Usurpation is defined as entry to another’s property without right or permission; the act of forcibly dispossessing an owner of property. It is synonymous with encroachment, intrusion and with trespassing.
While the word is scarcely uttered today our founders wrote extensively of the usurpation of powers exerted by the British Crown over the American Colonies. The entire grievance list in our Declaration of Independence is centered on usurpation.
It is quite typical in today’s understanding spearheaded by modern liberalism’s assault on education to reinforce that the world the founder’s lived in and the words they wrote are irrelevant to this modern world. That somehow these documents of personal freedom and liberty…of personal sovereignty…are no longer relevant to us. The modern liberal wants us to believe that the words are dead. They want us to believe this because it is the antithesis of all that they believe.
The modern liberal differs vastly from liberalism in our founder’s time because, and make no mistake about this, our Founders were liberals. They were open to the discussion of all ideas and avenues of thought. When our founders spoke about diversity of thought they meant real diversity, not the exclusionary control thought through education. To them diversity was not about blending our culture, but in recognizing and protecting the differences in political, ideological and religious thought.
Our founder’s were not interested in protecting the status quo nor were they interested in establishing a new status quo to regulate and control the collective masses of the future. It is this reason that they gave us a Republic and not a Democracy. The Majority Rule of Democracy diminishes the sovereign rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (property) that led them to fight for freedom in the first place.
When our Constitution was written and sent out to the individual states for ratification there was concern about State Sovereignty being breached and the cry went for a declaration of individual rights to make sure the states and the individuals would remain protected. These concerns were made public by individuals through a series of publications that are today collected together as the Anti-Federalist papers and they serve as an important document of our history in that it raises the questions many of us confront today. The more familiar federalist papers are a response to these questions and concerns and by looking at both documents we can better understand our founder’s intent for our government. The questions raised were deemed important enough to resolve those questions with the creation of the Bill of Rights assuring and protecting us in the preservation of our Republic.
By 1825 issues were already being raised about encroachments by our government on the individual rights of the states and individuals.
In a letter to William Branch Giles in 1825 Thomas Jefferson wrote this: “I see,… and with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that, too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their power… It is but too evident that the three ruling branches of [the Federal government] are in combination to strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of the powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all functions foreign and domestic” (The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 16:146)
It would be interesting to read Mr. Jefferson’s comments on the federal Government in this new millennium. For that matter it would be interesting to see any of our Founder’s response to where we are.
The principle of Delegated Authority was very important to our founder’s. It is important than that we understand what that meant.
They believed that any power that a just government possessed had to arise from the consent of the governed. They believed that if a governing body exceeded this authority then that government would become an unjust government.
The principle of delegated authority rests in the knowledge that no individual has the right to delegate any authority to anyone, elected or otherwise, that they themselves did not possess. While just governments require the consent of the governed this must be coupled to the understanding that no individual, group or majority could give consent to something they had no right to claim in the first place.
As individuals, we do not have the right to the theft of another individual’s property….for whatever reasons or justification. Even for the point of survival, no individual has the right to steal from another without punitive results that require the restoration of whatever it is that has been stolen. No matter how great our need, theft is still theft.
If this is true of us as individuals then we, as individuals, cannot delegate such authority to any elected body that we have placed in position to oversee and protect our freedoms and liberties. Consent in this matter is irrelevant. We cannot consent to something we have no right to in the first place. That is where the principle of being a Republic and not a Democracy becomes a critical component of our government.
While as an individual we might be tempted to authorize the theft of another individual’s property if we are going to personally benefit from such a transaction the law recognizes us only as an accomplice in a crime of theft. We don’t personally have to engage in the actual crime but if we aided or abetted that crime in any way we can be prosecuted.
If we, as individuals cannot do this than we cannot, as a collective body, consent to such an action by our government. When the government assumes such an act then it is guilty not only of the same crime but also of a usurpation of powers that we, as a people, have no authority to grant to them.
It is not that difficult then to understand why government and modern liberalism wants to declare the language of our founders as an irrelevant and dead language. It is not too difficult to understand why we hear so much about the Constitution as being dated and antiquated. Nothing can be further from the truth if we wish to preserve our individual rights through the full expression of our freedoms and liberty.
We hear much today, in light of the recent shootings, that all of society must be punished and controlled by government because of the actions of criminals. Many are fooled into believing that this form of legislation is some type of protection of society and thus are willing to surrender personal freedom and liberty while denying others their rights.
We have a right to protect that which belongs to us…to protect our property. It is a Sovereign Right and no law can be moral, just or legal which denies this Right. The right to Bear arms in the protection of our Life-our property-can not, nor should it ever be, removed.
The fact that some have individually usurped powers to take the lives of others is the point that should be central to the conversation; to preserve and protect Rights, not to remove or destroy them. Any other discussion empowers the criminal by removing the ability to protect one’s self since the criminal has already clearly demonstrated an unwillingness to respect the rights of others.
It is the conversation that the modern liberal refuses to engage in because that conversion destroys their notion of the collective and their desire to control the behavior of the masses.
As an individual, if I am not trespassing; if I am not violating the property of another individual I have nothing to fear from them unless they has the a desire to remove my rights and liberties from me. It is clear that no law actually ends crime if the individual becomes bent on the pursuing of that crime. Regardless of countless laws against robbing banks, homes or simple trespassing, our courtrooms are full of people who have violated such laws.
If we understand that the murderers of these children, or the col-blooded murder of any individual for that matter, are vile and contemptible in that they have no respect for the rights of others than we will quickly see that if our government attempts to take aware our right of protection they are no different from the actual murder. They become accomplices to the crime because the end objective is the same: To remove from us that which rightfully belongs to us.
These murderers have received the shock news treatment where the national media gives them front line position as a lead story for days. Certainly the murder of 20 students and six adults should concern us. Yet on any given day hundreds more children than this will meet the same fate at the hands of abortionists. What is the difference, in both cases the rights of individuals were ursurped by the self-proclaimed powers of others? How is Adam Lanza any different from the Supreme Court who decided in favor of Roe Vs, Wade or the doctors who murder for profit daily through this procedure?
How is Adam Lanza’s right to choose who should live or die any different from a woman who wants to do the same?
The modern liberal does not want to have this discussion because the modern liberal isn’t really a liberal at all. The modern liberal is not interested in preserving diversity. The modern liberal is not interested in protecting individual freedom and liberties. The modern liberals only concern is to assure that they will be the ones making all the decisions about what we can and will believe, how we can and will live, and how power will be dispersed. It is a usurpation of power that only empowers the forces that have no regard for the Sovereignty of the Individual. It is a usurpation of power that finds companions in the minds of people like Adam Lanza.
This then becomes the ultimate form of usurpation and this is what we call tyranny.
On the Edge of the Precipice 