A crowd of 30 students attended author and U.S. Constitutional expert KrisAnne Hall's Saturday seminar about the origins of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, state constitutions and how this heritage matters to American citizens today.
"If you don't know what your rights are, how do you know they are already gone," she asked her Saturday students. "That's what we are doing here. Educating, equipping and inspiring people to defend our Constitutional Republic."
One key debate point she brought up was that the American public is woefully uneducated in the Constitution and why our government was designed the way it was and just how far we have gotten away from many of the central concepts under which the American republic was founded.
"Many are saying that the Electoral College is outdated and needs to be done away with," she said. "That is not true. We were established first as a group of sovereign states. They then established a federal government first and foremost to deal with the small set of Constitutionally designated duties dealing with interstate law and international relations. The rest of government was to be handled by the states themselves. That has not changed, at least in a legal sense."
She noted just this election cycle, illustrated by the news media recently, how much they misunderstand the process and their own role. The news media plays no part in bringing forth the victor in a presidential campaign, at all.
"No president has in fact ever been elected in November," she said. "Every president is elected Jan. 6, when the Senate counts the Electoral College ballots. The Electoral College represents the sovereign states, who in fact elect the president. Having the press call an election now is not in the constitution and not the role of the press. It is unconstitutional and disingenuous."
Later in the day, she addressed state constitutions, reminding the audience that the states are the primary source of governmental authority, not the federal government. She took a look at the Texas constitution and reminded the audience of the purpose of a constitution in the first place.
"These things are not established to control us, the people," she said. "They are established to control government. It is criminal of another person to try to deny you your rights, which the constitutions state and federal acknowledge (they do not grant rights, they acknowledge they exist independently of the constitution and the government). For the state to try to take away your rights is also criminal."
She touched on the current COVID crisis, which she says has many government entities vastly overreaching their authority as defined by their constitution.
"We have had state authorities establish restrictions and sanctions in a way entirely outside the rule of law and their authority as listed in our documents," she said. "Despite the federal emergency declaration, there is nothing about the law that allows a government to arbitrarily shut your business, your place of worship or anything like that, just because a virus may be present."
She especially noted the inordiate amount of power judges seem to have in Texas.
"They have crazy power, like kings," she said. "You all need to fix that."
She outlined a principle of "non-compliance", simply not going along with law that is clearly beyond the authority of the state to establish, never mind the edicts of authorities, such as those issued by governors, which are, by definition, not law at all.
"How can you take my business without due process," she asked. "It is way beyond governmental authority to arbitrarily shut down your place of business without a lawful reason to do so."
She made the point that much of this is possible because many Americans comply with much of this without questioning it.
"The prison of the mind is more powerful than the shackles of the state," she said. "We choose to obey."
KrisAnne Hall was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri and began her career as a biochemist, then a Russian linguist for the U.S. Army. She eventually went into law, working as a prosecutor for the State of Florida. She also practiced First Amendment Law for a national non-profit law firm. She is now the president of Liberty First University and travels the country teaching about the nation's principles of liberty and the nature of the United States as a Constitutional Republic. She is a nationally syndicated radio and cable television host and has written six books on the Contitution and the Bill of Rights.
For those who want to attend a KrisAnne Hall event, there will be one 2 p.m. today (Sunday) at Church on the Rock, 1601 Mall Drive, Texarkana, Texas. It is entitled "Forgotten Founders to Students."