Judge Andrew P. Napolitano: Freedom’s Extinction

“Freedom is always just one generation away from extinction.”

— Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)

Thomas Paine felt a sense of desperation in the colonies six months after the Declaration of Independence was signed. This was just six months after the Declaration of Independence was signed. He wrote a famous and candid essay titled “The End of Time” about it. “The American Crisis,” It all started with the famous line “These are the times that try men’s souls.” He used a similar argument to Ronald Reagan’s 188 years later.

This argument essentially states that our individual liberties are fragile. Because government is fundamentally a negation of liberty, it is liberty’s greatest threat. We must use our freedoms with wisdom and courage. We must be skeptical about what the government does and says.

Reagan and Paine, as well as those who risked their lives to fight for England, understood that our freedoms were natural to us.

Freedom is the right to make personal choices — about religion, speech, association, self-defense, travel, privacy, money, property — without a government permission slip or anyone’s approval. A right is an indefeasible claim that all people have against the entire world. Only when we are found guilty by a jury of violating another’s rights can our rights be removed or denied.

This is at most the theory of The Declaration. It’s the theory that led to the secession of colonies from England, and it was the theory that led to the creation of the American republic.

Our rights can be canceled or denied today. Without a jury trial, politicians and bureaucrats may take our liberty, property, and liberty.

These are the times we need to be careful of. Our government spends $2 trillion per year more than it takes home. Meanwhile, the Russian dictator taunts us by paying for a war against Ukraine that the Ukrainians can’t win.

In the United States, the two political parties in Congress have spent $31 trillion more over the last 100 years than the feds, have written any law or regulated any behavior, taxed any amount, spent any sum and interfered with any property or process they thought would help them politically.

American private industry added 517,000 jobs to its payroll last month. This brought down the unemployment rate to its lowest level in 58 years. This was also the lesson learned by the traders who move equity markets. The markets dropped!

Down? The traders are afraid that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in response to positive economic news. Why? Because the Fed has so flooded the market with fake money — more dollars chasing the same amount of goods and services — that inflation is rampant.

The Fed has made it more costly to borrow money to correct its mistakes by increasing its base rate. This induces the large banks, which are dependent on the Fed for artificial cash, to raise their interest rates. Higher interest rates will induce less or deferred borrowing and thus — this modern monetary theory goes — a reduction in economic activity and a lessening of inflation.

Interest on borrowing is simply the rent we pay for other people’s money. Why should government planners regulate this rent? It shouldn’t. It should be regulated in the same way as all rents (except for real estate in New York City where rent controls from World War II era are still in effect) according to the law of supply-demand. Is it legal for the Fed regulate interest rates This is the only issue that the Supreme Court has not ruled on in 100 years of fake currency.

But the federal government is one of limited powers, all of which are derived exclusively from the Constitution — and there is no grant or even hint of a grant in the Constitution of power to the feds or their offspring to regulate interest rates.

The Constitution explicitly prohibits the government’s taking of property without just compensation. When the government spends more than it collects in revenue, it borrows — often Fed-created money — in order to pay its bills, and that causes more inflation and it pushes the obligation to repay the borrowing with interest on to generations of Americans as yet unborn.

Basically, the government will take your money without increasing taxes.

Today’s federal government is funded by borrowed money and fake cash.

What is the ultimate goal of spending $100 millions in Ukraine? It is either the expulsion from Crimea and Ukraine of Russian troops and civilians, or the removal of Vladimir Putin from power. Is either of these circumstances a threat to American national security? No.

Is Putin threatening the United States? No. The United States has threatened to kill him. Ask Sen. Lindsey Graham (Republican from South Carolina), who asked the president to assassinate Putin. We have arms near the Russian border. They have none at theirs.

Are we able to identify who in Ukraine was given American military equipment or cash? No. No. No. Is it possible for Congress to fund a war and not declare it? But Congress can fund a war without declaring it.

So why then are we funding war against Russia? We do so because the government in Washington is out of control, and the president is not popular. When that happens, the government will choose war. Presidents kill to make a point.

Our property is being devalued by a political system at home that is incapable of living within its means, abiding the Constitution, as well as by saber-rattling overseas in the face of a nation that does not pose a threat to America.

Freedom is just one generation away from extinction, but it’s possible that this nightmare event will be because those in whose hands the Constitution has been placed for safekeeping loathe it. These constitutionally unfaithful stewards have taken our liberty and property.

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