Contract with the U.S. Constitution

Because this is a crucial time in American history, and a multitude of voices claim that their views represent core American values, I hereby affirm my commitment to the United States Constitution through my covenant to the following principles which are inherently part of our country’s heritage and foundation.

I hereby affirm that all men and women from every race and ethnicity are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I, in my capacity as an elected official of a governmental body, promise to strictly adhere to the following principles embodied in the Constitution of the United States and to the principles of liberty on which America was founded, of which the following ten are listed.

1. The principle of limited government. Our system of government is founded upon the principle that it is a “that government governs best that govern least”, and that it has no more authority over its citizens than is expressly granted to it by its citizens in the U.S. Constitution. Any authority not expressly granted in writing in the U.S. Constitution to the federal government is reserved either as an unalienable right held by all U.S. citizens under the Ninth Amendment, or as a reserved power held by state governments under the Tenth Amendment. All other attempts by the federal government to exercise power are illegitimate.  U.S. Bill of Rights, Amendments IX, X.

“Government is aptly compared to architecture; if the superstructure is too heavy for the foundation, the building totters, [even if] assisted by outward props.” Benjamin Franklin

“Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.” James Madison, essay in the National Gazette, March 27, 1792

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.” Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816

“The constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness, you have to catch it yourself.” Benjamin Franklin

2. Sovereignty of the United States. Our federal government is entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring the sovereignty and independence of the United States, a sovereignty that was bought and paid for by the blood and sacrifice of our forefathers and is defended by the men and women of our armed forces. This responsibility includes the duties to maintain our freedom and our national interests through a strong military; to establish and maintain secure national borders; to participate in international and diplomatic affairs without ceding authority to foreign powers that diminish or interfere with our unalienable rights; and to be mindful of our history as a nation of immigrants, promoting immigration policies that observe the rule of law and are just, fair, swift, and foster national unity.  U.S. Constitution, Articles I, II.

“If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.” George Washington

“Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace.” Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Monroe, October 24, 1823

“Foreign influence is truly the Grecian (Trojan) Horse to a republic. We cannot be too careful to exclude its influence.” Alexander Hamilton, Pacificus, No. 6, July 17, 1793

“’Tis folly in one Nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its Independence for whatever it may accept under that character…. ‘Tis an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard. … Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, (I conjure you to believe me fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of a (r)epublican (form of) Government.” George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796

3. Powers of the States are numerous, powers of the federal government are limited. Each of the States of the United States is a sovereign state that has granted a portion of its sovereignty to the federal government. The practice of the federal government to overreach its limited grant of powers through either the power of the purse, or the inventive expansion of authority to circumscribe or tyrannize the States is unconstitutional and shall no longer be tolerated. U.S. Bill of Rights, Amendment X.

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace negotiation, and foreign commerce; … The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the state.” James Madison, The Federalist No. 45

4. Only the legislative branch can make law. Only the legislative branch of government can make law. The duties of the executive and judicial branches respectively are solely to execute and interpret those laws. The practice of the President of the United States to make law through the use of executive orders, or the promulgation of new regulations through federal or state agencies that exceed the scope or intent of a legislated law, is a violation of the separation of powers of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, and is therefore illegitimate. Likewise, the appointment and tolerance of judges who advocate and practice judicial activism under the guise that the Constitution is a “living document” with no fixed meaning, is also a violation of the separation of powers, and is therefore unconstitutional. Articles I, II and III, U.S. Constitution.

“At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man [i.e., a judge] is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account.” Thomas Jefferson, letter to Monsieur A. Coray, Oct 31, 1823

5. Freedom of speech and thought. So-called “hate crimes” legislation, or the imposition of any form of the “Fairness Doctrine” upon any branch of media or the Internet, is an undue and unconstitutional abridgment of our rights to free speech and thought. U.S. Bill of Rights, Amendment I.

“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” George Washington

“One of the amendments to the Constitution… expressly declares that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,’ thereby guarding in the same sentence and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press; insomuch that whatever violates either throws down the sanctuary which covers the others.” Thomas Jefferson, Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798 ME 17:382

6. Freedom of religion. The First Amendment promises that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”. Our Constitution provides its citizens the freedom to acknowledge God through our public institutions and other modes of public expression, and the freedom of religious conscience without coercion by penalty or force of law. U.S. Bill of Rights, Amendment I.

“The liberty of conscience and the freedom of the press were equally and completely exempted from all [congressional] authority whatsoever.” James Madison, 1798 (Debate on the Alien & Sedition Act)

“The constitutional freedom of religion [is] the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights.” Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 1819 ME 19:416.

7. Security of property. It is the individual’s unalienable right to own, possess and manage private property without arbitrary interference from government while acknowledging the necessity of maintaining a proper and balanced care and stewardship of the environment and natural resources for the health and safety of our families. U.S. Bill of Rights, Amendments IV, V, and IX. See also, preamble to the Declaration of Independence.

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence”. John Adams, 1797, A Defence of the Constitution of Government of the United States of America, Vol. III

“It is the undoubted right and unalienable privilege of a [citizen] not to be divested or interrupted in the innocent use of . . . property. . . . This is the Cornerstone of every free Constitution” John Jay, original Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court and an author of the Federalist Papers.

8. Right to bear arms. The Second Amendment preserves the individual right of owning, possessing, and using firearms as central to the preservation of peace and liberty. U.S. Bill of Rights, Amendment II.

“No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” Thomas Jefferson

“The said constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” Samuel Adams

9. Protection of the family. The family is the foundational building block of our nation. It is in both the interests of the states and the nation to secure our collective interest in the institution of marriage and family by embracing the union of one man and one woman as the sole form of legitimate marriage and the proper basis of family, as well as to safeguard the fundamental rights of parents to the care, custody, and control of their children regarding their upbringing and education as guaranteed in the Ninth Amendment. U.S. Bill of Rights, Amendment IX.

“Whether we consult the soundest deductions of reason, or resort to the best information conveyed to us by history, or listen to the undoubted intelligence communicated in Holy Writ, we shall find that to the institution of marriage the true origin of society must be traced. . . Legislators have with great [correctness]. . . provided, as far as municipal law can provide, against the violation of rights indispensably essential to the purity and harmony of [marriage].” James Wilson, U. S. Supreme Court Justice and Signer of the Declaration and the Constitution

10. Constitution to be interpreted with the original intent of the Founding Fathers. Our nation was founded as a country and a people to be governed by the “rule of law”. To allow our judiciary, the president, or the Congress to redefine their authority in any other manner than what was originally intended by the Framers of the Constitution is tyranny, and degrades our republic into a rule by tyrants disguised as “public servants”.

“[T]he people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government and to reform, alter, or totally change the same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it. And the federal Constitution — according to the mode prescribed therein [Article V, U.S. Constitution] – has already undergone such amendments in several parts of it as from experience has been judged necessary. Samuel Adams, 1796, The Writings of Samuel Adams (emphasis added)

“Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.” James Madison

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” Abraham Lincoln

I hereby swear or affirm, in my capacity as a servant of the people, that I shall neither abandon the above principles, nor shall I allow or participate in the passing, amending, or sustainment of any laws, rules or regulations that would serve to weaken or destroy these principles in any manner. I shall strive to restore these principles to their prior role of preeminence within our government and our country.
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