In our last column, we asked you to take our challenging question of “Who refused to attend the Constitutional Convention because he said, “I smell a rat” and why?? What do you think?”
The answer to the question is Patrick Henry. He smelled a rat because he knew that Madison was, illegally, trying to call a convention. He knew that it was going to create a central government that they just fought a bloody war to prevent. More importantly, he knew that this convention was going to trample on the rights of the people…and it did.
Remember that when the Constitution was first drafted, it did not contain the Bill of Rights. That goes back to the challenging question from our 1st column which asked about which founding father said he would rather cut off his right arm than sign the Constitution and that answer is George Mason. Both of these founders knew that the convention was an attack on the rights of the people…and it was.
This column of the very important “Liberty Beacon” has discussed what it means to be a Patriot and where our rights come from and why it matters. We have also explained how we do not live in a sovereign “nation” because it is the individual who is sovereign, not the country.
Once people REALLY understand that we are the sovereign and that we were all created in this manner by almighty God, then…and only then, can they live in peace knowing that their rights cannot ever be taken from them. This understanding of sovereignty is core to knowing how to protect yourselves in the future no matter how ugly this world becomes.
Americans should understand that it isn’t just important to read the Constitution. It’s more important to read the Federalist and the Antifederalist papers to fully understand what happened at the Constitutional Convention. It is the Antifederalists who were the true Patriots. The true liberty fighters. They were the ones standing up for the rights of the people and if it weren’t for them we wouldn’t have been protected by the Bill of Rights for centuries.
People in America today do not understand how the Constitution was, actually, shoved down the throats of the people who didn’t really want it. In fact there is a historian who has done the only real scholarly work explaining the concerns of the people and what happened at the ratification conventions and that is Pauline Meyer. Her book, “Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788” is phenomenal. It explains the horrible circumstances of those conventions when they censored reporters who were on the Antifiederalist side of the debate, etc. Pauline can also be found on many videos on the internet and she is fascinating to listen to about this important topic to understand how the people felt.
So…why in the world does all of this matter today? It matters because the tyrannical government that we have today is in power because the people don’t know the history of their own country. Most Americans think we live in a democracy when it was founded as a Republic.
I will tell you what one of my Constitutional mentors always reminded me of over the years. If you don’t know where your rights come from (i.e. almighty God)…then they WILL be taken away from you! Don’t let that happen. Study the founding of our, once great, nation. Learn what the debates were all about and who the TRUE Patriots were. Stand up and fight for your rights whenever they are threatened by a tyrannical government. Knowledge is power so go get it. There is an old adage/saying of how “Facts are stubborn things.” Learn the facts of history and stand firm in the truth if you call yourself a “Patriot.”
When Benjamin Franklin was leaving the Constitutional Convention, a person on the street asked him what they gave us and his reply was “A Republic…if you can keep it.”
It is your DUTY under God, and under the Constitution, to do whatever you can to keep it.
