EP 45 | The Constitution's Biblical Roots - with JR Carman #foundingfathers #constitutionalhistory

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Now, the founders thought that politics and government could be understood in the same way, that it can be predicated and can be predictable.

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It doesn't need to be relying on accident and force like Alexander Hamilton talks about in Federalist One.

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It can be based upon reflection and choice based upon laws of nature who are given and legislated by God.

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So, first of all, we see that the laws of nature and nature's God are mentioned in this declaration.

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So, God is what? He is a legislator. He is a lawmaker. Further on in the

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Declaration of Independence, in the last paragraph, we read that the founders were appealing to the supreme judge of the world.

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Now, the judge of the world, in what realm or in what environment is a judge?

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He's in a judicial realm. He is adjudicating justice.

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He is adjudicating law. He is a judge. So, there we have two of the three branches of government that the founders and John Adams would articulate even just prior to the

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Declaration of Independence. We have the laws of nature and nature's God. God is the legislator representing the legislative branch,

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Article One of the Constitution. Then we have the judicial branch. God is the supreme judge of the world.

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And that is Article Three. The very last sentence in the

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Declaration, we read, and for the support, the founders are asking for the support for this declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence.

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And welcome to Tearing Down High Places. I'm Average Joe here with the pastors, Tim and Jeff. Hi, guys.

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Hey, Joe. Glad to be here, man. Nice to see you. And you see the other square up here.

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Hold on. Let me tell you, I'll give you a minute to go get your pocket constitution out because we're going to do something special today.

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Today's guest, J .R. Carman, he's the founder and president of the New Jersey Constitutional Republicans.

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The organization focuses on educating the public about foundational principles out of the

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Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And he's going to share with us today about the

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Bible's influence on these important documents. J .R.

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Carman, welcome to Tearing Down High Places. Well, it's a pleasure to be with you gentlemen today in the audience and looking forward to an invigorating conversation.

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Yeah, we are too. Jeff, what are you looking forward to the most about the topic today, the

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Constitution and its biblical moorings? Well, I'm excited for that because we are living in a day and age where there's been a departure from the

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Bible and from the Constitution. But to see the connection between the two should really help people.

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Tim, what do you think? Do the youth today know their Constitution? Not so much.

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It's an area that I'm not even that strong in, so I'm really excited to hear what J .R. is going to bring to the table and looking to learn something today myself.

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So I'm excited. Fantastic. So J .R., what do you want to tell us about the Bible and the

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Constitution to get us a little educated? And then after you talk a little bit, then we'll ask you some questions.

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Well, I guess essentially we have to go back to Genesis. We would have to go back to the

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Bible. And I think, of course, the United States was the last, was called the

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New World. It was the North American continent would be the last continent that would be discovered by the

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European entities in the end of the 15th century.

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And I think what we have to do really to understand the importance of what would made

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America, which was based on an idea. Alex de

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Tocqueville talked about the idea that the Puritans had when they came to the country and when they were in 1620 and the

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Mayflower Compact was essentially a created right outside the

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Boston Harbor by Plymouth Rock. And their objective quote was to we whose names are underwritten, having undertaken for the glory of God and for the advancement of the

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Christian faith. That was the that was the objective. It wasn't to to to find gold or it wasn't to find riches or wasn't to have trade with the

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Oriental powers. It was to advance the kingdom of God, which would directly go back to Matthew chapter 28 with the command of Christ to go into all the world and proclaim the gospel.

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Wait a minute. Sounds like you're talking about Christian nationalism. Well, no, I'm not going that far now that that will.

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I'm sure we'll talk about that later. But I do want to say, as I was referring to going back to Genesis, God told

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Abraham to go to who is in Ur of the Chaldees. He told him to go into Canaan.

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Now, that was a substantially a move that was going to take him southwest. The key word there is west.

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Then we see with the nation of Israel created, which was west of originally where we believe civilization started,

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Ur of the Chaldees. And then we see that with Christianity, we see expansion of Christianity going even further west, northwest, if you will, into Greece, into Europe.

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And then eventually the new world going even further west. So it seemed to be that there was a design.

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God's plan of design was to move west with the gospel. And the

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United States would be the final, the final objective for the

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United States would be the country by which the greatest number of people and resources would be utilized in which to proclaim the gospel throughout the world.

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Christ said that the end could not come until this gospel be preached throughout the world.

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So that is essentially what America has been involved with to a greater degree, inheriting that from the

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British empire, from the United Kingdom, primarily after the, primarily within the 19th century with the influx of missionaries and the printing of Bibles and the sending forth of Bibles and providing the material resources by which to supply missionaries and to supply the people throughout the world with Bibles in their own language.

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Of course, we've been printing Bibles in their own language. Ultimately, that is the objective as we see

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God's will for the United States. And it's the Declaration of Independence that would articulate these principles by which would create an environment of freedom and liberty for the people to be able to read

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Bibles, to print Bibles, to train missionaries, to train children in the gospel in the

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United States. And then the Constitution would come along 11 years later as the very mechanism, the very conduit, if you will, of the principles of the

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Declaration of Independence, protecting natural rights, protecting the consent of the government, government being contingent upon the consent of those governed as long as the government is securing rights, which we read of in the

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Declaration. So all of this is pieced together. Now, it all follows a plan.

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It all follows a purpose. Now, we can talk about the specifics like the influences that the

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Puritans had, the influences that the Great Awakening would have, the influences of the state constitutions, which, don't forget, came before the national constitution.

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The impact of a one John Adams from Massachusetts, the man who was essentially responsible for putting together the

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Massachusetts Constitution and a means of government after the founders had discussed their break and their separation from Britain, realizing there would be no government at all when they declared independence on July 4th, 1776.

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It was a blank. It was what they call a state of nature, the great Hobbesian and the great

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Lockean ideas of a state of nature. So John Adams said, well, we have to have some sort of a structure of government.

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And this is when these ideas became, his ideas became the precipices for state constitutions.

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And one more thing to start is that what Adams had devised in many ways was what we understand as the separation of powers, meaning because the founders knew that power concentrated in one man or in a group of men in an oligarchy, or even the people themselves in a pure or direct democracy was tyrannical and would eventually eat itself up and destroy itself, but it would certainly oppress others or the minority.

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And this is what was in the thinking of the founders. This is why the structure of the constitution is so important.

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I got to pause right there and ask you a question, because this is something that irks me all the time. Why do

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Republicans constantly refer to our republic as a democracy? I think it's more than anything,

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Joe, it's laziness. What the country really is, if you want to define what type of government the

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United States government is, is it's a democratic constitutional federal republic.

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So that's a mouthful. Most people don't have the attention span to say those four designations, but that's essentially what it is.

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A demos meaning the rule of the people. And essentially we are, because it's we the people who created the constitution, who ordained it and established it.

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So it is a government of the people, but it's a government of the people that agrees to be ruled by law.

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Constitutionalism is law. So the people agree to this constitution.

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It's very important to remember, and this gets lost today. The people in 1789 ratified the national

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United States constitution. And what did they say in it? The preamble says, we the people with all of the different designations, there's six different designations to create a more perfect union, to create domestic tranquility, et cetera.

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But what it finishes up with is we the people do ordain and establish this constitution.

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Meaning that they agree to be ruled by this constitution, which is a written down set of laws.

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We do not ordain and establish a president. We do not ordain and establish a congressman.

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We do not ordain and establish the freeholders. We ordain and establish the constitution from which all of those entities must subscribe to.

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Well, wait a minute. It sounds like you're about to attack the basic understanding of the supremacy clause,

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JR. Is that what you're going to do? No, not at all. The supremacy clause in article four of the constitution means that the

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United States constitution has supremacy over what it is designed and directed and required and subscribed to do.

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But that's not a popular understanding in our current majority of our elected officials, is it?

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Well, that's true, Joe. And that's because of what you and I have talked about previously. That's the apparent civic education crisis that we have in this country.

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And the people do not understand constitutionalism. They don't understand the structure of the constitution.

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What's the popular understanding? What does our government and our legal system operate under currently?

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How do they interpret it? Well, it's been completely infiltrated by progressive thinking.

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It's just the systemic effects of the political theory of Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, one was a

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Republican, one was a Democrat, predicated upon essentially Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, the ideas of evolution, of a living constitution, of the fact that history is only contingent upon the era in which it exists, eliminating any fixed understandings or fixed dogmas, if you will, or fixed principles like natural rights.

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Today natural rights has been completely abrogated as being something that is archaic, it's passed on.

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Now natural rights are the derivative of government, whereas the founders understood and the country was predicated upon natural rights being founded and given by God.

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So now government has replaced God and a lot of people agree to that. And that's because if there is the evolution, of course, says there is no

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God, that we evolved from apes and other lesser forms that we have, there is no soul, there is no

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Christ, there is no God, so what do you have? So you're denying constitutionalism in that regard, because constitutionalism comes from the written down word.

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The written down word is the Bible. What makes American constitutionalism so unique is that it was written down.

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The British constitution, which is a lot where our American constitution, the idea of common law comes from, wasn't written down.

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It was in the Magna Carta in 1215, but it's not written down in a very, very simple, articulate structure like our

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United States constitution. So today, the thinking today is predicated upon the progressive political theory, which means you're going to have somebody leading the way, which is the president.

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He's going to dictate, he's going to have a mandate. You hear the word mandate all the time. He's going to have a mandate to do this and to do that.

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And he doesn't really want the Congress or the judicial branches involved.

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It's almost as if we're looking back, and this is what Ben Franklin incidentally warned about Jeff in the

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Constitutional Convention, and you understand this in your studies, because he said that the propensity for most people, it's a propensity for human nature to look for a king, to look for a strongman, to look for someone that they can put their hope and their trust in to take care of them.

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Whereas the founders said, you have to take care of yourself. You have to think for yourself. You are the pop, you are the sovereign in a democratic constitutional federal republic.

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You have to take care of yourself. And you've written down laws in a constitution that you must follow that will protect your liberties and your freedom.

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Our problem, Joe, is we've abandoned constitutionalism. Now, why is that uniquely

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Christian? Because I believe it is. I know Jeff believes that's uniquely Christian to give with freedom.

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If you're going to give someone freedom, they're going to have to have responsibilities, right? That's right. And the founders understood that when they talked about liberty, they talked about ordered liberty.

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They talked about the liberty to do right, the liberty to do good.

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It didn't mean as later court decisions would come down through the 20th century and say, you're at liberty to look at pornography.

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You're at liberty to engage in any sort of premarital sex or whatever it is, whatever you decide, whatever you desire, whatever you lust after, you're at liberty to do that.

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That is not in any way, shape or form, the liberty that the founders had in mind when they created this empire of liberty, as Thomas Jefferson would call it.

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It was the liberty to do what you saw or what you thought was right. John Adams said, of course, that this type of government would only be for people that would be able to essentially self -govern themselves.

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Because if they're not able to self -govern themselves, they're going to elect people that aren't either. And this is the problem we have today.

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We're electing representatives who lack moral virtue, who lack integrity, who lack honesty, who lack a dedication to protect and to preserve and to defend the

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Constitution. And this is the biggest problem that we have as far as representative government. And incidentally, and the pastor can speak to this, is the fact that representative government goes all the way back to Moses and his father -in -law, who suggested that all of this work and judging and leading these people, the

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Israelites out of Egypt, it's too much for one man. You have to break this down into representative government.

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You have to have one man for every 50 people. So this is where the idea of representative government comes in.

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You know, Joe and Tim and the pastor and I, we don't have, we're making a living, we're doing, fulfilling our responsibilities, number one, under God.

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But number two, we have to earn a living, we have to pay mortgages. So we're not capable of going to Trenton and to making legislation.

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We're not capable of going to Washington unless we seek the office and we run an election.

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But we're hiring essentially somebody to do that when we are electing representatives. But the problem is this, and James Garfield, who was president in 1880, he was in the

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House of Representatives, he said, the people of the United States are representative for the moral conduct and the character of their

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Congress, meaning that it's the American people, they are responsible for electing the

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Nancy Pelosi's, the Mike Johnson's, the Chuck Schumer's, the

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McConnell's and everyone else who they've elected. They are responsible. So the

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American people have nobody to blame for bad government themselves. But I say it's because of a lack of civic education that they're in this almost unwinnable predicament to begin with, because they don't know what to do.

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They don't know what a democratic constitutional republic, federal republic is. Wow.

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That's well said. Well said. Good, Jeff. I have a question for you. So I can hear what you're saying and think of some of our listeners recognizing that this would be a good safeguard from the left.

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People off to the left have completely rejected constitutional republicanism.

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But I could also hear somebody off to our right criticizing what you're saying here.

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You mentioned earlier, America is an idea. And J .D.

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Vance recently said that this is not a proposition nation, right?

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Is there something more to America than an idea? Is there something about the land, about the language, about the clan or the ethnicity or the nation as such that we should focus on?

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Because I've heard many people speaking recently against this idea of a proposition nation.

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And I wanted to just hear what your reaction to them might be. And I'm just sitting here listening to everybody right now, trying to understand what's going on.

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Right. Well, we've already touched upon it once, Pastor, and that's what was the idea that the

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Puritans had on the Mayflower. Their idea was to propagate the gospel. Abraham Lincoln said that indeed we were, our nation was predicated and based upon the proposition that all men are created equal.

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And we know that all men are created equal. That's for sure. And this is what has always puzzled me, is why don't we talk about the fact that we're all created equal in sin?

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There's no question about our equality in that regard. For we, like sheep, have all gone astray, for there's none that doeth good, no not one.

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For we all die in Adam, but we have the potential of being made alive in Christ. We are all dead.

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The wages of sin is death. This all, this is an all -encompassing, this is a universal trait, that this isn't a proposition, this is a fact.

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And that equality is there in the state that we are created in, which is in depravity, which is in sinfulness.

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But also, we have a right as God creates human life from the moment of conception, we have a right of life.

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That is one of the prepositions that is listed in the Declaration of Independence. Self -evident truth that God, their creator, unalienable rights given by their creator, of them being life, number one.

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And then liberty, and then the pursuit of happiness, which has a lot to do with ownership of property in the founder's mind.

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But not only physical real estate, but intellectual property. Property in what you know, property in what you think, property in what you do.

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Property had a very different meaning to the founders than we only associated with material things, but it's much more than material.

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But we are indeed, and I totally disagree with Mr. Vance, we are indeed a nation based upon that proposition, that self -evident truth that all men are created equal.

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And so much so that the hundreds of thousands of men during the 1860s gave their lives in bloody combat on horrible battlefields to justify and to verify what

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Abraham Lincoln said on the Gettysburg Address, at the Gettysburg Address, November 19th, 1863, at the

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Gettysburg National Cemetery. JD's young, we'll give him a little grace. Yeah, well, you know what,

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I actually hear a discussion developing, a conversation with conversations that matter.

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A guy that I really respect and listen to, a guy named John Harris, has done some work and spoke with a group called the

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Abbeville Institute. He has a documentary called the 1607 Project, I think it is.

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I've watched it, I thought it was very insightful, but I'm still in the position of a learner on this question, where I'm really wanting to hear someone like John Harris say, you know what, the

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Civil War was the war of northern aggression, shouldn't call it the Civil War. And I'm hearing you say the opposite, that Abraham Lincoln, I see his profile behind you.

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So why don't we go there for just a minute and let me give you a chance just to share a little bit about that subject.

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Why is Abraham Lincoln a hero? Or if want to take it in a different direction, why should the

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Civil War have been fought? Who started it? What went on there? Because if we don't really understand history, we can't really know if JD Vance is crazy to call, to challenge the proposition nation idea, or if he's onto something.

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So take it away, JR. All right, well, it's an excellent question and it's not a quick answer, but really those answers,

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Pastor, can be found in original source documentation. All we have to do is to read the words of Lincoln to know about Lincoln.

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All we have to do is to read the words of James Calhoun and Mr. Harris and Abbeville Revere as their great intellectual representative of the slave power.

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And the words of Alexander Stevens, who said that the confederacy, the cornerstone of the confederacy was predicated upon slavery and that the inferiority of the black man and the positive good that James Calhoun said that it was good for the black man to be oppressed by the white man because he didn't know any better and he needed to have a paternal overlord.

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And this justified this idea of slavery and this is what became known as states' rights.

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He had states' rights, all right, states' rights to inflict bondage and oppression on a race of people predicated upon their color is what they did.

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And Abraham Lincoln said they are human beings.

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These aren't property. These aren't mere hogs or cattle. These are human beings that need to be treated as such.

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The confederacy didn't believe that. They believed that they were less than human. And these ideas would later on become more and more accepted with incidentally progressive thinking with the idea of eugenics and all sorts of different racial theories that were eventually accepted by Adolf Hitler and the

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Nazis in Germany. Look to America, to some of the atrocities that he had to begin to formalize in his thinking in the 1920s.

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But all we have to do to look at the importance and the greatness of the man,

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Abraham Lincoln, is in the words, is in what he said, in the words that he said during the seven debates that he had with Stephen H.

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Douglas. And Stephen Douglas saying that the people should be able to vote up and down on slavery as a yes or no vote.

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If it's a democratic vote and the majority wants it, well, that's popular sovereignty. Lincoln said, whoa, wait a minute.

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You can't take an up and down vote on natural rights. You can't take an up and down vote on the inalienable rights given by a creator, which among them would be life, number one, liberty.

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The slave wasn't a liberty to do what he wants. The other thing Lincoln said was that we're a government based on consent.

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What black man is giving consent to be a slave? What man is agreeing to be a slave?

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That's not government based on consent. You mean the black man is not entitled to the same idea of consent that the white man is?

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Of course he is, because he's created equal. And this is what Lincoln talked about. And Douglas tried to paint

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Lincoln out as an abolitionist and as a radical. And Lincoln said that we're not always equal.

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No two people are completely equal. Some people have a lot of determination. Some people are very intelligent.

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Some people are very athletic. Some people are very emotional. Some people like to eat a lot.

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Some people don't. On and on and on and on it goes. But where we are all equal is that God gives us the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for just the starters.

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He also gives us the right to marriage. He gives us the right to get a job. He gives us the right to get an education, et cetera, et cetera.

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But Abraham Lincoln brought the Declaration of Independence back into view.

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He brought it back into where the founders had placed it, the Confederacy and the slave power. Those who said that we are not a proposition nation, which is what the same argument the slave power had, said, no, those unalienable rights don't apply to black men.

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They only apply to the white man. Well, Lincoln says, well, how about if a man is a little bit darker than, one man might be white, but he's darker than another white man.

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So that means he has the right to enslave that man, and on and on it will go. And that's what

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Lincoln was saying, on and on it goes. He said, so you're going to say that it's okay to enslave somebody who's not as intelligent as you, or somebody can be enslaved if they aren't as pretty as you, or they're not as good looking.

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So on and on it's going to go if you keep up with the argument that the slave power was perpetuating the rights deserved to some but not all.

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The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, who was a slave owner, Arthur of the Declaration, said that the self -evident truth, the proposition that we believe in is the self -evident truth that all men are indeed created equal.

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And Lincoln said, in that equality, everyone has the right to eat the bread that they earn, as opposed to the slave making the bread that the white slave power oppressor eats.

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Don't muzzle the ox. Don't muzzle the ox, right, JR? That is an applicable application in that regard.

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That's a literal applicable application in that regard. So I could go on for weeks on the virtues of Lincoln.

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That's just the start of it. I think we all have too many questions for you at this point. We're about halfway through the show.

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I mean, I got questions, JR. I bet you, Jeff, you probably have some too. What do you got? All right.

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Why don't you ask the questions and I'll summarize where we can go from that discussion. How about we use that as a springboard to a conversation?

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I can text this conversation that we're having now to my friend, John Harris, and then invite him on the show with you.

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And we could have a deeper conversation, or maybe he could just interact with it and we can go back and forth that way.

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But I would love to just learn more from you, because when I asked that question, I know that you have, I'm sure you could talk about this for four hours and we gave you 15 minutes.

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You can go for weeks, Jeff. Yeah, I think he could. JR, I think you've studied these things a little bit.

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I didn't know who fired the first shot in the Civil War until you told me that recently. The counter -argument is that that shot was fired in Southern Territory.

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It wasn't fired. It wasn't an act of aggression against the Northern Territory. I'm just saying.

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But, Joe, it was because it was a federal installation. Fort Sumner was a federal installation.

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The men that were in that installation were being starved to death because the

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Confederates would not let any provisions into Fort Sumner.

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They threatened to attack any, and Lincoln said they will be unarmed. They're just going to be giving food to hungry men is all they're going to be doing.

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The Confederacy refused because the Confederacy was looking for the fight. Yes, it was, but it certainly was.

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I can show you all the documented information. Lincoln attempted to bring food to these starving men in a federal installation.

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It was not a state installation. It was not property of South Carolina. It was property of the United States government. Lincoln is sworn to defend the

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United States government, sworn to protect and to preserve and defend the Constitution, which gives him the authority over federal forts and federal installments and military depots and so forth.

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But here's the other thing that I want you to... Go ahead, Joe. Let me just say, based on the one quote you gave me from Lincoln, that you can't take an up and down vote on natural rights,

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I would forgive any other kind of craziness, kookiness, if I could get any politician to say that and abide by it.

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That is so powerful. We can unpack that for three episodes. However, I'm just going to tell you what the counterargument is because I'm a lot like Jeff, where I'm kind of...

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This whole Civil War thing's got me baffled because I've studied a little bit about just war theory.

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It talks about the northern aggression and how everything changed when the

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South went into Pennsylvania. But in a Christian just war theory, you're only supposed to defend yourself unless it's a unique situation where God says, do this.

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However, back to Lincoln and what happened in South Carolina there, doesn't the constitution say that the federal government can only own a land of 10 square miles, which was supposed to be

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Washington DC, and they were allowed to rent property off of the states for forts and things like that?

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So technically, that would have been... Maybe they should have waited until their rent was up for renewal.

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I don't know. This is why we say you are not average Joe, because I don't know anything about this.

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This is not so average Joe, but I'm sure JR has an answer to that also. Yeah. Fort Sumter was a federal installation.

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It was a federal fort that was built and maintained by the United States government to protect

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Charleston Harbor from British invasion in the Revolutionary War.

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But just let me say this, because I wanted to share with you some remarkable language that's in the

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Declaration of Independence that is directly attributable to the theme of the program today. But I do want to end this discussion if I could, or I don't want to ever end a discussion, but I just want to say that as far as northern aggression is concerned, you have to remember, the

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Civil War was fought over slavery. Slavery was what motivated the South to protect their interests.

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And unfortunately, it was an oligarchy, it was an aristocracy, it was a small percentage of the slave power that owned and were essentially the representatives in Washington, in their state governments, and they did not want to give up, they did not want to get rid of slavery.

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It's not so much that they didn't want to get rid of it, they wanted to expand it, and this is why we had the great conflict. But here's the incriminating evidence that I'll share with you, and I can bring it up for you so you can read it next time.

36:24

In the Declaration of Secession Ordinances of the Confederate States, they, four out of the five that I'm positively aware of, said the reason we're doing this is because we must protect the institution of slavery.

36:40

We have a right, we have a constitutional right to own property in people, and that is exactly what the slave power and the

36:51

Confederacy believed. And nothing hurts the gospel more. Nothing hurts the gospel more.

36:57

But here's the thing, the gospel in the South, the pastors in the South, they were defending this idea, saying, look, there's slavery in the

37:06

Bible, look, your slaves were submissive, Philemon was a slave, on and on it goes.

37:12

But that contradicts the idea of the golden rule, doing unto others as you would want them to do unto yourself.

37:20

And the idea God gives us, the command God gives us to love our neighbor as ourself, and to provide for our neighbor, and to be there for him spiritually, and to help him and to cultivate a safe and secure environment for him.

37:38

And on and on, there are many different biblical verses we can bring up. But this idea of northern regression is, lack of a better word, an old word, poppycock.

37:47

It's absolutely ridiculous. The South perpetuated the Civil War, and the

37:53

South did it because they wanted to protect their investment in human beings, which they were slaves, and they said it in their ordinances.

38:01

Stephen A. Douglas, who was the vice president incidentally, and also a friend of Abraham Lincoln as a

38:06

Whig, when they served in the House of Representatives in 1842, he said that the cornerstone of our

38:13

Confederacy is slavery. And that's just the way he said it down in Georgia right before the

38:19

Civil War. So let's remember these things. But I did want to share with you gentlemen, a couple of very interesting words from the

38:27

Declaration of Independence, if I could. So we're talking about the

38:33

Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bible and the relevance between those.

38:40

And we read in the very first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, when in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's

38:58

God entitle them. Now we could spend a week on this one particular sentence, but notice that it's the laws of nature, the laws of nature and nature's

39:11

God that are entitling the founders to this separation from the crown.

39:17

So here we see laws of nature and nature's God. They understood, and the

39:23

Enlightenment was just, this was just after the Enlightenment where we see the tremendous strides taken in science, understanding many things we didn't know before.

39:37

Newtonian Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, John Locke, all of these ideas that they were able to scientifically articulate.

39:48

John Isaac Newton and the law of gravity, whatever you hold up and drop must fall down, no matter how many times

39:58

I do that. That is a law of gravity. I can go anywhere in the world and hold up this orange highlighter and drop it and it will drop.

40:07

That is a law. That is something that we can predict. We know it's true.

40:13

Now the founders thought that politics and government could be understood in the same way, that it can be predicated and can be predictable.

40:23

It doesn't need to be relying on accident and force like Alexander Hamilton talks about in Federalist One.

40:31

It can be based upon reflection and choice, based upon laws of nature who are given and legislated by God.

40:42

So first of all, we see that the laws of nature and nature's God are mentioned in this declaration.

40:50

So God is what? He is a legislator. He is a lawmaker. Further on in the

40:57

Declaration of Independence, in the last paragraph we read that the founders were appealing to the supreme judge of the world.

41:08

Now the judge of the world, in what realm or in what environment is a judge?

41:14

He is in a judicial realm. He is adjudicating justice.

41:21

He is adjudicating law. He is a judge. So there we have two of the three branches of government that the founders and John Adams would articulate even just prior to the

41:36

Declaration of Independence. We have the laws of nature and nature's God. God is the legislator representing the legislative branch,

41:44

Article One of the Constitution. Then we have the judicial branch. God is the supreme judge of the world.

41:53

And that is Article Three. The very last sentence in the

42:00

Declaration we read, and for the support, the founders are asking for the support for this declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence.

42:15

We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. Protection. The protector is an executor.

42:26

An executor of law. An executor of law, the executive, the chief executive is the president.

42:35

Article Two of the Constitution. So we see the Declaration of Independence foreshadowing the three branches that would comprise the structure of the

42:47

Constitution and comprise the structure of the government. Now, I say one more thing.

42:54

The founders believe prior to the suggestion that a Bill of Rights be put in, which would be in 1791, after the ratification of the

43:04

Constitution in 1789, the founders and Madison and Alexander Hamilton and the majority of them believed that the structure of the

43:14

Constitution itself within the first eight articles was all that was needed, or the first seven articles, rather, was all that was needed.

43:22

Because the separation of power, the legislative from the executive, from the judicial, and them all being equal, no one being more prevalent or more important or leading the others, but all of them protecting their own particular self -interest, which is what

43:42

Madison talks about in Federalist 54, which is another topic of great discussion, meaning that the branches have to protect themselves and we shouldn't have speakers of the

43:53

House holding hands with presidential candidates during presidential conventions and we shouldn't have speakers of the

44:00

Houses going to see the president being indicted and giving him support. The founders would say he is supposed to be separate from all that.

44:08

The legislature is not to rubber stamp everything the president. There to be a check on the president.

44:16

The Supreme Court is not to make rulings giving you presidential immunity because the president is required to work within law and order just like Joe, Jeff, and Tim have to.

44:29

He is not above law. No one is above the law. So we see that with these separation of powers and them checking each other, that is what would lead to the success, which did lead to the success of the establishment.

44:43

Joe, you talked about earlier what the problem is. It's because we've lost that. We've lost those three branches working within their own subscribed constitutional duties and they've kind of blended into one another and essentially what they're doing, they're propagating up the president to be greater and more important than they are.

45:02

That's our problem. Well, people think that there's three, I think,

45:08

I don't know where people learn this, certainly, but so many people repeat the incorrect phrase that we have three co -equal branches.

45:17

I haven't been able to find that in any of the documents. Looks to me like the House of Representatives is supposed to be the strongest.

45:24

Well, that description of co -equal branches is correct. However, that's not the way it's been, that's not the way it's maintained.

45:33

Now, the Congress was essentially given specific enumerated duties.

45:39

Look at all the enumerated duties in Article 1, Section 8, many different responsibilities. They have the power of the purse.

45:46

They have the power to, they're creating legislation in many, many different regards and they blend into foreign policy, they blend into other regulating foreign commerce or regulating state and domestic commerce rather, regulating between the states, which was the duty of the

46:05

Congress. So the Congress was very, very important, but only within the jurisdiction that they were to work within.

46:12

It's become much more expanded, but no greater branch has expanded more than the presidential branch.

46:19

That's where all these administrative agencies, Joe, they come from the presidential branch.

46:25

But the fact is that they're not, the judiciary was to employ judicial review on all legislation that the

46:34

Congress was legislating. The president was meant to be a check on the legislative body to make sure that they were not going to tyrannize the minority in making law.

46:47

Can you believe that? That's what the president was intended to do. He was to protect the minority.

46:53

Now it's the mandate's been given, the majority, the majority. And of course, I can talk about the inflows of Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, and the ideas of the

47:03

Democrats versus the Federalists were to where we've come to where those ideas have come.

47:09

But three co -equal branches, Joe, was what the intent was. But the problem is they're not co -equal anymore.

47:15

They're more like this. And they're making the executive branch more and more. They're giving him more power than what is prescribed in the constitution.

47:24

We talked earlier about having a jealousy for a constitution that operates as it was initially intended.

47:34

And I want to go back to something we already talked a little bit about, but I wanted to see if you could explain how did the supremacy clause go from the constitution was the supreme law of the land converting into anything the feds decide to vote on becomes the supreme law of the land.

47:56

How did that happen? Do you know? Well, there have been several court decisions that have done that.

48:05

A lot of it had to do with the New Deal and the effects of the New Deal court in giving

48:11

Franklin Delano Roosevelt the ability to give wage and price controls.

48:18

That was something that was supposed to be, of course, if there's interstate commerce, then the constitution gives the federal government, the

48:28

Congress in this case, they have the right to legislate in that regard. But some of the state provisions that have been abrogated by the federal government, there have just been poor rulings.

48:44

Now, there's also been rulings, for an example, the 14th Amendment was essentially the amendment that gave the right of due process to all the freed blacks, whereas the states, the southern states, they were depriving the black man of his rights.

49:00

So the federal government required that with the 14th Amendment, which would be in the federal constitution, required the states, you have to recognize these people as human beings and they have natural rights just like you do.

49:11

So that was a just amendment to the constitution over the states.

49:17

But the 9th and 10th Amendment are protecting the states and the interests of the states, giving them the police and authoritative power that they need, because the people live within these small local communities, they live within the cities within these states.

49:32

The federal government was not intended to be involved with every single means of legislating the states.

49:40

The states were to follow the rules that they prescribe in their own state constitutions, and this is something that's been forgotten.

49:49

The state constitutions are just as important as the federal constitution. And people in New Jersey would complain about the high taxes and the property taxes, and we complain about sanctuary state status, which really is essentially a confederacy against the federal government and not enforcing the laws of the federal government, because the federal government is in charge of rules of naturalization and the states have to enforce those laws, which

50:13

Phil Murphy has refused to do. That in itself is an act of confederacy. But the point is, is that the states have jurisdiction over what they are given legitimate power as constitutionally authorized in their own state constitution, but the federal constitution does take the supremacy, if there are any abrogations that are spilling over into federal jurisdiction.

50:39

The federal government has no right to tell the people how to run their police department in Boreas, or their police department in Deptford, or how they're going to run their freeholder board, or their,

50:53

I call them freeholders still, how they're going to call their city township, city government.

50:58

That's not the responsibility of the federal government. That's for local government. It's a federal government. When was the last time anyone said, hey, you can't vote on that?

51:05

That's not an enumerated power. I haven't heard anyone say that in my lifetime.

51:11

That's another problem, Joe. That's an effect of the progressive movement giving these memorandums and referendum voting is all part of the progressive era in trying to circumvent the responsibilities of the representatives who we elect and take upon ourselves to make the decision.

51:28

The representatives today say, that's fine. Go ahead, let the people decide. We don't want to be, we don't want to lose an election over that vote.

51:36

Let them do it. Well, we're electing them to go in there and to debate and to respectfully deliberate over these issues.

51:44

That doesn't happen anymore. Now it's whatever the speaker or the leader of the house or the state assembly says, this is how you're going to vote.

51:51

Nobody's got any independent, there's no more independent critical thinking anymore. Just do what the party tells you to do.

51:57

That's just what the founders said would be one of the problems with, the potential problems with the country, factions.

52:03

The baneful spirit of faction is what George Washington said in his farewell address. Factions means parties.

52:09

It's synonymous with political parties. The political parties have more control and more power than our constitution,

52:15

Joe. That's the problem. All right. I'm going to go a whole different question outside of what we're talking about, but each one of my questions could be a full episode with you,

52:26

JR, because I just so appreciate what you're saying. Can you tell me what due process is supposed to mean in the constitution?

52:33

I think it's, I think it's based in Deuteronomy 19, but you know, two or three witnesses, but I mean,

52:40

I never hear anyone, I hear people talk about due process, but I've never heard it defined.

52:45

What did the founding fathers think? Well, you have to, it's article five of the constitution talks about the due process of law.

52:54

No man can be, no man, of course it means woman. When it means man, it means woman and children.

53:00

No one, no man or woman can be deprived of the right of liberty, of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness without due process.

53:09

Meaning they have to be, number one, they have to go before a jury of their peers, which is where you get the

53:15

Deuteronomy witness from, and that is directly attributable. There's another biblical influence on that particular fifth amendment.

53:22

And incidentally, the 14th amendment would re, would re, would, would also reestablish the very same language that the right of due process, the right of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness will not be deprived of anyone without due process in the states is what the 14th amendment, which was specifically for the black man to protect his right of due process after the winning of the civil war.

53:46

So the right of due process means that you have the right to be given a fair and legitimate evaluation of any accusations or any, any accusal of guilt.

53:59

You have to be proven without the shadow of a doubt that you're guilty of an alleged crime. And you're, you go before, you have legal representation.

54:08

You have, you go before a jury of your peers, the judge is there to make sure everything is done constitutionally prescribed in a correct manner.

54:16

But the right of due process has to do with you being given the full extent of the law and the program of law.

54:26

The, the, your right of due process cannot be deprived without the organization and methodology by which you must be either proven, you must be proven guilty because you're already assumed innocent in our judicial system.

54:42

Regardless of the accusation, you are, you are assumed to be innocent unless you are proven guilty.

54:49

We used to be. That process is called due process. Right, right.

54:55

Can I sneak in a question? Please do. All right.

55:00

So JR, you seem like you're, we can tell you're so knowledgeable and you have all this passion. I think that you could probably teach a

55:07

US history class better than the professors around here. And I'm just wondering, where did all this knowledge and passion come from?

55:16

Where and when did you start this journey of understanding all these things?

55:22

Well, I'll have to tell you, Tim, it started in my grandfather's basement. He was born and came from Springfield, Illinois, Bridgeport, Illinois.

55:31

And I saw these, I saw these statues and I saw these campaign posters and I saw all these, all these replicas of this man with this beard and this tall, lanky, very unattractive looking man.

55:45

But that man, that man turned out to be Abraham Lincoln. But the ironic thing... I thought you were talking about me when you said beard, tall, lanky, unattractive.

55:55

I thought you were talking about me. Jeff, you're very, you're a very handsome man. So we can't, we can't compare you to Lincoln in that regard.

56:02

Maybe in others, but not in that one. But anyway, Tim, my grandfather never told me anything about Abraham Lincoln.

56:09

So I, later on in life, I started to do some inquiry, but here's the thing that really got me.

56:14

My father, golf professional. I grew up in the golf business and he would look at the morning news, the

56:22

Today Show back in the seventies, and he would get up in the morning and he'd cook me breakfast and we'd get ready to go to the golf club to work.

56:30

I was only 10 years old and he would be yelling at the TV sets saying, you son of a, you son of...

56:37

And I'd say, dad, what are you getting so excited about? He said, that George McGovern, he's nothing more than a liberal, no good, rotten son of a...

56:46

So my father was a great supporter of Nixon and the Republican party. And that's where I got immersed in Republicanism.

56:53

I started to read about all these great Republicans and Dwight Eisenhower and Calvin Coolidge.

57:00

And of course, Lincoln was the first Republican. So I had to start with that.

57:06

But my father really is the one who gave me this passion for history and the politics of the

57:11

Republican party. And I, incidentally, gentlemen, and I'll admit this, I'm a great defender and apologist for Richard Nixon.

57:19

Richard Nixon was a great constitutionalist in many ways. And he was probably our greatest foreign policy president next to Ronald Reagan.

57:27

But a lot of the success Ronald Reagan had in winning the Cold War was directly attributable to what

57:33

Richard Nixon was able to accomplish with his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, in the early 1970s.

57:40

Really? That's correct. Wow. That is correct. Do you agree with me quick?

57:46

I'll get one in from you. Do you agree with me that Calvin Coolidge is our greatest president or one of our greatest because he was the do nothing president?

57:56

That is a very, very accurate observation, Pastor. And I would agree that he was one of the greatest presidents because he was a constitutional

58:08

Republican. See behind me? Constitutional Republican. Calvin Coolidge is really the 20th century example.

58:16

Ronald Reagan was a great constitutional Republican, too. But he came up in the

58:21

New Deal era. And the influence of the New Deal is another topic for another conversation. The New Deal is systemic in our political environment.

58:30

It drives everything. The idea of a mandate that we're hearing about directly comes from the New Deal and Franklin Roosevelt.

58:37

But Calvin Coolidge worked within the constitutional restraints of the Constitution.

58:43

He respected the legislative branch's duties because he was a legislator. And he also respected the judicial branch because he was also an attorney and understood.

58:52

Calvin Coolidge went up the process. He started in small town, municipal government.

58:58

Then he went to state government. Then he went to vice president. Then he went to president. He went through every stage.

59:03

And I think he provides an example, Jeff, of what every representative should do. You should start at the school board level, then go to your municipal or township level, then go to your county level, then go to your state level.

59:16

I think it's very, very important, just like ballplayers are cultivated through the farm system, I am convinced now that we've had the representatives who are electing the highest office in the land and other offices who are completely constitutionally illiterate, that is our problem.

59:31

We're electing people that are ill -equipped and uninformed in their roles and in their duties as elected representatives.

59:38

And anyone in our audience that hates the fact that they didn't learn this stuff in school and wants to become constitutionally literate can join the

59:49

New Jersey Constitutional Republicans and hear JR speak in detail about a lot of these things.

59:57

Is that not true, JR? That's what the organization was created. We're called

01:00:02

Constitutional Republicans, Joe, but we don't have any affiliation with local state or national

01:00:09

GOP. As a matter of fact, if you learned a little bit about what we've been talking about lately, we probably resemble the

01:00:19

Whig Party who came in opposition of Andrew Jackson back in 1828. And of course,

01:00:26

Jackson was the last populist president and the last demagogue we had as president.

01:00:32

But as Republicans, we're not politically affiliated, but we are interested in educating our citizens.

01:00:39

Well, JR, I need you to send me any links you want me to have in the show notes so people can reach out and become affiliated with the

01:00:48

New Jersey Constitutional Republicans. I'm going to have I have some information on Ray as a card carrying member, by the way.

01:00:55

Yes. Just saying. I'm glad to have you. And I'm glad to be there. And I've learned a lot.

01:01:00

So much I don't know. Go ahead, Jeff. Yeah. And I want to just give a couple of key takeaways because I can imagine our listeners trying to get their minds around all this information.

01:01:10

Some of the key things that I heard said is that the Bible taught us a view of human nature and human depravity.

01:01:19

And the genius of Adams and the Constitution was to get that right and to have a balance of powers that are based on a rule of law and not to invest power into any person or group.

01:01:34

But what we have is exactly the opposite, that we have a bureaucracy in Washington, D .C., the merging of these powers.

01:01:40

And we're about to lose this whole thing, which was a beautiful design based on the

01:01:45

Bible and understanding of human nature. And we've got to get back to the Constitution, the way this country was formed, if we ever hope to see a great future for the

01:01:56

United States of America. Is that a good summary? Amen. You knocked it out of the park,

01:02:02

Jeff. It was like Aaron Judge. You just knocked it right out of the park. That was a beautiful summary and 100 percent accurate.

01:02:12

OK, great. So, guys, again, we're going to have links in the show notes. J .R. does a radio show out of Vineland as well.

01:02:21

On the fourth Saturday of the month, you can listen to him on Cruisin' 92 .1

01:02:28

WVLT in Vineland, New Jersey for the NJCR radio hour. His website is

01:02:34

NJCR, the number for Restores .com and on YouTube at NJCR4restores.

01:02:42

Again, all that will be in the show notes. J .R., so grateful to have you here today. You were a real blessing to us and our audience.

01:02:48

Yes. Well, it was my great pleasure and I hope to come back and we've still got more to talk about.

01:02:54

Amen. We sure will. So now, so that we hit our time, if you see a brother down, lift him up, lift him up,

01:03:02

J .R. Get him up, get him off, pick him up by his bootstraps. And if you see a high place, tear it down.