Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve edited this…
http://wedeclare.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/the-united-states-constitution.pdf
Updated Annotations to the US Constitution
Gay…Marriage? Is THAT what we think this is about?
PRESS RELEASE: Gay…Marriage? Is THAT what we think this is about?
Andrew Horning, Candidate for Indiana US Senate
May 15, 2012
Freedom, IN: Like all things political, the “gay marriage” issue has become far more battle cry and “litmus test” than sane discussion.
What we call gay marriage is not (I repeat, NOT) about a church recognized covenant between a man, a woman, and God. No, the church gave that unto Caesar a long time ago. That’s why the minister says, “…by the power vested in me by the State of…”
Marriage, my fellow Americans, is politics.
Now, marriage is about Social Security, bereavement pay, visitation rights, property rights, work rules, tax rules, and more rules, rules rules from the Great Caesar’s Golden Calf. Marriage is legal, contractual, corporate, political privilege, rights, guardianship and healthcare.
So, those who now want to claim the moral high ground on traditional marriage have wallowed into the preposterous role of promoting disparity in matters of simple justice.
I propose we get politics entirely out of marriage. From the Christian perspective, we should take from Caesar what is God’s. From the secular perspective, we should make policy and law that does not involve sorting, allocating and denying rights based upon abstract and arbitrary political categories.
Not only is this the moral thing to do, it is also the Law of the Land. Our constitutions were written in large part to prevent politicians from granting “to any citizen, or class of citizens, privileges or immunities, which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens.” (Indiana Constitution Article I Section 23)
That is what I’m putting on the ballot – rules that are few enough to know, simple enough to understand, and important enough that they’re to apply equally…to all.
This is all written down in the annotated Indiana and US Constitutions at
http://horningforsenate.com
. These precious, workable laws will be on the US Senate ballot exclusively under the name, Andrew Horning (L).
###
Watching the eyes go cold…
I had to kill a rooster about an hour ago. He’d been attacking people, including me. We all agreed that, while he was a prize-winning-beautiful bird, we had too many roosters and this taloned terrorist had to go. So I finished my workday, and put on some gloves and safety glasses. My youngest son Hark locked the dogs inside to avoid undue excitement (you don’t want your dogs to develop a taste for your chickens), and he also put on gloves and safety glasses.
Yeah, the rooster was mean and could jump high. His spurs are sharp and his beak drew blood too. A few weeks ago, Hark accidentally blinded the rooster’s right eye while fighting him off, but that only made the rooster even more fearful and aggressive.
I think he knew what was coming, as Hark and I started across the field toward the free-ranging flock. Maybe the saddest part for me was when he ran behind his favorite hen; the one whose back he’d plucked completely bare. The cocky bully turned chicken in his final moments, and my heart sank. I almost called the whole thing off. Maybe I should have.
I don’t know.
Anyway, while my son and I both chased him down, I got the short straw as the one able to grab the rooster first. I scooped up the squawking chainsaw of beak, feathers and two-inch spurs, and swiftly broke his neck.
I suppose it was as quick a death as possible, but man, I hated doing that. It’s not as easy as it looks in movies; but worse, I took a life that was fighting for life. He wanted to live, and I killed him.
Damn.
Since moving to the farm, I’ve had to kill many animals, for many perfectly understandable reasons, but I’ve never gotten used to it. My hands shake and my spirit is heavy for a long time after strangling, shooting or twisting the life out of even the most vicious creature. If anything, it’s getting harder every time.
Do not take me for a saint. When I was very young, I had little trouble extinguishing the life of frogs, squirrels, or whatever else was on the wrong end of my shoe, slingshot, bow or gun.
But a more mature perspective has revealed to me the preciousness of life, and the horror of stealing life. I don’t kill from childish fear or flippancy. While I don’t at all begrudge hunters their sport, killing is never a sport to me. It’s just something that sometimes has to be done in the real world.
Yes, this is about politics. Damn it all, this is most definitely about politics.
What is politics, after all, but the delegation of reality to somebody else? Politics is about taking somebody else’s money for our convenience and comforts. It’s about risking somebody else’s life for our sense of security. It’s about blaming somebody else for our choices and making somebody else pay for our mistakes. Mostly, it seems these days, it’s about getting other people to do your violence for you.
Right?
Why else would we put up with it?
Anyway, the original societal design written into our state and federal constitutions is quite different from what we delude ourselves with today.
We citizens are supposed to take account for our own violence/killing…personally. We are still (the laws of the land haven’t been altered) to be citizen soldiers, trained in the use and accountability of deadly force. We are to consider what it means to look into another person’s eyes before snuffing out all his or her opportunities. We are to think long and hard before entering another person’s nation to serve some political whimsey. We are, in point of fact and fact of the point, to be responsible adults who treat others as we’d like to be treated.
It’s by no accident that we’ve laid most of the personal risks of war upon our young and ill-informed. We know the human brain’s ability to assess risk and benefit is undeveloped and fragile in today’s soldiering age-range of teens to thirty. It’s too easy to whip up the young into a Hatfield v McCoy, or Colts versus Bears tribalism. They are too brave, too fearless, too free of adult restraint, to be the antiviolent force that freedom requires.
It’s too easy for the fearful, selfish, greedy and foolish among us to direct these young bucks to do our evil for us in the name of patriotic duty.
Maybe this is a long way to come to my core point, but I didn’t want to just come out and directly state that I abhor that “…thank a soldier” mentality.
I have great respect for soldiers. I’ve seen the service to great things for people who serve. I’ve met very few rotten soldiers and plenty whom I admire. Pretty much everybody in my family forever has been in the military at some point; some for their whole careers. My dad was a decorated war pilot and POW.
But exactly who is it that ever takes away liberty? Who is able to oppress, enslave and steal on a large scale? Was it Stalin or Mao themselves who killed so many millions of their own citizens?
…Or did they have professional help?
Isn’t it obvious from even the most brief examination of humanity’s historical record that the permanent, professional standing armies that our founders warned us against are still our greatest threat?
Yes, it’s a bloody horrible thing to take a life with your own hands. We should hate it. We should avoid it as though it’s a stain upon our soul. It is a taste of hell.
But it is a far worse, insane and wicked thing to delegate our killing to others and act as though it is some hallmark of civility.
Horrible, evil things happen. Horrible, evil things must be opposed; sometimes by force. Deadly force is very rarely necessary, but it does happen that it is necessary to kill.
But shouldn’t we bring that force into the light and make it both accountable, and personal?
Yes, taking life is ugly. It is hellish horrid. We really should own up to that. We should personally weigh that evil against the comforts we claim from it.
It is a shame that’d make our founders shudder that we have turned this abhorrent thing into a career for so many, for so long.
Looking for a few good voters
I plan to place a series of large-format ads in the Indianapolis Star and a few other key newspapers around the state (donations made out to Horning For Senate, if you’re so inclined). It will be a simple ad, with a simple logo, maybe a picture of me, some contact information, and something like this:
Looking for a few good voters
If you think this nation can keep going the same direction we’re going, then, please, read no further and have a nice day.
If, however, you’re concerned about our future, then please, read on. We may need you.
OK, the bad news is that we have nobody but ourselves to blame for the cronyism, the violence, the injustice and self-destruction of our culture. We The People have exactly and only what We The People have chosen with our wallets, our actions, our voices (and/or silence) and our votes. We certainly cannot blame the politicians and political abstractions we’ve chosen over and over again. They’re just doing what comes natural, what they can get away with, and what we ask them to do.
The good news, however, is that We The People can have exactly and only what We The People choose. We don’t have to turn to anybody else to fix our problems. It is not too late to clean up our messes and choose the life we want to live. It’s never too late; and there is currently no need for a “revolution” anywhere but in our own minds and voting arms.
Of course, the bad news with that is that we don’t get what we want, we get only what we choose…and we’ve felt as though there are no choices but that two-headed crony network we call the “two party system.” We have been betrayed and deceived. It’s understandable that your trust in any politician, even ones you’ve never given a chance, is very low.
Then again, the good news with that is that there never really has been a “two party system;” that’s just an abstraction of some pretty bad choices on our part. We can fix that with just a little information.
Alright, so the bad news is that most people can’t even imagine how this country could work better. Trained in government schools and suckled on government handouts, surrounded by government actions and always aware of our wars, nobody alive remembers how life worked before we had all the “programs,” taxation, regulation and litigation that are now sucking us dry. Nobody alive remembers how “national security” worked before we began endless games of international “whack a mole” with our children’s lives. Nobody alive can remember how we could have schools, roads, jobs or healthcare without giving everything unto our new Caesars. We are all caught in the monkey traps of Social Security, Medicare, “national security,” “education” and “welfare.”
Ahh, but there is more good news. The good news that outweighs all the bad is that it’d take only a little more than a third of Hoosier voters to set this nation to a better direction, a proven direction. It’d take only slightly more than a third to crack the cronies’ pedestals and govern our government by rules that are few enough that everyone can know them; simple enough that everyone can understand them; and important enough that every single one of them is to be obeyed by everyone (even the rich and mighty) equally, without exception, all the time.
And my fellow Hoosiers, those rules exist; they are proven to work better than anything else humans have ever tried; and they are already the Law of The Land. They can be ours again as soon as we choose them.
This is not fantasy. The fantasy, though a very bad one, is what we’ve been doing. The dreamers are those who think we even can preserve the authoritarian, lawless status quo. The fools are those who keep voting for it.
We all make decisions every day that impact our families, our careers, our children’s future. I’m asking only that you give more thought to your vote than you have ever dedicated to it before. I’m asking that you read your state and federal constitutions to see what you have been missing, how you have been misled, and how you can fix it all on Election Day.
We can fix this country. We can live in peace, prosperity, security and freedom if only we choose to. That choice will be at least in part represented as Andrew Horning (L) for US Senate. But the choice is yours.
Putting the constitutions on the ballot…again
Andrew Horning, Candidate for Indiana US Senate
December 12, 2011
Freedom, IN: There’s been some noise about this year’s National Defense Authorization Act. The December 5 Forbes.com published the ominous-sounding article, “The National Defense Authorization Act is the Greatest Threat to Civil Liberties Americans Face.”
Oh hogwash. The Act is just a bunch of words. Granted, a big bunch of words at 926 pages for S.1867 alone – that’s many, many times the number of words in the entire constitution as amended…plus the Declaration of Independence…plus some historical commentary…plus my local phone book. It’s another 908 pages for H.R. 1540.
These words are not law. These words are, in fact, illegal. Null and void at best, the Act is clearly unconstitutional:
- The United States of America hasn’t constitutionally declared a war since WWII, so the authorization bill, an annual crime for the past 48 years, could constitutionally authorize only the maintenance of navies (we’ve never amended the constitution to allow for the maintenance of anything else outside state militias).
- The Act could be legal only as far as the limits of the US Constitution’s authority grant (see Amendment 10 for clarification on this).
Americans do face threats to their civil liberties, but only those they’ve voted for themselves. We can at any time choose to leash our unrestrained politicians; I’m running on that hope, in fact. I aim to govern our government to what’s clearly written for all to read.
It’s all here (
http://lpin.org/files/2011/12/THE-UNITED-STATES-CONSTITUTION-1211.pdf
); we only need to choose it. It will be on the ballot for 2012 under the name, Andrew Horning (L).
###
Calling all Antiestablishmentarianists!
If you’ve been looking for a wholesome, constructive way to thumb your nose at the entrenched, corrupt, violent and stupid “Two Party System,” I’ve a suggestion…
Join my campaign team for US Senate!
This will be a practically zero-dollar campaign that I mean to run with mostly newbies. I’m looking for people who love life …and mistrust politics enough to track it down, beat it down with a club and keep it hungry on a short leash.
I plan to fill all key positions in the next month or so. I’ll need people to update lists, blast emails, coordinate volunteers, make movies, chalk sidewalks, perform street art, and so on.
For those who couldn’t make it today…
Today was Step #1. I think it’d be great to do pretty much the same thing again on Constitution Day, Saturday, September 17. We had a good band of patriots in attendance today, but hopefully, Constitution Day will be much, much better.
Here’s pretty much what I’d said today:
Eleven score and fifteen years ago, our founding fathers waged war against their own government.
Yet it seems that to many Americans today, Independence Day is about flags, fireworks, and a day off work.
Let us humbly recognize that because of our founders’ sacrifices, We The People have what We The People have chosen. Our votes and our daily actions leave us nobody else to blame for any of the injustice, corruption and violence around us.
Indeed if the so-called “Arab Spring” of uprisings in the middle east teaches us anything, it’s that ALL government, even the most oppressive, is by consent of the governed.
Here in the USA, we can simply choose how we’d like to live; and we can do it in safe, air-conditioned, button-pushing comfort.
After generations of choices, it’s obvious that the life we have chosen is not at all what our founders sacrificed, fought and died to bequeath us.
Out of the 27 specific complaints listed in the Declaration of Independence, there is only one, rather minor mention of taxation. Obviously there were no complaints about healthcare or Social Security. The colonists weren’t mad about working conditions or Daylight Saving Time. They weren’t asking for anything special or even new.
Our nation’s founders’ first and underlying complaint was that they’d been denied what was due all English people: They were denied English Law.
The very first-listed complaint against the king was that “He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”
That’s important; let me repeat that. “He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”
Now, to those who don’t know anything about Libertarians, it may seem odd that I would stress that our libertarian founders wanted laws.
But what we have instead of laws today is an endless stream of contradictory words, spit out like machine gun bullets by bureaucrats, judges, lawmakers and executives that produce the effect of power without authority; politics without any restraint …ungoverned government. Rules change daily, corruption is everywhere, and the violence is incessant.
This lawless, politicized anarchy is just not working.
It’s a basic human need that we must know the rules by which we must live. It’s the most basic justice that these rules should be applied in a way that’s fair, or at least predictable.
So here’s what we’re asking for:
We want rules that are few enough that everybody can know them; simple enough that everyone can understand them, and important enough that every one of them is to be obeyed by everybody without exception, all the time. We want these rules to stay put for long enough to plan a business or a retirement; or better yet, to raise a child to see that law and order is a thing to be desired, and chosen.
OK, so we’ve all had reasons to oppose such simple order and justice. Maybe our fear of foreigners, our political tribal loyalties and hatreds, the past sins of slavery or our greed and ignorance made us use the constitutions as tug-of-war ropes. We’d grab onto our favorite rights to yank away somebody else’s.
But those of us here today have learned our lesson. We will sacrifice our pet violations, or even the degree of freedom we think the constitutions deny us, in order to gain some measure of liberty and justice, for all.
We want to know the rules. And we’re all fine with what is already the proven, signed and once-revered Law of the Land.
Bottom line: We want our constitutions, state and federal, as written, back.
…They must be kidding me
I wasn’t going to blog about such things. I really do mean to focus on my primary objective and avoid wasting time on anything else.
However, just moments ago I just opened the Final Order/assessment of a $503.68 “civil” penalty to the Horning for Governor campaign for what was, perhaps, the all-time most trivial offense against Indiana Election Commission paperwork.
We failed to properly close-out our meagerly funded campaign and report the money we didn’t make by their deadline. That’s it.
But the whopping fine, amounting to a huge percentage of what my campaign raised, is not what I’m writing about.
And no, it’s not that I’m miffed that Obama or Charlie White got away with much more serious violations of campaign and civil law, while a poor schlemazel like me has to cough up the dough.
(though, in case you’re wondering, I am miffed about all that).
No, I’m really writing about the two (2) quarter-sheet notices slipped into the envelope.
The two sheets were identical, and said,
ATTENTION
The styrofoam cube enclosed in this envelope is being included by the sender to meet a United States Postal Service regulation. This regulation requires the letter or package to be ¾ of an inch thick at its thickest point. The cube has no other purpose and may be disposed of upon opening this correspondence.
For any further questions or comments about the styrofoam cube only, please call 1-888-624-5990.
Now, there is so much wrong with this, that I hardly know where to start. Forget that StyrofoamTM is a trademark of the Dow Chemical Company and should …by law, be so noted. Forget that the enclosed bit was not a cube at all (it was supposed to be a parallelepiped, but it was smashed into a rhombus). I don’t care so much about clumsy or incorrect grammar and such (“is being included,” or “disposed of upon opening”). And I’m assuming I was given two notices by mistake (may I never find out that this is another regulation!)
No, this is just one of those freakishly weird regulations that none of us could possibly know about unless we’re in the business of sending dangerously, criminally thin packages. I see this as analogous to having to duck under a sign that says “WARNING, Low Sign / ¡ADVERTENCIA, Señal de baja! placed in accordance with the Officious, Unnecessary and Badly-Worded Signage Act of 2010”
I’m quite tempted to call that 888 number and… No, strike that. I don’t even want to know how many people staff that line at taxpayer expense. I think I’ll just slip the “cube” and the little sheets into the documents I’m mailing to the Governor (
http://wedeclare.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/713/
). Maybe he’ll be amused. Maybe the package will look suspicious and get “special attention.”
Sigh…
We must oppose this unregulated regulation/lawless lawmaking madness with all our wits and might; and we must not waste any more time in this important endeavor.
We need to know the rules
I think we should meet at 11:30-11:45am on the east steps of the Statehouse in Indianapolis to get ourselves composed and our story unified. I don’t know how many want to speak, but let’s do our best to make it only a few, and make it brief. It’s never good to give too much rope to the media when they get to determine who, or what, gets hanged.
Who: Citizens who want to know the rules
What: Asking the Governor to do his job, as written
When: July 4, 12:00 noon
Where: East steps of the Statehouse, Indianapolis, IN
We need to know the rules
Freedom, IN – The time is long past when we could fuss about “big government” versus “small government;” or about raising or lowering taxes. Even war versus peace, or freedom versus oppression are irrelevant abstractions right now.
We need to know the rules. We need to see them in print so we can judge infractions, or whether they’re even rules, as opposed to excuses. We need to know that our rules will be rules long enough to start a business, plan a retirement, or raise a family. We’ve lived for too long without this simple, foundational understanding on how we humans are to get along.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse? Nobody knows the laws that we’re supposed to live by! Nobody could. It’s debatable, in fact, whether we have any laws at all out of the billions of contradictory word-strings woven into the incomprehensible and corrupt tangle that our judges, lawyers, bureaucrats and other politicians call “laws.”
None of their words apply equally to all. None are enforced as written. All of us know that our tribal, crony lawlessness is corrupt, immoral and destructive to our society’s peace, prosperity and life. It is madness. And history shows that our lot will grow much worse if we don’t come to our senses very soon.
It is the heart of sanity to establish simple rules by which we can live. The most basic justice demands that these rules apply equally to all. It’s only reasonable that these laws must be knowable by all.
So this is what we’re asking for: rules that are few enough that everybody can know them; simple enough that everybody can understand them; and important enough that all of these rules must be obeyed equally by everybody all the time. And we’re fine with the rules (the real rules) that are already written, already proven to work, and already the Law of the Land.
###
Do you really want to live like this?
According to our Declaration of Independence, governments derive “…their just powers from the consent of the governed.” But as demonstrated in the Middle East today, all government powers, just or unjust, are by consent of the governed; and that consent can be withdrawn from even the most oppressive dictators.
So the problem with despotism is never really the despot. The problem is that for every despot there is a majority of citizens who empowered that despot. Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Caligula and countless others didn’t kill hundreds of millions by themselves, you know. Do not fool yourself; people like Kim Jong Il, Charles Taylor, Hirohito, Mugabe, Quadhafi, Nebuchadnezzar II, Nero or even Vlad the Impaler are everywhere and always among us. They are nobody special by themselves.
Here in the USA, we can conveniently, painlessly choose how we are to live. Deny it or not, we have exactly what the majority of us have freely chosen. We may say we want change, but we vote for mostly elites and incumbents. We may say we don’t like the corruption and money in politics, but less than 10% of us ever vote for anything else. Many dictators of the past century, including Benito Mussolini, were elected by people just like us.
So consider what we’ve chosen. We’ve not had even a year’s peace since the War to End All Wars. The Home of The Brave has sacrificed freedom for empty promises of security. The Land of The Free has the world’s highest percentage of citizens in prison. We really do tax people out of their homes to pay for homelessness programs; and we tax, regulate and litigate away businesses to stimulate the economy. We guard borders everywhere in the world except at home. For the first time ever, we’re working longer hours, taking fewer vacations, spending less time with our kids, and living more poorly than the previous generation. The rules we must live by are unknowable and ever-changing – law has now become little more than incantations, as high priests of law in grand courts decree, apparently on whim, how things are to be.
Are you happy with this? Is this how you want to live?
Humans can learn. When we want something, we know all about our choices of color, flavor, engine size, craftsmanship, price or caliber. We spend crazy amounts of time on sports, or romance novels. I know people who can tell you the vertical jump height of their favorite basketball stars, or can detail Oprah’s diet ups and downs.
But by what I’ve personally seen in tens of thousands of average voters, We The People apparently don’t care about the injustice and madness we’ve chosen to make of our lives. We know less about those we’ve chosen to lord over us than we know about movie stars. We certainly don’t know anything about our state and federal constitutions.
Despite what we may say, our votes say that we want unaccountable people of status and money to tell us what to do. Our behavior in the voting booth is beckoning a dictator. I believe we’re going to get one soon.
May I make a request? I’d like for you to read your state and federal constitutions and see what we’ve thrown away…and could have back anytime we choose. They are still law, though we act otherwise. They would still work better than anything else ever tried, if we’d only try them.
If you’ve taken the hour or so it takes to read the federal constitution, you already know that federal government should be invisible to almost all of us almost all the time. The Indiana constitution is the contract most relevant to Hoosier life. It’s a longer read, but still not terribly long or complicated. Both comprise rules of life that are few enough to know, simple enough to understand, and important enough that everybody should obey them without exception, all the time. The free life these contracts describe is simpler, safer, and in every way better than the politicized lives we’re living now.
You can read these constitutions (with my annotations)here:
http://wedeclare.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/the-united-states-constitution.pdf
http://wedeclare.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/indiana-constitution-book.pdf
Please ask other people to read them too. If you know somebody who wants to read them, and has no internet access, and you’re too cheap to print them out yourself, then contact me at thefreedomfarm@gmail.com, and I’ll get you copies.
Yes; it’s that important to me. I have to live here too…
