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Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address where 50,000 soldiers were killed or wounded in a 3 day battle, July 1-3, 1863.
Lincoln stated, November 19, 1863:
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation,
conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us –
that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion —
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain
— that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom —
and that government
OF the PEOPLE,
BY the PEOPLE,
FOR the PEOPLE,
shall not perish from the earth.”
President Theodore Roosevelt stated in 1903:
“In NO other place and at NO other time has the experiment of government
OF the PEOPLE,
BY the PEOPLE,
FOR the PEOPLE,
been tried on so vast a scale as here in our own country.”
Is “Government OF the People, BY the People, FOR the People” perishing?
President Calvin Coolidge, April 19, 1926:
“The whole system of American Government rests on the ballot box.”
The U.S. Constitution mentions the word:
- “ballot” 3 times;
- “vote,” “votes,” “voted,” 15 times; and
- “elect,” “elected,” “election,” “electors,” 18 times.
The Federalist Papers, written to ratify the Constitution, mention:
- “vote,” “votes,” “voted,” “voter,” 60 times;
- “elect,” “elects,” “elected,” “election,” “electors,” 226 times.
But never once are instructions given on how to have “an honest election.”
It was assumed members of all political parties would be honest, God-fearing citizens, who would refuse to stoop to voter fraud.
But what if people no longer fear God?
John Adams wrote October 11, 1798:
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other …
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.
Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.”
Harper’s Weekly Magazine, October 7, 1871, featured a political cartoon by Thomas Nast, featuring New York’s William M. “Boss” Tweed with his arm on the ballot box and the caption:
“Boss Tweed, ‘As long as I count the Votes, what are you going to do about it? say?’”
Washington Post writer David Broder, in his article, “HOW ‘LANDSLIDE LYNDON’ EARNED HIS NAME,” March 4, 1990, reviewed Robert Caro’s book The Years of Lyndon Johnson:
“Lyndon Johnson … driven by ‘a boundless ambition’ … had been a story of manipulation, deceit and ruthlessness …
The morality of the ballot box … in which nothing matters but victory and any maneuver that leads to victory is justified …
… Johnson … stole the victory in the 1948 Senate race … to win by the narrowest of margins — the 87-vote victory that earned him the derisive nickname of ‘Landslide Lyndon.'”
Saul Alinsky influenced notable modern-day politicians, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. He wrote in Rules for Radicals, 1971:
“In war the end justifies almost any means …
The question of morality would never arise … Ethics are determined by whether one is losing or winning …
The essence of Lenin’s speeches during this period was ‘They have the guns and therefore we are for peace and for reformation through the ballot. When we have the guns then it will be through the bullet.'”
Would political parties be willing to engage in fraud to win?
In examining the answer, one must consider, that if a political party can justify killing innocent babies, even including it in their platform, is there anything that party could not justify?
What is voter fraud compared to that?
President Theodore Roosevelt, December 6, 1904:
“There is no enemy of free government more dangerous and none so insidious as the corruption of the electorate.
No one defends or excuses corruption, and it would seem to follow that none would oppose vigorous measures to eradicate it.
I recommend the enactment of a law directed against bribery and corruption in Federal elections.”
Like the foundation of a building, the founders of the American Republic built the whole system of government on the assumption that there would be honest elections.
If that is eroded away, the entire structure collapses.
From the national and state level down to the county, city and school board level, elections would be nothing more than a battle over who is the most creative and unscrupulous in their corruption.
President Harry S Truman stated April 3, 1951:
“Unless men exercise their freedom in a just and honest way, within moral restraints, a free society can degenerate into anarchy.
Then there will be freedom only for the rapacious and those who are stronger and more unscrupulous than the rank and file of the people.”
Students are taught America is a democracy;
and historians clarify it is a constitutional republic;
but in reality America has been functioning as neither.
It has seemingly devolved into a despotism of an oligarchy — a relatively small group of deep state insiders and globalists, aided by media and social tech giants are usurping the will of the people.
Webster’s 1828 Dictionary defines “oligarchy” as:
“A form of government in which the supreme power is placed in a few hands; a species of aristocracy.”
Immense effort goes into the legislative process:
- political campaigns,
- registering voters,
- getting to polls,
- voting,
- swearing in,
- introducing bills,
- debating bills,
- voting on bills,
- overriding vetoes.
Yet this is all an exercise in futility if corrupt deep state insiders, given cover by media and tech elites, can orchestrate election fraud and effectively invalidate the entire process.
Usurpation can happen with self-serving election judges, as well as with unelected activist Federal judges.
Thomas Jefferson wrote to William Jarvis, September 28, 1820:
“You seem … to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”
For example:
- The people of Arizona voted English as their official language, but Federal Judges overruled. (9th Circuit, Prop. 106, March 3, 1997)
- The people of Arkansas passed term limits for politicians, but Federal Judges overruled. (Sup. Ct., Term Limits v Thornton, May 22, 1995)
- The people of California voted to stop state-funded taxpayer services to illegal aliens, but Federal Judges overruled. (Prop. 187, Nov. 20, 1995)
- The people of Colorado voted not to give special rights to homosexuals, but Federal Judges overruled. (Sup. Ct. Romer v Evans, 1992)
- The people of Missouri defeated a tax increase, but Federal Judges overruled. (8th Circuit, Missouri v Jenkins, Apr. 18, 1990)
- The people of Missouri limited contributions to State candidates, but a Federal Judge overruled. (8th Circuit, Shrink Pac v Nixon, Jan. 24, 2000)
- The people of Missouri passed “A Woman’s Right to Know.” Governor Bob Holden vetoed it. Legislators overrode his veto, but a Federal Judge overruled. (U.S. District Judge Scott O. Wright, Sep. 11, 2000)
- The people of Nebraska passed a Marriage Amendment with 70% of the vote, but a Federal Judge overruled. (U.S. District Judge Joseph Batallion, May 12, 2005)
- The people of New York voted against physician-assisted suicide, but Federal Judges overruled. (2nd Circuit, Apr. 2, 1996)
- The people of Washington voted against physician-assisted suicide, but Federal Judges overruled. (9th Circuit, Mar. 6, 1996)
- The people of Washington passed term limits for politicians, but Federal Judges overruled. (Sup. Ct., Term Limits v Thornton, May 22, 1995)
- The people of Montana voted by an overwhelming 74 percent to define a marriage as between one man and one woman, but Federal Judge Brian Morris overruled (Nov. 19, 2014). Rep. Steve Daines explained that an “unelected federal judge” ignored Montanans’ wishes. (Associated Press, Nov. 19, 2014)
Another notable example was on September 5, 1999, when Missouri’s legislators passed a ban on partial birth abortion, which was vetoed by Democrat Governor Mel Carnahan.
In a historic session, 15,000 citizens knelt in prayer in a circle around the State Capitol as the Legislature overrode his veto.
Just days later, Federal District Judge Scott O. Wright ignored the will of the people and suspended the law.
Thirty-one States had passed bans on partial birth abortion, only to have unelected Federal Judges suspend them.
A national bill to ban partial birth abortion worked its way through the U.S. Congress, being signed by the President November 5, 2003.
The next day a Federal Judge suspended the law indefinitely.
A despotic tyrant is one who rules through mandates.
Webster 1828 Dictionary defined a “despotism” as:
“Absolute and arbitrary authority … independent of the control of men.”
Thomas Jefferson warned of judicial despotism to William Jarvis, September 28, 1820:
“Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so … and their power (is) the more dangerous, as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control.
The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots.”
In his 1841 Inaugural Address, President William Henry Harrison warned:
“The great danger to our institutions does … appear to me to be … the accumulation in one of the departments of that which was assigned to others.
Limited as are the powers which have been granted, still enough have been granted to constitute a despotism if concentrated in one of the departments.”
LINCOLN’S VIEW OF COURTS
In 1857, Democrat appointed Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney gave his infamous Dred Scott decision that slaves were not citizens, but property.
In his First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln stated:
“I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court …
The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made … the people will have ceased to be their own rulers,
having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of the eminent tribunal.”
Have Americans “ceased to be their own rulers”?
Have Americans resigned their Government into the hands of deep state insiders, including an “eminent tribunal” of activist judges?
Have we become an American oligarchy?
Can “Government OF the People, BY the People, FOR the People” be preserved?
USURPING POWER
Fifty-five men helped write the Constitution, but only thirty-nine signed it.
Why did some not sign it?
They did not think it put enough limits on the power of the Federal Government.
Men like Samuel Adams, George Mason and Patrick Henry were against the Constitution. Why? Because they thought there were not enough limits on the power of the Federal Government.
The promoters of the Constitution promised the thirteen states that if they ratified the Constitution, the first action of new Congress would be to put limits on the new Federal Government.
There were 12 Amendments proposed, of which 10 were ratified. These ten limitations on the Federal Government are called the Bill of Rights.
Over time, the Federal Government has gradually usurped power from the states.
Foreseeing this, Thomas Jefferson warned Mr. Hammond in 1821:
“The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in … the federal judiciary;
an irresponsible body … working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow,
and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the states.”
Appalled that judges were usurping power, Jefferson wrote September 6, 1819:
“The Constitution is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.”
Harvard Constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz wrote (Newsmax.com, December 5, 2019):
“The Constitution cannot be amended through stretched academic interpretation.”
CONCENTRATED POWER IS THE ENEMY
The Founders disliked concentrated power. Colonial leader John Cotton stated:
“For whatever transcendent power is given, will certainly over-run those that give it … It is necessary therefore, that all power that is on earth be limited.”
James Madison stated at the Constitutional Convention, 1787:
“All men having power ought to be distrusted.”
George Washington stated in his Farewell Address, September 17, 1796:
“And of fatal tendency … to put, in the place of the delegated will of the Nation, the will of a party – often a small but artful and enterprising minority …
They are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People and to usurp for themselves the reins of Government;
destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
President Andrew Jackson stated in his Bank Renewal Bill Veto, July 10, 1832:
“It is easy to conceive that great evils to our country and its institutions might flow from such a concentration of power in the hands of a few men irresponsible to the people.
Mere precedent (stare decisis) is a dangerous source of authority, and should not be regarded as deciding questions of constitutional power.”
President William Henry Harrison stated in his Inaugural Address, 1841:
“The tendency of power to increase itself, particularly when exercised by a single individual … would terminate in virtual monarchy.”
Patrick Henry warn at Virginia’s Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1788:
“My great objection to this Government is, that it does not leave us the means of defending our rights, or of waging war against tyrants …
There is to be a great and mighty president, with very extensive powers — the powers of a king …
This Constitution … squints towards monarchy … Your president may easily become king …
If your American chief be a man of ambition and abilities, how easy is it for him to render himself absolute!
The army is in his hands … and it will be … with him to seize the first auspicious moment to accomplish his design …”
Henry concluded:
“The president … can prescribe the terms on which he shall reign master, so far that it will puzzle any American ever to get his neck from under the galling yoke …
Where is the existing force to punish him? Can he not, at the head of his army, beat down every opposition?
Away with your president! We shall have a king: the army will salute him monarch … What will then become of you and your rights? Will not absolute despotism ensue?”
Lord Acton wrote in his letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1881:
“All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
WHO CONTROLS GOVERNMENT
James Madison sums up the current dilemma in Federalist Paper #51:
“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this:
you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
Is the Judicial Branch under control?
President Andrew Jackson stated in his Seventh Annual Message, December 7, 1835:
“All history tells us that a free people should be watchful of delegated power, and should never acquiesce in a practice which will diminish their control over it.”
Citizens must not to give in to “a practice which will diminish their control over” the power they delegate to government, lest Americans find themselves pledging, not “to the Republic, for which it stands,” but to a new American oligarchy.
Abraham Lincoln reminded citizens, September 16-17, 1859:
“The people are the rightful masters of both Congresses, and Courts.”
CONFUSION OF POWERS
November 18, 2003, even as Massachusetts Legislators were working to define marriage as between a man and a woman, four State Supreme Court Judges “ordered” the State Legislature to pass a law within 180 days recognizing homosexual marriage.
Instead of “Separation of Powers,” the Massachusetts Supreme Court suffered “Confusion of Powers.”
The Judicial Branch of government cannot “order” the Legislative Branch to do anything.
Thomas Jefferson wrote to Abigail Adams, September 11, 1804:
“Nothing in the Constitution has given them (Judges) a right to decide for the Executive, more than to the Executive to decide for them …
But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional, and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature and executive also, in their spheres, would make the judiciary a despotic branch.”
Deciding what laws are needed is the responsibility of the Legislative Branch.
The Judicial Branch is simply to administer the laws according to the meaning the legislators had when passing the laws.
Thomas Jefferson explained to Supreme Court Justice William Johnson, June 12, 1823:
“On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates,
and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”
ALL WOULD BE LOST
Baron Montesquieu, the most quoted writer by the Framers of the Constitution, warned of the dangers of uncontrolled judicial power in his Spirit of the Laws, 1748:
“Nor is there liberty if the power of judging is not separated from legislative power and from executive power.
If it were joined to legislative power, the power over life and liberty of the citizens would be arbitrary, for the judge would be the legislator.
If it were joined to executive power, the judge could have the force of an oppressor.
All would be lost if the same … body of principal men … exercised these three powers.”
Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America (1835), warned:
“The President, who exercises a limited power, may err without causing great mischief in the State.
Congress may decide amiss without destroying the Union, because the electoral body in which Congress originates may cause it to retract its decision by changing its members.
But if the Supreme Court is ever composed of imprudent men or bad citizens, the Union may be plunged into anarchy or civil war.”
Just as during the Civil War, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address inspired the nation, may it again inspire Americans once again to:
“… highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain
— that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom —
and that government
OF the PEOPLE,
BY the PEOPLE,
FOR the PEOPLE,
shall not perish from the earth.”
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Image Credits: Public Domain; Author: Thure de Thulstrup (1848–1930) Blue pencil.svg wikidata:Q7779204; Restored by: Adam Cuerden; Blue pencil.svg; Title: Battle of Gettysburg; Description: L. Prang & Co. print of the painting “Hancock at Gettysburg” showing Pickett’s Charge; Date: 1887; Lithograph: L. Prang & Co. (Boston); Source: Library of Congress; Wikimedia CommonsWikipedia; The copyright holder of this file, Adam Cuerden, allows anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that the copyright holder is properly attributed. The author died in 1930, so this work is in the public domain; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Thure_de_Thulstrup_-_L._Prang_and_Co._-_Battle_of_Gettysburg_-_Restoration_by_Adam_Cuerden.jpg
This post originally appeared at https://americanminute.com/blogs/todays-american-minute/will-government-of-the-people-by-the-people-for-the-people-perish-from-the-earth-lincolns-gettysburg-address-american-minute-with-bill-federer