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A web site from Terence James Mason, author of No Loopholes.

e-mail:  tjmason@oneamericanvoice.me
twitter:  OneAmericanVoic
terencejamesmason.blogspot.com

Personal Musings...

Give a man a fish, and you can feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish, and you can feed a man for a lifetime.  Teach a man the trade of making fishing poles, and you can enrich both him and his village while feeding them for a lifetime. 

If God is dead, then damnation is letting any man, or institution of men, have the dominion of God over your life.  For that matter, even though He isn't, that's a pretty good definition of damnation.

It seems self-evident that the most prosperous nation is one where every person is working as hard as she or he can, at meaningful productive labor whether physical or mental, to enrich herself or himself.  That's as true as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of which it is an economic corrollary.  Contriving to take the wealth of others through the ballot box, however, is not working -- it is theft, just the same as if someone burglarized them. 

"Selfishness is the bedrock foundation of moraility.  Any animal that is so poor in spirit that it won't even defend itself should crawl off and die, so as not to pass on its defective genes."  -- Robert A. Heinlein (paraphrased from "The Pragmatics of Patriotism")

"Shared prosperity" presumes that there is prosperity to share.  Prosperity comes ultimately from hard work, and is then best shared by using the products of that work to buy goods and services. Saying that prosperity can be shared by taking from someone who works hard and giving it someone who doesn't work at all - or performs make-work - is like saying that the thief in the night enriches the household. 

"Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto",

Publius Terentius Afer (Terence, d. 159 BC)

"I am human.  Nothing which concerns mankind is foreign to my interests."

James Madison, principal author of the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution

• A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.
• All men having power ought to be mistrusted.
• If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
• It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
• It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.
• Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
• The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

George Mason, author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights

• A few years' experience will convince us that those things which at the time they happened we regarded as our greatest misfortunes have proved our greatest blessings.

• All men are by nature born equally free and independent.

• As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this.

• Attend with Diligence and strict Integrity to the Interest of your Correspondents and enter into no Engagements which you have not the almost certain Means of performing.

• I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few public officials. 

 

No Loopholes:  Back to the Basics

An essay on the meaning of the Bill of Rights by Terence James Mason.

© 2012, Terence James Mason

Ever since the ink dried on the Bill of Rights, federal and state legislators have looked for loopholes that could be turned to their personal or political benefit.  Terence James Mason, an ordinary American citizen with a common-sense view of the political process, has looked to the founding documents for ways to identify and close those loopholes.  No Loopholes identifies the specific protections needed to return the interpretation of the Bill of Rights to that intended by the Framers.  Through specific and detailed clarifications of the limits intended in the Bill of Rights, Mason describes what the Framers intended and how it should be applied to Federal and State governments in the modern, high-tech world.  Ten additional proposed Amendments would further limit the powers of the Federal government by restoring the Commerce clause to its intended scope, imposing term limits and prohibiting political dynasties, requiring a balanced budget, defining new federal crimes to protect the integrity of the elected offices and federal bureaucracy, and permit the States and the People to step in when Congress refused to prevent damage to the United States and its people.  No Loopholes provides a template which can assess any political action, or any political party, on the protection of individual rights and control of the size of government.

No Loopholes is available in electronic format on Amazon Kindle, B&N Nook, and other e-reader formats from Twilight Times Books.

For excerpt and sales information:

http://twilighttimesbooks.com/NoLoopholes_ch1.html

For Amazon Kindle:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00927QEBG

For Barnes and Noble Nook:  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/no-loopholes-terence-james-mason/1112666220

Author biography:  http://twilighttimesbooks.com/Authors.html#Mason