East Tennessean

Issue date: 2/23/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Mathew Jeffers "Long term, we want to reintroduce and reinforce the fundamentals of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution to students and locals." -Matthew Jeffers [Click to enlarge]

The Students of American Liberty will be hosting an antiwar event in the Culp Center's Martha Street Culp Auditorium on March 4 at 6 p.m. This event will be featuring Justin Raimondo, author and editorial director of Antiwar.com.
Matthew Jeffers, co-founder of Students of American Liberty, helped organize the campus group to engage the students of ETSU in a debate over the role of government.
Jeffers, who plans to eventually have a political career of his own, thinks the recent efforts of Presidents Bush and Obama and Congress to bail out American business are an un-Constitutional power grab aimed at building a more powerful federal government. "Government is looking more and more like a petty gangster," he said.
"Worst of all," Jeffers adds, "it touts its [government's] necessity, while wrecking all of our vital institutions." This former Marine and former Republican is fighting back. "Our Republic is unique to all of history. Our founding documents are a treasure, not dusty relics," he said.
A major supporter of Congressman Ron Paul, Jeffers has organized a campus group to engage the students of ETSU in a debate over the role of government.
"Long term, we want to reintroduce and reinforce the fundamentals of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution to students and locals," Jeffers said.
As a Libertarian, Jeffers sees every war from Korea through today as un-Constitutional. "We've been bypassing the Constitution to declare war since World War II."
Born on Lee Circle on a hill overlooking a very different ETSU campus, Mathew Jeffers, 25, has always been civic-minded. He joined the Marines in 2002 and served for four years and he became disillusioned with politics as he watched his country change.
"I felt the [Republican] neo-conservative agenda had destroyed the party I once identified with," Jeffers said. He loves the United States of America, not the federal government. "The Constitution does not limit us, the people. It limits the government and any policy that may harm us."

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