Defending the Bill of Rights, Arlington Monument, and Property Rights

On December 21, 2023, Kim Monson examines the foundations of American liberty with Stan Everitt, founder of the Legacy Project, who explains how the Bill of Rights protects individual freedom. Scott Powell, author of Rediscovering America, sounds the alarm on the dismantling of the Reconciliation Monument at Arlington National Cemetery, while Northern Colorado caller Jenny exposes how conservation easements serve as government land grabs disguised as environmental protection.

The Bill of Rights and American Founding Principles

Start listening at 32:57 – Hour 1

Stan Everitt, founder of the Legacy Project, has spent 12 years bringing Northern Colorado residents together to study the foundational principles of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. His grassroots education initiative has reached over 2,000 participants, including a remarkable session with 22 recent African immigrants who deeply understood the concepts of tyranny and liberty from personal experience.

Everitt traces the Constitutional Convention’s evolution toward the Bill of Rights, explaining how James Madison initially opposed adding these amendments but was persuaded by George Mason that specific protections against government overreach were essential. The Federalist 51 insight that “if men were angels, no government would be necessary” captures why the founders crafted explicit limits on governmental power. Everitt emphasizes that the First Amendment’s placement at the top of the Bill of Rights was deliberate, protecting the civil rights of religion, speech, press, and assembly that make self-governance possible.

Addressing current challenges, Everitt argues that legislation and executive actions now routinely “nullify the Bill of Rights” by circumventing constitutional constraints. He frames contemporary struggles as more spiritual than political, urging Americans to understand that the Declaration of Independence was fundamentally a “Declaration of Dependence” on divine providence and natural law principles that the secular age has largely forgotten.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident. Originally it was written we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable. So even Jefferson’s coming into the game with a very theological recognition that if we don’t have a higher power, man will steal the power and then rule over others.”

Stan Everitt, Founder of the Legacy Project

The Fight to Save Arlington’s Reconciliation Monument

Start listening at 68:40 – Hour 2

Scott Powell, author of Rediscovering America: How Our National Holidays Tell an Amazing Story About Who We Are, reports on the dismantling of the Reconciliation Monument at Arlington National Cemetery during Christmas week. Conceived by President William McKinley after the Spanish-American War to heal divisions lingering from the Civil War, the monument was sculpted by Moses Ezekiel, a Jewish cadet from Virginia Military Institute who fought for the Confederacy and became one of America’s greatest sculptors.

Powell explains that the monument depicted reconciliation itself rather than celebrating any particular side of the conflict. At its crown stood an angelic woman turning a pruning hook into a plowshare. The base told a story of national healing, and returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan found solace there during their post-trauma recovery. The Congressional Naming Commission, charged with renaming Confederate-named military bases, improperly extended its reach to cemeteries despite explicit prohibitions, ensnaring this monument in political action.

Despite legal efforts by Defend Arlington, the courts refused to grant a hearing on the monument’s status as a reconciliation symbol rather than a Confederate memorial. With the temporary restraining order lifted, workers began removing the monument even as the organization explores alternative legal venues. Powell invokes G.K. Chesterton’s observation that “tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors” to argue that destroying historical monuments prevents future generations from learning the complete story of American history.

“We learn from our past. We don’t destroy our past. We learn from it.”

Scott Powell, Author and Historian

Conservation Easements and the Hidden Land Grab Agenda

Start listening at 82:16 – Hour 2

Northern Colorado caller Jenny delivers an extensively researched warning about how the Wildlands Project and “smart growth” initiatives create what she calls “the sustainable development dialectic” that funnels citizens toward tyranny. She begins with Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which limits federal land ownership to 10 square miles for the seat of government plus lands purchased from states for military purposes, contrasting this with the massive federal land holdings that now exist.

Jenny traces the modern conservation movement to Maurice Strong, the Canadian billionaire who served as Secretary General of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio. She quotes Strong’s explicit statements that “current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class” are “not sustainable” and that “the only way to save the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.” Following President George H.W. Bush signing onto Agenda 21 in 1992, Great Outdoors Colorado was established alongside open space taxes and land trusts, which Jenny argues coordinate to pressure farmers and ranchers into conservation easements.

The core deception, Jenny argues, lies in calling these agreements “easements” when they are actually “conveyance of rights.” Property owners who sign conservation easements split their title with the easement holder, lose management control of their land, invite third-party oversight of their operations, and remain liable for property taxes on land they can no longer freely use. She cites the 2013 Colorado floods as an example: when 20 acres of Silverdale Ranch were redesigned by flooding, the owners could not restore the landscape because they had surrendered those rights through a conservation easement. Jenny closes by quoting Edward R. Murrow: “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”

“Because this has nothing to do with easement, Kim. It’s all about conveyance of rights. This is a land grab. That’s all it is. It’s a land grab. It has nothing to do with protecting agriculture.”

Jenny, Northern Colorado Caller