America, The Land That I Love | Eastern North Carolina Now

    I'm a long-time activist. I started a Tea Party group in 2009 in my area of North Carolina and have been running it ever since. I believe in the Tea Party movement because it embraces our core American values and principles and fights for them. I recently (November 2021) started another citizen-activist group, a conservative education advocacy group for outraged and frustrated parents and concerned citizens. The group not only has already made a difference with the local board of education but has inspired neighboring counties to form similar groups of their own.

    I fight tirelessly for them. I fight because this is the land that I love. I wish more people would. As Ronald Reagan once said: "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

    A growing number of Americans distrust the federal government. According to a Pew Research Center poll published on June 6, 2022 and a Monmouth University poll released on May 12, 2022, a growing number of Americans distrust the federal government and believe our country is headed in the wrong direction. "Only two-in-ten (20%) Americans say they trust the government in Washington DC to do what is right 'just about always' or 'most of the time.'" Even more telling, 79% of Americans surveyed said that they believe the country has "gotten off on the wrong track." The fact is that most Americans recognize that an all-out war is being waged against our republic and against every American's individual liberty. That war is being waged in the name of socialism, social justice, and an uber-progressive agenda.

    I fight for our founding values and principles because this is my country. I fight because this country, for better or worse, is the land that I love.

    Why do I love her?

    I love her because she was founded and designed to be exceptional. The Declaration of Independence, a brilliant and revolutionary document written largely and substantially by my favorite Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, articulates the reasons why the founding American colonies decided to separate from Great Britain but most importantly, the values and principles that would come to define them.


    Paragraphs one and two articulate those values and principles. They read:

    "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.-That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.-Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world."

    These principles were considered "revolutionary" back in the 17thand 18th centuries. Back in those days, countries were ruled by kings and blue-bloods. They believed that there was a divine right for certain individuals to rule. America would be different. They would be the source of government power, through elected officials, and government would be tasked to protect and secure their individual rights and liberty.

    The Declaration didn't just proclaim to a candid world our reasons to separate from Great Britain but rather, it continues to influence our country to this very day. What many people don't know is that the Declaration influenced the very drafting of the Constitution in 1787 when the States decided to scrap the Articles of Confederation in favor of a totally new constitution and new form of government. It also inspired the abolitionist movement and the ultimate prohibition of slavery in this country, it inspired Martin Luther King Jr. to lead his people to fight against racial discrimination and fight for a federal civil rights law, and most recently, it offers encouragement and direction to the modern conservative originalist movement [including the Tea Party movement starting back in 2009 and continuing, Turning Point USA, Judicial Watch, the Heritage Foundation, Freedom Watch - with its motto "Government fails, freedom works", Citizens United, The American Conservative Union (ACU), American Family Association (AFA), Americans for Prosperity (AFP), The Conservative Caucus, Family Research Council (FRC), and Eagle Forum].

    As mentioned above, the Declaration informed our US Constitution and continues to do so.

    Most Americans don't actually know the nature of the Constitution. Many regard it as nothing more than a founding document and those on the left regard it as something even more inconsequential - as an outdated founding document. The truth is that it is so much more. In fact it is critical to our constitutional republic. It created the federal government, assigned it a series of enumerated powers, sets limits and boundaries on the branches of government, provides for a series of checks and balances to keep the government in check (with the antagonism of the States being the most powerful of those checks and balances), and provides a legal mechanism for changing or amending it (Article V). It establishes the "Supreme Law of the Land" (Article VI) which therefore forms the basis for our Rule of Law.

    Our US Constitution, like all constitutions, is a social compact, drafted and ratified by the people of the several states, to protect We the People from an ambitious and oppressive government. The Constitution is intended for We the People; it is for the protection of our Liberty. People need to view it that way in order to understand why it is so important and critical and why activists like myself fight so hard to defend it, to chastise elected officials for violating it, and to explain it to others. Education is the best way to keep we Americans informed and help them be responsible voters.

    The fact is that we almost didn't get that Constitution in 1787. The discussions and debates among the delegates devolved into headstrong arguments and stubbornness. When it seemed that there would be no overcoming this and that the Convention had come to an impasse, the eldest delegate to the Convention, Pennsylvania's Benjamin Franklin called upon all the delegates to take a moment and appeal to God to imbue them with rationality, purpose, and vision and to remind them of why they had met in Philadelphia in the first place. This is what he said on June 28, 1787, just one month into the convention:

    "We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded; and we ourselves shall become a reproach and by-word down to future ages...I therefore beg leave to move - that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the clergy of this city be requested to officiate in that service."

    Granted, the Constitution was not perfect when the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention (Constitutional Convention) completed their draft and signed it (on September 20, 1787). In fact, several key delegates found the final draft to be unsuitable and a danger both to state sovereignty and to individual liberty and refused to sign it. They demanded that a Bill of Rights be included and certain key states, including Virginia, North Carolina, New York, Massachusetts, and North Carolina, agreed (and made note of that condition in their ratification conventions).


    Alexander Hamilton, in his Federalist Papers essay No. 1, understood how difficult it would likely be for the Constitution to be ratified by all the independent States. He explained:

    "After an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind. This idea will add the inducements of philanthropy to those of patriotism, to heighten the solicitude which all considerate and good men must feel for the event. Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good. But this is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected. The plan offered to our deliberations affects too many particular interests, innovates upon too many local institutions, not to involve in its discussion a variety of objects foreign to its merits, and of views, passions and prejudices little favorable to the discovery of truth.

    Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under one government.

    A torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose. To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives. An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty. An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good. It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten that the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.

    After having given it an attentive consideration, I am clearly of opinion it is your interest to adopt it. I am convinced that this is the safest course for your liberty, your dignity, and your happiness. I affect not reserves which I do not feel. I will not amuse you with an appearance of deliberation when I have decided. I frankly acknowledge to you my convictions, and I will freely lay before you the reasons on which they are founded. The consciousness of good intentions disdains ambiguity. I shall not, however, multiply professions on this head. My motives must remain in the depository of my own breast. My arguments will be open to all and may be judged of by all. They shall at least be offered in a spirit which will not disgrace the cause of truth.

    I propose, in a series of papers, to discuss the following interesting particulars: The utility of the Union to your political prosperity, the insufficiency of the present Confederation to preserve that Union, the necessity of a government at least equally energetic with the one proposed by this new Constitution, the conformity of the proposed Constitution to the true principles of republican government, its analogy to your own state constitutions, and lastly, the additional security which its adoption will afford to the preservation of that species of government, to Liberty, and to property.

    It may perhaps be thought superfluous to offer arguments to prove the utility of the UNION, a point, no doubt, deeply engraved on the hearts of the great body of the people in every State, and one, which it may be imagined, has no adversaries. But the fact is, that we already hear it whispered in the private circles of those who oppose the new Constitution, that the thirteen States are of too great extent for any general system, and that we must of necessity resort to separate confederacies of distinct portions of the whole.1 This doctrine will, in all probability, be gradually propagated, till it has votaries enough to countenance an open avowal of it. For nothing can be more evident, to those who are able to take an enlarged view of the subject, than the alternative of an adoption of the new Constitution or a dismemberment of the Union. It will therefore be of use to begin by examining the advantages of that Union, the certain evils, and the probable dangers, to which every State will be exposed from its dissolution. This shall accordingly constitute the subject of my next address."


    The strongest argument against the ratification and adoption of the new constitution by certain key delegates to the Convention and then by certain key States during the ratification period was its lack of a Bill of Rights. They argued that the new constitution was defective in its failure to protect individual freedom and liberty because it lacked such a bill. They pointed to England, which adopted a Bill of Rights in 1689 (and which the colonists regularly pointed to in defense of their rights - their "rights as English subjects").