What Good Is The "10-4" Pledge?

After trying to get one candidate to sign the 10-4 Pledge, http://pledge.tenthamendmentcenter.com/the-federal-pledge/ so that I could do a write up on him, put suitable campaign videos, etc… he got the pledge and replied that he didn’t feel the need to reaffirm his support for the constitution (as he already did this in the military).  I replied that as is evidenced over the last 80+ years of federal governance in America, obviously politicians have quite a different view of their pledge than do service members.  So he took another look and ultimately still decided against it.  Then, fellow state coordinator (Andrew Nappi, from Florida) sent me this video. The video shows the reason the Pledge can make a difference.

So….. I can boil down what she is saying in this video to a couple of sentences.  Since five Supreme Court justices (unelected bureaucrats nominated for life) were able to agree that the Federal Government can violate their founding laws and had no problems with their conscience, who am I to disagree?  Why should I read and follow the Constitution when these lawyers have already told me what they think, and they believe the Federal Government has no limits to their power whatsoever?

The real shame here is that the Constitution was written to restrain the Federal Government.  By allowing the Federal Government (Supreme Court) to determine the bounds of it’s own authority there are effectively no limits whatsoever.  After all, more federal power means that the Supreme Court will have more power.  If the Supreme Court can by fiat (as all their powers are exercised) nullify state laws, add new laws and mandates to the Federal Government (and there is no check to that power) why did the framers bother to write down the powers at all.  They could have just said that the power of the nation will be vested in one King who shall be reelected every four years, and the Supreme Court will be hand-picked by the King and have a lifetime tenure, and will determine the justice of all laws.

So the pledge reintroduces the state government to the mix.  As with any contract (in this case between the State and the Federal Government) both parties have an equal right to judge for themselves if the other has violated the contract.  So if the Federal Government violates this contract, the states are not only justified but duty-bound to restore the contract into compliance.  They are responsible in this way for ensuring the liberty of the citizens of their state.  The proper way of exercising this check on federal power is thru nullification.

Instead of the politician being able to point to a 200-page document that uses tortured language to justify clear violations of the Constitution, they need to judge for themselves from the plain English text of the Constitution itself. This is what the 10-4 Pledge tries to accomplish.  I hope that with a goodly number of pledge signers in all levels of government, slowly but surely, the Nation will become a Republic again, with the state governments reasserting their authority, and slowly putting Pandora’s evil “back in the box.”

In Liberty,
Tim Reeves
www.oregon.tenthamendmentcenter.com

Tim Reeves is the State Chapter Coordinator for the Oregon Tenth Amendment Center.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 1:53 pm. It is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.