I’m a people watcher, and here’s what I saw during my three days at CPAC:

Some came for education, some for entertainment, but most seemed to be there for direction. And like the sedated masses of the Roman empire who were entertained with bread and circuses while invaders attacked the borderlands, we had our own political ringmasters at CPAC—and they too served bread and circuses with thick bravado while leaving the real issues unattended. 

A few samples from the tasting table:

Ron Paul wins straw poll—the hundreds of under-25 crowd swarming through the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel took on targets of opportunity like packs of vegan dogs. Mention anybody but Ron Paul and they barked and snarled, screamed and yelled—but no biting. When the vote was announced, youthful high-five whoops and oh yeahs! thundered throughout the hotel.

• Meanwhile, those more studious about the issues smiled patiently when Mitt Romney took a strong second place in the ballots with 22%. About a fourth of the attendees bothered voting. It became apparent from day one that the youth were largely Ron Paul supporters who flooded the ballot box in droves and packs. But when asked why, the answers were usually thin: “Why do you want Ron Paul?” “He’s the man! He rocks!” “Yes, but why do you support him?” “He’s the man! He rocks!” “And the issues—?” “He’s the man, he rocks!”

See and be seen—Encouragement from the old war horses and newer battle ponies sent a stir across every square foot of the gathering. Cheney’s surprise runway wave to the podium shook the very foundations of the building, an appreciation that was well-earned and well-deserved. Scott Brown exhausted what screams were left, though betrayed them days later on the jobs bill vote. Ann Coulter was her usual spicy self but was escorted out for security reasons, and Mitt Romney had the best one-liners of the whole three days. Newt Gingrich was happy to be mobbed by friends from decades past to present, and a gallery of lesser-knowns waved their arms at this growing national anger aimed at the Obama crowd.

• But did we learn anything new? Not since Andrea Bocelli sang with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was there ever such raptured preaching to the choir. But alas, a lot of heat, a lot of smoke, but where was the smelter?

Value added or just valuable?—Across every floor for 12 hours a day, a thousand voices screamed for attention, ten thousand web sites spewed literature for links, a million opinions exchanged to save the Constitution—but only a handful of real solutions were delivered. One came in the form of Glenn Beck. He entered the arena with education in mind—and deliver he did. The hoo-rah segment strained with pain at this new discipline called education. Beck was patient with them, bringing along his chalk board to help. Those wanting education, those working hard to be good students of freedom had their engines of determination well primed. The enemy is the progressives, Beck hammered home. Learn to recognize them in their many forms, they know no party boundaries. It was the educational moment of the entire event, but only a segment of the audience seemed to appreciate it.

• And then there was us. We also came with education in mind and found at least one in ten who understood that education is our call to arms. All else falls short of sustainability. Freedom cannot be maintained without knowing what it is, how we got it, and how to keep it.
• Says Dr. W. Cleon Skousen in the opening paragraphs of The Five Thousand Year Leap, “Part of the genius of the Founding Fathers was their political spectrum or political frame of reference. It was a yardstick for the measuring of the political power in any particular system of government. They had a much better political yardstick than the one which is generally used today. If the Founders had used the modern yardstick of ‘Communism on the left’ and ‘Fascism on the right,’ they never would have found the balanced center which they were seeking.”

And so was it last week at CPAC. The measuring stick given us at that gathering of 10,000+ was Obama on the left, everybody else on the right. But what we needed instead was more of Glenn Beck’s education: How much do you know about freedom and do you want to know more?

I witnessed thousands of empty anticipations leaving that building on Saturday night, most of them seemed to be wondering “did I get fed or did I get entertained?” We pointed, we cheered, we booed, and we blamed. But in the end, did anybody get education? May I suggest that next year’s Conservative Political Action Convention be renamed to Conservative Political Action College? I don’t think we can afford any more bread and circuses.

By Paul B. Skousen

Somebody told me there’s a Guinness World Record at the end of this interesting pursuit, so let me share it with you.

First, we need to visit Karl Marx in his dingy, slummy accommodations in London. It was here that this barrel-chested and very unemployed philosopher with disheveled hair and a bushy beard sat about chain-smoking his clay pipes and blustering his philosophies and complaints to whoever would listen.

He was only part way through his life of reckless demands and manipulations when he came across a collaborator with money—a man named Friedrich Engels. They became fast but oddly-paired friends in 1844, mutually bent on re-creating the world in their images.

By 1847, after some initial spats of intrigue and power ploys with a growing communist movement in Europe, Marx and Engels won the trust of their compatriots and were asked to write up a declaration of principles or a “Manifesto to the World,” the Communist Manifesto.

When it was done, the pair had settled on six goals or prerequisites that would invite a new era of world-wide peace and prosperity. All it took was:

1)        the overthrow of capitalism

2)        the abolition of private property

3)        the elimination of the family as a social unit

4)        the abolition of all classes

5)        the overthrow of all governments

6)        the establishment of a communist order with communal

           ownership of property in a classless, stateless society.

Now we need to fast forward to 1867 when we find Marx and Engels already well known for both good and bad among their communist comrades. They had been all over Europe, through difficulties and triumphs. But behind them and around them was turmoil in various nations, infighting among communist federation memberships, backstabbing and maliciousness to gain power.

The ends justified the means for Marx, and he did what he could—and wanted—to take power. He succeeded and he failed, but mostly he failed. And with the failure of the First International—a congress of communist movers and shakers—Marx had lost his bully pulpit.

So what does a world conqueror do when he has no army with which to conquer? He writes a book. For Marx, that book was a sort of guidebook that explained history and communist philosophy. He called it Capital.

(Okay, in German its title is Das Capital, but let us wrap this up.)

Just a side note about his personal life, when Marx died in 1883, he joined family members who preceded him in death including daughter Francisca who died in 1852, Edgar who died in 1854, an unnamed baby who died in birth in 1856, daughter Eleanor who committed suicide, daughter Laura who committed suicide, his wife who died of cancer in 1881, and daughter Jenny who died in January 1883. Two months later, Marx himself died. They say 7 or 8 people attended the funeral.

“It was a pathetic life,” as Dr. W. Cleon Skousen said in his best seller, The Naked Communist wherein the above discussion is fleshed out. Marx’s life, Skousen said, was “filled with burning ambition, constant frustration and continuous failure.”

But Marx’s ideas unfortunately did not die with him. In short, Marx said he simply wanted to “dethrone God and destroy capitalism.” It was up to Engels to carry the work forward for another 12 years.

These two anarchists saw three primary problems as the source for the world’s woes.

First was the notion of private property. Marx and Engels said the haves always fighting the have nots was the root cause of the world’s problems—the property owners fighting to control everything, and the poor fighting for a piece of the pie.

And worst of all, Marx said, the rich exploited the poor, making them beasts of burden forced to work for low wages just so the property owners could expand their holdings and become rich and more rich.

Marx and Engels decided that those evil rich guys, in order to keep a strangle hold on the poor, came up with two powerful tools of leverage.

The first was the State (the government), the Big Stick that forced people to obey the property rights of the land owners—or go to jail.

The second was Religion, invented, they said, to keep the poor in their place, prevent rebellion, to keep them contented and subservient. Such adages as “thou shalt not steal,” and “thou shalt not covet,” and “judge not” were meant to teach this one lesson: Keep Your Hands Off My Stuff—lest God smite you for your thievery and covetousness.

Marx and Engels thought it perfectly obvious what had to be done: to bring lasting change to the world, to make it better, to ensure universal peace, universal prosperity, and universal cooperation, those bastions of what they called tyranny—Property, the State, and Religion—had to be annihilated.

Today we see the cost to bring about Marx’s and Engels’ idea of universal peace and prosperity is shockingly unacceptable. For example, the cost in human life is at least topping more than 100 million people executed, slaughtered, starved, gassed and destroyed—in the name of communistic peace. And that in just over 100 years.

So now we get to the part about the world record.

With Marx and Engels’ idea for universal peace failing to catch on, somebody tried another tact. It is unknown just how many converts to the failure formula have been attracted, but evidently it has had an impact based on the numbers of people who sing along.

In 1971, a catchy little tune captured the goals of Marx and Engels in such an enticing way that it swept the world in just a few weeks, selling out everywhere, being played tens of millions of times. Somebody said it was the most played piece of music any where any time, and therefore should be declared a Guinness World Record.

Let us review the lyrics of this musical mausoleum to the doctrines of Marx (with editorial commentary in italics):

First, the assault on Religion:

Imagine there’s no heaven

It’s easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today…

Next comes the assault on the State:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too …

And third, here come the horrible evils of private property:

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man ….

Finally and from beyond the grave, Marx’s plea to join him and the other founding fathers of Annihilation that include Plato, Socrates, Engels, Stalin, Lenin, Mao Zedong, Hitler, Che Guevara:  

You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will live as one

So—was John Lennon just being poetic and fancifully utopian with his song? Were his lyrics simply accidently lockstep with Marx and Engels?

In the book “Lennon in America,” author Geoffrey Giuliano quotes Lennon saying his hit song Imagine was “an anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic [song], but because it’s sugar-coated, it’s accepted.”

Elsewhere Lennon is quoted saying his song is “virtually the Communist Manifesto, even though I am not particularly a communist and I do not belong to any movement.”

So how does that bring us to The Guinness World Records? The Guinness people did a poll in Britain in 2002, and found that Imagine ranked number 2 as the all-time most played, most listened to and favorite rock song in that country, falling behind only to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. It was similarly popular in the U.S. and other nations all around the world.

Not quite a world record, but for those three targets of annihilation—Property, the State, and Religion—Lennon’s song certainly hit all the Marx.

By Paul B. Skousen

The John Edwards soap opera just won’t go away. His affair, the cover-up and lies, his cancer-stricken wife, the divorce, the baby, the tell-all book, haven’t we had enough?

Evidently not.

While the $400-haircut was getting a little off the top from mistress Frances Quinn Hunter, Edwards was setting himself up to become just one more famous name in a growing mass of infamy.

Can any of us ever again hear “Bill Clinton” without also thinking “Monica Lewinski”?

Didn’t we all applaud the wife of Tiger Woods for giving new meaning to the term “long drive”?

Do any of us watch Dave Letterman without wondering who on the staff is high on his Top Ten List?

And just what happens if the price isn’t right for one of Bob Barker’s beautiful models? He’s retired now, so we may never know. 

But at least former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer tried to give a little back when he made his generous investment of $80,000+ to New York’s prostitution industry. And I wonder, did they charge him sales tax? One can only hope.   

These scandals certainly attract a lot of attention and rouse our ire for a while. But why should they? After all, isn’t our united indignation oddly juxtaposed against the $11 billion spent each year to bring that very SAME kind of behavior vicariously into our households via the Internet?  

Every second there is $3,200 spent on pornography. Every second there are 28,000 Internet users viewing pornography. And every 30 minutes, a new porn video is created.

What was darkly forbidden just 25 years ago is today rampant, popular and widespread from coast to coast. Corporate sponsors are reaping billions from their porn-happy clientele, and there seems no stopping its spread.

This modern-day version of Rome’s “bread and circus” detractions from the most pressing national problems kept the Founding Fathers worried for quite some time.

A look into history shows that there were heated and sometimes violent debates among the 13 colonies between 1775 and 1776 over the issue of morality.

Quoting Dr. W. Cleon Skousen in The Five Thousand Year Leap (pg. 41), “For many thousands of Americans the big questions of independence hung precariously on the single, slender thread of whether or not the people were sufficiently ‘virtuous and moral’ to govern themselves. Self-government was generally referred to as ‘republicanism,’ and it was universally acknowledged that a corrupt and selfish people could never make the principles of republicanism operate successfully. As Franklin wrote: ‘Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.’ … George Washington later praised the American Constitution as the ‘palladium of human rights,’ but pointed out that it could survive only ‘so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of the people.’”

Dr. Skousen further explains:

          Morality is identified with the Ten Commandments and obedience to the Creator’s mandate for “right conduct,” but the early Americans identified “public virtue” as a very special quality of human maturity in character and service closely akin to the Golden Rule. As a modern historian epitomized it:

          “In a Republic, however, each man must somehow be persuaded to submerge his personal wants into the greater good of the whole. This willingness of the individual to sacrifice his private interest for the good of the community — such patriotism or love of country — the eighteenth century termed public virtue…. The eighteenth century mind was thoroughly convinced that a popularly based government ‘cannot be supported without virtue’.”

Self-Doubts

          The people had an instinctive thirst for independence, but there remained a haunting fear that they might not be “good enough” to make it work.

          These self-doubts were actually the eye of the hurricane during those final pre-revolutionary years when Americans were trying to decide whether they had the moral capacity for self-government. Great names of later years were among the doubters in those pre-revolutionary days. John Jay, Robert Morris, Robert Livingston, and even John Dickinson were among them. Their doubts gradually diminished as their patriotic indignation was aroused by the harsh and sometimes brutal policies of the British crown. They were also moved by the powerful expressions of faith and confidence pouring forth from men of “admired virtue” such as John Adams, George Washington, Richard Henry Lee, and Josiah Quincy.

          Spirits continued to rise so that by the spring of 1776, thousands of confident voices were heard throughout the colonies affirming that there was sufficient “public virtue” in the people to make republican principles work successfully.

A Warning from the Founders

          At the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, Samuel Adams, who is sometimes called the “father of the revolution,” wrote to Richard Henry Lee:

          “I thank God that I have lived to see my country independent and free. She may long enjoy her independence and freedom if she will. It depends on her virtue.”

          John Adams pointed out why the future of the United States depended upon the level of virtue and morality maintained among the people. He said:

          “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

          Samuel Adams knew the price of American survival under a Constitutional form of government when he wrote:

          “The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy the gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people; then shall we both deserve and enjoy it. while, on the other hand, if we are universally vicious and debauched in our manners, though the form of our Constitution carries the face of the most exalted freedom, we shall in reality be the most abject slaves.”

Conclusion

See The Five Thousand Year Leap for the remainder of Dr. Skousen’s discussion of public virtue in Principle #2. 

Despite the fact that the John Edward’s, Bill Clinton’s, Tiger Wood’s, David Letterman’s and Bob Barker’s of life will always appeal to the tabloid mentality of most Americans and get us shaking our heads at such infamous violations of public virtue, the truth is that all of us are failed humans.

And don’t we feel fortunate our failings don’t dominate the headlines as do theirs? 

But there is a great deal more at stake for us as a nation than just them losing trust or an election or sponsors or ratings.

If not stopped in our individual lives, the plague of corruption filtering into every corner of our free society is guaranteed to one day complete its work in a most devastating and irreversible way.

And then—quite suddenly and without question—when everything great about America is falling apart all around us, “public virtue” will make a whole lot of really good sense.

By Paul Skousen

Tuesday night, the Ghost of America Past came to pay a visit on the progressive liberals in America.

His stealthy arrival wasn’t a complete surprise nor his appearance without warning because there was a familiar messenger who preceded his coming.

It was none other than the apparition of Ted Kennedy dragging his chains of socialism across the border into Massachusetts.

Two million voters were out that night wondering in awe at Theodore’s approach. They heard the hauntings, the clanging and rattle. What could this odd disturbance be on such a night as this? Was it a bit of rotten TART funds? Perhaps an undigested piece of bailout money?

Finding their way to the voting booths, they drew back the curtained enclosure, and suddenly there he was! The face of the Ted, grinning back at them, a claim to his Senate seat firmly lashed about his back, and wheezing from his memory a labored foretelling of more to come clinging to the chains of his decades in office.

“Voters of Massachusetts, these are the chains I forged by my works of tyranny and oppression,” he groaned, “to wrest from you your powers of choice, to oppress with shackles and squander your wealth. These are the chains I have wrapped you with, crushing your labors, your incentives, your very human nature and rights. Yes, these are the chains with which I will bind you more tightly this night. You see them not, but they are ponderous still, and will hold you fast.”

And when a million voters asked in unison, “What of us? We who work all hours to care for ourselves and help our brothers and sisters in harm’s way, not because of your government schemes, but because of the goodness and determination in our own hearts?”

“Are there no government housing projects?” replied he. “Is there not welfare? Have you no national health care to provide for them?”

“Some would rather pay their own way,” the voters replied, “or have none at all.”

“Then let them have none and decrease the surplus population,” he roared, shaking his chains all the more.

Then continuing, “This night you will be visited … Three brothers who teach, the first of America Past. Come the next hour, of America Present. Then beware, for that last who is America Future, he is the most tenuous of all, for he has power to terrify or to liberate. Then take heed, Massachusetts voters, for there comes this final chance to mend your ways lest you become as I, bound down with my wicked intents.”

As the apparition dissolved, those who voted for freedom with their ballots and retired for the night were indeed visited by the Ghost of America Past. And his pleasantness gave them the sweetest dreams, the most pleasant congeniality towards their fellow men, a bright hope that their vote to regain the brilliant wisdoms of the Founders could still secure to them their unalienable rights to self sufficiency, to freedom, to property rights, to free association, to equality under the law, to defense, to caring and compassion, and most important, to the freedom to fail and try again. In short, the hope for happiness opened before them. In their hearts came this plea, “God Bless us, every one.”

However, for the million who voted against these things, there stepped into their path, rising up from the wings of history the Ghost of America Future. He bore in his right hand a copy of the Constitution, and in his left a burning torch.

Then came this warning echoed from the failed dreams and failed governments of eons past, “I stand before you a shrouded and mysterious future, blocking your way forward to present you a choice—will you call to me to lift the torch in my one hand to light the path and light your way, and lift this law in the other to guide you back to freedom and prosperity? Or do you spit on me and dare me to ignite these together and burn all hope and prosperity to ashes in one blazing moment of lies and false hopes? You decide citizens of Massachusetts and you decide voters of America. You decide for my torch burns hot, and I wait for no one.”

It was a restless night for the progressive liberals in America on Tuesday late. They tossed and turned all the time through, torn by their weak application of the freedom to choose. When they awoke Wednesday morning, they wondered—had it all been a bad nightmare?

As they rose to consider their new day, there loomed out of view another waiting surprise—they didn’t see it, indeed they couldn’t see it, but the Ghost of America Present stood patiently waiting with but one chore to tend: he re-set his watch—it had been running a little fast.

And now umpteen millions want to throw a millstone around Reid’s neck and toss him into the sea. Or rue the day he was born.

While that soap opera burns up our attention span, I’m interested in something else.

Have you noticed the unspoken power of human nature that has exploded over this? Everybody has an opinion and some people want to see Harry Reid suffer.

Why?

There’s an ember of right and wrong that flares to life whenever idiotic statements like Harry Reid’s are made. Each of us have it. But it’s not just racist comments that get us riled.

We don’t like anything unfair. We especially don’t like our overzealous government increasing our taxes or shoving health care down our throats. It makes us angry.

That sense of fairness, that very ember of truth inside each of us actually has a name. Cicero called it “right reason.” The Founders called it Natural Law.

Natural Law is an inborn, hard-wired, fully-assimilated saturation into the universal and unifying common ground of “what’s right for one must be right for all.”

Nobody needs a book to explain why some things are “right reason” and others not. We know it the moment that first bully swipes our chew toy or pushes us down.

In the Five Thousand Year Leap, Dr. Skousen points out that Natural Law remains the one powerful constant whereby equality and free choice can shake hands and create for all human beings the greatest freedom possible. Good human relations and good government must begin here. Says he:
Most modern Americans have never studied Natural Law. They are therefore mystified by the constant reference to Natural Law by the Founding Fathers. Blackstone confirmed the wisdom of the Founders by stating that it is the only reliable basis for a stable society and a system of justice. Then what is Natural Law? A good place to seek out the answer is in the writings of one of the American Founders’ favorite authors, Marcus Tullius Cicero.
The Life and Writings of Cicero
It was Cicero who cut sharply through the political astigmatism and philosophical errors of both Plato and Aristotle to discover the touchstone for good laws, sound government, and the long-range formula for happy human relations. In the Founders’ roster of great political thinkers, Cicero was high on the list.
Dr. William Ebenstein of Princeton says:
“The only Roman political writer who has exercised enduring influence throughout the ages is Cicero (106-43 B.C.)…. Cicero studied law in Rome, and philosophy in Athens…. He became the leading lawyer of his time and also rose to the highest office of state [Roman Consul].
“… Yet his life was not free of sadness; only five years after he had held the highest office in Rome, the consulate, he found himself in exile for a year…. Cicero nevertheless showed considerable personal courage in opposing the drift toward dictatorship based on popular support. Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C., and a year later, in 43 B.C., Cicero was murdered by the henchmen of Antony, a member of the triumvirate set up after Caesar’s death.” 1
So out of Cicero’s maelstrom of turbulent experience with power politics, plus his intense study of all forms of political systems, he wrote his landmark books on the Republic and the Laws. In these writings Cicero projected the grandeur and promise of some future society based on Natural Law.
The American Founding Fathers obviously shared a profound appreciation of Cicero’s dream because they envisioned just such a commonwealth of prosperity and justice for themselves and their posterity. They saw in Cicero’s writings the necessary ingredients for their model society which they eventually hoped to build.
Cicero’s Fundamental Principles
To Cicero, the building of a society on principles of Natural Law was nothing more nor less than recognizing and identifying the rules of “right conduct” with the laws of the Supreme Creator of the universe. History demonstrates that even in those nations sometimes described as “pagan” there were sharp, penetrating minds like Cicero’s who reasoned their way through the labyrinths of natural phenomena to see behind the cosmic universe, as well as the unfolding of their own lives, the brilliant intelligence of a supreme Designer with an ongoing interest in both human and cosmic affairs.
Cicero’s compelling honesty led him to conclude that once the reality of the Creator is clearly identified in the mind, the only intelligent approach to government, justice, and human relations is in terms of the laws which the Supreme Creator has already established. The Creator’s order of things is called Natural Law.
A fundamental presupposition of Natural Law is that man’s reasoning power is a special dispensation of the Creator and is closely akin to the rational or reasoning power of the Creator himself. In other words, man shares with his Creator this quality of utilizing a rational approach to solving problems, and the reasoning of the mind will generally lead to common-sense conclusions based on what Jefferson called “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” (The Declaration of Independence).
Let us now examine the major precepts of Natural Law which so profoundly impressed the Founding Fathers.
Natural Law Is Eternal and Universal
First of all, Cicero defines Natural Law as “true law.” Then he says:
“True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions…. It is a sin to try to alter this law, nor is it allowable to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws at Rome and Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient is fleeing from himself and denying his human nature, and by reason of this very fact he will suffer the worst punishment.” 2
In these few lines the student encounters concepts which were repeated by the American Founders a thousand times. The Law of Nature or Nature’s God is eternal in its basic goodness; it is universal in its application. It is a code of “right reason” from the Creator himself. It cannot be altered. It cannot be repealed. It cannot be abandoned by legislators or the people themselves, even though they may pretend to do so. In Natural Law we are dealing with factors of absolute reality. It is basic in its principles, comprehensible to the human mind, and totally correct and morally right in its general operation.
To the Founding Fathers as well as to Blackstone, John Locke, Montesquieu, and Cicero, this was a monumental discovery.

Next: Natural Law continued—The Divine Gift of Reason

At first blush the Executive Order he signed that day seemed innocent enough. He simply dropped some words and a semicolon from an Executive Order that President Ronald Reagan had signed some 26 years earlier.

In 1983, Pres. Reagan gave Interpol, an international police organization, formal recognition as an International Organization, but with certain controls to prevent it from becoming abusive towards U.S. citizens.

Specifically, Pres. Reagan made it clear that Interpol’s property and assets could be searched and confiscated. He said Interpol’s archives would be subject to American Freedom of Information Act requests as well as other legal inquiry and discovery. That’s how Reagan wanted to protect U.S. citizens under the Constitution from the potential tyrannical behavior of a foreign police power operating within our borders. Interpol went ahead and set up its U.S. headquarters in our own Justice Department buildings.

And then came December 16, 2009.

Obama’s Executive Order 13524 amended Pres. Reagan’s Executive Order 12425 to eliminate those controls. Interpol’s files are no longer open for search and seizure, and its archives may not be examined. It now has full diplomatic immunity.

In short, Obama gave the green light to Interpol to operate inside the U.S. without regard to our Constitution or American law.

Who is INTERPOL?

The International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) was established in 1923 to help facilitate police investigation work across national borders. The 188 member nations finance it with about $60 million a year from membership fees. It is headquartered in Lyon, France.

Interpol’s governing rules forbid it from investigations that do not overlap the borders of several member countries. Nor may it investigate, so they claim, crimes of a political, military, religious, or racial nature.

Its declared purpose is to focus on a host of other problems: public safety, terrorism, organized crime, crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, piracy, illicit drug production and trafficking, weapons smuggling, human trafficking, money laundering, child pornography, white-collar crime, computer crime, intellectual property crime, and corruption.

Former U.S. presidents have been concerned that Interpol might be employed to charge, arrest, or otherwise harass members of America’s Armed Forces for war crimes or other issues as the result of American activities deemed unpopular around the world. That is one reason why the U.S. has not to this point put itself under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Interpol is the investigative arm of the ICC in the same way our FBI is the investigative arm of the Federal government and its Justice Department.

Can the President Do That?

The genius of the Founders can be seen in their emphasis on checks and balances in the Constitution. They made departments separate as to their assigned functions but made them dependent upon one another to be fully operative.

In order for that balancing act to work efficiently, a system of checks and balances was necessary.

The 17th Principle in Dr. Skousen’s The Five Thousand Year Leap (30th Anniversary Edition), explains the origins and necessity of a system of checks and balances to keep our Federal government not only strong in its assigned duties, but also smart.

That system of checks and balances is failing us. If the other parts of government were doing their job, Obama’s Executive Order 13524 would have met a resounding “NO!” from the members of Congress and the Supreme Court.

Please read the entire article describing Principle 17 for a better understanding. This excerpt below gives the essence of how checks and balances should work. (please note #7 and #17 below)

* * *

The Original Intent of the Founders

As it turned out, the American Founding Fathers achieved a system of checks and balances far more complex than those envisioned by Montesquieu. These included the following provisions:

1. The House of Representatives serves as a check on the Senate since no statute can become law without the approval of the House.

2. At the same time the Senate (representing the legislatures of the states before the 17th Amendment) serves as a check on the House of Representatives since no statute can become law without its approval.

3. A President can restrain both the House and the Senate by using his veto to send back any bill not meeting with his approval.

4. The Congress has, on the other hand, a check on the President by being able to pass a bill over the President’s veto with a two thirds majority of each house.

5. The legislature also has a further check on the President through its power of discrimination in appropriating funds for the operation of the executive branch.

6. The President must have the approval of the Senate in filling important offices of the executive branch.

7. The President must also have the approval of the Senate before any treaties with foreign nations can go into effect.

8. The Congress has the authority to conduct investigations of the executive branch to determine whether or not funds are being properly expended and the laws enforced.

9. The President has a certain amount of political influence on the legislature by letting it be known that he will not support the reelection of those who oppose his program.

10. The executive branch also has a further check on the Congress by using its discretionary powers in establishing military bases, building dams, improving navigable rivers, and building interstate highways so as to favor those areas from which the President feels he is getting support by their representatives.

11. The judiciary has a check on the legislature through its authority to review all laws and determine their constitutionality.

12. The Congress, on the other hand, has a restraining power over the judiciary by having the constitutional authority to restrict the extent of its jurisdiction.

13. The Congress also has the power to impeach any of the judges who are guilty of treason, high crimes, or misdemeanors.

14. The President also has a check on the judiciary by having the power to nominate new judges subject to the approval of the Senate.

15. The Congress has further restraining power over the judiciary by having the control of appropriations for the operation of the federal court system.

16. The Congress is able to initiate amendments to the Constitution which, if approved by three-fourths of the states, could seriously affect the operation of both the executive and judicial branches.

17. The Congress, by joint resolution, can terminate certain powers granted to the President (such as war powers) without his consent.

18. The people have a check on their Congressmen every two years; on their President every four years; and on their Senators every six years.

The Importance of Preserving the Founders’ System

President Washington felt that the separation of powers with its accompanying checks and balances was the genius of the American system of government. The task was to maintain it. In his Farewell Address he stated:

“It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another.

“The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power and proneness to abuse it which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.

“The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern, some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.” 9

The Founders’ Device for “Peaceful” Self-Repair

During nearly two centuries that the Constitution has been in operation, it has carried the nation through a series of traumatic crises. Not the least of these have been those occasions when some branch of government became arrogantly officious in the administration of its assigned task or flagrantly violated the restrictions which the Constitution placed upon it. As President Washington indicated, there is a tendency for some of this to occur continually, as is the case in our own day, but when it reaches a point of genuine crisis there is built-in Constitutional machinery to take care of it.

By way of contrast, we have scores of nations which claim to have copied the United States Constitution, but which failed to incorporate adequate checks and balances. In those countries, the only remedy, when elected presidents have suspended the constitution and used the army to stay in power, has been to resort to machine guns and bombs to oust the usurper. This occurs time after time. What the Founders wished to achieve in the Constitution of 1787 was machinery for the peaceful means of self-repair when the system went out of balance.

SO MR. OBAMA & INTERPOL – What are we to do? The horse (Executive Orders) was let out of the checks and balance barn long ago.

Coming soon – “The Imperial President and Executive Order History.”

If you stop to think about it, the government that the founder’s envisioned was really very minimal—non-intrusive, strong to defend us, out of our lives for the most part, but always directed by a basic set of principles that are and remain universal to all people everywhere.

Somewhere down the road, some Americans began to get afraid of failure and competition in their lives. It was “unfair.” They wanted some big hammer stronger than themselves to force compliance in whatever problem they had so life would be fair.

Unfortunately, they began to find a big hammer in government. And those in government thought it perfectly fine to do for others what they couldn’t do for themselves. Your neighbor has two cars? If you wanted one you can’t just take it, that’s stealing. But lobby the government to increase taxes on people making more money than you, then they can’t afford that second car and everything is fair again.

That old tired failure formula hasn’t worked in the past and can’t work in the future. Why? Because government control of lives to that extent is like a trailer park in tornado alley—it attracts corruption and power to individuals instead of the people.

Today, we’re so far down that path of government meddling and control, most Americans have stopped looking to help themselves and are looking for the government to take over. It’s expected—it’s demanded—it’s nuts.

The Founders saw that pattern among societies throughout history. It’s everywhere the research is available to find it. Just this week I read about a dynasty in ancient China where the new emperor burned 2,000 years of Chinese history and on penalty of death ordered everyone to teach, speak and practice his ideas only. That was 2,200 years ago. There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to tyranny.

The Founder’s challenge was how to protect the individual in a cooperative as large as ours. Their great contribution was how to protect the rights of the individual yet preserve the freedoms of the whole.

That’s a tough challenge. But they found it. The roots of the solution were discovered in ancient Israel and the Anglo-Saxons. The idea was simple enough—to empower “the people.”

Here’s how dad explains it, beginning on page 15 of the Five Thousand Year Leap.

The Founders Note the Similarities between Anglo Saxon Common Law and People’s Law

As the Founders studied the record of the ancient Israelites they were intrigued by the fact that they also operated under a system of laws remarkably similar to those of the Anglo Saxons. The two systems were similar both in precept and operational structure. In fact, the Reverend Thomas Hooker wrote the “Fundamental Orders of Connecticut” based on the principles recorded by Moses in the first chapter of Deuteronomy. These “Fundamental Orders” were adopted in 1639 and constituted the first written constitution in modern times. This constitutional charter operated so successfully that it was adopted by Rhode Island. When the English colonies were converted over to independent states, these were the only two states which had constitutional documents which readily adapted themselves to the new order of self government. All of the other states had to write new constitutions.

Here are the principal characteristics of the People’s Law in ancient Israel which were almost identical with those of the Anglo Saxons:

1. First of all, they were set up as a commonwealth of freemen. A basic tenant was: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” (Leviticus 25:10.) These same words are inscribed on the American Liberty Bell.

Whenever the Israelites fell into the temptation to have slaves or bond-servants, they were reprimanded. Around 600 B.C., a divine reprimand was given through Jeremiah: “Ye have not hearkened unto me, in proclaiming liberty everyone to his brother, and every man to his neighbor: behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord.” (Jeremiah 34:17)

2. All the people were organized into small manageable units where the representative of each family had a voice and a vote. This organizing process was launched after Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, saw him trying to govern the people under Ruler’s Law. (See Exodus 18:13-26.)

When the structure was completed the Israelites were organized as follows:

Moses

V.P. (Aaron) and V.P. (Joshua)

A Senate or Council of 70

A Congress of Elected Representatives

1000 Families

100 Families

50 Families

10 Families

Single family

3. There was specific emphasis on strong, local self-government.

Problems were solved to the greatest possible extent on the level where they originated.

The record says: “The hard causes they brought unto Moses, but every small matter they judged themselves.” (Exodus 18:26)

4. The entire code of justice was based primarily on reparation to the victim rather than fines and punishment by the commonwealth. (Reference to this procedure will be found in Exodus, chapters 21 and 22.) The one crime for which no “satisfaction” could be given was first-degree murder. The penalty was death. (See Numbers 35:31.)
5. Leaders were elected and new laws were approved by the common consent of the people. (See 2 Samuel 2:4; 1 Chronicles 29:22; for the rejection of a leader, see 2 Chronicles 10:16; for the approval of new laws, see Exodus 19:8.)

6. Accused persons were presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. Evidence had to be strong enough to remove any question of doubt as to guilt. Borderline cases were decided in favor of the accused and he was released. It was felt that if he were actually guilty, his punishment could be left to the judgment of God in the future life.

When the structure was completed the Israelites were organized as follows:

Note: These numbers are approximations based on the census recorded in the first chapter of the book of Numbers of the Old Testament.

Howard B. Rand, an American lawyer, reviewed these principles and wrote:

“When the time came for the United States of America to adopt a constitution, our forefathers modeled it after the perfect Israelite system of administration.” (Howard B. Rand, Digest of the Divine Law, Merrimac, Massachusetts: Destiny Publishers, 1943, pp. 130-31.)

These solid principles became the tow ropes down the stream of history for over a thousand years. Today Americans must take hold of those tow ropes if our nation is to survive. We must:

1. Acknowledge the inspiration of the Founders’ Success Formula.

2. Reinstate Constitutional principles in our government.

3. Revive our love for God, family, and country.

4. Rejuvenate morality in our lives, in our businesses, and in our country.

I love history’s tell-tale explanation of what works and what doesn’t when it comes to governing a society. And no matter how hard overlords try to cover the truth, later generations always uncover their corruption to one degree or another, and prove once again that eternal principles violated never equate to human growth or humans reaching their greatest potential.

And so, history shows that all man-made governments have failed to ignite and unleash our greatest capacities. The only exceptions are those governments that included any of the undying principles upon which our Constitution was built, such as the governments operating for the Anglo-Saxons and the Israelites. Aside from these, most cultures operated under the domain of strong men, monarchs, tribal chiefs, and a ruling class with the power to impose their laws based upon personal whim, and always oppressive against human rights.

The Founding Fathers loathed this bloody history of humanity—millions of people constantly being beaten down to slavery by so many tyrants and self-appointed rulers. The founders called this repressive form of government “Ruler’s Law.” For ages it was common in Europe and throughout the world, and certainly continues in many places today.

As my father stated in The Five Thousand Year Leap: “The long history of Ruler’s Law is one of blood and terror, both anciently and in modern times. Under it people are stratified into an aristocracy of the Ruler’s retinue while the law to the common people is one of perpetual poverty, excessive taxation, stringent regulations and a continuous existence of misery.” (Page 13.)

Proof that “blood and terror” remains the outcome of Ruler’s Law can be seen today in any of the socialist totalitarian regimes now operating in Cuba, North Korea, and in many other pockets of oppression scattered throughout Asia, the middle east, Africa, and the old Soviet Republic. If we could fly to these places today, we could be personal witnesses to political imprisonment, starvation, repressive poverty, and crushing suffocation of basic human rights that is in fact the order of the day for a sizeable part of our world’s population. These are the bloody, horrible testimonies to the abject failure of Ruler’s Law—proof that it does not and never has offered progress and happiness found in those governments where the people have a voice.

As discussed in my first column, the Founders were seeking a balanced “Center” where the dynamics of government were neither tyranny on one hand nor anarchy on the other. Let’s look at my father’s words from The Five Thousand Year Leap for more clarity on the Founder’s attitude toward establishing a government under the voice of a free people and the contrast between Ruler’s Law and People’s Law.

The Founders’ Attraction to People’s Law

In direct contrast to the harsh oppression of Ruler’s Law, the Founders, particularly Jefferson, admired the institutes of freedom under People’s Law as originally practiced among the Anglo Saxons. As one authority on Jefferson points out:
“Jefferson’s great ambition at that time [1776] was to promote a renaissance of Anglo Saxon primitive institutions on the new continent. Thus presented, the American Revolution was nothing but the reclamation of the Anglo Saxon birthright of which the colonists had been deprived by a ‘long trend of abuses.’ Nor does it appear that there was anything in this theory which surprised or shocked his contemporaries; Adams apparently did not disapprove of it, and it would be easy to bring in many similar expressions of the same idea in documents of the time.” (Gilbert Chinard, Thomas Jefferson: The Apostle of Americanism, 2nd edition, revised, The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1975, pp. 86-87.)

Characteristics of Anglo Saxon Common Law or People’s Law

Here are the principle points of People’s Law as practiced by the Anglo-Saxons:

1. The Anglo-Saxons considered themselves a commonwealth of freemen.
2. All decisions and the selection of leaders had to be with the consent of the people, preferably by full consensus, not just a majority.
3. The laws by which they were governed were considered natural laws given by divine dispensation, and were so well known by the people they did not have to be written down.
4. Power was dispersed among the people and never allowed to concentrate in any one person or group. Even in time of war, the authority granted to the leaders was temporary and the power of the people to remove them was direct and simple.
5. Primary responsibility for resolving problems rested first of all with the individual, then the family, then the tribe or community, then the region, and finally, the nation.
6. They were organized into small, manageable groups where every adult had a voice and a vote. They divided the people into units of ten families who elected a leader; then fifty families who elected a leader; then a hundred families who elected a leader; and then a thousand families who elected a leader.
7. They believed the rights of the individual were considered unalienable and could not be violated without risking the wrath of divine justice as well as civil retribution by the people’s judges.
8. The system of justice was structured on the basis of severe punishment unless there was complete reparation to the person who had been wronged. There were only four “crimes” or offenses against the whole people. These were treason, by betraying their own people; cowardice, by refusing to fight or failing to fight courageously; desertion; and homosexuality. These were considered capital offenses. All other offenses required reparation to the person who had been wronged.
9. They always attempted to solve problems on the level where the problem originated. If this was impossible they went no higher than was absolutely necessary to get a remedy. Usually only the most complex problems involving the welfare of the whole people, or a large segment of the people, ever went to the leaders for solution.

The contrast between Ruler’s Law (all power in the ruler) and People’s Law (all power in the people) is graphically illustrated below. Note where the power base is located under each of these systems. Also compare the relationship between the individual and the rest of society under these two systems.

Next Discussion:
The Founders Note the Similarities between Anglo Saxon Common Law and People’s Law

Today’s headlines are piled up with so many fantastic promises they give the illusion it really wasn’t a president we elected but a supreme ruler of some form or another. Even an aide to Mr. Obama let slip this amazing blooper the Sunday prior to the swearing-in ceremony: “Mr. Obama will be ready to rule from day one.”

Ready to rule? Be it a slip or not, the declaration went unchallenged and seems to have become the accepted role of the new president. And based on public response to Mr. Obama’s first months in office, too many Americans seem to support the role of “ruler” in spite of the extreme efforts and cautions of the Framers of the Constitution to guarantee it otherwise.

To control the office of president, our Founding Fathers wisely constructed a government ingeniously balanced with three branches of government–Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. This assured that one department could not exercise too much power over another. Each branch was supposed to be “checked” by the others to keep it within constitutional bounds. With that, the founders hoped that America would never become dominated by “rulers” or tyrants as has been the case through our planet’s first 5000-year experience.

Since the beginning, we Americans have been hearty pioneering types, eager to cross mighty oceans in flimsy boats for the promise of freedom. According to our American ancestors and forefathers freedom meant having a “voice” in decisions affecting their lives. That voice has been silenced.

To better understand why so many millions fled, fought and died to escape the tyranny of rulers and ruler’s law by coming to America, let’s take a look at some of my Dad’s words regarding, “Ruler’s Law vs. People’s Law” as found on pages 11-18, of The Five Thousand Year Leap, 2009 edition. The comments below are taken from these pages, but not necessarily in total. After reading this summary, may I please invite you to read the whole section? You will enjoy the more detailed discussion dad provides.

The Founders’ Political Spectrum

Part of the genius of the Founding Fathers was their political spectrum or political frame of reference. It was a yardstick for the measuring of the political power in any particular system of government. They had a much better political yardstick than the one which is generally used today. If the Founders had used the modern yardstick of “Communism on the left” and “Fascism on the right,” they never would have found the balanced center which they were seeking.

It is extremely unfortunate that the writers on political philosophy today have undertaken to measure various issues in terms of political parties instead of political power. No doubt the American Founding Fathers would have considered this modern measuring stick most objectionable, even meaningless.

Today, as we mentioned, it is popular in the classroom as well as the press to refer to “Communism on the left,” and “Fascism on the right.” People and parties are often called “Leftist,” or “Rightist.” The public do not really understand what they are talking about.
Measuring people and issues in terms of political parties has turned out to be philosophically fallacious if not totally misleading. This is because the platforms or positions of political parties are often superficial and structured on shifting sand.

The American Founding Fathers Used a More Accurate Yardstick

Government is defined in the dictionary as “a system of ruling or controlling,” and therefore the American Founders measured political systems in terms of the amount of coercive power or systematic control which a particular system of government exercises over its people. In other words, the yardstick is not political parties, but political power.

Using this type of yardstick, the American Founders considered the two extremes to be anarchy on the one hand, and tyranny on the other. At the one extreme of anarchy there is no government, no law, no systematic control and no governmental power, while at the other extreme there is too much control, too much political oppression, too much government. Or, as the Founders called it, “tyranny.”
The object of the Founders was to discover the “balanced center” between these two extremes. They recognized that under the chaotic confusion of anarchy there is “no law,” whereas at the other extreme the law is totally dominated by the ruling power and is therefore “Ruler’s Law.” What they wanted to establish was a system of “People’s Law,” where the government is kept under the control of the people and political power is maintained at the balanced center with enough government to maintain security, justice, and good order, but not enough government to abuse the people.

The Founders’ political spectrum might be graphically illustrated as follows:

WE WILL CONTINUE THIS DISCUSSION IN Column #2 by Paul Skousen