Hello again, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of Freedom's Creed. Today is Tuesday, May 17th, 2022. And, you know, I just gotta start off by saying this. I'm a pretty patient guy, but when it comes to our Constitution, I kind of have to draw the line. From day one, my podcast has been devoted to liberty and freedom, and it's unapologetic. I don't care what other people say or think or do, the Constitution, as far as I'm concerned, is it. And it is what governs our behavior, not only as citizens, but those citizens that we elect to represent us in Washington, D.C. I even mentioned in my last episode that, you know what, there may be a better place to live in the world. And I'm not disputing that. But what I would dispute and would argue with anyone is that there's no better constitution in all the world. Period. The beauty of our constitution is that it was created with a built-in safeguard to ensure, and I'm going to put that in air quotes, against unilateral power grabs. They put it in there, we refer to it as checks and balances, and they had amazing foresight, understanding how lustful humans can be when it comes to power. We human beings want power and authority and control. It's unparalleled, obviously, in the animal kingdom, but my goodness. But like a lot of other things in life, our elected officials love to find ways to usurp the Constitution. And they try to find ways around the pesky little checks and balances. Oh, it's such a nuisance that these checks and balances are in place to keep them from going crazy and running amok with all kinds of power. But the common citizen like you and me, we love the checks and balances. We just want to see it enforced by this current crop. So once again, the founders intelligently, and I might add, with a great deal of foresight, included in the Constitution because they knew firsthand the effects of tyranny. So they had to include this idea to make sure that there was a check on each of the branches of government, three coequal branches of government. So I think it's grand that they put that in there, to be quite honest with you. Now, can I just say that I don't care what political party is guilty of usurping the Constitution? I simply want it to stop. All three branches of government are guilty of it, whether it's the judicial attempting to legislate from the bench or the executive overdosing on these executive orders. It just needs to stop. It's clearly a case of people getting into power and just becoming completely drunk on that power. And once that gets in their system, it's like they become a whole new creature. It's really scary. And in my opinion, it needs to be stopped. And if we don't stop it as the people of this country, then who will? Now I get what people might say. You can't really compare the 21st century with the 18th century. And that's a fair complaint. But is there a reason why government has to be the behemoth that it is today? I don't think so. I think that the government has gotten way out of control. In fact, when Reagan ran for office and won, that was one of the things that he ran on, at least in his first term, that is the size of government, and that government is never the solution or the answer to most problems that we face. Government has a role to play, of course. You'd be a fool to deny that, but not the kind of role that it plays today. And that's what I'm talking about. I think if the founders were around now, they'd be appalled at the way that members of Congress, even members of the executive branch and the judicial branches of government conduct themselves. I'm not saying that the founders were saints, by no means were they. They were as guilty of sin as the rest of us. So I would say what Jesus taught, he who was without sin, let him first cast a stone. And speaking of sins, the balance of this episode is going to be devoted to the sins of the legislative branch. Article I of the Constitution governs the legislative branch of government. Now, there is no real basis authorizing any member of Congress to go overseas to meet with heads of state for any reason. Now, the one exception that I would make, or perhaps even concede to, is Article I, Section Five, Clause II. Part of that clause states, quote, each house may determine the rules of its proceedings, end of quote. In reality, I don't have a beef with the founders really. But Article I, that section, that clause right there, is one that I would argue that the founders perhaps should have left out. You don't want to give these people a clean slate to make any rule that they want, and they do. For example, take some time when you have it to go to the rules.house.gov website, and you'll kind of see what I mean. But I have to say that in congressional parlance, it's only about a 19-page document. But I want to read to you a very short quote from that rules document. It's under the heading Congress's Article One Powers. They say this quote The first branch of government, the Congress, was entrusted by the founders to be the voice of the people and to oversee the other branches. Let me stop right there. To my knowledge, there is nothing in the Constitution that says that Congress is the overseer of the other branches. To the contrary, it speaks of three coequal branches of government. So right there, they are usurping the Constitution. Let me continue with a quote. On March 2nd, 2020, the Rules Committee held a bipartisan hearing to outline the responsibilities of the legislative branch, understand how Congress ceded some of those responsibilities to the executive branch, and to discuss ways to bolster Congress's constitutional authority. Here, member discussion and witness recommendations focused on war powers, the power of the purse, rulemaking, the National Emergencies Act, and the Arms Export Control Act, end of quote. Do you see what I mean about how I wish that the founders would have left that part of Article I, Section 5, Clause 2, out of the Constitution? Ladies and gentlemen, this is a very scary proposition, and not just a proposition, it's an actuality going on right now that this Congress has made rules effectively making themselves the authority over the other two branches of government. It's pathetic and it's egregious. And I just love sarcasm there, how they talk about in the rules committee this bipartisan hearing, as if to say that, oh, we've used the word bipartisan, so it's both Republicans and Democrats. I don't care who it is. It could be Mo, Larry, and Curly for all I care. I don't care. They're making rules that are usurping the Constitution, and it's happening right under our noses. What are we going to do about it? They had a hearing to outline the responsibilities of the legislative branch because the Constitution wasn't good enough for them. And they want to discuss, or they did discuss, ways to bolster Congress's congressional authority? Are you kidding me? This is ridiculous. This should never be happening. Please, I invite you, indeed, I implore you to go to this rules.gov website and check it out for yourself. This is something that should not be happening. I'm certain I'll be talking about this again. In fact, I will probably dedicate an entire episode talking about how Congress makes their own rules and it they're doing it right under our noses, as I said, getting away with usurping the Constitution all under the guise of saying that, hey, this is our congressional authority granted to us by the founders. No, hell no. And I'm sorry, but this is just blatant abuse of power. I get fired up about it, and I wish other people would get fired up about it too, and not put up with it. The way that we can get people like this out of Congress is to vote them out of office, and I don't care what party they're from. If they are usurping the Constitution, they've got to go. Period. Okay, so recently you may have heard that both the Democrats and Republicans sent over their little delegations separately, I'm at Ed, to Ukraine to visit with President Zelensky. Supposedly the purpose of their visit was to tell Zelensky face to face that, okay, hey, uh, the checks in the mail, buddy. Mm-hmm. Yay. Again, there is nowhere in Article I of the Constitution that authorizes any member of Congress to go overseas and visit a head of state. End of discussion. To be sure, I don't support any member of Congress, Democrat, independent, Republican, that thinks it's somehow okay with their constituency for them to go abroad using taxpayer funds to tell a head of state that we're more than happy to donate billions of dollars to some war effort that we're not even involved in, at least not with boots on the ground, but certainly all this money that we're printing right now is going to be sent over there, which is devaluing the dollar. That's a whole nother story. There's just no reason for this. I don't care what party these congressional members were from. In fact, well, it was both parties, as I said, who went over there and thought that that'd be okay. Uh, did they check with any of their constituents to say, hey, here's what we're gonna do? We're gonna go over and visit with uh President Zelensky and we're gonna talk to him about all the billions of dollars that are gonna come his way for us to show our support and our unanimity with Ukraine. No, none of that happened. They're above the law. They do whatever they want to do. It's pathetic. The Constitution doesn't even stipulate that the commander-in-chief go overseas to meet with a foreign leader of another sovereign nation to unilaterally make a declaration of war. That power rests with the Congress to make a declaration of war, that is. It's not the president's job to do that. No president should be going overseas to talk about a declaration of war with another president of another sovereign nation. Now, if there's allies and like what happened with World War II, where you had these heads of state meeting together, discussing how the end of the war and how it should be conducted and the surrender treaties and so forth, that's understandable, but not in the way that this Congress is doing now. They are, as I said, usurping their authority given to them by the Constitution, hence by we the people. So there you have it. To say I'm pretty fired up right now is probably an understatement. But I'm sick and I'm tired of congressional leaders, any member of any branch of government, I don't care who it is, I don't care what their party is, usurping the Constitution. It should be criminal. It is criminal. But what happens today is only some people are held to account for the things that they do. Most members of Congress, regardless of the party these days, are never held to account for what they do. It's pathetic and it's so partisan. They talk about having a bipartisan committee or hearing, please. That's a joke. There's nothing bipartisan. The only bipartisan about it is the word itself that they used. It says nothing whatsoever to describe who or what these people are. They're pathetic. They should be voted out of office. End of discussion. Let me just say here at the end, ladies and gentlemen, if you like the content that I provide in this podcast, I need you to do me a huge favor to which I'll be eternally indebted to each of you for doing. And that is this. Please pass it along to your family, to your friends, to those who you might think would be interested in the content that I am providing. Whether you think someone would disagree with me or not, I don't care. I don't care. I think that the whole objective of not only my podcast, but the nature of our government, the way the constitution allows for differing opinions. It allows for us to have discussions where we get to disagree with each other. And on occasion, maybe we do agree with each other, and that's great. But the Constitution, the First Amendment, that Bill of Rights, even, provide to us all the opportunity to disagree with each other if we want to. Not to be hateful, not to be spiteful or take advantage of other people. No, that's not what it is. Unfortunately, that's what it's become in society nowadays. We can't even have debates with each other because somehow uh I don't agree with another person. So therefore, I'm going to be canceled because I don't agree, or because I'm not giving credence to the things that they're saying. I'm not affirming that there are more than two genders, or I'm not affirming that transgenders and others want to be referred to by a certain pronoun. I'm sorry. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to affirm to someone what I believe is a mental illness. I truly believe that. I don't have I have no animosity towards anyone who is transgender or any other mental illness. I I pray that they get the help that they need because truly they need the help. But instead of our society giving people help in that situation, we just affirm those pronouns and affirm that, oh yes, there there are dozens of genders, and we just should accept that. No, I'm not going to do that. But in any case, again, if you like the content that I'm providing, share the podcast with your friends, neighbors, family members, and anyone else that you might think would be interested in the podcast. And as I said, I do tend to get a little excited when talking about things that I really have a passion for. I consider myself to be a Christian. I'm far from a perfect person. I'm striving to follow the admonition and teachings of Jesus Christ. Period. Sometimes I slip and I might say a swear word, like I probably did in this episode. I don't know. I got pretty fired up, so I was seeing red for a bit. So anyway, if I did, my bad. The bottom line is your time is valuable. And I I totally get that, and I respect that. There are tons of various outlets that you can go to these days, be it podcasts or any media outlet or any other medium that provides content such as mine, or maybe it's 180 degrees different than mine. And hey, you know what? That's okay. That's the society we live in. To each their own. I say we should never ever make off-limits the things that we disagree with. That's not America. That's not how this country is supposed to be. We have the right to speak freely. We have the right to listen to whatever we want to listen to, and that should never be encroached upon, ever. I want to close this episode with a quote from Anne Frank. What an amazing individual. She only lived to be about 15 years old. She lived at a time when the Nazis took over Germany. I think she was born in 1929. She died in 1945. She died of typhus, I believe, she and her sister both in a concentration camp in Germany. She actually thought that she would be someone who the world would never know. But what she did is she kept a diary, she kept a journal, and she wrote down a lot. And fortunately, her dad was the impetus for those writings to be published. And it's been published in, as I understand it, dozens of languages. And her words, her life indeed lives on through those words. And so I wanted to close this episode with a quote from her. And she said this quote, It's difficult in times like these, ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us only to be crushed by grim reality. It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. End of quote. To have that perspective, especially in the last couple of years of her life when she lived in a concentration camp under deplorable conditions, that she could actually have that attitude and believe that people are really good at heart. I love that. And with that, if you can think it, you can plan it. If you can plan it, you can do it.