The Houston Property Rights Association’s featured speaker this week will be Carl Jarvis. Mr. Jarvis is a former U.S. naval officer, an alumnus of the U.S. Navy’s Nuclear Propulsion Program, and a graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with a degree in Mathematics. In 2006, he left his career in the financial sector to pursue his longstanding dream of writing a book about the U.S. Constitution, in the venerable tradition of the Federalist Papers, Walter Bagehot’s The English Constitution, and Woodrow Wilson’s Congressional Government and Constitutional Government in the United States.
A Tale of Two Constitutions:
Seven Keys to Understanding Why We Don’t Follow the Constitution Anymore
This Friday the HPRA speaker will be Carl Jarvis, a former U.S. naval officer, an expert on the Constitution, and author of the forthcoming book, The Citizen’s Guide to Fighting for Freedom and Winning (working title). This book is intended to help Americans save time and gain clarity as they seek real and lasting solutions to the urgent challenges our country faces.
Every day, millions of Americans read news stories about deficit spending, congressional dysfunction, the national debt, and inflation–and try to make sense of it all. The problem is: discussion of these issues too often makes people feel as if nothing can be done. Carl Jarvis will explore the evolution of the American political process, explain the changes that have led to deficit spending, political polarization, long-term incumbency, and more–and show what can be done about each of these problems. This is the first public talk he is giving on these issues and you will not want to miss it.
Houston Property Rights Association
PUBLIC INVITED: $16 — Courtyard Restaurant – 1885 St. James Place
Friday, January 18, 2013
Buffet lunch – 12:00 to 2:00 – Program starts at 12:30
(Directions: The Courtyard is south of San Felipe, west of Yorktown, and east of Chimney Rock.)
Please tell your friends and neighbors about our meetings.
RESERVATIONS NOT NEEDED
From his website, USConstitution.org:
During the final preliminary phase of my research, right before I decided to write a book, I came across a number of passages by Woodrow Wilson.
These were written in 1908, just four years before Wilson was elected to the presidency:
- [the president’s] veto upon legislation was only his ‘check’ on Congress,—was a power of restraint, not of guidance. He was empowered to prevent bad laws, but he was not given an opportunity to make good ones. As a matter of fact he has become very much more. [Constitutional Government, p. 59]
- [The president] is the only national voice in affairs… His position takes the imagination of the country. He is the representative of no constituency, but of the whole people… [Constitutional Government, p. 68]
- The president is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can. His capacity will set the limit; and if Congress be overborne by him, it will be no fault of the makers of the Constitution. [Constitutional Government, p. 70]
It was as I read these passages that I began to realize the extent to which we no longer follow the safeguards against dictatorship that were built into our Constitution.
And I decided that something needed to be done.
Dictatorship? In the U.S.? No way! Right? Well…this is what Mr. Jarvis has to say about President Obama’s gun grab:
The president repeated his call for a ban on assault weapons and stricter background checks for gun purchases during a press conference yesterday and said some of the steps could be accomplished by executive order. But Carl Jarvis says the president should let lawmakers decide. “Bypassing Congress to change the nation’s gun policy by executive order, as the White House has suggested it might do, would be a radically polarizing act that could bring the country to the brink of revolution.
It should be an informative presentation. Hope to see you there!