This is what a real hero looks like.

If you believe in capitalism, if you believe in the American Dream, and if you are a Young American for Liberty like me, then today I humbly request that you honor the unsung heroes in our lives: The entrepreneurs, the visionaries, and the business tycoons who have vastly changed our lives -- Steve Jobs surely rests near (if not at the top) of that list.

Steve Jobs is my hero. Thank you for forever changing the course of human history and improving the lives of hundreds of millions of people across the world.

If there should be any idolitry today, I would hope that in lieu of idolizing those who live at the expense of others, we idolize those who vastly improve the lives of others.

Send any kind remarks to: rememberingsteve@apple.com

The Educational Smear of the Antifederalists

While sitting in class the other day, I overheard several classmates of mine preparing to take a US Government exam. The conversation struck a particular chord with me due to one comment that was along the lines of

Classmate 1: Patrick Henry, what was he? Federalist or Antifederalist?

Classmate 2: He was crazy, so what would he have been?

Classmate 1: Ah, Antifederalist, okay.

Why does “crazy” set the tone for the Antifederalists? Have we come to a point in historical revisionism that we now associate some of the greatest fighters for liberty to be “crazy”? This is not my classmates’ fault, it is the fault of a revisioned history in America’s high schools.

The sad answer is "yes." We have come to a point in our history where those who inspired the Bill of Rights and fought the creation of a provably tyrannical state are labeled as crazy. Our classrooms in high schools are filled with teachers and textbooks that teach that Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, and the other Federalists were “right” and that Robert Yates, George Mason, Patrick Henry, and other Antifederalists were “wrong.”

Constitution Day at the Kazakh Presidential Palace (...or Severance Hall)

For Constitution Day 2011, YAL at Case Western Reserve University set up outside the Kelvin Smith Library and Severance Hall: 

(Severance Hall, home to the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, $50 tickets, and a $60 million "Center for Future Audiences," also had a cameo in the 1997 feature film Air Force One starring Harrison Ford, as the Kazakh Presidential Palace.)

In all, we gave away 133 YAL Pocket Constitutions and a few dozen YAL "Philosophy of Liberty" Palm Cards, and many cheerful wishes of "Happy Constitution Day!" -- which actually elicited quite a few more happy (if occasionally befuddled) responses than we expected.

We hope we did Harrison Ford -- ahem, President James Marshall -- proud.

We the States?

Since the early day of our republic, states' rights have been an integral part of our country's federal system.  In The Federalist, No. 40, James Madison states, "I ask hat are these principles [of opposition to the Constitution]?  do they require that in the establishment of the Constitution, the States should be regarded as distinct and independent sovereigns? They are so regarded by the Constitution proposed."

Without a doubt, the states have rights, but riddle me this:  Do the states have the right to take away the individual rights of their citizens? Undoubtedly not, as Slade Mendhall explains:

In order to illustrate the immorality of their positions, let us consider a hypothetical circumstance. Imagine that the federal government was to cede all of its regulatory authority to state governments— the regulation of industry, healthcare, education, communications, food, drugs, transportation, and environmental impact were retained as they stand today; all entitlement and social welfare programs were divided between the states according to the amount of their citizens’ contributions to the programs; nothing was changed save for the locus of power in our national political structure being reoriented from Washington D.C. to the fifty capitals. With all policies held constant, ultimately, the degree to which current laws and regulations violate the rights of private citizens and corporations would remain unchanged. In envisioning such a circumstance, the question which arises is this: if force is to be used to extract from individuals the products of their labor in order to contribute their wages and property to unjust aims, of what significance is it that the party that takes those wages is an agent of the state instead of the federal government?

Read the full article here.