Member Training - Enumerated Powers of the Constitution

TRANSCRIPT

Generated using A.I.; please forgive any mistakes.

Let's go ahead and get into the main thrust of tonight's meeting, where we're going to be covering the Constitution over the next several weeks, going into the different sections of it, what they mean, debunking a lot of the myths out there about the Constitution, what it is, what it isn't, and helping us to better understand so that we can better defend and better apply. and better hold people accountable to these principles. Let's just go ahead and get started.

You're talking about the enumerated powers, but of course we are doing this so that we do not perish. Every society that loses its understanding of its foundational principles is destroyed, and so we need to follow those. that principle of gaining knowledge. And the reason behind everything that we do is, of course, to build understanding of and then adherence to the principles that have built free nations. We need to expose the satanic conspiracy and then, of course, to build an effective resistance to that conspiracy. So everything that we do is combining both education and action. It doesn't do any good just to learn something and don't do anything about it. But at the same time, you're not going to be very effective in your action if you don't have a proper understanding. So we're all about doing the proper mixing of the two.

So what is the Constitution? There are different understandings of it and applications of it. And so I wanted to kind of share with you what some people on one side, the kind of anti -Constitution side, say about it. And then we'll get into, of course, what is its intent. So you have George Bush when he was people were complaining about the Patriot Act and about the warrantless searches and whatnot. He said, stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It's just a GD piece of paper. So he didn't think even though he swore an oath to uphold it, he didn't think a whole lot of it. And then we have pop pop stars like Britney Spears saying this. about the Constitution. Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes, and we should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens. Just trust whatever the government, you know, people in power say, and just trust that they'll do the right thing and that everything will turn out okay. So you have people that don't care about it. You have people that say, you know, it doesn't matter about the rules. We just should trust our politicians.

And then you have people that claim that the problems that we have are the result of the Constitution. Famous anarchist or I don't know if he'd be called libertarian, but he's very popular amongst anarchist thinkers. He says, whether the Constitution really be one thing or another, this much is certain, that it has either authorized the government that we have had or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it meaning the Constitution is unfit to exist. So he's coming forward with the idea that either the Constitution gave us the totalitarian state that we have today or it was designed not to be able to stop it. So either way, it can't exist or should doesn't isn't fit to to exist is his is his idea. Mark, yes, you got to unmute Mark. Yeah, I've been. Like our founding father is a libertarian over 30 years. This Spooner, he is no libertarian at all. Okay, fair enough. Anarchist, we'll call him. So, you know, in this idea, right, the founding fathers, you look at the Federalist Papers, they would talk about, you have James Madison saying that parchment barriers don't do us any good. We have to enforce it. And no piece of paper can enforce it. It'd be this. It'd be the same. His comments are the same thing about the Ten Commandments. Right. This is whether the Ten Commandments really be one thing or another. This much is certain that it has either authorized such a society as we have or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it's unfit to exist. It's a ridiculous statement. It's a ridiculous sentiment. Nothing. Paper words cannot enforce themselves. All words, all paper have to have people. to enforce them. And so to blame the Ten Commandments for the society we have is ridiculous. And to blame the Constitution for the government we have is ridiculous. It is the lack of adherence to those things that we are in the situation that we are in, not because of those things. And so we shouldn't fall for those lies and those ideas. Mark, go ahead.

A good analogy is blaming crosswalks for pedestrians getting hit by cars. Right. They're powerless to prevent it. Or they cause the wreck, right? So this guy, Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote the book Democracy in America, trying to help people figure out why America was special. Why were we able to do something that... Europe has never been able to do. Like with the French Revolution, even when they supposedly were, you know, when the conspiracy was promoting a fake version, a counterfeit version of liberty, it of course led to tyranny. Why can't Europe do what America does? And he explained in Democracy in America that every citizen is taught the doctrines and the evidences of his religion, the history of his country, and the leading features of its constitution. It is extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things. And a person wholly ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon.

So in the early 1800s, this was America. The average person was very well acquainted with his religion, with the history of his country. and the leading features of the Constitution. Those three things. Very well aware. Even though we weren't one religion, the population understood their religion, whatever their individual religion was. And they understood the evidences of it, of Christianity in general, and the history of America and the Constitution itself. That's why we were special. Now today, we have less people today than ever before that understand. their religion, let alone the evidences of it. We have very few people that could tell you the history of our country, the real history of it. And almost no one has read the Constitution, let alone could tell you what it was about, what its leading features are. So you can see why the enemies of freedom desperately want to change the culture and make us ignorant of these things. Because if we understand them, We can and will defend them, but we can see the situation that we're at today where we don't know these things. And so we are in no position to be able to defend them, which also tells us the solution. The solution is to understand and to help build the understanding of others.

So these are some clips of a video that probably most, if not all of you, have seen called Overview of America, where John F. McManus, who was the former president of the John Birch Society, goes through and talks about some of these leading features of our history and our Constitution. If you haven't seen the video, I encourage you to look on YouTube to watch it. But these are some just important things for us to go over real quick. When our founding fathers decided they'd had enough of British oppression, they broke away and declared independence. They stated as self-evident truth in the Declaration of Independence that men are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. In other words, God gave man his rights. And that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And in the very next sentence, the founders define the proper role of government. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted. This is the entire philosophical base of our nation.

Here the government cannot legitimately redistribute the wealth and redistribute the wealth and power over the people's lives and dominate man's existence with the press of taxation, regulations and laws. According to the founder's government, it was to be a negative force, which leaves people alone. Its sole function is to protect citizens from one another, from foreign governments, especially from their own government itself. Founders did not create a government to be a positive force, to do things for people, to take from some, to give to others. When a government starts doing something for one citizen, it has to take from another to do so. And in the process, it gains control over both. Britain's rulers didn't accept the Declaration of Independence, so our forefathers had to fight a war to make it stick.

By 1783, the War for Independence had been won, and British forces sent back across the sea. But the governmental system at that time was weak. It had no power to settle disputes between the states, nor the power to tax for proper needs, such as national defense. So in 1787, delegates from 12 of 13 states met in Philadelphia. to revise the system and they produced an entirely new government structure known as the constitution of the united states keeping faith with the thunderous insertions in the declaration the constitution was written to govern the constitution was written to govern the government not the state And not the state. Each of which was a jealous guardian of its own sovereignty.

The founders created a central government with strictly limited power. This left the states free to compete with one another. To be the best state. The one with the least amount of taxation and controls. One where citizens would want to build a business. And raise a family. That spirit of competition produces excellence. As honest competition always does. It's important to note that the Constitution wasn't forced on the people. It was sent back to the states for ratification and several of the founding fathers wrote essays in an effort to persuade fellow Americans to adopt this new system of government. Some of the essays written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay were collected into a volume known as the Federalist Papers. Those essays provide valuable insights into the intent of the founders in establishing our government.

Eventually all 13 states were actually... 13 states ratified the Constitution. Each ratified the first 10 amendments known as the Bill of Rights, further tying the hands of the federal government. These amendments are indeed about rights. But it would have been better had the Bill of Rights been labeled the Bill of Limitations on Government. Why? Because it's vital to realize that the Bill of Rights never gave citizens any rights whatsoever. Its sole purpose was to safeguard God-given rights. by limiting government power. The founders even insisted that Congress shall make no law about speech, religion, the press, assembly, the right to keep and bear arms, and so on. These amendments are directed squarely at the federal government, not the individual, and not the states. They are like most of the Ten Commandments, which are essentially, thou shall not. The Bill of Rights says Congress shall not. All the way up to the marvelous 10th Amendment, which says 10th Amendment.

If we forgot anything, you can't do that either. When Benjamin Franklin exited the Constitutional Convention, he was asked by a woman, sir, what have you given us? His immediate response was, a republic, ma'am, if you can keep it. Yet most Americans today have been persuaded that our nation's governmental system is a democracy. The difference between these two is essential in understanding Americanism. and the American system. Before we discuss political systems, however, it's helpful to address the confusion that has been spread about the political spectrum. Many have been led to believe that the political spectrum places groups such as communists on the far left, fascists or dictators on the far right, and political moderates or centrists in the middle. However, a more accurate political spectrum will show government having zero power on the far right to having 100% power on the far left. At the extreme right, there is no government. The extreme left features total government under such labels as communism, socialism, nationalism, fascism, any form of total government.

Those who claim that Nazis and fascists are right-wing never define their terms. This amounts to spreading confusion. Toward the middle of the political spectrum can be found the type of government limited to its proper role. of protecting the rights of the people. That's where the Constitution of the United States is. Those who advocate such a form of government are really constitutional moderates. So let's analyze the basic forms of government. They are monarchy or dictatorship ruled by one, oligarchy ruled by a few, democracy ruled by a majority, republic ruled by law, and anarchy which is ruled by no one. In discussing these five, we'll see that they can be narrowed down to that can be narrowed down to even fewer. Looking first at monarchy or dictatorship, this form of government doesn't really exist in a practical sense. It's always a group that puts one of its members up front. A king has his council of nobles or earls, and every dictator has his bureaucrats or commissars, the men behind the scenes. This isn't ruled by one, even though one person may be the visible leader. It's ruled by a group. It's ruled by a group. So let's eliminate monarchy, dictatorship, because it never truly exists.

Oligarchy, which is ruled by a group, is the most common form of government in all history. And it is the most common form of government today. Most of the nations of the world are ruled by a powerful feud. Therefore, oligarchy remains. At the other end, we find anarchy, which means without government. Some people have looked over history and found that many of the crimes were committed by governance. So they decided that having no government might be a good idea. But this is a mistake. Because as the ancient Greeks stated, without law there can be no freedom, our founding fathers agreed and held that some amount of government is a necessary force in any civilized orderly society. In a state of anarchy, however, everyone has to guard life, liberty and property, and the lives of family members. Everyone must be harmed. And movement is severely restricted because one's property has to be protected at all times. Civilized people have always hired someone to do the guarding, a sheriff, a police force, a sheriff, or some branch of government. or some branch of government. Once law enforcement was in place, the people were freer. They could leave their property, work in the fields and so on.

Ensure the proper amount of government makes everyone freer. There are some who advocate anarchy, however, not because they want no government, but because they don't like what they have. They use anarchy as a tool for revolutionary change. The condition of anarchy is very much like a vacuum where something rushes into filling. He's calculating anarchists work to break down the existing government, rioting, looting, and terrorism. Tragically, the people living in such chaos often go to those best able to put an end to it and beg them to take over and restore order. And who was best able to put an end to the chaos? The very people who started. The anarchists who created the problem, then created government, run by them, and created government, where they have total power. where they have total power. This is exactly what happened in Russia that led to Lenin taking total power and in Germany where Hitler's brownshirts created the chaos that brought him to power. Anarchy isn't a stable form of government. It's a quick transition from something that exists to something that exists to something desired by the power hungry. It's a temporary condition. Because it isn't permanent, we eliminate it as well. The word democracy comes from two Greek words. Demos meaning people and crotian meaning to rule. Democracy therefore means the rule of the people. Majority rule.

This of course sounds good. But suppose the majority decides to take away one's home or business. Obviously, there has to be a limit. The flaw in democracy is that the majority isn't restrained. If more than half the people can be persuaded to want something in a democracy, they rule. What about republic? Well, that comes from the Latin. Res meaning thing and public. It means the public thing, the law. A true republic is one where the government is limited by law. Leaving the people alone. leaving the people alone. America's founders had a clean slate to write on. They could have set up an oligarchy. In fact, there were some who wanted George Washington to be their king. But the founding fathers knew history. And they chose to give us the rule of law in a republic. Not the rule of a majority in a democracy. Why? Let's demonstrate the difference in the setting of the Old West. Consider a lynch mob in a democracy. Consider a lynch mob. 35 horseback riders chase one lone gunman. And they vote 35 to 1 to hang him. Democracy has triumphed. And there's one less gunman to contend with. Now consider the same scenario in a republic. The 35 horseback riders catch the gunman and vote 35 to 1 to hang him. But the sheriff arrives. And he says, you can't kill him. He's got his right to a fair trial. So they take the gunman back to town. The jury of his peers is selected. They hear the evidence and the defense.

They decide if he shall hang. Does the jury even decide by majority rule? No. It has to be unanimous or he goes free. The rights of the government aren't subject to majority rule but to the law. This is the essence of a republic. Many Americans would be surprised to learn that the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution, nor does it appear in any of the constitutions of the 50 states. The founders did everything they could to keep us from having a democracy. James Madison, rightly known as the father of the Constitution, wrote in essay number 10 of the Federalist Papers, Have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention? Have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property? Have in general been short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths? Alexander Hamilton agreed and he stated, we are a Republican government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of democracy. And John Adams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Democracy never lasts long, it soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. The founders had good reason to look upon democracy with contempt because they knew that the democracies in the early Greek city-states produced some of the wildest excesses of government imaginable. During that period in Greece, there was a man named Solon who urged the creation of a fixed body of law, not subject to majority whims. Where the Greeks never adopted Solon's wise counsel, the Romans did. Based on what they knew of Solon's laws, they created the 12 tables of the Roman law and in effect built a republic that limited government power and left the people alone. Since government was limited, the people were free to produce. With the understanding that they could keep the fruits of their labor.

In time, Rome became wealthy and the envy of the world. In the midst of plenty, however, the Roman people forgot what freedom they tell. They forgot that the essence of freedom is the proper limitation of government. When government power grows, people freedom receives. Once the Romans dropped their guard, power-seeking politicians began to exceed the powers. Some learned that they could elect politicians who would use government power to take property from some and give it to others. Agriculture subsidies were introduced, followed by housing and welfare programs. Inevitably, taxes rose, and controls over the private sector were imposed. Soon, a number of Rome's produced could no longer make ends meet. Productivity declined, shortages developed, and mobs began roaming the streets demanding bread and circuses from the government. And he were induced to trade freedom for security. Eventually the whole system came crashing down. They went from a republic to a democracy and ended up with an oligarchy under a progression of the Caesars. Thus, democracy itself is not a stable form of government. Instead, it is the gradual transition from limited government to the unlimited rule of an oligarchy. Knowing this, we as Americans are ultimately left with only two choices. We can keep our republic as frank and fair, or we will inevitably end up with an oligarchy, a tyranny of the elite.

Okay, so that was... longer than I usually do for training to have a video, but I thought it was good to use a tool. There's no reason to reinvent the wheel. And that laid out some key principles that we're going to kind of just encapsulate here with this quote. The Constitution is not a law, but it empowers the people to make laws. It's a document to govern the government, in other words. And so too often I hear people talk about how that they, you know, They'll say something, well, does the Constitution authorize, you know, does it give me the right to do this? Or does it give me the right to do that? No, that's not what it even was intended to do. Because, of course, our rights come from God. And so the Constitution's job is simply to delegate authority that the people themselves have to government. What is it they're allowed to do to be able to protect your life, liberty, and property? And then as was laid out in the video, the Bill of Rights, the Ten Amendments, is a list of thou shalt nots, making sure the government knows that they're not allowed to do things that they're not given authority to do. with that 10th Amendment being the capping document or the explainer part of the document. But you've seen a contract where it defines or it explains what the purpose of the whole document is. It's a delegation of authority. And if you were not delegated that authority, you don't have the ability to do it. And the Founding Fathers laid it out in the Federalist Papers. We have here James Madison saying, is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation.

No theoretical checks, no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea or it's an imaginary, it's not possible. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So, you know, even though you have James Madison, very much a Federalist, somebody that was a strong proponent of the Constitution, he's referred to as the father of the Constitution. He recognized that without virtue and intelligence, it was meaningless. It didn't matter. And so no government can be any good for the people if the people themselves are not virtuous and intelligent. And so we need to, that's one of the reasons why we do what we do is we need to instill in the people the intelligence through the building of their understanding. And a part of that intelligence and understanding is understanding the importance of virtue.

And what is virtue? And so that way we can be a people that can be free. And so that it's one of those talking, going back to Lysander Spooner and his concept of everything that we have wrong with government is because of the constitution one way or another. No, that is not why we have the situation that we're in. It is because of us. It is because we are ignorant and it is because we are unvirtuous. And so if we want to be able to be free. and apply the Constitution the way that it was intended, we have to be intelligent and virtuous. So this getting into what is the Constitution as it being a delegation of authority, these two concepts of enumerated versus unlimited power. Starting in the 1800s, this concept of unlimited power started to come forward. But the founding fathers said, no, that's not the case. We look at the Federalist Papers. explains that the powers delegated by the proposed constitution to the federal government are few and defined. It is to be remembered that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated or listed objects.

The power that the federal government has received from the constitution is few and they're specifically listed okay it is that we've talked about this in previous videos of the law of agency it is a contract a homeowner or landowner hires a contractor to build a home and enters into a contract of specific what it is it that i want you to do what is it uh that you're i'm going to pay for and then if the con if the uh the contractor if the home builder then builds a pool that was not authorized, it's not in the contract, then the homeowner is not required to pay for it. The contractor, the builder, has violated the contract. And so if the federal or general government does something that is not specifically given them the power or authority to do, they have violated the contract. And the states who created the contract created the agreement, they are not required to go along with it. They, in fact, have the obligation to nullify or to go against the actions that were passed by the government that were not authorized to it by the Constitution. And so what are those powers that are delegated to the government, to the general government? Legislative powers. Who has the power to create legislation? It is vested in the Congress, meaning the House and the Senate, to pass laws. But that doesn't mean they have the right to pass any law. But this tells us who has the right to pass law. So if you see the president issuing an executive order or a governor issuing an executive order saying this is now the law of the land, we know that they violated the contract.

If you see courts. writing legislation saying, now this group of people have the right to do X, Y, Z. Well, they don't have the authority to do so. Therefore, we know that that ruling or that opinion by the courts is unconstitutional. It's illegal. So there are 17 enumerated powers in the constitution itself. And so anything beyond those 17 specifically defined powers is illegal. They've broken the law. if they pass a law or a statute that is not within those 17 enumerated powers. This is what in the Declaration of Independence, the founders called pretend legislation, right? This is one of their reasons for declaring independence from England was that the king had combined with others to subject the colonies to a jurisdiction formed to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws. giving his assent to their acts of pretend legislation. So anything beyond what the Constitution authorizes the federal government to do, anything beyond Congress passing a law, even if it is authorized, is in the realm of pretend legislation, make-believe laws. So getting into the idea of enumerated powers, listed powers.

Versus a boundless field of power. Going back again, I mentioned earlier that starting in the 1800s, this concept of boundless power started to enter into the legal lexicon of the people. We have here Chief Justice John Marshall in 1816, totally erasing. What the founding fathers said and what the Constitution itself says, says among the enumerated powers, we do not find that of establishing a bank. But because it does not expressly prohibit one, Marshall claimed establishing a national bank to be constitutional. So according to John Marshall, if they weren't prohibited from doing it specifically, they were authorized to do it. What's that, Mike, Moses? He's shaking his head saying how ridiculous that concept is. Mark, yes? Yes. In the Constitution, it doesn't say murder is illegal according to the Constitution. So that means, according to Marshall, murder is illegal. Legal, right? Because it wasn't prohibited. The government can murder people, right? Yeah, absolutely. And then we go forward a few more years to the 1900s. The government of the United States can do nothing, not specifically prohibited by the Constitution.

So the Attorney General of the United States expanded that even more than what John Marshall was saying, is that anything that we're not prohibited from doing by name, we are allowed to do. And then now today, this has expanded even more with Congressman Peter Stark says in this country, the federal government can pretty much do whatever it wants to. So that's how far we've gone from the founding era of saying, you're only allowed to do these specific things that we've listed to today. We can do whatever we want until the courts say we're not allowed to. And so that's how we're ruled. So what are the excuses for unlimited power? We have the supremacy clause. We have the general welfare clause. We have the elastic clause. The interstate clause and treaty law. These are the things that people use to say, oh, yeah, the Constitution says the federal government can do whatever they want because of this clause. Carmen, you have your hand up. Yeah, I thought that in the beginning of this, it was listed all of the things that the government can do. And then at the very end, it says anything not listed. You cannot do it. Exactly.

Yeah, they're ignoring the Bill of Rights completely, totally. They erased that part. Yep, exactly. So as we go into each of these, right, we have the Clause 6, Article 6, Clause 2, the Supremacy Clause. This is how it's read usually. Is the Constitution, the laws of the United States, which shall be passed by Congress, shall be the supreme law of the land, right? So that's how it's read typically today by defenders of unlimited government. But what does clause two actually say? It says, made in pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land. So only laws that are within the limited delegated list of things that they're allowed to do are legitimate, are the supreme law of the land. But it is not a blanket permission to do whatever you want. Now we have the general welfare clause that says, The Congress shall have power to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare. So people say, well, it says for the general welfare. And this is for, you know, we can we can make an argument that X, Y, Z is for everybody's welfare. And so now it's authorized. But again, explaining the Constitution, the founding father is very clear. James Madison, if Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money and will promote the general welfare. The government is no longer a limited one. So he's saying that if I can make an excuse for spending money and saying that it's for everybody's welfare, then there's no reason for a constitution. Why even, you could just say, we can have it be a sentence long. We can pass things that we want to spend money and we claim it's for everybody's benefit. And if we can do that, then it's authorized. But they obviously didn't do that. He says, for what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general powers?

He's saying, why would we even list things if we meant they can do anything? Thomas Jefferson says, Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated. So what are those enumerated powers? We have the common defense powers and we have the general welfare powers. We have define and punish piracies and felonies, declare war, raise and support armies, provide and maintain a navy. And even with these, with the raise and support armies, that's only two years at a time. The only thing that they're allowed to have is a standing military force, as a navy, as a defensive against an outward force, not something within. make rules for land and naval forces, so the military, call for the militia to execute laws, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions, organize, arm, and discipline the militia.

What general welfare would be to borrow money to do the things listed below and on the left, to regulate commerce, but not in the sense that they say today, just to make regulars what that means. establish rules of naturalization and laws on bankruptcies and coin money, gold and silver, punish counterfeiting and original punishment for counterfeiting was death, establish post offices and postal roads, promote science and useful arts by protecting the exclusive right and constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court. So this is where, in fact, that, you know, all the things that people are complaining about. courts doing, this says that Congress can actually limit the jurisdiction of the courts so that way they can't rule on things like killing babies and so on. And so these are what are specifically enumerated in the Constitution. So the elastic clause, though, is one of the excuses why they don't have to stay within these enumerated lists. It says that Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper. Now, again, just like going with the general welfare clause, to say that anything that we can say is necessary and proper is now legitimate is to say that there's no list of powers. It just means it's necessary and proper for the carrying into execution the foregoing powers. So we're allowed to write laws that help us to implement. the delegated authority that we've been given by the states.

Okay. And then others say that the constitution and all treaties made or which shall be made under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land. Okay. So under the authority of the United States, again, has to be within their delegated authority. They can't just pass a treaty and say, well, the treaty was passed. We can do whatever we want. Otherwise, again, why have enumerated powers. So again, and Thomas Jefferson says this very same thing. He says, I say the same as to the opinion of those who consider the grant of the treaty making power as boundless. If it is, then we have no constitution. So if a treaty can do whatever it says, you know, whatever they want, then we don't have a constitution because then you just pass a law by treaty. And you can do whatever you want.

And that's exactly. the opposite of what the founding fathers said. So in summary, the constitution is a law for the government, not the people. It tells them what they're allowed to do. And if we didn't give them permission to do it, they don't have permission to do it. And if they do it anyways, they are creating pretend legislation that is a figment of their imagination that we must ignore. It gives them specific enumerated powers. And there is only 17 specific listed powers that they are given. So next week, we're going to be getting into the executive branch and its powers. Tonight was basically giving you an overview of what it was that was created, what powers that Congress has. And of course, those powers are to make law and nobody else is allowed to make law. And even though they're allowed to make law, they're not allowed to make any law they want to. They have a very specific few number of things that they're allowed to make laws on. And that is it. Nothing else. Anything else is illegitimate. Anybody else passing a law is illegitimate. Any law outside of those 17 powers is illegitimate. And they should be and must be ignored if we are to preserve the union.

So next week we'll be covering again, like I said, executive branch powers. Any questions, comments, thoughts on what we covered tonight? Feel free to raise your hand or put them in the chat. I'll chat real quick. Mark, go ahead. Excellent presentation. You're giving us the foundation of what our country is founded upon, the foundation of liberty. This is the rock. And people must learn this. I find all the time. a very very poor knowledge of these fundamental uh aspects of our our government i want to mention a few things here um i thought it was the federalist paper paper 45 where uh madison talked about few defined powers are are given to the federal government is it also on the 14th uh or yes you know both places i don't know oh i didn't know that okay and uh the elastic clause Some of us in the freedom movement refer to it just as the necessary and proper clause rather than elastic. Elastic is the term that those who are the subversives that want to give all power, the power to government. Absolutely. Yeah, because what does an elastic imply? You can stretch the constitution further and further, giving more and more powers to the government. um and of course what we're talking about here are criminal outlaws that are violating the constitution by lying to us about what the original 10 is and what it literally says as you you read off there that was really really uh good that you gave it went to detail um i wanted to just mention a couple other things here um the you were talking about the total government versus uh no government and what the in the propaganda disinformation we get in the media for the politicians everywhere they've come up with this term i i had it's only been around 10 years eight years to any extent at all and now it's constantly used and what they refer to anybody that doesn't support total government in principle uh communism so massive socialism government control uh government uh unlimited killing of anybody they want in and out of the country they call them anti-government people and and yeah so if you don't support total government and of course you pointed out the constitution uh right there in the middle between total and no government yep thank you any other questions comments thoughts people have anybody else Not sure how to raise my hand.

Oh, here we go. I see the thumbs up. It's a three dots at the bottom of the page. I think I found it. Okay, raise the hand. I want to be proper and raise my hand properly. Okay, I just thought it was really rich about the punishing counterfeiting. You said it was punishable by death when our government. is uh just yeah i saw some uh silver certificate my uncle had a while back he ended up selling them i was hoping to have like a comparison for what the which it says congress can coin money it doesn't say that they can print paper that uh yeah he had a silver certificate and just the difference in looking at a dollar bill the federal reserve note and just I think we've just bought into this that we don't even pay attention to even the way that we purchase things. Every time someone uses a credit card, more fake money is introduced, is more counterfeited money is introduced and causing the real money to be deflated, which is probably a whole other topic.

But anyway, that was... I thought this was really good. The whole presentation was wonderful. And I've been frantically trying to take notes. I'm glad that it's going to be recorded so I can get it right. Yes. And we'll have the transcript as well. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's really interesting, right? Because with the money thing, how our current government would receive the death penalty. according to original laws passed by the founding fathers. And some states have passed legal tender laws where they've made gold and silver legal tender. And so because according to the federal government, one ounce of silver is the legal definition of a dollar. They use grains and whatnot, but it's basically an ounce of silver. And so there have been some companies in those states, what they've done is they pay their employees. in silver dollars. And so that way, you know, you make you're making, you know, what is it now? 60 bucks an hour. You pay them one dollar and they're only taxed on the dollar. But then that individual can go and take that silver dollar and turn it into 60 Federal Reserve notes, you know, roughly speaking.

And so that, you know, it's it's helping people get around the the the taxes in that way by using the legal definition. of the terms and it's been and actually went to court they a company in las vegas was sued and and they were like sued for paying my employees in legal tender and then the courts threw it out they said yeah you're paying in legal tender and you know in in that state there's no reporting and so there's nothing anybody can do about it and so it was really interesting um rod you had your hand up next yeah i just wanted to just comment on The part from the beginning where he was talking about the actual political spectrum and just how important that is that we understand. It's either all government or no government, but we're given these false options today where it's either all government on the left or all government on the right. There's not really any escape from the government. Someone's going to rule over you one way or the other, which is nonsense. Exactly. Mark, yes, just for clarification, you mentioned 17 numerated congressional powers in the Constitution, but some of the ones you read, you notice there's more than one power in those 17.

So, but there's also two, three, maybe it's four, but I think it's like three other powers, congressional powers elsewhere, not in Article I, Section 8. yeah you covered article one section eight which is most of them but uh so uh it it's 30 a minimum 30 to 35 depending upon how you organize it powers uh uh congressional powers uh a great place to see them all listed you know where they're going to cover mainly what you covered but there's some additional ones uh you can go to the uh tree excuse my tree already you can go to first amendment uh center and they have a list i have the article here first amendment i'm sorry and back to the central bank the federal reserve you know who who won champion at the very beginning was alexander hamilton and guess what excuse he used for a national bank uh it's an inferred power applied power and of course There is no necessary implied power anywhere in the Constitution. Any idiot can see that. Well, they fought over it.

They made sure that there were no implied powers because the anti -federalists were going to kill it if things weren't specific. And so the necessary proper, or you could call it an elastic clause, is what Hamilton used. It's an implied power, and so that should be right on your list, too, of the five different... The provisions of the Constitution, they try to argue, gives them basically unlimited power. The welfare clause and the other clause. And commerce clause is such an important one as well. If we have time after we finish here, I have an article here. It only takes about less than a minute to read a list of what the law school is saying are inferred powers. and you just have to laugh laugh not laugh at it you you have to get angry about just anything they're including uh minimum wage as a as a another one that i'm real sensitive about is uh a forced draft for war which gives it the government the right to imprison and punish somebody if they don't go shoot and kill somebody whether they're good or bad I mean, so if we have a chance, I'd like to list what they're claiming.

These are what the law schools are teaching. Some of the, I mean, there's really a hundred of them. Go ahead. Yeah, if you just put a link in the chat box, that'd be great. Just to make sure we keep everybody, get everybody their time. Let's have a closing prayer. Then we'll have open forum where anybody can bring up anything they want. If, Rod, would you say the closing prayer for us? I can. Heavenly Father, we're grateful to have been able to meet tonight and discuss these principles. We're grateful for the Constitution that was inspired by thee and for the good and wise men who helped put it together and make it happen. And we're grateful also, though, that we have the documents and things that we can look back and understand better how it was framed and what people were doing. to understand why they did the things that they did. We ask you to help us to do what we can to return to these true principles and to help educate those around us. And we say it's the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Thank you.