A quote attributed to President George Washington reads, “Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” Even if he didn’t say it, it doesn’t make the quote any less accurate. Government is a force that can either aid in the protection of God-given rights or be liberty’s main enemy. The tipping point comes when government is allowed to operate outside of its limitations.
Then, government’s lust for power is never satisfied, and it will do whatever it takes to stay in control. You’re seeing an example of this through Elon Musk’s Twitter revelations of the federal government’s attempts to censor any and all Americans who do not swallow any of its fake science or fake medical narratives.
This is why the only way to prevent this from happening is to limit the powers of government. America’s Founding Fathers understood this and prescribed a limited government with limited powers to best protect the rights and liberties of individuals.
Over the last few years, due to the government’s response to Covid-19, citizens around the world have become much more interested in protecting their overall freedom given the blatant disregard governments had for the rights of its people.
Canada has been in the news for years demonstrating its penchant to dictate liberal policies that take away fundamental rights from its citizens. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has only helped make more progress toward this tyranny. Given his full embrace of socialist globalism, he has declared proverbial war on firearms, property rights, free speech, and against his own country’s natural resources. Canadians have steadily grown weary of Trudeau’s mandates. This especially came to light during the Covid lockdowns that saw churches closed and pastors arrested. Some Canadians began to pushback, including those part of the truck convoys that shutdown key highways and border crossings.
Also in 2020, Trudeau announced an immediate ban on the use, sale, and importation of more than 1,500 models and variant types of assault-style weapons. In December of 2022, gun buyback programs were to be instituted across Canada to confiscate these guns. However, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and New Brunswick balked at this unfunded mandate and suggested that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police should “refuse to participate,” as reported by The Washington Post.
Since then, Alberta has taken it a step further, taking a page from the playbook of America’s Founding Fathers. In order to protect its sovereignty, the provincial government enacted the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act last month.
As reported by The New American over the holidays, ‘The provincial government overview stated, “The act will be used to address federal legislation and policies that are unconstitutional, violate Albertans’ charter rights or that affect or interfere with our provincial constitutional rights…. The act gives Alberta a democratic legislative framework for defending the federal-provincial division of powers while respecting Canada’s Constitution and the courts.’”
According to The New American,
The Guardian reported that Alberta’s premier, Danielle Smith, said the law “would allow the province to reset its relationship with Justin Trudeau’s federal government.”
“It’s not like Ottawa is a national government,” said Smith. “The way our country works is that we are a federation of sovereign, independent jurisdictions. They are one of those signatories to the constitution and the rest of us, as signatories to the constitution, have a right to exercise our sovereign powers in our own areas of jurisdiction.”
Much like the relationship between the United States federal government and the states, there is a balance that is to be struck in order for the rights of individuals to be protected by government and not trampled by government. In the U.S., the states are duty-bound by the Constitution to protect its citizens from overreaches by the federal government. Any operation outside of its Constitutional limitations is unconstitutional and needs to be treated as such by the states, as recommended by the Founding Fathers.
While the Canadian government system is different than the American Republic, The New American reported, “The Alberta Sovereignty Act loosely resembles the U.S. Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, in which Thomas Jefferson and James Madison sought to nullify the federal Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Those Resolutions stated that the Constitution limits federal authority to certain enumerated powers, that congressional acts exceeding those powers are violations of the Constitution, and that each state has the right and duty to determine the constitutionality of federal laws and prevent application of unconstitutional federal laws in its own territory.”
Clearly, something has changed in Alberta. Recall that Alberta jailed a pastor for holding church services during the Covid lockdowns, and then erected an eight-foot fence around the church when the pastor and the congregation would not comply. But now, they are exerting their right to be free of tyranny?
What changed is the Premier of Alberta. In October of 2022, Danielle Smith was elected and since has sought to restore rights to those in Alberta. In November, she fired the entire board of Alberta Health Services, which was largely responsible for setting the Covid restrictions. Premier Smith is not a fan of lockdowns and suggested that she would fight against making the unvaccinated a second-class citizenry.
Much to her credit, she has also severed a relationship that Alberta had with the World Economic Forum that was described as a “health consulting agreement.”
During a press conference, she said, “I find it distasteful when billionaires brag about how much control they have over political leaders.… That is offensive.… the people who should be directing government are the people who vote for them.”
She is also exploring pardons for previous Covid-related fines and arrests. She is a great example of an elected official working within their constitutional limitations and using constitutional tools to reclaim sovereignty, tipping the scales of governance away from tyranny and toward freedom.
What Americans can learn from this is that nearly all of government’s ills can be fixed through adherence to its constitutional limitations. With this adherence, government works only on the powers it has been constitutionally granted. But how many of our elected officials today know of those limitations? How many Americans know these powers? Could you point to the section of the Constitution that grants enumerated powers to Congress? These powers are rarely taught in schools, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that the federal government operating outside of its limitations managed to takeover public education, forcing through curriculum that largely ignores the Constitution and the role each citizen plays in keeping government accountable. Without this accountability, the scope, size, and cost of the federal government has ballooned and is unsustainable.
The electorate must exert the pressure needed to force the federal government back within its constitutional limitations. And Premier Smith is demonstrating one way to do so: exerting sovereignty through nullification.
As we have stated in previous videos, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson advocated for nullification.
Specifically, Madison, known as the Father of the Constitution, wrote in favor of nullification in the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 when the federal government exercises powers not granted in the Constitution. He wrote, “The states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose.” In essay 16 of the Federalist Papers, Hamilton suggests that there are two ways states can interpose through nullification: “They have only NOT TO ACT, or to ACT EVASIVELY, and the measure is defeated.” Jefferson rightly concluded that “where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy.”
To control the force of government, it must be contained within its constitutional limitations. Yet, how many times have you heard this on Fox News, or heard it mentioned on the floor of Congress? Rarely will you hear of true solutions for righting this Republic come from those two sources. However, nullification is used over and over again at the local and state level to block government’s abuses.
Alberta Premier Smith grasps this concept. It’s high time Americans use it more frequently as the federal government becomes more and more lawless, stifling, and tyrannical to its citizens.
The Founding Fathers prescribed the right amount of government, and it’s up to us to keep it that way. The John Birch Society was created to do just that. We have chapters in all 50 states that stay strategically active in their community, engaging in activities that help to inform others of the threats we face and the proper solutions, including nullification. Since 1958, our organization has helped to keep America from falling into the trap of a New World Order. Your help is urgently needed to keep America from being overtaken. Join The John Birch Society today and work with others in your area to restore our lost freedoms and to keep government limited and accountable.
I’m Bill Hahn for The John Birch Society and until next time, stay informed, stay active, and get involved, patriots!
