Hey Readers!

Back on September 30th, 2011 I was outraged when I found out that President Obama ordered the assassination of alleged terrorist Anwar Awlaki. This was a United States citizen that was targeted by a drone and killed without due process of law. He had not been convicted of any crime nor had it been proven that he was even connected to one. He just happened to be on a “list.”

Well, on October 14th, 2011 Awlaki’s 16 year old son shared his Fathers fate. Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki was killed in Yemen by U.S. airstrikes while eating dinner with a group of his teenage friends. Yes, a group of teenagers…assassinated. What has this country become?

Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki was born in Denver Colorado. He was an American citizen just as his Father Anwar. Here is an image of Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki’s actual birth certificate showing where he was born. Even more proof of a US birth than our own President can produce.

Washington Post: In the days before a CIA drone strike killed al-Qaeda operative Anwar Awlaki last month, his 16-year old son ran away from the family home in Yemen’s capital of Sanaa to try to find him, relatives say. When he, too, was killed in a U.S. airstrike Friday, the Awlaki family decided to speak out for the first time since the attacks.

“To kill a teenager is just unbelieveable, really, and they claim that he is an al-Qaeda militant. It’s nonsense,” said Nasser al-awlaki, a former Yemeni agriculture minister who was Anwar al-Awalaki’s father and the boy’s grandfather, speaking in a phone interview from Sanaa on Monday. “They want to justify his killing, that’s all.

Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki was trying to locate his father. He was probably very scared and worried as a son would be if his father was missing. Yet, again with no due process or proof of any wrong doing, he was assassinated. 16 years old! This just makes my blood boil.

When Anwar Awlaki was assassinated it made headlines all over the world, yet I never heard about Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki’s assassination until yesterday when I happened onto a blog that I read occasionally. Is it because the government knows this is wrong? Is it to try and cover up the fact that this is happening more than we know? Or was it because they do not feel this would be as well received by the American public and defeat their agenda?

It is hard for me to understand. I want to go to the White House and scream at the top of my lungs how wrong this is. How can we allow this to happen? How can the whole world not see what monsters the U.S. has become. Can we really be surprised that so many want to kill us? Can we not understand that this makes us weaker in our defense?

When we open the pages of this book, nothing good can come of it. A whole new precedence has been adopted, and most Americans do not even realize that WE can end up on the very same list just by speaking out against our government. We can end up on the same list for simply asking the wrong questions. When will we finally all stand up to this tyranny? Will it take this happening on our own soil to someone we know personally?

The person approving these attacks, Barak Obama, is the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Should this now not be revoked? This man should be stripped of all titles and power as he is putting all of our safety on the line with these un-justified actions.

It seems that we have become so numb and blood thirsty in this country all in the name of “the war on terror.” We cheer when these things happen and celebrate cold blooded murder like it is Patriotic. If this is what we are to become, I fear for the future of this country. I fear for the future generations that will have this blood to clean from their innocent hands.

Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki was just a teenager. He was on Facebook. He was a happy kid who liked Harry Potter movies, The Gladiator and Troy. He enjoyed  the series Lost, The Simpsons and Spongebob. He will never know adulthood.

Is this the foreign policy of peace and democracy? Is this the message we want to send to the world? Do we really want to be the bullies of the world? So many neo-cons think that we have to show our muscles or we will be perceived as weak. What if instead we showed our hearts. What if instead we taught peace by example?

Presidential candidate Ron Paul believes in a peaceful foreign policy. He understands that we cannot be the policeman of the world, and not just because we cannot afford it, but because it is not how you spread peace. All we are doing is putting ourselves in danger making enemies around the world, and this will eventually backfire on us unless we stop it now.

Ron Paul is the ONLY one who is going to do that. Please visit HERE and read about Ron’s foreign policy. It will actually strengthen our defense, not weaken it as you will hear from so many un-confident neo-cons who want to continue the American Empire.

What do you think about this? Did you even know this happened? What do you think we should do about it?

UPDATE 10.27.2011: 
Here is a CNN report on the assassination of the Awlaki’s.

UPDATE 10.29.11:
Please DEMAND that congress press for an investigation into this assassination. Not just because he was a US citizen, but because he was a child. Please sign this petition.
http://www.petition2congress.com/5410/investigate-death-abdulrahman-anwar-alawlaki/ 

On September 30, 2011, US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was hunted down by a US drone armed with Hellfire missles and killed. He was reportedly a terrorist and a threat to the United States.

However, how, exactly do we know he was a terrorist? Could this information be wrong? What if all Anwar al-Awlaki wanted was peace and freedom just as we desire here in the US, and he was simply speaking out against the US foreign policy and actions?

What if he was put on a list for no other reason but standing up for that right?

Was there proof that he had a violent past? I cannot seem to find anything outside opinions of the mainstream media pundits who say al-Awlaki may have communicated with known terrorists and may have even been involved in recruiting members of Al-Qaeda. If he was indeed a criminal and a “terrorist” then why was he not arrested and tried?

Is the assassination not illegal according to executive order #12333 issued by President Ronald Reagan, section 2.11 Prohibition on Assassination, which states that no person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.

REFERENCE: http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12333.html#2.11

Here is a video that was uploaded back in July, 2011 with Awlaki speaking about why the world resents America…please watch.

This is actually the second time we have heard the news of al-Alwaki’s death. Here are 2 articles from December of 2009 stating that Awlaki was killed in pretty much the same manner. What proof do they have this time? What are we to believe?

FOXNEWS Article: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2009/12/24/imam-linked-ft-hood-rampage-believed-al-qaeda-killed-airstrike/

Al Jazeera: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/12/200912246820930737.html

I think there are many questions that need answered. Kudos to Jake Tapper, Senior White House correspondent for ABC news. He simply asked if we were going to hear from the White House the evidence that this man, this US citizen, was indeed a terrorist.  Watch this video:

What do you think? Do you think this was justified in the name of the war on terror, or do you feel that he deserved due process? When it comes to assassinating US citizens, do you think that we deserve PROOF that he was a terrorist?

But this is the type of math Washington uses to mask the incriminating truth about the unrepentant plundering of the American people. The truth is that frightening rhetoric about default and full faith in the credit of the United States being carelessly thrown around to ram through a bigger budget than ever in spite of stagnant revenues. If your family’s income did not change year over year, would it be wise financial management to accelerate spending so you would feel richer? That is what our government is doing, with one side merely suggesting a different list of purchases than the other.

In reality, bringing our fiscal house into order is not that complicated or excruciatingly painful at all. If we simply kept spending at current levels, by their definition of cuts that would save nearly $400 billion in the next few years, versus the $25 billion the Budget Control Act claims to cut. It would only take us five years to cut $1 trillion in Washington math just by holding the line on spending. That is hardly austere or catastrophic.

A balanced budget is similarly simple and within reach if Washington had just a tiny amount of fiscal common sense. Our revenues currently stand at approximately $2.2 trillion a year and are likely to remain stagnant as the recession continues. Our outlays are $3.7 trillion and projected to grow every year. Yet we only have to go back to 2004 for federal outlays of $2.2 trillion, and the government was far from small that year. If we simply referred to that year’s spending levels, which would hardly do us fear, we would have a balanced budget right now. If we held the line on spending and the economy actually did grow as estimated, the budget would balance on its own by 2015 with no cuts whatsoever.

We pay 35% more for our military today than we did 10 years ago for the exact same capabilities. The same could be said for the rest of the government. Why has our budget doubled in 10 years? This country doesn’t have double the population or double the land area or double anything that would require the federal government to grow by such an obscene amount.

In Washington terms a simple freeze in spending would be a much bigger cut than any plan being discussed. If politicians simply cannot bear to implement actual cuts to actual spending, just freezing the budget would give the economy the best chance to catch its breath, recover and grow.

These remarks were delivered to the Save America Foundation Convention in Tampa, Florida, on Saturday, March 19, 2011.

“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, (I conjure you to believe me fellow citizens,), the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government.

“Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European Ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humour or Caprice?”

These famous words of George Washington’s Farewell Message to America strike us today with remarkable precision and force. Our First President warned us against foreign influence and foreign entanglements — yet Americans have forgotten that message.

We have allowed ourselves to be stationed in military bases all over the world. We have endless entanglements dating back decades. We are in crushing debt in part because of it and seem to be in a state of perpetual war.

As Sun Tzu warned: “There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.”

The security of our nation is threatened by this debt we now owe to foreigners. Our children now face what was warned against in the farewell address of President Dwight D. Eisenhower:

“We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

This was as he warned us of two dangers to society: control of America by a “military industrial complex” and of public policy being held captive by a “Scientific and technological elite”. He warned

“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.”

Yet here we stand.

- a bankrupt America with our children losing political and spiritual heritage to foreign entities.

-subject to the whims of a United Nations Security Council that appears to regard the U.S. Military as its personal ready response police force.

-Captive to a scientific and technological elite that control our domestic and foreign policy agenda.

-a deeply entrenched military industrial complex that is endangering our liberties and our democracy.

- A series of Presidents that have committed to unconstitutional acts of war in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and now Libya.

- A Congress that disregards its responsibility to the nation to declare war rarely and soberly — recognizing the deep financial impact on our citizens, dangers to our country and the many losses of liberty by individual Americans that accompany such a declaration.

Our founders established in the very constitution –the bedrock of our country — that only Congress should declare war. But now this is seen as anachronistic, inconvenient and somehow trite.

Well, here is something that our founders knew that our elected leaders have forgotten: Entering into War is supposed to be inconvenient. It is supposed to be difficult. It should require national unity and a solid economic footing. It should consider the actual effect on Americans and the real American interests at stake.

No such declaration will be forthcoming. America fired its first missiles (114) at air defense system in Libya today (3/19/2011) — an act of war at the behest of an unelected, unaccountable council of 15 leaders of mostly foreign governments. People who do not have the consent of the governed in America. Made of many foreign entities who seek an end to America and who are delighting in the continued over-extension of our country — at its continued descent into endless debt as its currency becomes even more worthless. An act of war by an America with an overextended military, currency in danger of collapse. A risky action in a powder-keg of a region that threatens to evolve into the first stop in a new world war.

How can this be stopped? What should we do? Do we wait for our politicians to do the right thing on their own? If so, we will wait a long time.

We are blessed now to live in a time of Miracles. A time when Americans are rising up in the millions to say no to an oversized government with domestic policies that are a danger to their liberties and to the political and spiritual heritage of our children. It is now time for these same millions to recognize that our government over decades has made similar and even more serious errors in its foreign policy.

With the hostile actions of U.S. Military forces today, the President is now required under the War Powers Resolution of 1973 to report to Congress within 48 hours of this action. The Congress has 60 days to authorize continued military action.

It is time for the Tea Party and all Americans to tell our Congressman to vote no! No more wars of selection. No more wasted taxpayer dollars on foreign misadventures. No more blood of good American men and women spilled on foreign soil. No more foreign entanglements and call to action by an unelected United Nations that is not accountable to the American people. Talk about a foreign entanglement!

Over the next several days, there is likely to be launched an advocacy campaign among many tea party groups in Florida demanding that congress vote no on authorizing military force. I ask you to go to a website and sign up for an email action alert and be prepared to respond. I ask you to go to FLAlliance.com and register. That is FLALLIANCE.com. Get your members to go there. Get them to call their Congressmen and women and tell them: use all resources at your disposal to stop military action by the U.S. in Libya. Launch similar campaign by your tea party groups around the country and by any group that recognizes this to be an unwise act — a dangerous act for the security of America.

Many of the congressmen and Senators sent to Washington by the Tea Party are engaging in uninformed saber rattling. They are being drawn in by the power circles of Washington. They are being persuaded by foreign powers that we must get further entangled and must expend our treasure and our lives abroad.

It is time for Congress to tell the President to return American Military forces home. Close our foreign bases. End our military action. Grow Strong again America and then we will have true national security and no country or entity will lightly threaten the United States Again. They will remember these words from George Washington’s Farewell Address.

If we remain one People, under an efficient government, the period is not far off, when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or War, as our interest guided by justice shall Counsel.”

Copyright © 2011 David McKalip

Ron Paul gives:

“Questions to consider:

1.  Do the American people deserve to know the truth regarding the ongoing war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?

2.  Could a larger question be: how can an Army Private gain access to so much secret material?

3.  Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not our government’s failure to protect classified information?

4.  Are we getting our money’s worth from the $80 billion per year we spend on our intelligence agencies?

5.  Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths; lying us into war, or WikiLeaks’ revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?

6.  If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information, that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the First Amendment and the independence of the internet?

7.  Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on WikiLeaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?

8.  Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in the time of a declared war—which is treason—and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death, and corruption?

9.  Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it’s wrong?”

Read the full article here.

Demagoguing the Mosque by Ron Paul.

After Iraq’s successful invasion of Kuwait we reacted with gusto and have been militarily involved in the entire region, six thousand miles from our shores, ever since. This has included Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. After twenty years of killing and a couple trillion dollars wasted, not only does the fighting continue with no end in sight, but our leaders threaten to spread our bombs of benevolence on Iran.

For most Americans, we are at war — at war against a tactic called terrorism, not a country.

This allows our military to go any place in the world without limits as to time or place.

But how can we be at war? Congress has not declared war as required by the Constitution.

That is true, but our presidents have and Congress and the people have not objected. Congress obediently provides all the money requested for the “war.”

People are dying, bombs are dropped, our soldiers are shot at and killed.

Our soldiers wear uniforms; our enemies do not.  They are not part of any government. They have no planes, no tanks, no ships, no missiles, and no modern technology.

What kind of a war is this anyway? If it really is one. If it was a real war we would have won it by now.

Our stated goal since 9/11 has been to destroy al Qaeda. Was al Qaeda in Iraq? Not under Saddam Hussein. Our leaders lied us into invading Iraq and deceived us into occupying Afghanistan.

There’s still really no al Qaeda in Iraq and only a hundred or so in Afghanistan, yet there is no end in sight to the “war.” Could there have been other reasons for this war that is not a war?

Military victory in Afghanistan is illusive. Does anyone really know whom we are fighting and why?

Why has the war not ended? Nine years and it continues to spread. Some claim it is to keep America safe, that our soldiers are fighting and dying for our freedom, defending our Constitution. Are we being lied to in order to keep us in this spreading war, just as we were lied to in the 1960’s to keep us in Vietnam?

We own the Iraq government as we do Afghanistan’s. In Afghanistan we are fighting the Taliban-those dangerous people with guns, defending their homeland.

Once they were called the Mujahideen, our old allies, along with Osama bin Laden, in the fight to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980’s.

In that effort our CIA funded radical jihad against those nasty foreign occupiers-the Russians.

What gratitude? Those same people now resent our benevolent occupation-with a little violence thrown in.

The resistance to our presence grows as our perseverance wanes.

Our people are waking up but our officials refuse to recognize the longer we stay the greater is the support for those dedicated to the principle that Afghanistan is for Afghans, who resent all foreign occupation.

The harder we fight a war that is not a war, the weaker we get and the stronger becomes our enemy.

When an enemy without weapons can resist an army of great strength, the most powerful of all history, one should ask, who has the moral high ground?

Military failure in Afghanistan is to be our destiny. Changing generals without changing our policies or our policy makers perpetuates our agony and delays the inevitable.

This is not a war that our generals have been trained for. Nation building, police work, social engineering is never a job for foreign occupiers and never an appropriate job for soldiers trained to win wars.

A military victory is no longer even a stated goal of our military leaders or our politicians, as they know that type of victory is impossible.

The sad story is:

This war is against ourselves, our values, our Constitution, our financial well being and common sense, and at the rate we are going, it is going to end badly. What we need are honest leaders with character and a new foreign policy.

Since my 2008 campaign for the presidency I have often been asked, “How would a constitutionalist president go about dismantling the welfare-warfare state and restoring a constitutional republic?” This is a very important question, because without a clear road map and set of priorities, such a president runs the risk of having his pro-freedom agenda stymied by the various vested interests that benefit from big government.

Of course, just as the welfare-warfare state was not constructed in 100 days, it could not be dismantled in the first 100 days of any presidency. While our goal is to reduce the size of the state as quickly as possible, we should always make sure our immediate proposals minimize social disruption and human suffering. Thus, we should not seek to abolish the social safety net overnight because that would harm those who have grown dependent on government-provided welfare. Instead, we would want to give individuals who have come to rely on the state time to prepare for the day when responsibility for providing aide is returned to those organizations best able to administer compassionate and effective help – churches and private charities.

Now, this need for a transition period does not apply to all types of welfare. For example, I would have no problem defunding corporate welfare programs, such as the Export-Import Bank or the TARP bank bailouts, right away. I find it difficult to muster much sympathy for the CEO’s of Lockheed Martin and Goldman Sachs.

No matter what the president wants to do, most major changes in government programs would require legislation to be passed by Congress. Obviously, the election of a constitutionalist president would signal that our ideas had been accepted by a majority of the American public and would probably lead to the election of several pro-freedom congressmen and senators. Furthermore, some senators and representatives would become “born again” constitutionalists out of a sense of self-preservation. Yet there would still be a fair number of politicians who would try to obstruct our freedom agenda. Thus, even if a president wanted to eliminate every unconstitutional program in one fell swoop, he would be very unlikely to obtain the necessary support in Congress.

Yet a pro-freedom president and his legislative allies could make tremendous progress simply by changing the terms of the negotiations that go on in Washington regarding the size and scope of government. Today, negotiations over legislation tend to occur between those who want a 100 percent increase in federal spending and those who want a 50 percent increase. Their compromise is a 75 percent increase. With a president serious about following the Constitution, backed by a substantial block of sympathetic representatives in Congress, negotiations on outlays would be between those who want to keep funding the government programs and those who want to eliminate them outright – thus a compromise would be a 50 percent decrease in spending!

While a president who strictly adheres to the Constitution would need the consent of Congress for very large changes in the size of government, such as shutting down cabinet departments, he could use his constitutional authority as head of the executive branch and as commander in chief to take several significant steps toward liberty on his own. The area where the modern chief executive has greatest ability to act unilaterally is in foreign affairs. Unfortunately, Congress has abdicated its constitutional authority to declare wars, instead passing vague “authorization of force” bills that allow the president to send any number of troops to almost any part of the world. The legislature does not even effectively use its power of the purse to rein in the executive. Instead, Congress serves as little more than a rubber stamp for the president’s requests.

If the president has the power to order U.S. forces into combat on nothing more than his own say-so, then it stands to reason he can order troops home. Therefore, on the first day in office, a constitutionalist can begin the orderly withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. He can also begin withdrawing troops from other areas of the world. The United States has over 300,000 troops stationed in more than 146 countries. Most if not all of these deployments bear little or no relationship to preserving the safety of the American people. For example, over 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the U.S. still maintains troops in Germany.

Domestically, the president can use his authority to set policies and procedures for the federal bureaucracy to restore respect for the Constitution and individual liberty. For example, today manufacturers of dietary supplements are subject to prosecution by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or Federal Trade Commission (FTC) if they make even truthful statements about the health benefits of their products without going through the costly and time-consuming procedures required to gain government approval for their claims. A president can put an end to this simply by ordering the FDA and FTC not to pursue these types of cases unless they have clear evidence that the manufacturer’s claims are not true. Similarly, the president could order the bureaucracy to stop prosecuting consumers who wish to sell raw milk across state lines.

A crucial policy that a president could enact to bring speedy improvements to government is ordering the bureaucracy to respect the 10th Amendment and refrain from undermining state laws. We have already seen a little renewed federalism with the current administration’s policy of not prosecuting marijuana users when their use of the drug is consistent with state medical-marijuana laws. A constitutionalist administration would also defer to state laws refusing compliance with the REAL ID act and denying federal authority over interstate gun transactions. None of these actions repeals a federal law; they all simply recognize a state’s primary authority, as protected by the 10th amendment, to set policy in these areas.

In fact, none of the measures I have discussed so far involves repealing any written law. They can be accomplished simply by a president exercising his legitimate authority to set priorities for the executive branch. And another important step he can take toward restoring the balance of powers the Founders intended is repealing unconstitutional executive orders issued by his predecessors.

Executive orders are a useful management tool for the president, who must exercise control over the enormous federal bureaucracy. However, in recent years executive orders have been used by presidents to create new federal laws without the consent of Congress. As President Clinton’s adviser Paul Begala infamously said, “stroke of the pen, law of the land, pretty cool.” No, it is not “pretty cool,” and a conscientious president could go a long way toward getting us back to the Constitution’s division of powers by ordering his counsel or attorney general to comb through recent executive orders so the president can annul those that exceed the authority of his office. If the President believed a particular Executive Order made a valid change in the law, then he should work with Congress to pass legislation making that change.

Only Congress can directly abolish government departments, but the president could use his managerial powers to shrink the federal bureaucracy by refusing to fill vacancies created by retirements or resignations. This would dramatically reduce the number of federal officials wasting our money and taking our liberties. One test to determine if a vacant job needs to be filled is the “essential employees test.” Whenever D.C. has a severe snowstorm, the federal government orders all “non-essential” federal personal to stay home. If someone is classified as non-essential for snow-day purposes, the country can probably survive if that position is not filled when the jobholder quits or retires. A constitutionalist president should make every day in D.C. like a snow day!

A president could also enhance the liberties and security of the American people by ordering federal agencies to stop snooping on citizens when there is no evidence that those who are being spied on have committed a crime. Instead, the president should order agencies to refocus on the legitimate responsibilities of the federal government, such as border security. He should also order the Transportation Security Administration to stop strip-searching grandmothers and putting toddlers on the no-fly list. The way to keep Americans safe is to focus on real threats and ensure that someone whose own father warns U.S. officials he’s a potential terrorist is not allowed to board a Christmas Eve flight to Detroit with a one-way ticket.

Perhaps the most efficient step a president could take to enhance travel security is to remove the federal roadblocks that have frustrated attempts to arm pilots. Congress created provisions to do just that in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. However, the processes for getting a federal firearms license are extremely cumbersome, and as a result very few pilots have gotten their licenses. A constitutionalist in the Oval Office would want to revise those regulations to make it as easy as possible for pilots to get approval to carry firearms on their planes.

While the president can do a great deal on his own, to really restore the Constitution and cut back on the vast unconstitutional programs that have sunk roots in Washington over 60 years, he will have to work with Congress. The first step in enacting a pro-freedom legislative agenda is the submission of a budget that outlines the priorities of the administration. While it has no legal effect, the budget serves as a guideline for the congressional appropriations process. A constitutionalist president’s budget should do the following:

1. Reduce overall federal spending
2. Prioritize cuts in oversize expenditures, especially the military
3. Prioritize cuts in corporate welfare
4. Use 50 percent of the savings from cuts in overseas spending to shore up entitlement programs for those who are dependent on them and the other 50 percent to pay down the debt
5. Provide for reduction in federal bureaucracy and lay out a plan to return responsibility for education to the states
6. Begin transitioning entitlement programs from a system where all Americans are forced to participate into one where taxpayers can opt out of the programs and make their own provisions for retirement and medical care

If Congress failed to produce a budget that was balanced and moved the country in a pro-liberty direction, a constitutionalist president should veto the bill. Of course, vetoing the budget risks a government shutdown. But a serious constitutionalist cannot be deterred by cries of “it’s irresponsible to shut down the government!” Instead, he should simply say, “I offered a reasonable compromise, which was to gradually reduce spending, and Congress rejected it, instead choosing the extreme path of continuing to jeopardize America’s freedom and prosperity by refusing to tame the welfare-warfare state. I am the moderate; those who believe that America can afford this bloated government are the extremists.”

Unconstitutional government spending, after all, is doubly an evil: it not only means picking the taxpayer’s pocket, it also means subverting the system of limited and divided government that the Founders created. Just look at how federal spending has corrupted American education.

Eliminating federal involvement in K–12 education should be among a constitutionalist president’s top domestic priorities. The Constitution makes no provision for federal meddling in education. It is hard to think of a function less suited to a centralized, bureaucratic approach than education. The very idea that a group of legislators and bureaucrats in D.C. can design a curriculum capable of meeting the needs of every American schoolchild is ludicrous. The deteriorating performance of our schools as federal control over the classroom has grown shows the folly of giving Washington more power over American education. President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law claimed it would fix education by making public schools “accountable.” However, supporters of the law failed to realize that making schools more accountable to federal agencies, instead of to parents, was just perpetuating the problem.

In the years since No Child Left Behind was passed, I don’t think I have talked to any parent or teacher who is happy with the law. Therefore, a constitutionalist president looking for ways to improve the lives of children should demand that Congress cut the federal education bureaucracy as a down payment on eventually returning 100 percent of the education dollar to parents.

Traditionally, the battle to reduce the federal role in education has been the toughest one faced by limited-government advocates, as supporters of centralized education have managed to paint constitutionalists as “anti-education.” But who is really anti-education? Those who wish to continue to waste taxpayer money on failed national schemes, or those who want to restore control over education to the local level? When the debate is framed this way, I have no doubt the side of liberty will win. When you think about it, the argument that the federal government needs to control education is incredibly insulting to the American people, for it implies that the people are too stupid or uncaring to educate their children properly. Contrary to those who believe that only the federal government can ensure children’s education, I predict a renaissance in education when parents are put back in charge.

The classroom is not the only place the federal government does not belong. We also need to reverse the nationalization of local police. Federal grants have encouraged the militarization of law enforcement, which has led to great damage to civil liberties. Like education, law enforcement is inherently a local function, and ending programs such as the Byrne Grants is essential not just to reducing federal spending but also to restoring Americans’ rights.

Obviously, a president concerned with restoring constitutional government and fiscal responsibility would need to address the unstable entitlement situation, possibly the one area of government activity even more difficult to address than education. Yet it is simply unfair to continue to force young people to participate in a compulsory retirement program when they could do a much better job of preparing for their own retirements. What is more, the government cannot afford the long-term expenses of entitlements, even if we were to reduce all other unconstitutional foreign and domestic programs.

As I mentioned in the introduction to this article, it would be wrong simply to cut these programs and throw those who are dependent on them “into the streets.” After all, the current recipients of these programs have come to rely on them, and many are in a situation where they cannot provide for themselves without government assistance. The thought of people losing the ability to obtain necessities for them because they were misled into depending on a government safety net that has been yanked away from them should trouble all of us. However, the simple fact is that if the government does not stop spending money on welfare and warfare, America may soon face an economic crisis that could lead to people being thrown into the street.

Therefore, a transition away from the existing entitlement scheme is needed. This is why a constitutionalist president should propose devoting half of the savings from the cuts in wars and other foreign spending, corporate welfare, and unnecessary and unconstitutional bureaucracies to shoring up Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and providing enough money to finance government’s obligations to those who are already stuck in the system and cannot make alternative provisions. This re-routing of spending would allow payroll taxes to be slashed. The eventual goal would be to move to a completely voluntary system where people only pay payroll taxes into Social Security and Medicare if they choose to participate in those programs. Americans who do not want to participate would be free not to do so, but they would forgo any claim to Social Security or Medicare benefits after retirement.

Some people raise concerns that talk of transitions is an excuse for indefinitely putting off the end of the welfare state. I understand those concerns, which is why a transition plan must lay out a clear timetable for paying down the debt, eliminating unconstitutional bureaucracies, and setting a firm date for when young people can at last opt out of the entitlement programs.

A final area that should be front and center in a constitutionalist’s agenda is monetary policy. The Founders obviously did not intend for the president to have much influence over the nation’s money – in fact, they never intended any part of the federal government to operate monetary policy as it defined now. However, today a president could play an important role in restoring stability to monetary policy and the value of the dollar. To start, by fighting for serious reductions in spending, a constitutionalist administration would remove one of the major justifications for the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies, the need to monetize government debt.

There are additional steps a pro-freedom president should pursue in his first term to restore sound monetary policy. He should ask Congress to pass two pieces of legislation I have introduced in the 110th Congress. The first is the Audit the Fed bill, which would allow the American people to learn just how the Federal Reserve has been conducting monetary policy. The other is the Free Competition in Currency Act, which repeals legal tender laws and all taxes on gold and silver. This would introduce competition in currency and put a check on the Federal Reserve by ensuring that people have alternatives to government-produced fiat money.

All of these measures will take a lot of work – a lot more than any one person, even the president of the United States, can accomplish by himself. In order to restore the country to the kind of government the Founders meant for us to have, a constitutionalist president would need the support of an active liberty movement. Freedom activists must be ready to pressure wavering legislators to stand up to the special interests and stay the course toward freedom. Thus, when the day comes when someone who shares our beliefs sits in the Oval Office, groups like Young Americans for Liberty and Campaign for Liberty will still have a vital role to play. No matter how many pro-freedom politicians we elect to office, the only way to guarantee constitutional government is through an educated and activist public devoted to the ideals of the liberty.

For that reason, the work of Young Americans for Liberty in introducing young people to the freedom philosophy and getting them involved in the freedom movement is vital to the future of our country. I thank all the members and supporters of YAL for their dedication to changing the political debate in this country, so that in the not-too-distant future we actually will have a president and a Congress debating the best ways to shrink the welfare-warfare state and restore the republic.

This essay originally appeared in Young American Revolution, the magazine of Young Americans for Liberty.