The Committee of 50 States, of which I am founder and president, is currently trying to find a state sponsor who would propose a new federal government and Constitution. Several state legislators in Idaho, Utah, and Arizona have expressed interest in our work, and they realize that this notion of forming a new government and a more equitable compact between the 50 sovereign states and the federal government is not as farfetched as it might initially seem. A righteous and moral people will always exhaust all lawful remedies to tyranny before, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, refreshing the “tree of liberty” with “the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Exploring these options is exactly the purpose of my committee. If it is not inconceivable that American citizens could soon be extradited to U.N. courts, as it certainly is not, then we should surely view the exercise of our constitutional rights as a legitimate option and a possible course of action.

The Preamble to the Constitution reads: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” “We the People” obviously did not mean the whole people of the entire nation but the people acting through their individual state delegations. Unless the people of at least nine of the existing 13 states in 1787 ratified the Constitution, our present federal government could not and would not have been created.

The objective in getting at least nine states to ratify the Constitution was to form a union “more perfect” than the one which the states had established on March 1, 1781, under the “corporate’ charter they called the Articles of Confederation. And such was not a difficult task, for the federal government under those Articles had led to chaos. The Articles had led to a most imperfect union.

Once the requirement of Article VII of the Constitution was met, and nine states joined together in a new confederation, a new federal government was formed, whether or not it was more perfect than the one automatically dissolved under the Articles. What happened to the old government that existed under the Articles of Confederation when the Constitution went into effect with its ratification by New Hampshire on June 21, 1788? The new Constitution automatically dissolved an existing union and fired all officers or representatives working under it, but this only occurred in the states which ratified the new compact. Under the constitutional proposal it was possible that four states might never join in the new union and would continue to function as an independent country, or rather as four independent countries, under the Articles. One of the remaining four, Rhode Island, did exactly this for almost two years, finally joining the union on May 29, 1790. North Carolina stayed out of the union for 17 months, not joining until November 21, 1789.

When the first nine states joined in a new alliance, league, or confederation, did they give up their sovereignty to the new government? Not at all. They merely delegated a few limited powers to the new entity. These nine states, later 13, and today 50, did only that which many of us do occasionally in business.

From time to time a person might wish to give a trusted family member or friend power of attorney so that the delegated person can act as agent on behalf of the first person, who is the principal. If the principal desires, with or without cause, to withdraw power of attorney from the agent, he can do so at any time. The same happens in business, when individuals and groups of people create new corporations. Many of these corporations, months or years later, are then dissolved by the same authority which created them.

Our present government was created in accordance with these same principles of law. In effect, states can withdraw their power of attorney from anyone who works for the federal government—including Congress, the President, and federal judges. Further, as a corporate entity, the federal government is subject to dissolution at any time according to the pleasure of the states which created it, emulating the manner in which the first union —under the Articles of Confederation —was dissolved.

Shortly after George Washington became President, Alexander Hamilton argued (against Thomas Jefferson) that the Constitution carried with it “implied powers.” Hamilton succeeded in convincing Washington that implied powers allowed the new government to charter a bank. Over the past 200 years, hidden rights, implied powers, and elastic interpretations of the commerce clause have so twisted the Constitution that Washington and Jefferson would not recognize it today. The Constitution is tattered, torn, and hanging by a thread. Our federal government today is more tyrannical, wasteful, and inefficient than the British government from which we declared our independence in 1776.

History is repeating itself The Declaration of Independence states: “The History of the present King of Great Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” Referring to King George and the British Parliament it also states: “He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance.”

We would say this a little differently today, but the substance of the complaint would be the same, only now the object is to establish absolute power not only over the states but over the entire world via the United Nations. There are only two things standing in the way of modern tyrants: first and foremost, the ownership of some 200 million firearms of the American people; second, possible official resistance by some of the 50 states of the American union.

If the American people cannot be convinced or fooled into giving up their firearms by federal and state statutes and various other stratagems, the latter could eventually be seized by brute force. Firearms could be seized in the way which President Franklin Roosevelt seized our gold immediately after assuming office in March 1933. Americans were given 30 days to turn in their gold. After that, anyone caught with gold became a criminal subject to prosecution and imprisonment. Of course, the President could simply proclaim some sort of fraudulent “national emergency,” declare martial law, and give us ten to 30 days to turn in all firearms, after which the BATF, FBI, or possibly U.N. troops could go door-to-door with metal detectors and other state-of-the-art technology to locate contraband.

A line of defense does exist against the brute power of the federal government, and that power lies dormant within the legislatures of the 50 states. The sovereignty of each state was preserved when they organized their federal agent, and all states after the first nine came into the union on an equal footing. Hawaii and Alaska have all the rights, powers, and sovereignty as the first nine. Three of the original 13 states—Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island—actually stipulated in their ratification documents that they reserved the right to resume total sovereignty when “it became necessary to their happiness.”

How can a state take back its total sovereignty and withdraw all delegated powers from the federal government? One way, which I do not yet advocate, is to secede, separate, or declare independence as the 13 British colonies did on July 4, 1776. Yes, secession is lawful and the South was right in their legal arguments in 1860-61, but there is a better, more powerful way which carries little if any risk of bloodshed. It is an idea ahead of its time, yet as old as the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, for both serve as precedents.

Let’s face it. The present liberal and socialist mind-set of Washington, the media, and especially the Clinton administration will not change; the federal bureaucracy will continue to be arrogant; the IRS will continue to bully and intimidate; and BATF and FBI abuse of law-abiding citizens will not likely be curbed unless the states initiate action and exercise their ultimate weapon — sovereignty.

In the Articles of Confederation it was stipulated in four places that the Union then was one in “perpetuity,” and that amendments could only be added by unanimous consent of all 13 states. However, as Thomas Jefferson pointed out in the Declaration of Independence, it is always the right of the people to “alter or abolish” any form of government, though such is never done for “light or transient reasons.” In abolishing the existing government of 1788, our forefathers accomplished an extraordinary and bloodless revolution.

The sovereignty of the present 50 states originated with the Declaration of Independence and was confirmed by the Treaty of Paris (September 3, 1783), in which Great Britain agreed that the original 13 colonies were now recognized as “free, sovereign and independent states,” or countries: not collectively, but individually. On that day 13 new countries were officially recognized, and our present Constitution changed nothing regarding state sovereignty. Jefferson observed: “The federal is, in truth, our foreign government, which department alone is taken from the sovereignty of the separate states.”

The Constitution is, in a sense, a temporary delegation of certain powers of sovereign countries to an artificial corporate entity which they created to serve their common needs. In addition to being a compact, alliance, or treaty between sovereign entities, it is also a contract and a corporate charter. Like a corporate charter, it created out of nothing an artificial entity to serve specific needs of the “stockholders”—in this instance, the states. Corporations are dissolved by the same authority which creates them, and this holds true for the government of the United States. In 1788, nine of 13—69.23 percent of the existing states—dissolved the corporate charter and started over with a new government. If the states today should decide the present government has outlived its usefulness, 35 states — 70 percent, following the precedent—can fire the feds and start over. Delegates from only 12 states wrote and proposed the Constitution. But a single state could have written and proposed it to the other 12. And so it is today, as a single state legislature, say Idaho, could propose a new Constitution to the other 49 state legislatures. This state need not ask the feds for permission to do this.

The point of all this is not actually to form a new government in Washington but to initiate a national debate on federalism. A Concurrent Resolution by a single state legislature can start the ball rolling. If you wish to know how, simply contact us.