A Basic Voter’s Guide: Direct from the Constitution

A Basic Voter’s Guide: Direct from the Constitution

Oct. 24, 2024

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest(s): David New

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 10/24/24. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Sam Rohrer:       Hello and welcome to this Thursday edition of Stand In the Gap Today, and it’s also our bimonthly focus on the Constitution and American history with someone that you love. I know because they hear from you, constitutional attorney, author, and speaker. David knew now in less than two weeks, just less than two weeks. Now the long awaited. November 5th, the US elections are scheduled to occur. And while every election we always hear it, but it’s always kind of said like, well, this is the most important election of all times. Well, everyone is important in its times, but in some respects, this one here coming up may be very important, most important in some ways because I think this election that is before us is unique in many ways in that our nation at this time is perhaps more ideologically and politically divided than ever before. The circumstances surrounding this election are certainly different, and with the Democrat party platform in particular and the Harris Walz team, I don’t think we’ve ever had a platform representing policies and views regarding the purpose for America and being so communicated by this team.

Sam Rohrer:       Now that’s on the ballot in particular at the top that is more aggressively immoral or patently unconstitutional in so many of the things I’m going to say unashamedly, globalist, arrogantly, anti-Christian and decidedly unlawful in action and statements weaponizing even the use of government entities against their opposition, probably no more than what we’re seeing in this election. So this is different. I think these things alone make the outcome of this election. I think therefore historic. There are, however, I think many things that are coming into play that make a peaceful and successful election process more high risk, such things as this world war is coming, Israel has promised to attack Iran prior to the election, and then the threats of Iran and Russia now in relationship China thrown in there, all of them making threats against the United States with things happening here. If we permit that to happen now as of the latest, I just got something from the Times of Israel that maybe Israel is going to hold that off because of the leak that happened.

Sam Rohrer:       I don’t know, but these things are there. Then there is the highest level of threat of domestic terrorism and cyber attacks against a broad array of US infrastructure that all of these together produce elements that are beyond our control. They may impact the election, they may not, but at least they’re dominating our thinking of so many people. But then obviously I think above all of these is the hand of God at work in all those things I just mentioned and not here just in this nation, but around the world. And ultimately we know as God-fearing people that it is God who raises up and God who puts down nations and leaders. So into this scenario, we proceed with wisdom and careful thought at least we should as to how to vote and for whom we vote. Understanding that God will exercise His will as he alone retains his prerogative of choice of leaders and whether or not he extends the blessing or pours out his wrath and judgment against sin and rebellion and evil on nations and people that is directly in God’s purview.

Sam Rohrer:       Nothing alters that. Now for believers, the more aligned we are with biblical principles in our thinking and our voting, the better we can give an account to God. And I think that’s how we ought to be thinking carefully for all decisions including voting. So our intent today is to look at certain principles that can and should always guide our thinking in matter of how we vote and the positions that parties and individuals must uphold in order to warrant a yes vote in a yes vote. I’m going to say with clear conscience the title I’ve chosen for today’s program in my conversation with attorney David New is simply this, a basic voter’s guide direct from the Constitution and that’s the direction we’re going to go right now. And with that, let me invite in right now to the program, David New. David, thank you for being back. Great topic and certainly timely one.

David New:         Well, it’s so nice to be with you and everyone this morning. Blessings to you.

Sam Rohrer:       David. Before I get into that, I just want to ask you what your thoughts are about motivations of people for voting right now. A couple things just came out this morning according to the University of Florida’s early voting tracker, and there’s a lot of emphasis on early voting. That early voting turnout as of yesterday is off the charts. For instance, in 2020, 40.9 million Americans voted prior to election day. Now two weeks out, a whopping 24 million, almost 25 million have already voted. That is significant. Energy is very high on both sides. And David, our purpose today is not to project or even analyzing this early voting data and as I’ve looked through it, it tells quite a story, but that’ll be for another day. But it does raise the consideration that many that are voting and have a lot of different motivations. In my opinion though, I think my sense is I want your thought is that there’s far more negative emotion and personality driven emotions perhaps by different levels of fear because both sides are trying to create fear of what the opposing party or candidate will do if they get in more than positively driven choices for why we do what we do based on, for instance, morality and constitutionality by position of the platforms and the candidates.

Sam Rohrer:       So here’s my question to you. What are your thoughts before we get into the four constitutional principles in the next segment or two, what’s your sense about the voting motivations of people in this election as compared to perhaps the last elections?

David New:         A big piece of it is the economy. People are really hurting, people aren’t doing very well and they’re not quite sure which way to go, many of them, that’s quite obvious. Second is obviously the immigration problem, the border problem. That usually is not a big issue in elections except for with Republicans. But now that has seemed to spill over into the general electorate and they’re very concerned about that. The other thing that’s kind of maybe motivating people to vote more, it’s what is sometimes called an unknown unknown, and that is abortion. A lot of people are voting that is a minefield for Donald Trump that could affect the outcome of this election in a pretty important way. And of course the candidates, Kamala Harris, to me, it’s very obvious that she’s in over her head. I don’t think she’ll be a very good president if she gets elected. Of course I won’t be voting for her, but it will be very bad morally for the temper of the country. And I think her basic election strategy is to say, you should vote for me because I’m not Donald Trump. That’s basically what she’s been saying and that only works up to a point.

Sam Rohrer:       Yeah, you’re right David and ladies and gentlemen, we’ll get into more of that, but I think you kind of agree with what it is. Vote for me because the other one’s going to be worse than me. That’s kind of an amazing thing, isn’t it? But we’re going to come back. We’re going to bring this back and look at some guidelines from the Constitution to give us that kind of a basis to evaluate how we above the election. Well, if you’re just joining us, David New is with me today. This is our bimonthly focus on the Constitution and American history. And because we’re only at less now than two weeks away from the election, thought that we would connect some principles from the Constitution that ought to serve as a basis for evaluation in voting. Now, just a little preparatory piece to share at this point when it comes to voting for political leaders, the matter of, I’m going to say morality and worldview are of course the most basic and essential.

Sam Rohrer:       We talk a lot about that on this program. Either a person fears God or they are arrogant towards God. There’s no middle ground. It’s one or the other. They either have a worldview where God is God and creator and is the highest authority, as said in Isaiah 33 22, where God and Christ is identified as law giver, judge, and king. They either accept that or they’re in rebellion to that reality. A person either believes that God’s moral law and believes in that or views their accountability to him to be the highest of all considerations in matters of law, their choices, justice, public policy, either they have that view or they view themselves as God. Now in our nation then there is also our Constitution. It’s our highest civil law and it’s based totally on God’s moral law. Again, we’ve talked about that a lot. Everything that we find in the Constitution will come off of the pages of scripture.

Sam Rohrer:       There’s no contradiction. That is why in the past, even now, really no one can serve in office until they take that oath of office to support and to defend the constitution of the United States and our respective states. But when in the election or selection process, God’s moral law is thrust to the side and either totally repudiated by one party Democrat party, certainly totally repudiated or in many key places rewritten by the other party, it makes the assumption that God’s continued blessing on our nation is not possible. You just can’t take God’s moral law and throw it aside or rewrite it. It makes the entire election process difficult and we’re in that type of day. But when God’s moral law is literally thrown out as it has been nationally and culturally in our nation, it’s then easy to discard the Constitution as a binding and defining document.

Sam Rohrer:       And it’s why the Constitution is not paramount in the voting process of our day. Just think about it once the last time any candidate’s really talked about the morality as defined by God of an issue or the constitutionality, it’s not really there. So David, on one hand, we have a reality of what is, but we have the word of God in the Constitution as documents of law and authority that remain what should be. So alright, now with that preparatory in place, share with us voting guide principle number one as you’ve identified it, why it’s important and why a candidate worthy of a vote must support and defend that principle. Principle number one, what did he say?

David New:         Yes, the Constitution, when you read it carefully does in its own way become a voter’s guide. It does give you direction on how to vote. A lot of people don’t see the Constitution quite in that light, but the principles in that document that it lays out are good principles for how a voter should approach an election and a candidate. Now, one of the most important is what I call voter guide. Number one, should religion, should my religious personal religious values influence my vote? Now, our secular friends and neighbors say, no, it should not. The Constitution they claim is a secular document and God has nothing to do with it and therefore religion should not be a factor in your decision as to how you should vote. Well, the Constitution does not agree with that. If you notice in Article seven, there is a phrase that’s very, very significant.

David New:         It says, year of our Lord, year of our Lord. This is a very important phrase. Our secular friends say that the word God does not appear in the Constitution for a definite reason. They wanted the government to be God, to be secular. Well, if that’s true, then the framers have to keep out every other word for God as well. You can’t have just one excluded then exclude another one and keep saying it’s godless. And the problem they’ve got is that this phrase year of our Lord is a clear reference to God and it gets much worse than that. It’s the term our Lord in legal commentaries, legal dictionaries and the early years of this country, the first a hundred, 125 years, they all agree that the term year of our Lord refer to the Lord Jesus Christ. So this is a clear reference to Jesus Christ.

David New:         So if the US Constitution can honor God in a political document, the supreme law of the land, then you can use your religious values to influence your vote. Remember Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a lecture at a synagogue in Washington DC talked about this phrase year of our Lord. She knew exactly who it referred to and she persuaded the US Supreme Court that if Jews did not want the phrase year of our Lord in their bar certificates, when they become a member of the Supreme Court, they have the option of removing it. So when you go and you become a member of the Supreme Court Bar in the United States, you can have the year of our Lord in your bar certificate or you can have it removed because she said many Jews did not want to have that phrase because they know who it refers to. They didn’t want to have that displayed in their office. Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg knew the significance of that term.

Sam Rohrer:       That’s interesting. Of course, David, as believers, we know that we cannot set aside, which is why I began with our worldview. How can one set aside the worldview? Even the atheists have a worldview. So it’s about as impossible to separate a worldview from one’s actions as it is to, well it’s impossible. Anyways, let’s go on to the second one just because of trying to move through here. There is a second one as well. Identify and lay that out as why it’s important for a candidate worthy of a vote to support and to defend this one voting guide. Two,

David New:         Yes, there is a second one that’s in the Constitution and the second one is this, should we support bigger government or limited government? And the Constitution answers that question by saying we should support limited government. Remember the second domain that Satan uses to corrupt humankind. The first is human sexuality that Satan has corrupted to make sex a wonderful gift from God for the human race also to propagate the human race, but he has corrupted it with sin and all kinds of mischief that people get involved in sexually speaking. The second major artery for wickedness in the world is government. Government. The government is a big government kills more people than crime, drugs, any other kind of thing you can think of. Even disease government kills, corrupt government kills. Look at the Nazis, look at the USSR. Look at our government and the local public schools, how corrupt many of them have become, what they’re doing to children mutilating their body.

David New:         So the second great avenue of destruction for wickedness on this planet is the government. Well, the Constitution has a solution to that and that’s limited government. One of the most important federalist papers, which is the federalist papers of the most important commentary on the US Constitution written by John Jay, first, chief Justice of the US written by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. Those two individuals signed the Constitution and the Federalist Papers lay out the principle of government for the United States of America. And this is what it says in the first sentence, and it’s so clear, doesn’t need very much commentary. It says the power is delegated by the proposed constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the states are numerous and indefinite. So the constitution supports limited government. So when you’re looking to who should I vote for as a candidate, I would pick the candidate that promotes limited government. The smaller the government is, the better. Basically there’s an inverse relationship between the size of government and personal freedom. The larger the government, the less personal freedom you have, the smaller the government, the more personal freedom you have. That is the basic relationship. And of course you can see that basically we’ve lost our way in a big way in this country because we’re going to government to solve too many problems and now the government is no longer the servant. It’s quickly becoming the master

Sam Rohrer:       And

David New:         That’s very, very dangerous.

Sam Rohrer:       David, well said, ladies and gentlemen, I think probably all of you listening to me right now, understand why smaller government means bigger people and smaller people means bigger government. In all of the things David talks about, it manifests itself in so many, many ways. We come back, we may talk about that a little bit more and then we’ll move into what I call voter of guide principles from the Constitution number three and number four. Alright, David, you identified two principles that are right from the constitution. One is that our religious views cannot be separated if people should not fear separating it. The second is the principle of limited government. We just talked about that. If you have any additional thoughts on one of those or both offer those right now. If not, let’s move into then voting guide principle number three again right from the Constitution, why it’s important and why a candidate worthy of a vote must support and defend it.

David New:         Yes. On the closing remarks about government, Genesis chapter nine and verse six is the authority for mankind, for humankind to create government and to limit violence on the planet. Remember, this is the first time where man is giving power over other men If certain acts of violence occurs, look what it says. Who so sheddeth man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed for in the image of God made He man. Now that is a gift of God. That is the gift of government if you do something wrong. This is about trials, this is about courts. This is about punishment for bad behavior. And so this is what all of this verse six is about. And Satan has usurped that he has usurped it for his purposes, that government he uses to teach evil and wickedness. According to Romans 13, the government, the servant is a minister of God, but Satan wants to twist that and corrupt it to where he’s not a minister of God, he’s a minister of the devil.

David New:         So government has a definite purpose. Genesis nine six is a very dramatic break from what happened before Noah’s flood. After Noah’s flood, government was instituted by God for good. Our third voting guide from the Constitution involves property, property, private property. Private property is the guardian of personal liberty. There is no more powerful way for you to exercise your personal freedom than with your private property. Private property is the key that unlocks wealth in America. It is the key that unlocks wealth accumulation in America. There is too much poverty in America. Why? Because there’s not enough private property. The solution is private property. When you have private property that can lift nations and peoples out of poverty better than any economic system, and of course private property as an instrument of creating wealth is infinitely better than socialism and the welfare state and other economic systems. So what you want to do as a voter is to look at candidates who are pushing private property, protecting private property rights so that you can accumulate wealth, get the benefit of your labor, is the most tangible.

David New:         Building your private property is the most tangible way for you to be a free independent human being even within a community. So how does private constitution protect private property? Well, you turn to your Bill of Rights, you look at the Fifth Amendment and the Bill of Rights and you have something very interesting going on. It says Nor shall private property, this is the fifth Amendment to the Bill of Rights, nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation. What the Constitution does is that it protects your right to your private property. You will spend more time taking care of what you own than what the community owns. You will improve your property better than anybody else and better than what the government can do for you. And here to protect your rights as a private property owner, the government must compensate you.

David New:         If they take your property for a public use, they must provide just compensation. Interesting. Our secular friends, many of them are socialists. You go to many of the public schools and universities and colleges, the kids are going gaga all over socialism and of course the principal architect of socialism, socialism is no private property. So if you want to have socialism in the United States, then the government must compensate you if they take all of your private property and give you just compensation. Good fortune. If you think there’s enough money in the United States government to buy every person’s private property to compensate and you can’t have socialism and private property working together, it’s a contradiction in

Sam Rohrer:       Terms. Yep, David is right. And boy, we could go much further on it. Thoughts come to my mind than I’ve spoken a lot about private property is that even in our Declaration of Independence, were given by God our creator, life, liberty and it’s called the pursuit of happiness. But at the original it was private property and they modified it to that to include other things, but it goes there. But in our day, policies that are being discussed candidates right now has a lot to do with taxes. Some want to tax more, some want to tax left, but ultimately taxes are a way of stealing property. Is it not?

David New:         Yes. One of the reasons why Americans are so poor, it’s because of the government. The government is the main reason Americans are poor today. We’ve never had such difficulties except for the depression. The average American has never had such difficulty getting by economically, going to the store, getting enough gasoline, doing all the things that you need to do to have a household and to support your, it’s getting harder and harder. And the fault is the government. The government takes too much from the taxpayer. The government takes too much of your private property from you. And when they do that, then the government comes along and says to you, oh, I’m going to give you $25,000 to help you buy a house. I’m going to give you a larger tax credit so you can buy a crib and all the other things. Of course, what does that do? That makes you more dependent on the government. And so when the government gives out more, then it’s got to tax more. And as the taxes more, the people become more dependent upon the government. Basically what’s happening is that the United States slowly is becoming a slave society. We are becoming so dependent upon the government, we have lost our freedom because we really can’t move, we can’t do too much without a government handout. So taxes, it has been said that power to taxes, the power to destroy. And we are doing that to ourselves.

Sam Rohrer:       Alright David, that’s great. So you’ve got that. It’s connected to private property. So those who support private property, ladies and gentlemen, that’s obviously one reason to vote for those who support that, all these things tie into it limited government. The bigger government, the more they tax, the more the tax, the more they steal. Because what we earn is private property, well not just our real estate. And so all of these things they see fit together. David, let’s get into a couple of minutes here and then we’ll complete it. Next segment. There is also guide number four. Get us started in that one please.

David New:         Yes. Voters guide. Number four is, is religion. Is the subject of religion a proper political issue? Is it something that should be discussed in public? Are there religious values so important that should they be discussed in the public domain? We are told by our secular neighbors that religion and politics do not mix. How many times have you heard that? Now the only problem is, and it’s absolutely not true, there’s no truth to it whatsoever. Religion and politics do mix. In fact, there’s a whole body that you might consider political theology. Political theology, which I discussed in my upcoming book. If you want to know where America’s political theology can be found, go to the 50 state preambles. There you have God and religion and politics all mixed into that one preamble. The preambles of the state constitutions are political theology. And when they wrote the California constitution when it was first coming together in Monterey, California and they were looking about whether to add the word God in the preamble to the California constitution, there was a debate and several members said, yes, we should put God in the preamble. But there were several people that said, no, God should not be in the preamble. And the reason they gave is that if you put God in the preamble to the California constitution, which is there, go read it. It’s absolutely beautiful. If you do that, you make the preamble a prayer. The California preamble is effectively a prayer and similar discussion was made about Kentucky’s.

Sam Rohrer:       And hold that David, we’re just about out of time. We’ll finish that in the next segment. Ladies and gentlemen, come back, we’ll conclude that thought and then we’ll give a few additional principles to help us all as we approach this election. Alright, David, we’re into our final segment here right now. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to us today. If you recall, if you’re listening to a newer listener, we do this emphasis on the Constitution and something from American history every other Thursday. Often we try to, every other Wednesday we’ll focus on Israel prophecy and the Middle East, as an example, once a month we’ll do something on health freedom generally. Twila Brase is with me on that program. There are other focuses, geopolitical things will cover once or more a month. JR McGee is a guest that’s often here with me in that regard.

Sam Rohrer:       Leo Hohman, independent journalist will join regularly as we cover things of that issue. So you can actually go to the archives that stands in the gap radio.com or on your app Stand in the Gap, and you can sort and you can find programs and all of them now have a transcript of the program so that if you’re at a place where you can’t write down notes, you can go and you can easily pick up the transcript and then read along as you may listen to the program, as many do, and then pick up additional information. So that’s there. I just wanted to remind you of that ability and hope that you might take advantage of that, David. All right, let’s complete this one on number four that you were talking about because you actually found a sermon and I have read it and it’s dramatic, it’s important, but it ties into your principle number four. Share about that please.

David New:         Sure, absolutely. Very quickly though, I want to read the California Constitution preamble to demonstrate the point. It says, we the people of the state of California, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom in order to secure and perpetuate its blessings, do establish this constitution. Now you see the word Almighty God, that’s religion. When you see the word for our freedom, that’s politics. So what you’ve got in the preamble to the state of California is a clear mix of religion and politics together because the American ideology says, we get our freedoms from God. And the preambles of the states recognize that. By the way, almighty God comes from the Hebrew elai from Genesis 17 verse one, where it’s the God who is a very blessed God, a God who gives a very fruitful God. And so 30 states in the United States like to use Almighty God and their preamble.

David New:         Now the Constitution, this also is another example of religion influencing the Constitution. People say, should religion be a public issue? Should it be a public debate? Well, there is a sermon called the Republic of Israel, an example to the American states. This was published by the Reverend Samuel Langdon. John Langdon is one of the signers of the Constitution for the state of New Hampshire. And this sermon had a critical role in the ratification of the Constitution. This sermon put the Constitution’s ratification over the top. There was a big debate. New Hampshire had a difficult time ratifying the Constitution to some extent. And it was this sermon that did it. Now notice what it says, the Republic of the Israelites, an example to the American states. Why would somebody make a sermon like that about America and Israel? At the time of 1776 and the America of 1787 when the Constitution was written, Americans saw themselves as a reenactment of Israel in the Old Testament.

David New:         So for example, Boston was considered the new Jerusalem of this land. The Atlantic Ocean was considered the Red Sea. The King of England was considered Pharaoh. So they saw themselves as acting out in many ways the Israel experience. When George Washington died in 1799, in the month of December, John Thomas Jefferson said, I have seen fallen a great one in Israel. This is how deep the Israel experience was in America. Now this sermon helped ratify the US Constitution. So should religion be in the public domain? Should it be a political issue? The answer is yes. The religion of the Israelites, an example to the American states proves that it is finally the most powerful way to show that religion and politics do mix is what happened in 1787 all the way up to 1865. And that was slavery. What was happening in America? What was religion doing in America? Religion was the source of agitation in the United States to end slavery. Secularists who think religion and politics don’t mix are not very good historians because religion was front and center and the slavery debate in this country.

Sam Rohrer:       David, that is great. You brought us right up to the end. So ladies and gentlemen, when we talk about a Judeo-Christian underpinning of our nation, that’s exactly what David is talking about. It is that it is from the Old Testament. Our founders looked and said, what did God say to the nations of the world would bring them blessing. And what did God say? Don’t do if you want to have judgment. And so obviously they went to Israel. Out of that came the 10 Commandments, which was the foundation of our justice system. It hung on the walls of our public school classrooms. It was behind all of our judges’ benches and positions of justice and courts in the country. Why was that? Well, because it was the basis of moral law that starts with God. That’s where they went first. And then they said, what can we learn from history and civilizations of the world?

Sam Rohrer:       Well, they started with Israel and then they looked at the rest of the countries and said, of those who were blessed, how did they apply what God said of those who no longer exist? God raises up and puts down nations. What didn’t they do? And it all came back to that. It’s an amazing thing. That’s why William Penn here in Pennsylvania laid out his foundation for government, actually referred to it as a holy experiment, a holy experiment that’s written in our capital here in Pennsylvania where I served for a long time. Why did he say holy experiment? Well, because it was based on what God said holy and an experiment was, can we actually accomplish it in this new nation? Accomplish what? Self-government under God can we actually have a nation where people, individual citizens, choose to discipline themselves according to God’s moral law, the highest law.

Sam Rohrer:       Which is why we start by saying, is it moral? And then go from there to the highest civil law became our constitution. Will our people voluntarily submit themselves and do what God says and those in office limit themselves and do what God says? That was the experiment. Well did it work? It worked for a long time until people figured out that we don’t need God. And so we throw the 10 commandments out. We redefine what God says, morality be moral, marriage and life and all of those things. And then we wonder how did we get to the place we’re in? It was easy. And actually in that sermon that David referred to and get, the transcribing guy can pick up that name. He actually talks about it in there about if we walked away from what God said, we would lose what we have. That’s where we are. That’s why elections are important. That’s why we go and say who’s moral and support what God says. To what degree do they support the Constitution. Let that be your qualifiers and then good votes can be made. David New, thank you so much for being with us today. Great subject coming out from a little different perspective. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being with us today here on Stand In the Gap Today.