Does it drive you crazy when you hear politicians and talking heads refer to America as a “democracy”? If it does, I sympathize with you. And so do the founders. What didJames Madison, our fourth President and the man they call the “Father of the Constitution,” say about democracies?

Our Constitution is so simple that Alexander Hamilton expected us to be “enlightened enough to distinguish between a legal exercise and an illegal usurpation of authority”; and he said the people are “the natural guardians of the Constitution.” Well then, if our Constitution is something The People are expected to know and enforce; is it plausible to assert that the Representatives we send to Washington – and even supreme Court Justices – are incapable of understanding it?

Barack Obama has repeatedly threatened that if Congress doesn’t give him his way on immigration and bailouts and Obamacare, he’ll just do it himself. After all, he’s got a pen and a phone. All these bailouts and threatened executive action got me to thinking that maybe there is a common underlying and unspoken premise.

Does the Declaration of Independence have any authority in 2014? Is the Declaration of Independence relevant at all to our laws and government today, and what does it mean in the shadow of the U.S. Constitution? Is it, as liberals tell us, meaningless?

“Anyone who desires to be ignorant and free, desires what never was and never will be.” When Jefferson, the principle author of the American Declaration of Independence, wrote these words, he was expressing a truth that relatively few Americans appreciate today.

Today we endure levels of control and taxation that make the causes of our own Revolution pale in comparison. It is hard not to believe that if Washington, Henry, and that generation were with us today, they wouldn’t be issuing declarations and raising the alarm, “The Totalitarians are coming! The Totalitarians are coming!!”

All authority comes from the individuals and is provided to their representatives in government through an expressed powers document called a constitution. The understanding that all authority for government actions comes from the people individually is the fourth most important principle of freedom and the cornerstone of true freedom.

Besides regulating the division of authority, constitutions written to limit government must contain substantive rules. They need to establish general principles which will govern the specific acts of the legislature. Therefore, the essence of a constitution involves not only a hierarchy of power and authority; it also establishes a hierarchy of laws.

Conservatives are unwilling to confront the most potent weapon the Left uses against us over and over again. A weapon they have put in place so they could unravel the intent and foundation of our constitutional republic without risking the scrutiny of the voters. This way they could impose “pretend laws” on a defenseless citizenry that would never see the light of the day if they had to pass lawfully. I’m referring to judicial supremacy,

Do you see that it is essential that the body of the people know and understand what law is and what it is not? Do you see that, unless the people know the standards which establish legislative enactments as valid law or show them to be lawless frauds, they will not be able to hold a lawless legislature like the one we have in Maryland in check? To enjoy the benefits of law and liberty, we cannot be ignorant of their Source and nature.