ArcaMax

"Government requires make-believe. Make believe that the king is divine, make believe that he can do no wrong or make believe that the voice of the people is the voice of God. Make believe that the people have a voice or make believe that the representatives of the people are the people. Make believe that governors are the servants of the ...Read more

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -- George Santayana

I am amazed at the efforts around the country to remove and destroy painful mementos of our history. One would think that historical figures need to be perceived as perfect to survive the winds of change that buffet their statues and portraits, and the ...Read more

Here is a pop quiz on the Constitution. What is the first freedom protected by the Bill of Rights? If you guessed speech or press, then you are close. The first protected freedom is religion. The two religion clauses in the First Amendment keep the government out of our pockets for religious purposes and out of our churches for all purposes. ...Read more

For two months now, most of America has endured a government-imposed lockdown. I hate to use that word -- lockdown -- as it connotes locking prisoners into their cells during prison disturbances. But it is the word that the government itself uses when referring to its orders of confinement.

Today, we are the government's prisoners. Wear your ...Read more

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." -- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

Colonial America was filled with summer soldiers and sunshine patriots who wanted...Read more

The governors of all 50 states, and the mayors of many large cities, have assumed unto themselves the powers to restrict private personal choices and lawful public behavior in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19.

They have done so not by enforcing previously existing legislation but by crafting their own executive orders, styling those ...Read more

What if the government has it wrong -- on the medicine and the law?

What if face masks can't stop the COVID-19 virus? What if quarantining the healthy makes no medical sense? What if staying at home for months reduces immunity?

What if more people have been infected with the virus in their homes than outside them?

What if there are as many ...Read more

"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

To Thomas Jefferson, the fulcrum between the people and the government they have elected was fear. He argued succinctly that the government would only respect liberty if it feared losing power. ...Read more

I have been taking some heat from friends and colleagues for my steadfast defense of personal liberties and my arguments that the Constitution -- when interpreted in accordance with the plain meaning of its words, and informed by history -- does not permit the government to infringe upon personal freedoms, no matter the emergency or pandemic. ...Read more

When Francis Scott Key wrote the words "the land of the free and the home of the brave" in 1814, he did so in a poem called "The Defense of Fort McHenry." The battle of Fort McHenry in Baltimore was a decisive one in which Americans truly demonstrated bravery and fought for freedom.

This was the War of 1812, the origins of which are lost to ...Read more

The loss of liberty is at hand.

Every day in America, mayors and governors -- not one of whom is constitutionally or lawfully empowered to author laws and assign punishments for their noncompliance -- are imposing new standards of behavior that nullify liberty in the name of public safety.

I have been writing about this since the COVID-19 ...Read more

During the past month, as Americans have been terrified of the coronavirus, another demon has been lurking ready to pounce. It is a demon of our own creation. It is the now amply manifested inability of elected officials to resist the temptation of totalitarianism. And it is slowly bringing about the death of personal liberty in our once free ...Read more

That God, which ever lives and loves,

One God, one law, one element,

And one far-off divine event,

To which the whole creation moves. -- Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

When American colonists were oppressed by governance from Britain, the word most frequently uttered in pamphlets and editorials and sermons was not "safety" or "taxes...Read more