Against obama or george w. Bush, but to use the constitution as a standard, and sometimes hes good and sometimes not so much. Thats how we view what goes on in washington d. C. Not based on Political Party or personality, but based on the standard by which all americans should hold their federal government, the constitution. When you use that measuring stick, which president , in your view have adhered to the constitution and which havent. Its been a long time. Its been a very long time since weve had a president that was truly constitutional. Look at article two of the constitution which is the delegated authority for the executive branch. When we look at that, we realize how little power the president has, especially constitutionally speaking. I shall my students to look at the constitution, article one, the powers that are dedicated to congress i like this. Then you go to article two and then article three to the judiciary. In america, we have gravitated more toward an allconsuming executive rather than an executive in service to the legislative. What we have now in america is a bit of an aberration of what the president ought to be and we think that the president is a leader of america. He is not the leader of america. He was never intended to be the leader of america. The president was intended to be an ambassador on behalf of the state in Foreign Affairs. You can see that when you look at the powers that are delegated. The president is not the designator of war. He is not the controller of our troops unless constitutionally speaking there has been a forme formal declaration of war by congress. You asked me which president s. When was the last time we had a declaration of war by congress. World war ii. Every military action that has been led by an executive since world war ii has been unconstitutionally done so. So we have a president who is not allowed to make deals, he can only make treaties. Those treaties are only accepted if they are confirmed by two thirds of the senate and are consistent as the constitution demands with the delegated authority of the executive or legislative branches. And so what we have is this expansion of president ial power which is contrary to the intent of the framers. Our framers made the president a very small position relative to the legislative on purpose. Alexander hamilton will recall the federalist papers 69. It was a great deal of discussion about the office of the executive. The designers of our constitution republic were concerned that they had just achieved an independence from a monarchy. They did not want to establish a new government and create a new monarchy. It was an option, i dont know how many people remember from their civics classes but there was a point in time where people were actually begging George Washington to be king. We were this close to be the kingdom of america, but our founder said we dont want to go back to the kingdom system. Lets do the Constitutional Republic but how do we ensure the executive does not transmute over time into it. The federalist papers 69 is a great source and understanding of not only what the power is but why its so limited. How did we get to the point of executive orders and no war declaration since world war ii. Is it congress fault. Ultimately it rests on the people. Samuel adams said no people will tamely surrender their liberties nor be easily subdued but when the people become ignorant, they will sink underneath their own weight without the weight of foreign invaders. What we have seen in america is the decline in the importance of the study of the proper role and placement of the federal government and human nature. Dictates people will gravitate toward a more powerful government to take care of their needs and provide them with more comfort, and government will always accept more and more power. Congress has a great deal of responsibility in the expansion of the power of the executive branch by unlawfully and constitutionally delegating authority to the president through legislative acts. We have the people though, a good example, the last president ial election, if i have a radio show and a television show, and i took six president ial candidates that spanned the green party, independence, republicans, democrat, libertarian and so what i did was i took their published platform and i didnt compare them with each other as is popular. What i did is i compared each of their platforms individually to the constitutional rule of the president. What i found was the promises that the president ial candidates were making were outside the authority of the office of the executive. The president does not have the authority to raise or lower taxes. That is a power reserved to the house of representatives. The president cannot take care of our troops financially. He cannot expand troops, he cannot withdraw all troops, that is a power reserved to the legislative branch. What i realized is all of the promises the president s were making were responses to questions asked by the people. Will you do this for us. Yes we will do this for you. Im making a promise, but i think its the people were better educated, better understanding of the proper roles of the executives, we would ask better questions that are into and with the delegated authoritys. In that vein, i think president s become who the people want them to be. From your most recent book sovereign duty, you write, and if you explain this, the Central Government as a creation of the constitution is not and cannot be a party to the constitution. Let me say that again so that you dont miss it. The Central Government is not a party to the contract, it is a creation of the contract. One thing we need to remember about the formation of the federal government, and in the sovereign duty book and in the class i teach on state sovereignty that you cover here on cspan, we go through the whole timeline. The states are the first creation of the people and that happens on july 2, 1776 with the ratification of the lee resolution. From the creation of the states through the authority of the people, the states came together and said we need to form a confederation of states. We need to form a union for our Mutual Protection from foreign invaders and we must form this union to be a unified voice in Foreign Affairs for treaties and commerce and peace and war, and we need to form an alliance between the state for a more peaceful interaction between the states. The states were formed as independent sovereign governments. When you read the writing of the designers of our constitution of the republic through the federalist paper and the anti federalist paper, the ratification debates, you see the terms state and nation played interchangeably. When we speak of the state of virginia, new hampshire, rhode island, they also refer to germany, france and spain as states as well. So what we have to really understand is we created 13 independent sovereign government with this authority and political assumption as germany, france or spain. They said we need to come together and make this unified voice because weve looked through history, we will tell europe works and we need to fix the things that are not right. Through that we will create a Constitutional Republic bringing a confederation of the states in the constitution itself will create the federal government. The federal government did not exist until the constitution was ratified. Not only that, there was a precarious moment prior to the ratification of our current constitution where we didnt have enough states to ratify. It was a pretty scary moment for those who were designing the constitution to think we might not have a union at all. If that were to happen and the constitution were not ratified, there would be no federal government. So what we also have to realize is that the constitution is a contract. Contract law speaking, when you have a contract you have the parties to the contract. There the people come together to make the terms of the contract, they negotiate the terms, they design the contract, and ultimately sign it into legal being. In our Constitutional Republic, the states are the parties to that contract. There are so who teach that the constitution is an agreement between the people and the federal government. On that is not true. It cant be true. The c we can show that to be false by one simple fact. How was the constitution ratified. Was it ratified by popular vote . No. It was ratified by three quarters of the state. So the states being ratified of the constitution, mean they are the party. Some also try to teach that the constitution is an agreement between the states and the federal government. That is a temporary impossibility. The federal government did not exist until the constitution was ratified. You cannot be the party to a contract when you are the product of the contract because you cannot sign the contract into legal being until the contract is already signed. The only parties that existed that could be the creators of the constitution are the states, the federal government did not exist until the constitution was ratified which makes them the products. The states are the creators of the constitution. The constitution created the federal government, therefore the states of the creator of the federal government. So july 2, 1776 until september 1783. 1787. Thats when the constitution was finally ratified. We have the articles of confederation between their, but they proved to be faulty on several aspects. When you read the notes to the ratification debates and thes correspondence they had, you learn the greatest difficulty, the greatest problem they had was that the federal government was operating outside of its boundaries and it didnt have enough direction. The greatest problem we were having at that time was that the federal government was making inequitable treaties. What they were doing is they were making treaties with Foreign Governments in whichch one state were one set of states had to provide all of the resources and then a separate set of states that all the benefit so the states, having just form this union with this understanding that its supposed to be mutually beneficial, who are having to foot the entire bill, were likely to minute, this is not why we signed up for this to transfer our wealth to another state. We are not going to comply with this treaty which is a really big deal. Not only is a treaty an agreement, is a contract with a Foreign Government. Dea there are states who are refusing to comply and they were righteously resisting because the treaties were in equitable for the members of the state. W were making the Foreign Government mad for breaking the terms of the contract, the states that were supposed toto get the benefit were mad at the states that wouldnt pay. Itl we have a problem now in the articles of confederation. A our confederation is about to split and we just got started because were about to go to war between the states on conflict and Foreign Governments. That is why we brought together the new convention to create a constitution which is why its called the more perfect union. War when we dissolve the articles of confederation, there is nocoi more federal government and the only government that exists are the state. There wouldve never been a new federal government had the current constitution been ratified. From your book, reclaiming our constitution which was published in 2011, you write a common refrain these days is that we fall asleep. That means our ignorance of the history that brought us our american liberty allows tierney to sneak up on us. A however, that was not the case for our founders. We take the big picture,a and i mean the full scope of the history of our american Constitutional Republic, we have to realize that it didnt begin in 1787, that liberty was not invented in 1776 and tierney was not invented by george the third period when i teach a class called the genealogy of the constitution, what we do is we take the 700 years of history that give us our declaration of independence and our constitution and our bill of rights. It is this is that proves to us that our constitution is built upon timetested principles. They are not inventions. Nd when you read, you know there are five documents that are written. They are called the british liberty charter. Within those five documents, you find every single aspect of our declaration, our constitution and our bill of rights. Not just in principle. Sometimes in the very language themselves, taken from those documents. We didnt invent anything in our foundational documents, we inherited everything. It is that history that proves to us that our founders actually command this is so people which surprises everybody who attends a class or read the book is that there is nothing new in america. This is not a brave new world, theres a popular belief that the constitution is irrelevantor because our founders didnt know what we are possibly seen today, but when you study that history you see that we are just repeating the samebly scenarios over and over again throughout time, even today. Tor, the same stories. Its the same people with the same interaction of government e , just different faces and better technology. History always repeats. I think the theme of the not a living breathing document is those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. Youve mentioned these classes you teach. Is where do you teach. I teach all over the country. Cu this is your number seven for us. Who is us. My husband and our son colton who has been traveling with us and teaching for sevensb years. He is 11. He is quite the traveled young man. He has been to almost every state in the union to include alaska, but i hawaii. He has been to four countries. Nt what i do as i travel around and we teach on average over 260 classes every year in over 22 states. We dont solicit for classes. People email us and contact us and say, teach us. Over i Teach High School middle school students, college students, we teach civics groups, business groups, bar associations, Law Enforcement, i taught the legislators of ten states from the sovereignty class, we will teach anybody. What people find when we teach these classes is that some preconceived fallacies have to follow way. Teaching the constitution doesnt label me in any certain group. What people find is that it doesnt matter on what political side you stand. The constitution is relevantio to everyone. I taught a National Conference of physicians and surgeons, and it was very exciting hearing their comments after words. These are not people that you would think are generally carrying around the pocket constitution but they were so excited about what they learned. I think thats what we find as we travel around and teach. Weres this is an empowering message for all people, and inspirational message that overcomes a feeling of powerlessness that americans have today in view of how the government operates. Do you charge for these classes. We have no speaking fees. How do you pay for it. Its a lot of travel. We have airplane tickets, rental cars, food, hotel, we have never had a speaking fee, weve never required anyone to compensate us for our travel or our expenses, we do this as a mission of our heart. El we are not independently wealthy, we have never received a grant from anyone, but we work solely off private donations, 20 or 30 here and there and the sale of the books and were not out to get rich. Our family is a family of missionaries. When we are not teaching the constitution of the United States, we are missionaries. The best way ive heard somebody describe what we do here is we are missionaries to the people of the United States in defense of the constitution and thats how we operate. We work solely by fate, andrd for seven years, it works. The from your website, and from your bio, i was raised to democrat, the only thing more evil than satan was a republican in my home. I was an environmentalist, some of my best friends were members of greenpeace and i supported the World Wildlife fund and peta and i was a vegetarian by ideology, not for Health Reasons for almost 15 years. A i believed in Global Warming and defended it vigorously. I believed in the big bang and openly criticized those who believed in creationism as ignorant and misled. Rs i supported abortion and often condemned others for being prolife. I have argued with abortion protesters on street corners and called them names that im not proud of. I was not only not a christian, but i practiced many other religions including many cult versions. I was bitter against god and felt only ignorant week people needed faith. F, long white. What happened. I didnt have an epiphany moment. In my household there is nothing more evil than a republican than satan himself. Cess it was a very politically active household. My parents, my father and his father are union people so our political ideology came from the union born, union fed and when word dead were union dead. There really was no other choic choice. In that paradigm, there is also a very strong work ethic. So, if you want to be the right person you need to be, you need to be someone whos willing to work hard and put in the time and effort. My dad is one of the hardest working people that i know. He was able to instill that worwork ethic and me. When it was time for me to go to college, i put myself through school, Student Loans and jobs and i worked really hard. Ethic i graduated with a degree in biochemistry and i didnt have w , i didnt graduate with any delusions of grandeur. I realize i had to start at the bottom and work up. In doing so, i started noticing the paycheck, that there are these taxes coming out of my paycheck. Being raised, i was taught paying taxes is your fair share to take care of the elderly, the orphans, the disabled, the people can take care of themselves, but as i am looking around and im noticing my Community Around me, im noticing that the same people who werent working when i went to college are still not working. Not because they cant, butng because they choose and they make choices not to. I didnt think that was the definition of fair because of taxes were about fairness and the people who work hard, who have sacrificed and put themselves in a better placein would