By Dr. Robert Owens

I was raised by people who believed in “My country right or wrong.”  I was taught that America never started a war and never lost a war.  Reading Burry My Heart at Wounded Knee and an honest appraisal of the War of 1812 disabused me of those two notions.  While the jingoist attitude of blind acceptance and unreflective loyalty and unquestioning support for a sacred homeland are not descriptive of my life I am devoted to the enlightenment ideas enshrined in the Constitution.  
I am a vocal proponent of the nation founded on the proposition that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.  I am a proud supporter of the federal republic founded in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.
I am an avowed non-interventionist capitalist who believes passionately in individual liberty, personal freedom, and economic opportunity.  I was a Republican all my life, working my first campaign ringing door bells for Nixon in 1960, supporting Goldwater, Reagan for Governor and then for president in 1976, 1980, and 84.  
George H.W. Bush with his compassionate conservatism and new world order turned me off.  Bob “It’s my Turn” Dole discouraged me and after the Contract with America Congress veered off the rails and started pushing bigger government and crony capitalism I quit the party and became an independent.  George the Second pushed me over the edge.  I could no longer consider myself a Conservative because there was nothing left to conserve, so I began to style myself as a radical who believes in a return to limited government, individual liberty, personal freedom, and economic opportunity.
The Clinton interlude between the Bush bookends and the Obama nation I have viewed as akin to the Vichy regime in France during WW II.  They were and are mere figureheads for the multinational corporations and international organizations to which they surrendered our independence doing their best to institutionalize the Corporate State.
I have long believed and advocated for the following policies.  
Moratoriums on all immigration until those who are already here are assimilated.   Initiate policies which will induce those who are here illegally to self-deport.  These policies would include a cut off of public assistance and an E-verify law with teeth meaning significant fines for people who employ illegals and incarceration for those who have multiple offenses.   In foreign policy, resigning as the policeman of the world by ending our far-flung system of bases in more than a hundred countries, leaving Europe and Korea to defend themselves, bringing our troops home, securing the border and our defenses with the strongest military in the world and stop intervening in places that are not in our national interest.
Yes, I know that these proposals will be called racist, xenophobic and anti-American by the open borders clique; however, to quote Ronaldus Magnus, “A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.”  They will also be opposed by the neo-con hawks as isolationist.  I stand with Ron Paul when he says, “The Founders and all the early presidents argued the case for non-intervention overseas, with the precise goals of avoiding entangling alliances and not involving our people in foreign wars unrelated to our security.”
Yes, I know tariffs will make prices rise for many goods.  However, I also know that we need to rebuild our industrial base if we are to remain an independent nation capable of providing jobs for our people that support a middleclass lifestyle and a nation that can provide for its own defense.  Yes, I know that a non-interventionist resignation from being the policeman of the world is portrayed as a retreat and as abdicating our leadership of the world.  I call it jettisoning the empire to save the republic.

These positions have been heretical within the globalist interventionist neo-con Republican Party of Bush, McCain, Krauthammer, and the National Review.  However, today is a new day and perhaps there is a chance to right the Ship of State and resurrect the greatest experiment in human freedom in History before we plunge into the dustbin of History as another centralized collectivist utopia that will inevitably end up a dystopian nightmare.
Now we face a choice of historic proportions.  Do we want Hillary “The Nail in Our Coffin” Clinton to complete the transfer of American sovereignty to international globalist cabals such as the WTO and the UN?  Or are we willing to vote for the first candidate since Reagan with the courage to even say, “America First”?
I am still an independent.  I will not rejoin the Republican Party unless and until it has been purged of its globalist leadership.  However, I have waited my entire life to hear a politician say what The Donald said in his speech of June 28, 2016 “Declaring America's Economic Independence.”  In this speech he outlines a program I can endorse 100%.  
Mr. Trump said in that speech, 
This wave of globalization has wiped out our middle class. 
It doesn't have to be this way. We can turn it all around - and we can turn it around fast.
But if we're going to deliver real change, we're going to have to reject the campaign of fear and intimidation being pushed by powerful corporations, media elites, and political dynasties.
The people who rigged the system for their benefit will do anything - and say anything - to keep things exactly as they are.
The people who rigged the system are supporting Hillary Clinton because they know as long as she is in charge nothing will ever change.
The inner cities will remain poor.
The factories will remain closed.
The borders will remain open.
The special interests will remain firmly in control.
Hillary Clinton and her friends in global finance want to scare America into thinking small - and they want to scare the American people out of voting for a better future.
My campaign has the opposite message.
I want you to imagine how much better your life can be if we start believing in America again.
I want you to imagine how much better our future can be if we declare independence from the elites who've led us to one financial and foreign policy disaster one after another.
This is the message I have been waiting for all my life.  This message is clear and direct.  Trump often speaks off the top of his head.  He speaks his mind and often says things which offend the politically correct media and by extension those who slavishly believe and follow the Progressive’s multi-mouthed Pravda.  However this speech was scripted.  He used a teleprompter to deliver it and its text has been released as an official campaign document.
I know that in the divided America of the 21st century many who have followed the History of the Future for years will be angry with what I have to say next. Some may be surprised and some may be disappointed.  However I have to do what I believe is the best for my country.  Therefore, I have decided to endorse and support Donald Trump.  Some may say you can’t believe what he says.  A man I greatly respect says, “All politicians lie.  The good ones do it convincingly.”  That may be true.
Just as Eve did not sin because she believed the serpent and just as if you donate to a charity that you honestly believe will do good and they waste the money that is not your responsibility that is on them.  I believe Donald Trump.  I believe he honestly wants to make America great again, and I am 100% for that.
While I encourage everyone to read the entire speech or listen to it on YouTube and it is too long to include verbatim in this article I want to end by sharing his trade program for rebuilding America.
A Trump Administration will change our failed trade policy - quickly
Here are 7 steps I would pursue right away to bring back our jobs.
One: I am going to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has not yet been ratified.
Two: I'm going to appoint the toughest and smartest trade negotiators to fight on behalf of American workers.
Three: I'm going to direct the Secretary of Commerce to identify every violation of trade agreements a foreign country is currently using to harm our workers. I will then direct all appropriate agencies to use every tool under American and international law to end these abuses.
Four: I'm going tell our NAFTA partners that I intend to immediately renegotiate the terms of that agreement to get a better deal for our workers. And I don't mean just a little bit better, I mean a lot better. If they do not agree to a renegotiation, then I will submit notice under Article 2205 of the NAFTA agreement that America intends to withdraw from the deal.
Five: I am going to instruct my Treasury Secretary to label China a currency manipulator. Any country that devalues their currency in order to take advantage of the United States will be met with sharply
Six: I am going to instruct the U.S. Trade Representative to bring trade cases against China, both in this country and at the WTO. China's unfair subsidy behavior is prohibited by the terms of its entrance to the WTO, and I intend to enforce those rules.

Seven: If China does not stop its illegal activities, including its theft of American trade secrets, I will use every lawful presidential power to remedy trade disputes, including the application of tariffs consistent with Section 201 and 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
President Reagan deployed similar trade measures when motorcycle and semiconductor imports threatened U.S. industry. His tariff on Japanese motorcycles was 45% and his tariff to shield America’s semiconductor industry was 100%.

Hillary Clinton, and her campaign of fear, will try to spread the lie that these actions will start a trade war. She has it completely backwards.
Hillary Clinton unleashed a trade war against the American worker when she supported one terrible trade deal after another – from NAFTA to China to South Korea.
A Trump Administration will end that war by getting a fair deal for the American people.
The era of economic surrender will finally be over.
A new era of prosperity will finally begin.
America will be independent once more.
Under a Trump Presidency, the American worker will finally have a President who will protect them and fight for them.
We will stand up to trade cheating anywhere and everywhere it threatens an American job.
We will make America the best place in the world to start a business, hire workers, and open a factory.
This includes massive tax reform to lift the crushing burdens on American workers and businesses.
We will also get rid of wasteful rules and regulations which are destroying our job creation capacity.
Many people think that these regulations are an even greater impediment than the fact that we are one of the highest taxed nations in the world.
We are also going to fully capture America’s tremendous energy capacity. This will create vast profits for our workers and begin reducing our deficit. Hillary Clinton wants to shut down energy production and shut down the mines.
A Trump Administration will also ensure that we start using American steel for American infrastructure.
Just like the American steel from Pennsylvania that built the Empire State building.
It will be American steel that will fortify American's crumbling bridges.
It will be American steel that sends our skyscrapers soaring into the sky.
It will be American steel that rebuilds our inner cities.
It will be American hands that remake this country, and it will be American energy - mined from American resources - that powers this country.
It will be American workers who are hired to do the job.
We are going to put American-produced steel back into the backbone of our country. This alone will create massive numbers of jobs.
On trade, on immigration, on foreign policy, we are going to put America First again.
We are going to make America wealthy again.
We are going to reject Hillary Clinton's politics of fear, futility, and incompetence.
We are going to embrace the possibilities of change.
It is time to believe in the future.
It is time to believe in each other.
It is time to Believe In America.
This Is How We Are Going To Make America Great Again – For All Americans.
We Are Going To Make America Great Again For Everyone – Greater Than Ever Before.
I don’t know about anyone else but that is a program I can believe in and one that I believe will lead to a rebirth of the American economy. 
Hopefully I won’t end up living out the words spoken by a character in a book I wrote many years ago who when asked why he supported a disreputable candidate running for president who was a plain-speaking non-politician and the richest man in the world said, “I know he’s a liar but I like what he says.”
So far I like what he says.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com  © 2016 Contact Dr. Owens [email protected]   Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Excerpt:
I have waited my entire life to hear a politician say what The Donald said in his speech of 6-28-16
Tags:
Donald Trump, Dr. Robert Owens, the Donald, TPP, NAFTA, World Trade Organization, WTO, America First

By Dr. Robert Owens

Recently I spent some time with a person I respect highly, who is very intelligent, and who has thought about and reached conclusions concerning America’s Constitution.  This person, who is representative of many others, believes that a document written hundreds of years ago is meaningless in today’s America.  He cited the fact that many of the Framers were slave owners, they could not have imagined a nation of hundreds of millions, they could not foresee the technologically rich environment we call home, or the diverse population that now constitutes the body politic. 
None of the things cited above can be refuted because they are all true. 
First of all, what is a constitution?  A constitution organizes, distributes and regulates the power of the state.  A constitution sets out the structure of the state, the major state institutions, and the principles governing their relations with each other and with the state’s citizens.
So, why do we have a written Constitution, and does this written Constitution still matter?  
When the American Revolutionaries broke free from Great Britain they wanted to build their new nation on a solid foundation.  They most assuredly did not want what they had just rebelled against, a monarchy or an unlimited government.
Did the British have a constitution? In the Eighteenth Century just as it is now Britain is unusual in that it has an ‘unwritten’ constitution: unlike the great majority of countries there is no single legal document which sets out in one place the fundamental laws outlining how the state works. Britain’s lack of a ‘written’ constitution can be explained by its history.
In other countries, many of whom have experienced revolution or regime change, it has been necessary to start from scratch or begin from first principles, constructing new state institutions and defining in detail their relations with each other and their citizens. By contrast, the British Constitution has evolved over a long period of time, reflecting the relative stability of the British polity.
 It has never been thought necessary to consolidate the basic building blocks of this order in Britain. What Britain has instead is an accumulation of various statutes, conventions, judicial decisions and treaties which collectively can be referred to as the British Constitution. It is thus more accurate to refer to Britain’s constitution as an ‘uncodified’ constitution, rather than an ‘unwritten’ one.
The British Constitution can be summed up in eight words: What the monarch in Parliament enacts is law. This means that Parliament, using the power of the Crown, enacts law which no other body can challenge. Parliamentary sovereignty is commonly regarded as the defining principle of the British Constitution.
 This is the ultimate lawmaking power vested in a democratically elected Parliament to create or abolish any law. Other core principles of the British Constitution are often thought to include the rule of law, the separation of government into executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and the existence of a unitary state, meaning ultimate power is held by ‘the center’ – the sovereign Westminster Parliament.  In other words there is neither check upon nor balance to the power of the government.  The entire shape, form, and substance of the government can change at any time by a simple majority vote of Parliament.  To sum up: the British Constitution is a living document.

This is what caused the revolution.  If you look at the list of particulars that are in the overlooked or forgotten part of the Declaration of Independence you see that many of these individual charges against the Monarch as the representation of the government are changes made by arbitrary and unilateral acts of Parliament.  
•             He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
•             He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
•             He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
•             He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
•             He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
•             He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time (sic) exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
•             He has endeavoured (sic) to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
•             He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
•             He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
•             He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
•             He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
•             He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
•             He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
 
•             For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us
•             For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States
•             For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world
•             For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent
•             For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury
•             For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
•             For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring (sic) Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
•             For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments
•             For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever
 
 
•             He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
•             He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
•             He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat (sic) the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
•             He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
•             He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured (sic) to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

The colonists tried to follow the procedures as they knew them to find relief within the system.  But they were ignored and baffled as the system kept changing.  They describe their experience dealing with the shifting sands of their revered living document in the following words.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish (sic) brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
It was because of this failed effort to deal with a system that has no solid structure, a system that can change at the will of a simple majority that the Framers were determined to set our new nation on the solid rock of a written constitution.  What did the Founders and Framers have to say?
George Washington said, “The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution, which at any time exists, ‘till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. … If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”
Thomas Jefferson said, “Our peculiar security is in possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction. … If it is, then we have no Constitution.”
James Madison said, “Can it be of less consequence that the meaning of a Constitution should be fixed and known, than a meaning of a law should be so?”
This is what we were founded upon and this is the philosophical underpinning for the originalist view of the constitution as championed by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
What do the leading lights of the living document side of the argument have to say?
Woodrow Wilson said, “Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop.  All that progressives ask or desire is permission—in an era when ‘development,’ ‘evolution,’ is the scientific word—to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.”
FDR said, “The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.”
Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter said, “The words of the Constitution … are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.” 
Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall said, “I cannot accept this invitation [to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution], for I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever ‘fixed’ at the Philadelphia Convention … To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start.”

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia summed up the end result of more than a century of Progressive constitutional stretching.  “If we’re picking people to draw out of their own conscience and experience a ‘new’ Constitution, we should not look principally for good lawyers. We should look to people who agree with us. When we are in that mode, you realize we have rendered the Constitution useless.”
Or to put it another way the Progressive’s living document has gone a long way to changing the Constitution from something carved in stone to a mirage written in the sand.  So why do we have a written constitution?  In my opinion we need a written constitution so that the government cannot change the social contract with the wave of its hand or the passage of thousand page bills no one even reads.
So why do we have a written constitution?
To keep demagogues and tyrants from arbitrarily changing the rules by which we live.  If you think this has worked see my book The Constitution Failed.  As a professor of Political Science and as the Director of one of the largest Political Science Departments at any university I have long advocated that the study of the Constitution should be moved from Political Science to History because it has become merely an historical document and now has little to do with how our country is administered by the political class.
Does it still matter?  Only if the citizens of this nation have the fortitude to rise up and demand that it matters.
Keep the faith.  Keep the peace.  We shall overcome.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2016 Contact Dr. Owens [email protected]   
Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Excerpt: 
When the American Revolutionaries broke free from Great Britain they wanted to build their new nation on a solid foundation.  
Tags:
Living document, Dr. Robert Owens, the Constitution, original intent, originalist view, Antonin Scalia, progressive agenda, socialist agenda, Obama’s agenda