Duty. Author kris krisanne haul in early august, how is President Trump doing. Guest well, he is a president. Host and . Guest well, i teach the constitution as it was intended to be applied. And the president s in america have operated outside the realm of their executive authority, constitutionally speaking, for decades. So, to judge trump, for me, is not to judge him against obama or george w. Bush but to use the constitution as a standard. And sometimes he is good, sometimes not so much. And so that is how we view what goes on in washington, dc, not based on Political Party or personality but based on the standard by which all americans should hold their federal government, the constitution. Host when you use that measuring stick, which president s in your view have adhered to the constitution, which havent . Guest its been a very long time since we had a president that was truly constitutional. You look at article 2 of the constitution, and that host which is. Guest the delegated authority for the executive branch, and when we look at that, we realize how little power the president has, especially autonomously, constitutionally speaking. I always show my students, you look at the constitution, article 1 is the powers delegated to congress, its like this. Then you go to article 2, delegated to president , and then article 3, delegated to the judiciary, and in america weve gravitated measure towardston allconsuming executive rather than an executive in service to the legislative, and what we have now in america is a bit of an aberration of what the president ought to be, and we think that the president is a leader of america. He is not the leader of america. He was never intended to be the leader of america. The president was intended to be an ambassador on behalf of the states in Foreign Affairs, and you can see that when you look at the powers delegated. The president is not the designator of war. He is not the controller of our troops unless constitutionally speaking, there has been a formal declaration of war by congress. So you ask me, which president s, right . So we look, when was the last time we had declaration of war by congress . World war ii. That means every military action that has been led by an executive since world war 2 has been unconstitutionally done so. And so we have a president is not allowed to make deals. He can only make treaties. Those treaty are only accepted if they are confirmed by twothirds of the senate and are consistent as article 6, section 2 of the constitution demand with the delegated authority of the executive or legislative branches. And so what we have, then, is this expansion of president ial power, which is contrary to the intent of the framers. Our framers made the president a very small position realtive to the legislative on purpose. Alexander hamilton wrote a paper, we call federalist paper 69. There was a great deal of discussion about the office of the executive. The designers over the Constitutional Republic were concerned that they had just achieved an independence from a monarchy. They didnt not want to establish a new government and create a new monarchy. It was an option. I dont know how many people remember from civics classes but there was a point in time where people were actually begging George Washington to be king. So we were this close to being the kingdom of america, but our founders said, we dont want to go back to the kingdom system again. Lets do the Constitutional Republic. Houston do we ensure the executive does not transmute over time into a king . And so the federalist paper 69 is a great source and understanding not only what the power of the executive branch is but why its so very limit. Host how do we get to the point of executive orders and no war declarations since world war ii . Is it congress fault . Guest ultimately it rests on the people. Samuel adams said, no people will tamely surrender their liberties nor be easily subdued when knowledge is when the people become universally ignorant and debached anywhere manners they were sink underneath their own without without the aid of foreign invaders inch america we have seen the decline in the importance of the study of the proper role and placement of the federal government, and human nature dictates that people will gravitate towards a more powerful government to take care of their needs and to provide them with more comfort, and government will always accept more and more power. So, congress, yes, has a great deal of responsibility in the expansion of the power of the executive branch by unlawfully to constitutionally delegating authority to the president through legislative acts. We have the people, though, a good example. The last president ial election, if i have a radio show and a Television Show and what did was i took six president ial candidates that spanned at the green party, we had independents, we had republicans, democrats, libertarian, and so what i did was i took their published platforms and i didnt compare them with each other as is possible already. What i did was compared each of their platforms individually to the constitutional role of the president. And what i found was that the promises the president s candidates were making are promises outside of the authority of the office of the executive. So the president does not have the authority to raise or lower taxes. That is a power reserved to the house of representatives. The president cannot take care of our troops financially. He cannot expand troops. He cannot withdraw troops. That is a power reserved to legislative branch. What i realize is that all of the promises the president s were making were responses to questions asked by the people. Will you do this for us . Thats what the whole web site thing is. Yes, we will do this for you. I will do this. Im making this promise. But i think if the people were better educated, better understanding of the proper role of the executive, we would ask better questions that are in tune with the delegated authorities of the president. So in that vein, i think president s become who the people want them to be. Host from your most recent book sovereign duty you write if youll the Central Government as a creation of the constitution is not and cannot be a party to the constitution. Let me say that again so that you dont miss it. The Central Government is not a party to the contract. It is a creation of the contract. Guest one thing that we need to remember about the formation of the federal government and in the sovereign duty book and in the class i teach on state sovereignty, that you cover here on cspan, we go through a whole timeline. The states are the first creation of the people, and that happened on july 2, 1776 with the ratification tee lee resolution. From the creation of the states through the authority of the people, the states came together and said we need to confederation of states. We need to form a union for our Mutual Protection from foreign invaders, and we must form this union to be a unified voice in Foreign Affairs for treaties and commerce and peace and war and those kind of things and we need to form an alliance between the states for a more peaceful interaction between the states. The states were formed as independent sovereign governments. When you read the writings of the designers of the Constitutional Republic through the federalist papers, the antifederalist papers, the rall ratification notes that James Madison took from the rat fix addition debates you see the terms state and nation played interchangeably. When the speak hoff the state of virginia, new hampshire, rhode island, they also refer to germany, france, and spain, as states as well. And so what we have to really understand is we created 13 that time independent sovereign governments with the same authority and political function as germany, france or spain. And toso they said we need to come together and make this unified voice because we looked through history and how europe works and need to fix the things not right over there. Through that well create a Constitutional Republic, bringing a confederation over the states and then the constitution itself will create the federal government. So the federal government did not exist until the constitution was ratified. Not only that. There was precarious moment prior to the ratification of our current constitution, where we didnt have enough states to ratify. It was a pretty scary moment for those who were designing the constitution to think, we might just not even have a union at all. And if that were to happen, in the constitution were not ratified, then there would be no federal government. So, what we also have to realize is that the constitution is a contract. Now, contract law speaking, when you have a contract, you have the parties to the contract. The parties of the contract are the people who come together make the terms of the contract, they negotiate the terms, they design the contract, and ultimately sign the contract into legal being. In our Constitutional Republic, the states are the parties to that contract. There are some who teach that the constitution is an agreement between the people and the federal government. That is not true. It cant be true. We can show that to be false by one simple fact. How was the constitution ratified . Was it ratified by popular vote . No. It was ratified by threequarters of the states. So the states being the ratifiers of the constitution, mean that they are the parties. Some also try to teach that the constitution is an agreement between the states and the federal government. That is a temporal impossibility because the federal government did not exist until the constitution was ratified. You cannot be the party to a contract when you are the product of the contract, because you cannot sign the contract into legal being until the contract if you dont exist until the contract is already signed. So the only parties that existed that could be the creators of the constitution are the states. And the federal government did not exist until the constitution was ratified, which makes them the product. So the states are the creators of the constitution, the constitution created the federal government, therefore the states are the creators of the federal government. Host so july 2, 1776 to, what, 1783. Guest 1787. Host when the constitution was finally ratified. Guest we had the articles of confederation in between there but they proved to be faulty. One when you read the notes to the ratification debates and the correspondence they head, you see the greatest problem with the only articles articlesf confederation was the federal government was operating outside of its boundaries and it didnt have enough direction. So the greatest problem we were having at that time was that the federal government was making inequitable treaties with Foreign Government inside which one state or one set of states, had to provide all of the resources and then a separate state or separate set of states got all the benefits. So the states having just now formed this union with this understanding that its supposed to be mute mutually beneficial, who were having to foot the entire bill were saying, wait a minute, this not why we signed up to this, to transfer our wealth to another state. So we are not going to comply with this treaty. Which is a really big deal. Because not only is a treaty an agreement, its a contract with a Foreign Government. So our states who were refusing to comply with these foreign treaties, and they were righteously resist bought the treaties we have a problem now in the articles confederation. Our confederation is about to split and bust got start because were got to go to war between the states on conflict, about to go to war with Foreign Governments, which is why we brought together the new convention to create our constitution, which is why our new constitution is called, the more perfect union. So when we dissolve the articles of confederation there is no more federal government, and the only government that governments that exist are their states, and there would have never been a new federal government had not our current constitution been ratified. Host from your book not a living, breathing document, reclaiming our constitution published in 2011 you write the common refrain these days is that we fell asleep. That meansunder ignorance of the history that brought us our american liberty allowed tyranny to sneak up on us. However, that was not the case for our founders. Guest when we take the big picture and i mean the full scope of the history of our american Constitutional Republic we have to realize that it didnt guinn 1787. That liberty was not invented in 1776, and tyranny was not invent bid gordon iii. When i teach a class called the genealogy of the constitution, which i covered in the not a living, breathing document book, we take the 700 years of history that give us our declaration of independence, our constitution and our bill of rights, and it is this history that proves to us that our constitution is built upon time tested prims, axiomatic truths. Theyre not inventions. When you know the history, you know there are five documents that were written. They are called the british liberty charters, and within those five documents, you find every single aspect of our declaration of independence, our constitution and our bill of rights. Not even just in principle. Sometimes in the very language themselves. Just taken from the documents and supplanted. We didnt invent anything in our foundational documents. We inherited everything. And it is that history that proves to us our founders actually this is what may surprise people, surprises everybody who attends this class or reads the book there is nothing new in america. This is not a brave new world. Theres a popular belief that the constitution is irrelevant and inapplicable today because our founders couldnt know what were possibly seeing today. But when you study that history, you see that we are just repeating the same scenarios over and over again throughout time, even today. The same stories. Its the same people with the same interaction of government, just different faces, and better technology. History always repeats, and i think the theme of that of the not a living, breathe document book is those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. You mentioned classes you teach. Where do you teach them . Guest i teach all over the country. We teach this is year number seven for us. Host who is us . Guest any husband parentally indiscover, my husband and my son who has been centralling with us and teaching for seven years now. He is 11, so he is quite the traveled young man. He has been to almost every state in the union to include alaska but not hawaii yet. He is praying for that one. And he has been to four countries. And so what i do is i travel around, we teach on average over 260 classes every year in over 22 states. And we dont solicit for classes. People email us and contact us and say, come and teach us. I teach high school, middle school students, college students, we teach civics groups, business groups, bar associations, Law Enforcement, ive taught the legislators of ten states from the sovereign duty class. We will teach anybody and what people find when we teach these classes is that some preconceived fallacies have to fall away. Teaching the constitution doesnt label me in any certain group, what people find is that it doesnt matter on what political side you stand. The constitution is relevant to everyone. I taught a National Conference of physicians and surgeons, and was very exciting hearing their comments afterwards. These are not people that would be you would generally carrying around the pocket constitution and they were so excited what they learned, and i think thats what we find as we travel around and teach, is that this is an empowering message for all people, an inspirational message that overcomes a feeling of powerlessness, that americans have today in view of how their government operates. Host do you charge force these classes. Guest we have no speaking fees. Host how do you pay for it . Guest we host a lot of travel. Guest we have airplane tickets, rental cars, food, hotels, we have never had a speaking fee. Never required anybody to compensate us for our travel or our expenses. We do this as a mission al our heart. We are not independently wealthy. We have never received a grant from anyone. But we work solely off private donations, 20, 30 bucks here and there, and the sale of the books, and were not out to get rich. This is our our family is a family of missionars so when were not teaching the constitution of the United States, were missionaries to haiti. We have a servants heart. The best way ive heard somebody describe what we do is were missionaries to people of the United States in defense of the stumps thats how we operate. So we work solely by faith, and for seven years, it works. Host from your web site, and from your bio, i was raided a democrat. The only thing more evil than satan was republican in my home. I was an environmental list and ardent environmentalist, some of my best friends were members of green space supported the World Wildlife fund and peta and i i was a vegetarian by ideology, not Health Reasons forks almost 15 years. Believed in Global Warming and defended it vigorously. I believed in the big bang and openly criticized those who believed in creationism, as ignorant and misled. I supported abortion and often openly condemned others for being pro life. I have argued with abortion protesters on street corners, and called them names i am not proud of. I was not only not a christian but i practiced many other religions, including many occult versions. Was bitter against god and felt that only ignorant, weak people, needed faith. Was too intelligence and too educated for such a feeble crutch. Guest ive come a long way. Host what happened. Guest it was not an epiphany. It was transformational. You start with the beginning in my household there was nothing more evil than a republican, than satan himself. It was very politically active household. My parents my father and his father and all his brothers are union people, and so our political ideology came fro