps that is the deepest irony of this entire incident.