I’m Cliff Ribner, and I’m going to talk to you today about how politicians in Washington, in all 3 branches of government, have been stealing our liberty for about a hundred fifty years. This has been going on, and the politicians have been doing this just to benefit themselves—not us. There is a 0sum game always between the citizen and the state, and every drop of power the state has—every drop of power politicians have—is taken, drop for drop, from the citizens. And when this nation was founded, they did something that had never been done before: They have a constitution that very specifically defines the powers of the central federal government and also of the states.

Limits on Federal Government Power

The main job of the federal government is not to police us in any way. It was never supposed to be in the business of doing that; it was supposed to be in the business of policing the states to the extent it did any policing. And there were only 3 crimes that it was even allowed to enforce—can you believe that? Every day, when you’re reading in the paper, you read about all these federal crimes that people supposedly commit. Well, the Constitution in Article I, Section 8, actually specifies all the crimes the federal government is allowed to prosecute.

Constitutional Protections and Freedom of Contract

The Constitution was set up to describe very specifically what powers the federal government has and what powers it doesn’t, and it limits the powers of the states because it guarantees that every state has to have a Republican form of government. It has to protect freedom of contract, which means that none of the states are allowed to interfere in the terms of contracts, other than if you do something illegal—something illegal under the common law, meaning if you have a contract to kill someone, that’s illegal; that they’re allowed to police. But otherwise, there’s a clause in the Constitution that specifically says, “Freedom of contract shall not be impaired in any way.” And there’s a reason for that, because they were coming from a society which had existed previously. They had a very conscious awareness of what they were doing in the revolution that they did for us, and what they wanted was for us to be the freest people on the planet—for us to have all the liberties that only free men, and in fact the freest of free men, noblemen in Europe, enjoy. One of the differences between noblemen and free citizens—free men—is that noblemen had special rights above and beyond those of free men.

Equal Liberty and Property Rights

And one of them was that they were allowed to bear arms. Well, in America, we’re all supposed to have the same power as noblemen in Europe, and the Constitution was set up to preserve maximum liberty for all individuals. And there’s one freedom—and one freedom alone—that separates free men from serfs. There had been serfdom in Europe, where people were basically the same as slaves, and the difference between a free man and a serf is that serfs were not allowed to own property and were not allowed to have any freedom of contract. They couldn’t enter into a contract and describe the terms of the contract. So, in our Constitution, it’s written that we will always be guaranteed those rights, and the way it’s written requires the federal government to be the guarantor of that. That’s one of its duties—to make sure that the states don’t interfere in our right to freedom of contract and our right to free—it’s called fee-simple ownership of property. It’s a remarkable thing; it’s real fee-simple absolute ownership. We don’t have that anymore now.

Environmental and Zoning Laws Impact

They’ve invented things like environmental laws, which create this moral demand—that’s basically what they are—they’re claiming, “Well, we have this moral claim on your land, and we can tell you what to do with your land.” So you don’t really have fee simple ownership anymore; you can’t just do whatever you want with it. You’ve got to check with us if you want to put a roof on your house—that’s what zoning laws do. They also interfere with freedom of, uh, fee simple ownership.

Federal Government’s Duty and Freedom of Contract

Anyway, in the Constitution, the one individual liberty that was put in there before the Bill of Rights was passed—the Bill of Rights is in the first ten amendments—is a freedom, an individual liberty, that’s put into the Constitution (originally written as originally written), and that’s freedom of contract. And the federal government’s duty is not to impair it—which is what they’ve been doing—but to guarantee that the states will not violate it. And they have been doing the opposite, especially since the 19thirties, and I’m going to get into the court decision that has rubber-stamped them doing that. But anyway, the freedom of contract is so sacred that that’s why it’s the one individual liberty that’s in there.

Federal Overreach in Enforcing Regulations

And they’ve been stamping all over that. They’ve been using one clause—and one clause alone—to justify not only the state’s trampling on your freedom of contract and property ownership, but also the federal government’s. It wasn’t even contemplated that the federal government could ever do it, because it doesn’t have any powers that would permit it to go anywhere near anybody’s contracts or property.

Federal Crimes and Treason

Oh, I was going to tell you, the only crimes the federal government is allowed to prosecute— they’re specified in the Constitution—are piracy (but only piracy on the high seas). So, if the pirates go into Atlanta and take over and start charging people to walk down the street, that’s a Georgia problem; that’s not a federal problem under the Constitution. So, piracy, counterfeiting, and they were also supposed to enforce the crime of treason. But treason had been a common law before the republic was formed, and what the Constitution does is it doesn’t say anything about authorizing treason; it limits the definition of treason. They wanted to minimize the number of times the federal government could accuse someone of committing treason, and what they did was they required that there be 2 witnesses to the treason. That’s not the case under common law. And that’s how Aaron Burr, the great traitor who came up with the filibuster idea—that’s how he got off from committing treason, because he had committed treason. He, and Mexico and Spain and possibly also England, were going to be involved in this transaction where the entire Louisiana Purchase would be stolen from the United States. This was in, in, after President Jefferson had bought it from Napoleon, and they were going to make Aaron Burr king. And he even got the head of the military to go along with it—General Wilkinson. Anyway, the crime of treason—and he got off because there were not 2 witnesses to the treason. He was very clever about his dealings, making sure that the people who knew about it couldn’t be available to testify in—anyway, that’s the extent of the policing the federal government is allowed to do.

Expansion of Federal Crime Power through Amendments

Now, there are constitutional amendments—the 13th, 14th, 15th, 18th (which is now repealed—that was prohibition—and the 19th)—which have a paragraph in them that gives the federal government the power to make new crimes. It says it gives Congress the power to enforce each of those amendments by doing anything at once, and that, of course, would include criminal liability. But those didn’t even exist until after the Civil War, so they were only—and they only are limited to the crimes involved in those specific amendments.

Regulatory Overreach and the Commerce Clause

Anyway, they’ve been using one clause—and one clause alone—to justify every one of those alphabet agencies in Washington and all of the intrusions on people’s rights, including all those federal criminal crimes. Every one of those agencies sits around and they pass what they call regulations, which have the force of law according to them. In reality, they should not, because Congress is the only one that’s allowed to pass laws, and none of those things are done pursuant to the proceedings of Article I, Section VII, which says what is required to be a law. Anyway, if you violate any of those regulations, according to the politicians in Washington, you’ve committed a crime. So they get all these extra crimes that weren’t mentioned in the Constitution by having unconstitutional agencies pass laws, and they’ve been using one clause—and one clause alone—to justify that, and it’s called the Commerce Clause.

The Commerce Clause and Supreme Court Decisions

I’m going to read you what it says: “Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce,” and by the way, at that time, the word commerce meant trade; so it’s “Congress shall have the power to regulate trade with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” That’s the clause they’re using to claim that they could turn the whole Constitution on its head, which they were not supposed to be in the business of policing us at all, and create all these crimes. The Supreme Court has been taking the position that that clause authorizes it. There’s a case, Wickard v. Filburn, from 19 42, where they basically said they could just do anything—as long as they say there’s some rational basis for doing it, we can make it a crime, we can order people to do it—the hell with the freedom of contract, all that stuff. And it’s a grotesque violation of the Constitution. In subsequent videos, I’m going to show you how everyone in Washington has known all along that they’ve just been stealing our power by pretending that that clause permits them to turn the entire Constitution on its head and give them that power to criminalize virtually everything citizens do, simply because they call it commerce. And commerce is simply anytime anybody talks to someone else. That’s why they thought they could do Obamacare. That was the first time any of the justices—since Wickard v. Filburn—Justice Roberts said they couldn’t use the Commerce Clause for that. Now, the other so-called conservatives on the court also said they couldn’t, but Justice Roberts said that also. That’s why he came up with that crazy opinion about saying that the taxing authority justified the Commerce Clause, or justified Obamacare.

Conclusion

Anyway, I’m Cliff Ribner, and if you like listening to what I have to say, follow me, and there will be more of these.