Enough talk…

This is my final blog.  Not that I spent much time on blogging (or that I was particularly good at it), but I will not blog anymore.  I will not read blogs anymore.  In fact, I wish you wouldn’t either. 

It’s time to act.

What more do we need to say, hear or read?

Our founders bequeathed us peace and freedom by way of liberty and justice for all; and we’ve thrown it all away.  All of it.

It is gone and the illusion that’s left is fading fast.

If you want back what is ours by law, it’s time to act.  If you and your neighbors don’t want it back enough to act, then it’s time to go the way of all foolish nations and learn to live oppressed.  That is what’s coming, you know.

If I’m to write anything more in this space, it will be to announce actions.

 

We need to demand that our politicians stay on their side of the fence, obey their laws, keep their leash on themselves – and off of us.  We need our politicians to obey written constitutions as written, and we can’t expect them to do that without our incessant, urgent and forceful action.

And don’t think that Ron Paul is going to save us either.  If we don’t get off our duffs and do something, then even President Paul’s victory would result in only another assassinated president.

No more talk.  You don’t need any more information than you’ve already got in your tax bill, and in any history book ever written.

There.  I’ve said my bit.  I’m going to go and do something now.  If you’d like to join me, let me know.

Leash Laws – The Only Ones That Matter

With every new anti-constitutional law, people say, “the innocent have nothing to fear.”

Given that none of us are truly innocent (I’ve seen y’all drive, and I know how y’all vote), I already see a a problem.  But given the history of human government (oppression, slavery, genocide and war), that phrase, “the innocent have nothing to fear,” is an inexcuseably stupid thing to say.  …Particularly when a power-mad nut-job decides the meaning of “innocent.”

But OK, how about we turn that saying around and see if it works?  Would an innocent government fear citizens?  Certainly not, right?  But that raises questions about our secretive, increasingly intrusive and authoritarian government.  Or at least it should raise a lot of questions.

Because, who should you fear most; some head-case hermit with a gun, or a malevolent Hitler with a Napoleon complex who has around three million troops (including the Reserves), each armed with weapons that you are forbidden to own?

The loner can kill, at most, 30 or 40 before getting nailed (probably by one of the few citizens still armed).  But when governments go sour, death tolls spike into the millions.  A thief can steal your house; but only government can steal all you own, including your house…along with any record that you ever existed.

Why mention all this depressing stuff? 

The “Continuity of Government Commission” (COGC) and rapidly increasing numbers of anti-constitutional laws seem like a responsible attempt to keep America safe and secure from the zealots who’ve attacked us with boxcutters and exploding shoes.  But there are a couple of important things to keep in mind:

1.      No such radical alteration of our governance happened during the Cold War with nuclear missiles pointed at us.   It never happened when we fought Hitler.  It certainly didn’t happen when Washington, D.C. was sacked and burned by the British.  In fact, the closer in history we were to real knowledge of oppression, the more Americans defended their liberties…not some false sense of “security.”

2.      Our government is already unlike it ever was before.  In every way but open recognition of fact, our government has become fascist (seriously; read how Mussolini – the man who coined the term himself - defined fascism).  You mean nothing.  The government means everything.  Very Un-American.

3.      You hardly need more than #2 above, but keep in mind that the history of such arrangements is 100% grim death and oppression.  There is no good history here.  Only bad.  Very bad.

4.      The laws enacting it have already been signed.  You probably never heard about it.  You can’t have read some of them…they’re kept secret.  …From you.

But hey, the innocent have nothing to fear, right?

If you’d like to do something about this, here’s what you do:

1.      Read this and this.  It won’t take long, it shouldn’t be painful, and it’s a perspective you’ve never been taught in government schools.

2.      You can almost certainly summarize better than I can.  I’m pretty wordy.  So summarize what you get out of those things and write letters to your politicians; particularly the executives.  Ask them to, in short, obey their side of the contracts.  Obey written laws as written.  Tell them to take the leash off of you, and put it on politicians, where it belongs.

3.      Stay tuned.  We must do something organized, public, and (to get the media there) a bit dramatic to insist that politicians obey their leash laws. 

Our constitutions are leash laws, y’know.  They are a leash on power; a leash on politicians; a leash on all who’d be dangerous to you in the most dangerous ways.

Our politicians are dangerous beasts indeed.  It’s time we treat them appropriately.

The Best Compromise Ever

On Thursday, December 20 at around 9:02 and 11:53 am, WFIU FM (Bloomington, Indiana) will air the following in a segment of “Speak Your Mind:”

“This is Andy Horning, and I have what I think is a reasonable request:   

I want politicians to obey written laws, as written.  No “interpretation” from the bench; no “legal precedents;” no ifs, ands or buts. 

If a law is unclear, politicians can clarify it in print.  If a law is bad, then they can change it, or delete it – in print.     

But I want no more fudging or cheating.  I want politicians to obey what’s written, as written.

In other words, I want the Rule of Law under state and federal constitutions, right here in the USA, that we say we’re fighting for in Iraq. 

That’s it.  That’s what I want.   

Yes, I know.  Constitutions are called “outdated,” as if they can’t be amended.  Constitutions are called “living documents,” as if that makes it OK to swindle them, too.    

It’s no surprise that politicians say such things.  Constitutions are a leash on politicians, after all, and you’d never expect those bad dogs to beg for the leash. 

But most of us have problems with constitutions too.     

Take the Bill of Rights.  Many of us want the 2^nd Amendment, but many of us don’t.  About half of us want the 4^th and 5^th Amendments, but half don’t.  It seems that nobody wants the whole 1^st amendment, and almost everybody completely ignores the ninth and tenth.   

We apparently can’t accept that the whole constitution is both the best compromise ever, and the law.  We’re quick to call an unconstitutional foul when it suits us, but are otherwise happy to ignore the laws that protect us from oppression, slavery, genocide and war. 

I challenge you to take just a little time and actually read the state and federal constitutions.  See for yourself if you’re willing to give your neighbor his freedom in order to secure your own.  I’m betting that you’ll conclude that the best compromise of all time is good enough. 

So let’s do this:  Let’s demand that our politicians keep their oaths of office, and obey the laws that both authorize, and limit, their powers.  Let’s accept nothing less.   

Then we will enjoy the blessings of liberty – by allowing others theirs, too. 

For Speak Your Mind, this is Andy Horning.”

 On Friday, the MP3 should be in WFIU’s Archives section.  

It’s Time for an Epiphany

 

I feel sick that not everybody got the message that the press conference had been cancelled; and that some brave patriots (including Paul Wheeler, dressed like a 1770′s patriot, and my old comrades Eric Barnes and Kurt St. Angelo) went to the Statehouse anyway. 

While it looks like a good time was had by all…I apologize!

A lot of people had planned to drive two hours or more each way (including me and my family), and that made no sense on a sleet/snow/death day like Saturday, so I cancelled.

Anyway…

Attached  is a copy of the letter I sent to the Governor in both hardcopy and digital form; and here’s roughly what I would’ve said at the press conference: 

“On December 15, 1791, the Bill Of Rights was ratified to protect citizens from the threat of ungoverned government.  Over the last two hundred and sixteen years, those precious laws have been twisted, inverted and …”interpreted” until they’ve been stolen from us, and our rights are now just an illusion. 

We want our laws back.

We are here today to ask that our politicians keep their oaths of office.  We say it’s time that all politicians and law enforcement personnel who swore to uphold and defend both the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Indiana …do just that. 

We ask, in short, that politicians obey written laws, as written.  No exceptions.  No provisos.  No ifs, ands or buts. 

Thank you. I will now take questions.”

Don’t worry; we’ll reschedule another event.    

In the meantime, assemble your own proof of the abuses heaped upon us by politicians (that’s the easy part).  And get ready. 

Remember, the problem isn’t taxes, wire-tapping, wars, immigration, gay marriage, the Colts, or the Central Library expansion.  Those are only symptoms. 

This is certainly not about Mitch Daniels or even Ron Paul (even though I support Dr. No 100%).  Ideas are bigger than people.

We must not nibble at the branches of our corruption tree, or be distracted by what are only the symptoms of our communal disease.  We need to strike at the root of all of our most serious problems. 

We need to treat the cause.  We must ask for the law, as written, to be obeyed.  Nothing else will do, you know.  Nothing else has ever worked.Please pass this along.  Shout it in the streets.  And then get ready. 

The next wave of citizen awakening is beginning.

It is time, now.   

Re-thinking education. No; REALLY re-thinking education.

Every election season politicians scold us about “education.”  We must pay more, we are told, for the education of our young.  And this education must last from near-birth until at least a Bachelors Degree.  That’s a long time to entrust our kids into govenment schools.  That’s a long time to spend before starting your life.  That’s a lot of money that could be invested in other ways.

Does this make any sense?

Computer Moguls Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (Apple); Bill Gates and Paul Allen (Microsoft), Lawrence Ellison (Oracle) and Michael Dell (Dell) are not the only famous and successful college dropouts.  There are lots of them.  There are also an awful lot of successful people who’d dropped out of high school, or never had any formal schooling at all.

Nobody would be surprised that Jimmy Dean, Louis Armstrong and most other performers aren’t well-educated in the formal sense.  Even gifted writers like Mark Twain, Faulkner and Shakespeare …especially ones like Jackie Collins, had no credentials other than success.  And why bother to mention painters like Monet and van Gogh?  You’d never expect a famous artist to possess a PhD, or even both ears.

Maybe political pundit types like Rush Limbaugh and Nina Totenberg don’t count since they just talk, and it’s their listeners about whose education we need to ponder.  For similar reasons, politicians probably shouldn’t count.  It’s voters who really call the shots.  But not even the brilliant Patrick Henry (he did gain a law degree, but he taught himself…as did President Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln) or George Washington had college education.  Perhaps political theorists like Henry George and Thomas Paine should’ve had college degrees; but they didn’t.

It’s a little odd that politicians, a class of society that ranks lower than you might suspect in education achievement, push us so hard into government schools; but let us continue…

Certainly, you can imagine that multi-billionaires like Kirk Kerkorian, Richard Branson, Robert Maxwell or Thomas Haffa didn’t need college education to amass vast college-free wealth like Kroc and Carnegie and Rockefeller and… 

Hmmm… Is that why they call them “self-made millionaires?”

But what about inventors and scientists like George Eastman and Benjamin Franklin?  How about the Wright brothers, Henry Ford, Michael Faraday, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, Heinrich Schliemann and …Albert Einstein?

Well, sort of.  Einstein wrote his first scientific papers while in high school, dropped out, later failed an entrance exam to college and came up with a lot of his most famous ideas before actually finishing high school.  He eventually got a college degree, but then was unemployed.  He became famous while he worked as …a patent clerk.

Scientists don’t usually become famous anymore, so you’d probably not have heard that child-prodigies like Philip Emeagwali and Jaron Lanier dropped out of high school before their successes in science. 

And if you were to poll the boardrooms of the biggest companies in the world, you may find a bunch of MBAs sitting around the tables.  But the people in the Big Chairs are more often college dropouts – or they never even went to college.  It’s fact that the bulk of the world’s millionaires made their money in real estate, where post-middle-school education just isn’t that useful.  Many other millionaires simply sell stuff, and you don’t need a degree for that.

Yet it’s also fact that throughout history, many of the greatest inventors, scientists, engineers, philosophers, musicians, writers and polymaths (“Renaissance Men” who excelled in numerous fields) had little to no formal education.  Thomas Edison had only three weeks of formal schooling.  Many people, like H.G. Wells, taught for years before they got a college degree, then became famous for doing something barely related to their education.

Despite all the political hand-wringing about a lack of “science and math education,” we have an awful lot of science and math graduates who’re either unemployed, or working in areas unrelated to their education.

Why am I going on about all this?  Because one would be hard-pressed to come up with a successful person who got successful correctly.  That’s why.  Few notably-successful people do what our Teachers Union-Approved education system says is necessary for success. 

…And because well-over half of your local tax load supports a big, fat lie.  That’s why.

Personally, I wish I’d not wasted so much time getting my head twisted around in college.  I wish I had recognized the faulty programming I was receiving sooner, and had acted in the interests of my own life, instead of playing out the whims and bad ideas of politicians.  It could have been like adding twenty years to my life.

None of us should be ants, operating as a collective and living only for the hive.  None of us are machine parts, to be assembled by an all-knowing state into a transmission of political values.  I grieve for the young minds and souls being lock-stepped into some illusory and backwards “diversity,” which amounts to the ultimate conformity, crushing the individuals we were born to be.  Our founders had a much better plan in mind for us, of course.  

And yet, home-schooling moms just may build an even better future than what our founders dared dream:

Imagine learning without any political interference at all. 

Imagine learning where those who’re most deeply connected to a child’s well-being and development as a successful person, are the ones who feed the mind as well as the body.

Imagine kids coming from home-schools growing up with the knowledge that politicians did not make them what they are today. 

Imagine that these kids then look at the world and political tangles we leave them, and then declare it not good enough.

Ahhh…There is hope. 

Mitch’s Tax Plan?

While I’ve talked about it plenty, it just occurred to me that I’d never written down what I think of the Governor’s tax plan.  And that should be a very easy thing to do…

First, I never, ever said that simply eliminating property tax and replacing it with sales tax would solve any serious problems.  This was misreporting by the media and misinterpretation by a lot of people.  Simply changing tax policy, or swapping one tax for another only moves numbers around.  It solves nothing – especially in the long run.  …And especially considering the web-work of “federal”/state tax rules (corporate status, speech rights, tax “deductions,” etc.) that have made us all serfs, we can’t eliminate one tax up front without taking another tax in the, um…well…somewhere else.

All taxes are a kind of property tax.  Government seizes your income (money), sales (money) or property tax (money) in differing ways but the same ultimate effect.  And if you don’t pay, and aren’t rich/powerful enough to fight back, the government will take more of your property. 

People lose homes to income tax too, y’know.

Though Indiana’s implementation of property tax is awful, the problem isn’t just tax policy; the problem is un-governed government – or power without limits written down in law.  Our politicians are breaking the laws that authorize their powers, and that is what has lead to outrageous spending, and of course, destructive taxation.

Governor Daniels’ proposal does push school funding an infinitesimal fraction closer to what is mandated by the Indiana Constitution (just an itty-bitty, truly tiny fraction).  But other than that, his proposal protects only the governments’ treasury, not citizens’ rights and property.   He shuffles around numbers and leaves untouched the illegal practice of stealing homes to sate political greed.  

There is only one solution to our mess, and that is to lasso our politicians back under law.  In Indiana, that law is both the Indiana Constitution, and the Constitution of the United States of America.  In Indiana, all of our elected officials, police and armed forces swear an oath to uphold both; and it’s time they Just Do It.

Pray without ceasing…

Maybe I’m just burnt out.  But I am weary-sick and grievous sore of going through one campaign season after another without any collective discernment or even discussion of right from wrong, success from failure…or truth, from the more common lies. 

We’ve been talking Las Vegas odds and Fortune 500 money, as usual, without ever seriously discriminating the true differences between candidates and the government they’d embody.  We’ve allowed the pundits to ask their stale, dryly stupid questions, and we’ve bought the resulting media blather about likely match-ups and political strategy on Election Day.  We have never (most of us, anyway) questioned the proper role of government, how much is too much, is war really so great, and just who are these Federal Reserve Bankers, anyway?

Damn us all as fools; this is no game. 

Those who don’t see what’s coming and vote anyway, are fools drawing the rest of us into a fatal vortex of complacency.

But then, if you’re reading this page, I’m guessing that you, like me, are equally disgusted by our antics, yet are praying on hope.

I really do hope. 

I hope that we’ll straighten our heads before next November, when the fate of the world (really) is determined.

With the brilliant exception in Ron Paul’s amazing campaign, my hope seems unfounded.  With what I know of the GOP, it seems too much to hope that the best candidate could win in such a horribly corrupt power structure.  With what I think I know of third parties and voters’ reaction to them, it seems too much to hope that third party candidates could get our attention at last.  It seems too much, in other words, to hope that God will save us from ourselves when we have shown so little interest in Him.

If you’ve a mind to, I hope you’ll join me in prayer that a sufficient number of Americans would:

• Take more interest in our future than in football.
• Push aside the silly pundits who spew irrelevance and demand real information.
• Treat our right to vote as a critical and dangerous responsibility; giving it all the attention this life and death function deserves.
• Understand that voting is just a tiny part of our citizenship and accountability to our neighbors.

Of course, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). 

Let us pray.

If you were hiring a burger-flipper…

Some people who know that I support the Fair Tax have wondered why I’m not a fan of Mike Huckabee.  Other people, who’ve heard me go on about our wide-open borders wonder why I’m not waving a flag for Tom Tancredo.

Well, I also like the idea of UFOs sending rose-scented messages to politicians, but I just can’t rally for Dennis Kucinich.  And while I’m strongly in favor of laissez-faire individual liberties, and while Rudy does look better in drag than he does in a suit, I really can’t vote for him.

Am I picky?  Yes; but no more picky than you or anybody else …in any area other than in politics. 

Let me explain.

If you were to hire a chef, you’d want to know that he or she can cook, right?  You’d check the resume, reviews of previous restaurants, and you’d call interviews to look him or her straight in the eye and assess for yourself whether this person will be a credit or discredit to your organization.  If you were to hire a race car driver, you’d want to know all about previous results, sponsorships, injuries, ability to assess and set up a car…and whether this person will look good and present well in the team jacket.

No matter the job, you want to know that the person you’re hiring isn’t an embarrassing flake or a cagey swindler.  You want to know that the person is respected, truthful, scrupulous and disciplined enough to show up and Do The Job.

I’m no different.  I’m looking for a candidate for the constitutional office of President of the United States of America who will do the job he (or she) is supposed to do.

Sadly, there’s currently only one of those.  Happily, after a very long time without even one, there is one – Dr. Ron Paul.

How can I so boldly state that there’s only one?

Well, what’s the job of the President of the United States of America?  What does Article II, Section I of the constitution say the president must swear an oath to do?

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

So it’s simple then.  None of the candidates (excepting perhaps Hillary) has been president before, but which candidate has already proven invariably determined to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States? 

If you were to actually read the Constitution and Bill of Rights (yeah, I know; who’s got the hour or so necessary to properly read all that old stuff), then look up the career voting records, issues and even current presidential candidacy rhetoric, you’d see for yourself that only one candidate has any interest in obeying written laws as written.  Only one candidate would honor the Oath of Office.

Really.  Just one.  The other candidates are running for some other office.

I wish there were more to choose from.  But one is better than none; and now is definitely better than never.

America Was Great…

“America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”  This saying is typically attributed to that pro-American Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville.  It’s an interesting saying, but de Tocqueville never said it.  Also, the saying itself is only half-true. 

Americans have always been humans; not so different from all those sinners in France.  A seed of truth in the quote is that there was a time when Americans had to act hat-tipping, help-your-neighbor civil.  There was a time when Americans acted better than they were.

During de Tocqueville’s visit to the USA (1831), and in fact through the hundred-some years until Income Tax, central banking and the New Deal (as opposed to the Best-Ever Deal) changed all the rules, the church was the only Department of Health, Education and Welfare – even in our biggest cities.  Churches ran hospitals, schools, welfare and social cooperative programs.  It was church mothers who’d helped rear our young.  It was church fathers and sons who’d helped at planting time.  It was church leaders who’d opposed slavery and unscrupulous businesses, and it was the church that served as FEMA for natural disasters. 

So excommunication meant the loss of key social services …if your barn burnt down, there’d be no church-based barn-raising to build it back up. 

The only alternatives to churches in those days were fraternal societies/clubs that also operated on a voluntary basis, and which also operated by strict moral code.

In other words, to get social services and insurance from nothing more than a voluntary collection plate, Americans had to behave. 

That was not such a bad thing!  Per capita crime rates in cities (many of which were more densely populated a hundred years ago) were only a tiny fraction of what we have today even in rural areas.  Murder was rare, big news when even kids walked around with firearms and it was perfectly legal to use your machine gun with a silencer (before you dress up and go off to church).

But now, instead of a voluntary tithe, Americans apparently prefer to give up half their wealth (actually more by recent estimates; and 22% more of their time just since 1979!) to a government that itself has neither interest nor experience in morality.  The combination of tax laws that gag preachers and policies that replace traditional church roles have made churches socially irrelevant; and have made politicians our new gods.

Fortunately for some, these politicians are for sale.  Unfortunately for the rest of us, our politicians have been bought.  Such corruption of power is as ancient as Adam and as unavoidable as decay. 

Our nation became great only by constitutionally limiting the size and scope of corrupt government.  That was the Old Deal…politicians on a leash. 

 But since the New Deal we’ve devolved into more regulation, taxation and litigation than all other nations on earth …combined.  And we must compete with nations that have far less of all of that.

There are no unions or EPA or OSHA or patent enforcement or minimum wage in China, yet we buy things made there, right? Canada and Europe remove their VAT and GST taxes before shipping them to our stores, and we suck it all up, right?   

So while we pat ourselves on the back for the USA’s “progressive” politics, we’re promoting slavery, unregulated pollution, disease, oppressive regimes and powerful enemies all over the world.  When we buy shoes from Portugal, medical equipment from Germany or telecom service from France (Sacré bleu!), we’re firing Americans.

See?  We don’t even act good now (hey, I’ve seen how y’all drive).   

Of course I suggest we try III John 1:11: “Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good.”  If that’s the best we could do, fine; because it’s the best that’s ever been done. 

But if we don’t cut our politicians, their regulations, litigation and taxation down to competitive (and, by the way, legal) size, we will not only cease to be great; we may just cease to be.

A Declaration of Rights

I’m a little up-to-here with those who deify Thomas Jefferson, and who’ve never even heard of George Mason.  Without Mason, American may have never had the three-branched and separated federal powers; and there’d have certainly been no Bill of Rights. 

George Mason was a prominent (and phenomenally prescient) anti-federalist, which propels him to the top of my short list of history’s People We Should Have Listened To. 

Yes, the Declaration of Independence is wonderful.  But it’s really not as good as the work that preceded and inspired it, George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights.

 So here, in its entirety, is that Virginia Declaration of Rights.  I’ll try to shut up and let the words speak for themselves, but whenever I interrupt, it’ll be in blue: 

A DECLARATION OF RIGHTS made by the Representatives of the good people of VIRGINIA, assembled in full and free Convention; which rights do pertain to them and their posterity, as the basis and foundation of Government.

1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

This is a much more clear, understandable and sensible statement than Jefferson’s admittedly more poetic “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”  John Locke coined the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of property,” but it was Mason who first made it law.

2. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the People; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.

3. That Government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community;–of all the various modes and forms of Government that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the danger of mal-administration;–and that, whenever any Government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right, to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the publick weal.

4. That no man, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments and privileges from the community, but in consideration of publick services; which, not being descendible, neither ought the offices of Magistrate, Legislator, or Judge, to be hereditary.

5. That the Legislative and Executive powers of the State should be separate and distinct from the Judicative; and, that the members of the two first may be restrained from oppression, by feeling and participating the burdens of the people, they should, at fixed periods, be reduced to a private station, return into that body from which they were originally taken, and the vacancies be supplied by frequent, certain, and regular elections, in which all, or any part of the former members, to be again eligible, or ineligible, as the law shall direct.

Please read that again.  Particularly the part starting with “they should, at fixed periods, be reduced to a private station…”  If only we took this to heart!

6. That elections of members to serve as Representatives of the people, in Assembly, ought to be free; and that all men, having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the community, have the right of suffrage, and cannot be taxed or deprived of their property for publick uses without their own consent or that of their Representative so elected, nor bound by any law to which they have not, in like manner, assented, for the publick good.

Please read that again, too.  This is so good it makes me grieve that we don’t do it.

7. That all power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by any authority, without consent of the Representatives of the people, is injurious to their rights, and ought not to be exercised.

8. That in all capital or criminal prosecutions a man hath a right to demand the cause and nature of his accusation, to be confronted with the accusers and witnesses, to call for evidence in his favour, and to a speedy trial by an impartial jury of his vicinage, without whose unanimous consent he cannot be found guilty, nor can he be compelled to give evidence against himself; that no man be deprived of his liberty except by the law of the land, or the judgment of his peers.

9. That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

10. That general warrants, whereby any officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offence is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive, and ought not to be granted.Oh my.  If only…

11. That in controversies respecting property, and in suits between man and man, the ancient trial by Jury is preferable to any other, and ought to be held sacred.

12. That the freedom of the Press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotick Governments.

13. That a well-regulated Militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free State; that Standing Armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

Is this clear enough?  People defend their own lands.  Professional, permanent standing armies are dangerous.  Is this brilliant, or what?

14. That the people have a right to uniform Government; and, therefore, that no Government separate from, or independent of, the Government of Virginia, ought to be erected or established within the limits thereof.

15. That no free Government, or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.

16. That Religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and, therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practise Christian forbearance, love, and charity, towards each other.

These last two are woefully missing from our U.S. Constitution.  This is brilliant.  Just brilliant. 

George Mason, I tip my hat to you, sir.  We owe you much.