Musings of a Total Idiot

The real cost of freedom

2011-12-16T11:28:00.000-08:00

We have long, as a people, sought freedom. We've turned our faces to the sky, looking out into the stars, and wondered where it lies, what it means. I've discussed in earlier documents what freedom is, what it looks like, how it's found and how that system came to evolve. This time, however, your poor and total idiot must discuss something far more dark, its cost. Like all things, freedom has its own costs. Many are aware of the cost of blood and heartache, but there are deeper costs, costs far more intrinsic to the makeup of freedom itself.

We all hold beliefs, and many hold these beliefs as sacred and as truth, bound by the wisdom of the ages. Not all agree on these beliefs, not all choose to follow the same Gods or guidelines, and thus, the separation of the power of the state from those powers of belief was established, to allow the power of conversation, rather than the power of government, to shape the right of conscience.

The greatest cost of freedom, of its creation, its maintenance, and safekeeping lies in these beliefs, and in our sacrifice of our power over our fellow man to force them to our beliefs. If we cannot force them by conversation, we certainly must not bring down the impersonal power of the government to bend their minds to our will.

Equally, we have costs in self-interest. If we cannot thrive by our own industry, and those working for us, we cannot bend the government to grant us advantage, or others penalties for doing things differently. We cannot support business upon the altar of the economy by government action. Monopoly has ever been the enemy of freedom, and it exists only so long as the government has the power to influence some for their benefit, and others for their penalty. It grinds our liberty and our ability for self-determination, and capability for our increase and profit under its bootheel.

We have costs in our abilities to levy weights upon others for their misdeeds. While we as a society have the authority to punish, such punishments must be laid out in the beginning, and enforceable under the law. We cannot lay separate law against one class of offender once the state's interest in incarceration is done, and a separate law for the rest of society. In this direction lies the loss of all rights for all persons.

We have costs in our feelings of security, for in a free society, there is no security save that which one may provide for himself in his rights of self-defense. No policeman may be everywhere at once, and still maintain that freedom. We have no right to be protected, nor are the police required to give that protection. All we may do is attempt to maintain the powers of an individual to protect himself, and those around him.

We have costs in our dominance over others. Whilst power seems a worthy end, power over others is the enemy to freedom. We have no more right to dominate the wills and properties of others, than for them to dominate our own will and volition.

We sacrifice numerous things on the altar of freedom, our ability for actions against the rights of others, our ability to target the law against others for our own benefit, our ability to steal via the powers of government, be that property the property in rights, or real or personal property. We sacrifice the power to enforce our definitions of marriage, of religion, of our beliefs and our faiths, or lack thereof, upon others.

We turn away from codified laws of the malum prohibitum, to the malum in se.. those things which are done, no matter whom they are done to, that are wrong in and of themselves, and go no further.

We must enforce the laws upon our president, and our congress, equally to our people and our courts. No exemptions may be made, no codicils, loopholes, or immunities. All must bear the burden of the law, and none are above it. The laws must be made for general benefit, not for the benefit of the few, and they must affect all equally.

This is true both at the state, and federal level, and at the county and city levels as well, as they are extensions of, and created by the state power.

And that is the greatest cost of all... you must give up power over your neighbor, and deal with your things in the way you see fit, and allow him to do as he sees fit, so long as it harms no one.

We must give up the belief that being offended is a wrong in and of itself, and abandon the belief that we have the right to determine the beliefs of others.

If we mean to be free, we must be also free to determine our own future, and leave others to determine theirs. Denial of that right to determine the future is a crime, in and of itself. It is malum in se.

Attainder occurring? How... quaint.

2011-08-04T10:25:00.000-07:00

On July 1st, 2011, the Congress of the State of Idaho placed into active law a new set of Sex offender registry rules, with the following statement of purpose, enshrined in title 18, section 8302.
18-8302. Findings. The legislature finds that sexual offenders present a danger and that efforts of law enforcement agencies to protect their communities, conduct investigations and quickly apprehend offenders who commit sexual offenses are impaired by the lack of current information available about individuals who have been convicted of sexual offenses who live within their jurisdiction. The legislature further finds that providing public access to certain information about convicted sexual offenders assists parents in the protection of their children. Such access further provides a means for organizations that work with youth or other vulnerable populations to prevent sexual offenders from threatening those served by the organizations. Finally, public access assists the community in being observant of convicted sexual offenders in order to prevent them from recommitting sexual crimes. Therefore, this state's policy is to assist efforts of local law enforcement agencies to protect communities by requiring sexual offenders to register with local law enforcement agencies and to make certain information about sexual offenders available to the public as provided in this chapter.

This law requires, by its mere operation, that registrants give up email addresses and communication names to assist potential later investigation. there is no other purpose, and as such it is violative of the rights involved in the 4th and 5th amendment. We cannot require a person to give up information due to the purported possibility of putative future crime. Those protections operate equally against state and federal law. Further, those communication addresses and media are becoming the de facto communication methods with both state, and federal officers, through facebook and other social networking sites, and further, are used for anonymous political speech, a protected right under the first amendment. The possession of those addresses, by requiring seizure under the guise of 'regulatory function' is in violation of title 18, section 242 of the United states code, by acting as a chilling effect upon both political and common speech through a major artery of communication. The only means by which this information may be compelled give absolute immunity to all uses of this information, under Kastigar v. United States 406 US 441, (1972).

The people themselves, further, have a protected property interest in self-defense, under the 2nd amendment to the United States Constitution, and District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) This prohibition is extended to the state, however, the plain import of the statute, and the purposes for which it was defined, were also within that 1866 act, preventing all state and federal actions against that right under color of law. The omnibus crime control act of 1968 by itself constituted as well a bill of attainder, designating those against whom the right would be disabled, and its enforcement is equally against that 1866 act.

The people of the united states have, by the mere possession of life, a right to it, to liberty, to property, and to the means to defend the above, from which all rights flow. those rights are inalienable, under action of law there is no just means to disable them short of killing the offender. This was the plain import of the words of Blackstone,

"WHEN sentence of death, the most terrible and highest judgment in the laws of England, is pronounced, the immediate inseparable consequence by the common law is attainder. For when it is now clear beyond all dispute, that the criminal is no longer fit to live upon the earth, but is to be exterminated as a monster and a bane to human society, the law sets a note of infamy upon him, puts him out of its protection, and takes no farther care of him than barely to see him executed. He is then called attaint, attinctus, stained, or blackened. He is no longer of any credit or reputation; he cannot be a witness in any court; neither is he capable of performing the functions of another man: for, by an anticipation of his punishment, he is already dead in law.11 This is after judgment: for there is great difference between a man convicted, and attainted; though they are frequently through inaccuracy confounded together. After conviction only, a man is liable to none of these disabilities: for there is still in contemplation of law a possibility of his innocence. Something may be offered in arrest of judgment: the indictment may be erroneous, which will render his guilt uncertain, and thereupon the present conviction may be quashed: he may obtain a pardon, or be allowed the benefit of clergy; both which suppose some latent sparks of merit, which plead in extenuation of his fault. But when judgment is once pronounced, both law and fact conspire to prove him completely guilty; and there is not the remotest possibility left of anything to be said in his favor. Upon judgment therefore of death, and not before, the attainder of a criminal commences: or upon such circumstances as are equivalent to judgment of death; as judgment of outlawry on a capital crime, pronounced for absconding or fleeing from justice, which tacitly confesses the guilt. And therefore either upon judgment of outlawry, or of death, for treason or felony, a man shall be said to be attainted. "

One might note, however, that the removal of rights in this instance due to crime was only upon sentence of death. There were lesser acts of attainder, known as 'bills of pains and penalties' and a secondary prohibition against ex post facto laws, which activated and operated retrospectively to remove rights in cases where the act being reached was lawful when done, or the punishment is increased for a past act, or different requirements of evidence are emplaced. In all cases, ex post facto laws are bills of attainder, and fall under that same prohibition, though they were such egregious methods as to deserve special attention. Bills and writs of attainder, by their nature, were the only means by which, under English law, property of any sort could be forfeit, including that property found within rights, and the right to one's own person, including the rights to have rights and life itself. This was clarified within Justice Story's Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833) in book 3, chapter 32, section 1337-1339

"§ 1337. The next clause is, "No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed."

§ 1338. Bills of attainder, as they are technically called, are such special acts of the legislature, as inflict capital punishments upon persons supposed to be guilty of high offences, such as treason and felony, without any conviction in the ordinary course of judicial proceedings. If an act inflicts a milder degree of punishment than death, it is called a bill of pains and penalties.23 But in the sense of the constitution, it seems, that bills of attainder include bills of pains and penalties; for the Supreme Court have said, "A bill of attainder may affect the life of an individual, or may confiscate his property, or both."24 In such cases, the legislature assumes judicial magistracy, pronouncing upon the guilt of the party without any of the common forms and guards of trial, and satisfying itself with proofs, when such proofs are within its reach, whether they are conformable to the rules of evidence, or not. In short, in all such cases, the legislature exercises the highest power of sovereignty, and what may be properly deemed an irresponsible despotic discretion, being governed solely by what it deems political necessity or expediency, and too often under the influence of unreasonable fears, or unfounded suspicions. Such acts have been often resorted to in foreign governments, as a common engine of state; and even in England they have been pushed to the most extravagant extent in bad times, reaching, as well to the absent and the dead, as to the living. Sir Edward Coke25 has mentioned it to be among the transcendent powers of parliament, that an act may be passed to attaint a man, after he is dead. And the reigning monarch, who was slain at Bosworth, is said to have been attainted by an act of parliament a few months after his death, notwithstanding the absurdity of deeming him at once in possession of the throne and a traitor.26 The punishment has often been inflicted without calling upon the party accused to answer, or without even the formality of proof; and sometimes, because the law, in its ordinary course of proceedings, would acquit the offender.27 The injustice and iniquity of such acts, in general, constitute an irresistible argument against the existence of the power. In a free government it would be intolerable; and in the hands of a reigning faction, it might be, and probably would be, abused to the ruin and death of the most virtuous citizens.28 Bills of this sort have been most usually passed in England in times of rebellion, or of gross subserviency to the crown, or of violent political excitements; periods, in which all nations are most liable (as well the free, as the enslaved) to forget their duties, and to trample upon the rights and liberties of others.29

§ 1339. Of the same class are ex post facto laws, that is to say, (in a literal sense,) laws passed after the act done. The terms, ex post facto laws, in a comprehensive sense, embrace all retrospective laws, or laws governing, or controlling past transactions, whether they are of a civil, or a criminal nature. And there have not been wanting learned minds, that have contended with no small force of authority and reasoning, that such ought to be the interpretation of the terms in the constitution of the United States.30 As an original question, the argument would be entitled to grave consideration; but the current of opinion and authority has been so generally one way, as to the meaning of this phrase in the state constitutions, as well as in that of the United States, ever since their adoption, that it is difficult to feel, that it is now an open question.31 The general interpretation has been, and is, that the phrase applies to acts of a criminal nature only; and, that the prohibition reaches every law, whereby an act is declared a crime, and made punishable as such, when it was not a crime, when done; or whereby the act, if a crime, is aggravated in enormity, or punishment; or whereby different, or less evidence, is required to convict an offender, than was required, when the act was committed. The Supreme Court have given the following definition. "An ex post facto law is one, which renders an act punishable in a manner, in which it was not punishable, when it was committed."32 Such a law may inflict penalties on the person, or may inflict pecuniary penalties, which swell the public treasury.33 Laws, however, which mitigate the character, or punishment of a crime already committed, may not fall within the prohibition, for they are in favour of the citizen.34 "

The sex offender registry bears the onus of this as well, having had the Legislative branch, in HR 2355 (June 24, 2011), proposed by Representative Hartler, preventing dead prior offenders from being interned, or memorialized in federal cemeteries or receiving funeral honors.

Article 1, sections 9 and 10 of the U.S. constitution prohibit 'bills of attainder' to the legislature of the United states, and to any action of the states. This includes actions in the state constitution or laws, determining those upon whom the law will act, outside of general law, and inflicting upon them a penalty without trial. Penalties may be applied absolutely or conditionally, and may be enforced with threat of criminal punishment. They may be given effect conditionally by expurgatory oaths or actions, or in some cases, I contend, by continual expurgation upon fine and action.

Ex parte Garland, 71 U.S. 4 Wall. 333 333 (1866) 71 US 377
The statute is directed against parties who have offended in any of the particulars embraced by these clauses. And its object is to exclude them from the profession of the law, or at least from its practice in the courts of the United States. As the oath prescribed cannot be taken by these parties, the act, as against them, operates as a legislative decree of perpetual exclusion. And exclusion from any of the professions or any of the ordinary avocations of life for past conduct can be regarded in no other light than as punishment for such conduct. The exaction of the oath is the mode provided for ascertaining the parties upon whom the act is intended to operate, and, instead of lessening, increases its objectionable character. All enactments of this kind partake of the nature of bills of pains and penalties, and are subject to the constitutional inhibition against the passage of bills of attainder, under which general designation they are included.

This particular prohibition flows to legislating against groups that have voluntary membership, but how much more must the prohibition apply to those whose class, or grouping is created by action of the legislatures of whatever sort, against whom their rights were to be preserved? Is it not more egregious for the congress, for whatever purported reason, by inclusion or exclusion, to remove their rights, when the congress itself, with no other intervening body, has determined that the executive branch must enforce upon the people those deprivations of rights under colour of civil law? This question was answered within Cummings v. Missouri, 71 US 277, (1867) in pages 71 US 320-332, in exhaustive detail. In 71 US 330-331 are the most pertinent passages to our interests.

A question arose in New York, soon after the treaty of peace of 1783, upon a statute of that State, which involved a discussion of the nature and character of these expurgatory oaths, when used as a means of inflicting punishment for past conduct. The subject was regarded as so important, and the requirement of the oath such a violation of the fundamental principles of civil liberty and the rights of the citizen, that it engaged the attention of eminent lawyers and distinguished statesmen of the time, and, among others, of Alexander Hamilton. We will cite some passages of a paper left by him on the subject in which, with his characteristic fullness and ability, he examines the oath and demonstrates that it is not only a mode of inflicting punishment, but a mode in violation of all the constitutional guarantees, secured by the Revolution, of the rights and liberties of the people.

"If we examine it" (the measure requiring the oath), said this great lawyer,

"with an unprejudiced eye, we must acknowledge not only that it was an evasion of the treaty, but a subversion of one great principle of social security, to-wit, that every man shall be presumed innocent until he is proved guilty. This was to invert the order of things and, instead of obliging the State to prove the guilt in order

Page 71 U. S. 331

to inflict the penalty, it was to oblige the citizen to establish his own innocence to avoid the penalty. It was to excite scruples in the honest and conscientious, and to hold out a bribe to perjury. . . . It was a mode of inquiry who had committed and of those crimes to which the penalty of disqualification was annexed, with this aggravation, that it deprived the citizen of the benefit of that advantage, which he would have enjoyed by leaving, as in all other cases, the burden of the proof upon the prosecutor."

"To place this matter in a still clearer light, let it be supposed that, instead of the mode of indictment and trial by jury, the legislature was to declare that every citizen who did not swear he had never adhered to the King of Great Britain should incur all the penalties which our treason laws prescribe. Would this not be a palpable evasion of the treaty, and a direct infringement of the Constitution? The principle is the same in both cases, with only this difference in the consequences -- that, in the instance already acted upon, the citizen forfeits a part of his rights; in the one supposed, he would forfeit the whole. The degree of punishment is all that distinguishes the cases. In either, justly considered, it is substituting a new and arbitrary mode of prosecution to that ancient and highly esteemed one recognized by the laws and constitution of the State. I mean the trial by jury."

"Let us not forget that the Constitution declares that trial by jury, in all cases in which it has been formerly used, should remain inviolate forever, and that the legislature should at no time erect any new jurisdiction which should not proceed according to the course of the common law. Nothing can be more repugnant to the true genius of the common law than such an inquisition as has been mentioned into the consciences of men. . . . If any oath with retrospect to past conduct were to be made the condition on which individuals, who have resided within the British lines, should hold their estates, we should immediately see that this proceeding would be tyrannical, and a violation of the treaty; and yet, when the same mode is employed to divest

Page 71 U. S. 332

that right, which ought to be deemed still more sacred, many of us are so infatuated as to overlook the mischief."

"To say that the persons who will be affected by it have previously forfeited that right, and that, therefore, nothing is taken away from them, is a begging of the question. How do we know who are the persons in this situation? If it be answered, this is the mode taken to ascertain it -- the objection returns -- 'tis an improper mode, because it puts the most essential interests of the citizen upon a worse footing than we should be willing to tolerate where inferior interests were concerned, and because, to elude the treaty, it substitutes for the established and legal mode of investigating crimes and inflicting forfeitures, one that is unknown to the Constitution, and repugnant to the genius of our law."

Similar views have frequently been expressed by the judiciary in cases involving analogous questions. They are presented with great force in The matter of Dorsey, [Footnote 9] but we do not deem it necessary to pursue the subject further."

United States v. Brown (No. 399) 334 F.2d 488 elucidated more upon this, and to my opinion, nearer the heart of the matter.

The doctrine of separated powers is implemented by a number of constitutional provisions, some of which entrust certain jobs exclusively to certain branches, while others say that a given task is not to be performed by a given branch. For example, Article III's grant of "the judicial Power of the United States" to federal courts has been interpreted both as a grant of exclusive authority over certain areas, Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, and as a limitation upon the judiciary, a declaration that certain tasks are not to be performed by courts, e.g., Muskrat v. United States, 219 U.S. 346. Compare Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579.

The authors of the Federalist Papers took the position that, although, under some systems of government (most notably the one from which the United States had just broken), the Executive Department is the branch most likely to forget the bounds of its authority,

in a representative republic . . . where the legislative power is exercised by an assembly . . . which is sufficiently numerous to feel all the passions which actuate a multitude; yet [p444] not so numerous as to be incapable of pursuing the objects of its passions . . . ,

barriers had to be erected to ensure that the legislature would not overstep the bounds of its authority and perform the functions of the other departments. [n17] The Bill of Attainder Clause was regarded as such a barrier. Alexander Hamilton wrote:

"Nothing is more common than for a free people, in times of heat and violence, to gratify momentary passions by letting into the government principles and precedents which afterwards prove fatal to themselves. Of this kind is the doctrine of disqualification, disfranchisement, and banishment by acts of the legislature. The dangerous consequences of this power are manifest. If the legislature can disfranchise any number of citizens at pleasure by general descriptions, it may soon confine all the votes to a small number of partisans, and establish an aristocracy or an oligarchy; if it may banish at discretion all those whom particular circumstances render obnoxious, without hearing or trial, no man can be safe, nor know when he may be the innocent victim of a prevailing faction. The name of liberty applied to such a government would be a mockery of common sense. [n18] [p445] "

Thus, the Bill of Attainder Clause not only was intended as one implementation of the general principle of fractionalized power, but also reflected the Framers' belief that the Legislative Branch is not so well suited as politically independent judges and juries to the task of ruling upon the blameworthiness of, and levying appropriate punishment upon, specific persons.

"Everyone must concede that a legislative body, from its numbers and organization, and from the very intimate dependence of its members upon the people, which renders them liable to be peculiarly susceptible to popular clamor, is not properly constituted to try with coolness, caution, and impartiality a criminal charge, especially in those cases in which the popular feeling is strongly excited -- the very class of cases most likely to be prosecuted by this mode. [n19] [p446]"

By banning bills of attainder, the Framers of the Constitution sought to guard against such dangers by limiting legislatures to the task of rulemaking.

"It is the peculiar province of the legislature to prescribe general rules for the government of society; the application of those rules to individuals in society would seem to be the duty of other departments."

Fletcher v. Peck, 6 Cranch 87, 136. [n20] [p447]
----

This issue was finally discussed to the point by the court:

We do not hold today that Congress cannot weed dangerous persons out of the labor movement, any more than the Court held in Lovett that subversives must be permitted to hold sensitive government positions. Rather, we make again the point made in Lovett: that Congress must accomplish such results by rules of general applicability. It cannot specify the people upon whom the sanction it prescribes is to be levied. Under our Constitution, Congress possesses full legislative authority, but the task of adjudication must be left to other tribunals. [p462]

This Court is always reluctant to declare that an Act of Congress violates the Constitution, but in this case we have no alternative. As Alexander Hamilton observed:

"By a limited constitution, I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions to the legislative authority; such, for instance, as that it shall pass no bills of attainder, no ex post facto laws, and the like. Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of the courts of justice; whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing. [n40] "

Further, the prohibition under law under title 18, sections 241 and 242 created by the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 had a clear, and unambiguous intention, expressed most clearly in Congress by Senator Lyman Trumbull, best quoted in several court cases involving these laws.

Under Jones v. Mayer Co. 392 U.S. 409 (1968) the Supreme court considered much of this law, and reported.

‘Mr. President, I regard the bill to which the attention of the Senate is now called as the most important measure that has been under its consideration since the adoption of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. That amendment declared that all persons in the United States should be free. This measure is intended to give effect to that declaration and secure to all persons within the United States practical freedom. There is very little importance in the general declaration of abstract truths and principles unless they can be carried into effect, unless the persons who are to be [392 U.S. 409, 432] affected by them have some means of availing themselves of their benefits.'"(429-30)

‘the trumpet of freedom that we have been blowing throughout the land has given an `uncertain sound,' and the promised freedom is a delusion. Such was not the intention of Congress, which proposed the constitutional amendment, nor is such the fair meaning of the amendment itself. . . . I have no doubt that under this provision . . . we may destroy all these discriminations in civil rights against the black man; and if we cannot, our constitutional amendment amounts to nothing. It was for that purpose that the second clause of that amendment was adopted, which says that Congress shall have authority, by appropriate legislation, to carry into effect the article prohibiting slavery. Who is to decide what that appropriate legislation is to be? The Congress of the United States; and it is for Congress to adopt such appropriate legislation as it may think proper, so that it be a means to accomplish the end.'" (440)

"Negro citizens, North and South, who saw in the Thirteenth Amendment a promise of freedom - freedom to ‘go and come at pleasure' 79 and to ‘buy and sell when they please' 80 - would be left with "a mere paper guarantee" 81 if Congress were powerless to assure that a dollar in the hands of a Negro will purchase the same thing as a dollar in the hands of a white man. At the very least, the freedom that Congress is empowered to secure under the Thirteenth Amendment includes the freedom to buy whatever a white man can buy, the right to live wherever a white man can live. If Congress cannot say that being a free man means at least this much, then the Thirteenth Amendment made a promise the Nation cannot keep.

"Representative Wilson of Iowa was the floor manager in the House for the Civil Rights Act of 1866. In urging that Congress had ample authority to pass the pending bill, he recalled the celebrated words of Chief Justice Marshall in McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 421:

‘Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional.'

‘The end is legitimate,' the Congressman said, ‘because it is defined by the Constitution itself. The end is the [392 U.S. 409, 444] maintenance of freedom . . . . A man who enjoys the civil rights mentioned in this bill cannot be reduced to slavery. . . . This settles the appropriateness of this measure, and that settles its constitutionality.'

This, however, was not the only case in which this set of laws were tried. Regarding the matter of putative civil immunity:
Under Ex Parte State of Va. 100 U.S. 339 (1879)

"But the constitutional amendment was ordained for a purpose. It was to secure equal rights to all persons, and, to insure to all persons the enjoyment of such rights, power was given to Congress to enforce its provisions by appropriate legislation. Such legislation must act upon persons, not upon the abstract thing denominated a State, but upon the persons who are the agents of the State in the denial of the rights which were intended to be secured. Such is the act of March 1, 1875, and we think it was fully authorized by the Constitution." (346-47)

"We do not perceive how holding an office under a State, and claiming to act for the State, can relieve the holder from obligation to obey the Constitution of the United States, or take away the power of Congress to punish his disobedience...It was insisted during the argument on behalf of the petitioner that Congress cannot punish a State judge for his official acts; and it was assumed that Judge Cole, in selecting the jury as he did, was performing a judicial act. This assumption cannot be admitted. Whether the act done by him was judicial or not is to be determined by its character, and not by the character of the agent." (348)

Griffin v. Breckenridge 403 U.S. 88 (1971)
"Our cases have firmly established that the right of interstate travel is constitutionally protected, does not necessarily rest on the Fourteenth Amendment, and is assertable against private as well as governmental interference. Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 629 -631; id., at 642-644 (concurring opinion); United States [403 U.S. 88, 106] v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745, 757 -760 and n. 17; Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U.S. 78, 97 ; Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 79-80; Crandall v. Nevada, 6 Wall. 35, 44, 48-49; Passenger Cases, 7 How. 283, 492 (Taney, C.J., dissenting). The ‘right to pass freely from State to State' has been explicitly recognized as ‘among the rights and privileges of National citizenship.' Twining v. New Jersey, supra, at 97. That right, like other rights of national citizenship, is within the power of Congress to protect by appropriate legislation." (105-6)

McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transportation Co. 427 U.S. 273 (1976)

"While neither of the courts below elaborated its reasons for not applying 1981 to racial discrimination against white persons, respondents suggest two lines of argument to support that judgment. First, they argue that by operation of the phrase "as is enjoyed by white citizens," 1981 unambiguously limits itself to the protection of nonwhite persons against racial discrimination. Second, they contend that such a reading is consistent with the legislative history of the provision, which derives its operative language from 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, Act of Apr. 9, 1866, c. 31, 1, 14 Stat. 27. See Runyon v. McCrary, ante, at 168-170, n. 8; Tillman v. Wheaton-Haven Recreation Assn., 410 U.S. 431, 439 (1973). The 1866 statute, they assert, was concerned predominantly with assuring specified civil rights to the former Negro slaves freed by virtue of the Thirteenth Amendment, and not at all with protecting the corresponding civil rights of white persons.

"We find neither argument persuasive. Rather, our examination of the language and history of 1981 convinces [427 U.S. 273, 287] us that 1981 is applicable to racial discrimination in private employment against white persons." (285-87)

"The bill ultimately enacted as the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was introduced by Senator Trumbull of Illinois as a "bill . . . to protect all persons in the United States in their civil rights . . ." (emphasis added), and was initially described by him as applying to "every race and color." Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 211 (1866) (hereinafter Cong. Globe). Consistent with the views of its draftsman, 17 and the prevailing view in the Congress as to the reach of its powers under the enforcement section [427 U.S. 273, 288] of the Thirteenth Amendment, 18 the terms of the bill prohibited any racial discrimination in the making and enforcement of contracts against whites as well as nonwhites. Its first section provided:

‘[T]here shall be no discrimination in civil rights or immunities among the inhabitants of any State or Territory of the United States on account of race, color, or previous condition of slavery; but the inhabitants of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, . . . shall have the same right to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, to the contrary notwithstanding.'" Id., at 211. 19 (287- 88)

"The point was most directly focused on in the closing debate in the Senate. [427 U.S. 273, 290] During that debate, in response to the argument of Senator Davis of Kentucky that by providing for the punishment of racial discrimination in its enforcement section, 2, the bill extended to Negroes a protection never afforded whites, Senator Trumbull said:

‘Sir, this bill applies to white men as well as black men. It declares that all persons in the United States shall be entitled to the same civil rights, the right to the fruit of their own labor, the right to make contracts, the right to buy and sell, and enjoy liberty and happiness; and that is abominable and iniquitous and unconstitutional! Could anything be more monstrous or more abominable than for a member of the Senate to rise in his place and denounce with such epithets as these a bill, the only object of which is to secure equal rights to all the citizens of the country, a bill that protects a white man just as much as a black man? With what consistency and with what face can a Senator in his place here say to the Senate and the country that this is a bill for the benefit of black men exclusively when there is no such distinction in it, and when the very object of the bill is to break down all discrimination between black men and white men?' Id., at 599.

"So advised, the Senate passed the bill shortly thereafter. Id., at 606-607." (272-73)

It is clear, at this point, that the people were, in their whole body, whatever their colour, or prior state of servitude (including servitude under the law for past offenses) were vindicated upon the end of the state sentence in their rights, and equally allowed the recourse at law under those rights, and equally protected in those rights against both federal and state action. The rights in the bill of rights were established to limit government action, and to limit them against the powers of licensure and permit. A right that must be given permission by another to use is no right at all, and enforcement of a prohibition from using such a right is at the heart of the purpose and intent of the prohibitions in title 18, 241 and 242 of that U.S. code, to prevent ever again a person from being the master of another.

in the case WATCHTOWER BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY OF NEW YORK, INC., et al., PETITIONERS v. VILLAGE OF STRATTON et al. 536 U.S. 150 (June 17, 2002) it was stated:

" That the Jehovah's Witnesses are not the only "little people" who face the risk of silencing by regulations like the Village's is exemplified by our cases involving nonreligious speech. See, e.g., Schaumburg v. Citizens for a Better Environment, 444 U. S. 620 (1980); Hynes v. Mayor and Council of Oradell, 425 U. S. 610 (1976); Thomas v. Collins, 323 U. S. 516 (1945). In Thomas, the issue was whether a labor leader could be required to obtain a permit before delivering a speech to prospective union members. After reviewing the Jehovah's Witnesses cases discussed above, the Court observed:

"As a matter of principle a requirement of registration in order to make a public speech would seem generally incompatible with an exercise of the rights of free speech and free assembly... .

. . . . .

"If the exercise of the rights of free speech and free assembly cannot be made a crime, we do not think this can be accomplished by the device of requiring previous registration as a condition for exercising them and making such a condition the foundation for restraining in advance their exercise and for imposing a penalty for violating such a restraining order. So long as no more is involved than exercise of the rights of free speech and free assembly, it is immune to such a restriction. If one who solicits support for the cause of labor may be required to register as a condition to the exercise of his right to make a public speech, so may he who seeks to rally support for any social, business, religious or political cause. We think a requirement that one must register before he undertakes to make a public speech to enlist support for a lawful movement is quite incompatible with the requirements of the First Amendment." Id., at 539-540. "

The United States has engaged, and continues to engage, in a pattern of behavior, at both the state and federal levels, against those rights. An example of this is the 1968 Omnibus crime Bill, wherein felons were prohibited the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. At the same moment, the law is both attainder, and a felony in its enforcement by that 1866 act, and the operation of the plain prohibitions of the 13th and 14th amendment, and the laws established under that act.

It has further, recently, chosen to further weaken the protections of the 4th amendment, and the 5th, with self-written warrants, no-knock entries and seizure of property with self-written warrants under the Patriot Act.

The most recent and egregious actions in pursuit of these goals appears to be the so-called 'operation gunrunner' wherein the ATF, an organization developed to uphold firearms laws, has chosen to ignore the laws to exacerbate the situation on the border apparently to deliberately create situations for international agreements for more stringent controls.

If the union is to be preserved, these rights must be returned to the people, to whom they belong, from whom the just power of law flows. The purpose of this suit is to prevent the growing turmoil from becoming general enough to cause an insurrection that is forced to be put down by force of arms, and thereby to defend the constitution and laws of the united states, the just power of the judiciary, the executive branch, and Congress itself.

The states, and federal government itself in a limited republic, may not act in a manner in which they are prohibited, nor in a manner in which they are not allowed. Laws passed outside the powers of the constitution are no law at all, and are void for any purpose, create no offices, establish no duties, have no obligations to be upheld nor any power to compel the victim to comply.

And the legislative cannot bind the Executive branch to commit felony or other unlawful acts, nor may the offer immunity for so doing, nor may they engage the power of selection exclusively limited to the power of the judiciary for that purpose.

Title 18, section 242
Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

The right to?

2011-06-03T09:07:00.000-07:00

It may fairly be said that the nation is a nation of rights, that it is a nation created with the intent of limiting both the power of government, and the people's power over each other. Dangers were recognized in the beginning to those fledgling, awakening rights, and means and procedures were established to protect them.

But what are the nature of rights? A right is a power to do a thing, or not do a thing. It is a system of powers and forebearances. In its most basic sense, it is, in some ways, a tautology, a right being both a property, and the right to that property.

Rights in property are defined by several aspects, the primary being dominion and control, with subsidiary powers from that dominion and control exercised with delegation, dimunition, dissultion, destruction, alienation, rent, lein, and fee-simple obligation.

However, some rights are not subject to these powers, those rights considered inalienable. Alienation of property comes from the original definition of transfer, and a property or right that was inalienable implied sovereign powers: i.e. that there was no higher authority that could lawfully or justly seize it for any purpose.

Inalienable rights are the category of rights that actually make the law itself. They are both the foundation of law, in a common-law jurisdiction, and the limit of law.

Those rights must, and are, rights that require exercise, rights that require the active capability of their maintainance and expression.

The rights under the constitution are of similar variety, rights expressing the capability of resistance to involuntary or oppressive measures taken by government or others against those rights.

It was extended under the 1866 Civil Rights act against the powers of the states themselves, making it a felony to enforce any law which went against the rights of any person under the U.S. that were enjoyed by any other person under U.S. control.

Both civil and criminal charges aplied (title 18, sections 241-245 and title 42, section 1981-1984).

But what happens when such a law is not enforced? By what means are rights to be enforced when the transgressor against them is the very government established to protect them?

There were also means, both civil and criminal, for that recourse, which was also an inherent right.

The first means was by convincing others that your position was correct, by the pulpit, soap box, or media.

The second means was by the vote, removing those who make laws against rights.

A tertiary means was by the jury, nullifying criminal cases that acted against rights, the constitution, and common sense.

The fourth means, was the most dangerous of all. It was spoken of by the founders themselves, by the Supreme Court, by many of the oldest philosophers who shaped our nation.

In the first case, you had the right to protest, to assemble, to speak and transmit information freely and without reserve, subject only to consequences for libellous and slanderous comments... and even those comments were protected if they were truth.

In the second case, the right to vote was to be kept inviolate, there was to be no transgression that removed that right, as it was a right by which all other rights are protected. How, after all, could they protest, should they be removed from the right to vote?

In the third instance, the jury box, it dates back to Throckmorton, Zenger, and Bushell, the inability of the government to punish or sanction a jury for finding against the judge's instructions, or finding for their own conscience. They were the arbiters of both the facts of the case, as well as the law of the case, without which there would be no case at all.

In the fourth instance... well, the fourth instance is of the gravest sort of all, and is only in effect when there is none of the prior means allowed. Where there is no recourse, or the recourse becomes impossible due to machinations of that government.. the gravest right of recourse applies. As was said by Supreme Court justice Story, in the case of U.S. vs Libellants of the Schooner Amistad:

But in the next place, (and it is that which would furnish a case of most difficulty and danger, though it may be fairly be presumed to be of rare occurrence,) if the Legislative, executive, and judicial departments should all concur in a gross usurpation, there is still a peaceable remedy provided by the constitution. It is the power of amendment, which may be always applied at the will of three fourths of the states. If, therefore, there should be a corrupt cooperation of three fourths of the states for permanent usurpation, (a case not to be supposed, or if supposed, differs not at all in the principle or redress from the case of a majority of a nation or state having the same intent,) the case is certainly irremediable under any known forms of the constitution. The states may now, by constitutional amendment, with few limitations, change the whole structure and powers of the government, and legalize any present excess of power. And the general right of the society in other cases to change the government at the will of the majority of the whole people, in any manner, that may suit its pleasure, is undisputed, and seems undisputable. If there be any remedy at all for the minority in such a case, it is a remedy never provided for by human institutions. It is a resort to the ultimate right of all human beings in extreme cases to resist oppression, and to apply force against ruinous injustice.

In what place are we?

We are told, that for our own protection, we may be searched without warrant, have our properties seized, arrested upon suspicion without warrant, and be placed in custody indeterminately without trial or hearing. We are told that this is for our benefit, and that without it, our lives are endangered. We are further told that resistance to warrantless entry of our own homes is a crime, and that to resist is enough for the police to use force.

We are told that we have no right to recourse through the government, that the government itself is sovereign, and that we have no right to question, petition, and that only those whom are in possession of sufficient monies may have their recourse by law.

We are told that we may not find for our consciences in the jury, that we may not be allowed to determine our futures, that we will purchase the products the government says that we should purchase, that we cannot question the will of faceless bureaucrats, that the will of officers of the law is supreme in all things.

We are told that we may not resist the molestation of ourselves or our youth by officers of 'the law' without facing the repercussions of that law.

We are told we may not film those officers, and gather evidence in our own protection.

We are told that we must travel by the virtue of the civil graces of our government and that said government may determine who may travel, and by what means.

Arguments are being made that we must do those things that the government demands to receive the putative benefits of the things they demanded we purchase.

And we are told that our property may be seized without trial, without charges, and that they may seize the ultimate of our properties, without trial, without hearing, torture us, and kill us without repercussion.

And that this is being done, not by the majority, but a tireless, unrelenting minority that believes it knows better than us what is good for us, without regard for our realities in life.

Now they attempt, by virtue of 'copyright' and other actions to cause our exercise of free speech, parody, commentary, and education to become a felony act, for which they purport to further strip our rights away.

The vote is being taken on insecure machines, by persons with direct vested interests in the outcome of the vote, without chain of custody of the vote, and via secret code which no person may be allowed to see.

And now they purport the power to take away that final means of recourse.

That section 1983 of Title 42, as well as title 18's section 242 was not merely against racially biased action, but, according to the congressional record:

A "bill . . . to protect all persons in the United States in their civil rights . . ." Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 211 (1866)

Trumbull's own argument:

‘Sir, this bill applies to white men as well as black men. It declares that all persons in the United States shall be entitled to the same civil rights, the right to the fruit of their own labor, the right to make contracts, the right to buy and sell, and enjoy liberty and happiness; and that is abominable and iniquitous and unconstitutional! Could anything be more monstrous or more abominable than for a member of the Senate to rise in his place and denounce with such epithets as these a bill, the only object of which is to secure equal rights to all the citizens of the country, a bill that protects a white man just as much as a black man? With what consistency and with what face can a Senator in his place here say to the Senate and the country that this is a bill for the benefit of black men exclusively when there is no such distinction in it, and when the very object of the bill is to break down all discrimination between black men and white men?'

Id., at 599.

How insidious that we should allow men to work against those rights, for purported security.. wherein by working against those rights any purported security is not only abolished, but made impossible to regain?

It goes back to Manegold and Locke...

Sec. 91. For he being supposed to have all, both legislative and executive power in himself alone, there is no judge to be found, no appeal lies open to any one, who may fairly, and indifferently, and with authority decide, and from whose decision relief and redress may be expected of any injury or inconviency, that may be suffered from the prince, or by his order: so that such a man, however intitled, Czar, or Grand Seignior, or how you please, is as much in the state of nature, with all under his dominion, as he is with therest of mankind: for where-ever any two men are, who have no standing rule, and common judge to appeal to on earth, for the determination of controversies of right betwixt them, there they are still in the state of* nature, and under all the inconveniencies of it, with only this woful difference to the subject, or rather slave of an absolute prince: that whereas, in the ordinary state of nature, he has a liberty to judge of his right, and according to the best of his power, to maintain it; now, whenever his property is invaded by the will and order of his monarch, he has not only no appeal, as those in society ought to have, but as if he were degraded from the common state of rational creatures, is denied a liberty to judge of, or to defend his right; and so is exposed to all the misery and inconveniencies, that a man can fear from one, who being in the unrestrained state of nature, is yet corrupted with flattery, and armed with power.

(* To take away all such mutual grievances, injuries and wrongs, i.e. such as attend men in the state of nature, there was no way but only by growing into composition and agreement amongst themselves, by ordaining some kind of govemment public, and by yielding themselves subject thereunto, that unto whom they granted authority to rule and govem, by them the peace, tranquillity and happy estate of the rest might be procured. Men always knew that where force and injury was offered, they might be defenders of themselves; they knew that however men may seek their own commodity, yet if this were done with injury unto others, it was not to be suffered, but by all men, and all good means to be withstood. Finally, they knew that no man might in reason take upon him to determine his own right, and according to his own determination proceed in maintenance thereof, in as much as every man is towards himself, and them whom he greatly affects, partial; and therefore that strifes and troubles would be endless, except they gave their common consent, all to be ordered by some, whom they should agree upon, without which consent there would be no reason that one man should take upon him to be lord or judge over another, Hooker's Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 10.)

(Locke, second treatise of civil Government, chapter 7.)

"If the king ceases to govern the kingdom, and begins to act as a tyrant, to destroy justice, to overthrow peace, and to break his faith, the man who has taken the oath is free from it, and the people are entitled to depose the king and to set up another, inasmuch as he has broken the principle upon which their mutual obligation depended."

Manegold

"It is not only permitted, but it is also equitable and just to slay tyrants. For he who receives the sword deserves to perish by the sword.But 'receives' is to be understood to pertain to he who has rashly usurped that which is not his, now he who receives what he uses from the power of God. He who receives power from God serves the laws and is the slave of justice and right. He who usurps power suppresses justice and places the laws beneath his will. Therefore, justice is deservedly armed against those who disarm the law, and the public power treats harshly those who endeavour to put aside the public hand. And, although there are many forms of high treason, none is of them is so serious as that which is executed against the body of justice itself. Tyranny is, therefore, not only a public crime, but if this can happen, it is more than public. For if all prosecutors may be allowed in the case of high treason, how much more are they allowed when there is oppression of laws which should themselves command empeors? Surely no one will avenge a public enemy, and whoever does not prosecute him transgresses against himself and against the whole body of the earthly republic."

-- John of Salisbury: Policratus

In short, our rights are the means by which slavery of our people becomes impossible. How then do we become more secure in our possessions, in our lives, in our liberty, by their removal?

Preserving rights: What is the recourse?

2011-04-13T13:44:00.000-07:00

As an idiot, another question must be asked. If a law exists, intended by congress to be “preservative of all rights” do we have a right to its enforcement? If, further, the congress passed a law stating that a pattern of failure to enforce the law would give rise to its own sanctions, does that not lead to the conclusion that such law must be enforced? What happens when the laws, preservative of our rights, are refused to be enforced.. by the very individual whose action the Congress specified for our recourse?

There may be those unfamiliar with the law of which I speak... I refer, of course, to title 18, part 1, chapter 13, section 242 of the U.S. Code. There are ancillary codes regarding this subject, however, and I pray you will be patient with me as I bring them to light.

Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation,
or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory,
Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any
rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the
Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different
punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being
an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed
for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or
imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury
results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if
such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a
dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this
title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death
results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if
such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated
sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or
an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned
for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to
death.

This particular section is also backed up by civil penalties, and an absolute revocation of sovereign immunity for individuals other than judges engaged in such action, under title 42, section 1983 of the U.S. code.

Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance,
regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the
District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any
citizen of the United States or other person within the
jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges,
or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable
to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other
proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought
against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such
officer's judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted
unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was
unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress
applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be
considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia.

In addition, title 42 also covers, in section 1990, the duties of a U.S. Marshall in conjunction with this section of code.

Every marshal and deputy marshal shall obey and execute all
warrants or other process, when directed to him, issued under the
provisions of section 1989 of this title. Every marshal and deputy
marshal who refuses to receive any warrant or other process when
tendered to him, issued in pursuance of the provisions of this
section, or refuses or neglects to use all proper means diligently
to execute the same, shall be liable to a fine in the sum of
$1,000, for the benefit of the party aggrieved thereby.

Note that this $1000 dollars was in gold dollars at the time of 1866, a substantially larger sum in today's currency... well over a year's pay for many.

To cojoin with this prohibition, there is title 42, section 14141.

(a) Unlawful conduct
It shall be unlawful for any governmental authority, or any agent thereof, or any person acting on behalf of a governmental authority, to engage in a pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers or by officials or employees of any governmental agency with responsibility for the administration of juvenile justice or the incarceration of juveniles that deprives persons of rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.
(b) Civil action by Attorney General
Whenever the Attorney General has reasonable cause to believe that a violation of paragraph (1) [1] has occurred, the Attorney General, for or in the name of the United States, may in a civil action obtain appropriate equitable and declaratory relief to eliminate the pattern or practice.

While of a far more recent vintage, it was designed to hold up the earlier law... yet, what happens when it is the very individual who is charged with upholding this law refuses to prosecute violations of rights by the states or federal government?

Do we have a right to have the law enforced, or not? Remember, the police, and federal or state officers in general hold no duty to protect you. We also must recognize that the police, as an entity, has much room for abuse and corruption. Where is our recourse if the rights they are established to protect... are being denied by those who are engaged and bound to their protection?

Do they maintain their office when they are working contrary to the founding of that office? Does not the very inaction transgress the bounds and oaths of the office to the constitution and laws of these United States?

Action outside of those offices, or within them under title 18, section 242, would be equally wrong. There is no immunity to the crime, and all officers and judges, are equally under rules, regulations, laws, traditions, and customs.

The Cruikshank case, for instance, said:

'The fourteenth amendment prohibits a state from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or from denying to any person the equal protection of the laws; but this provision does not add anything to the rights of one citizen as against another. It simply furnishes an additional guaranty against any encroachment by the states upon the fundamental rights which belong to every citizen as a [106 U.S. 629, 639] member of society. The duty of protecting all its citizens in the enjoyment of an equality of rights was originally assumed by the states, and it remains there. The only obligation resting upon the United States is to see that the states do not deny the right. This the amendment guaranties, and no more. The power of the national government is limited to this guaranty.'" (638-39)

How, therefore, can the federal government pass laws to limit rights for specific classes of citizens, once the state interest in their punishment is passed? How may they, claiming 'civil regulation' promote a regulatory scheme under which they may restrict the rights of individuals by creating a new crime that attaches only to that particular class of individual?

Remember, that at the time of Blackstone, that 'felony' referred to a severance of property, generally the property of life. it was by attainder that such a property was severed from the individual, upon sentence of death by the courts, or by the power of attainder written into law by the legislature, resulting in banishment, execution, or property forfeiture, and often corruption of blood.

If that power of attainder is prohibited to any action by the states, including constitutional amendment (as per Cummings v. Missouri), and the state acts by the legislative, the judicial, and the executive branches only (and by no other means per Shelley v. Kraemer) how may they engage in powers they are prohibited without penalty?

Only by the failure to enforce the law...

Bills of attainder, ex-post-facto laws, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation. The two former are expressly prohibited by the declarations prefixed to some of the State constitutions, and all of them are prohibited by the spirit and scope of these fundamental charters. Our own experience has taught us, nevertheless, that additional fences against these dangers ought not to be omitted. Very properly, therefore, have the convention added this constitutional bulwark in favor of personal security and private rights; and I am much deceived if they have not, in so doing, as faithfully consulted the genuine sentiments as the undoubted interests of their constituents. The sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public councils. They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more-industrious and less informed part of the community. They have seen, too, that one legislative interference is but the first link of a long chain of repetitions, every subsequent interference being naturally produced by the effects of the preceding. They very rightly infer, therefore, that some thorough reform is wanting, which will banish speculations on public measures, inspire a general prudence and industry, and give a regular course to the business of society.

-- Federalist 44, James Madison

"The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection."

-- John Stuart Mill

Not self-protection against imagined, possible harm, but actions taken against rights. Those actions are cause for self-defense. No matter who exerts the force, no matter who creates the harm, the defense remains. Upon aggression, you have the right to resist.

Even if it is a police officer engaged in an unlawful arrest.

Arbitrary law and you!

2011-04-13T13:38:00.000-07:00

My friends. I am an idiot... a total idiot, one of those creatures wondering entire at the world around him, incapable of doing aught save absorbing those things which I study and pondering upon them for the myriad hours my mind is idle. Whilst turning a wrench or writing a program, whilst doing dishes or traveling in the desert or mountains, my mind is busy pondering uselessly upon the many things which concern me.

I however, submit a question. Should we allow arbitrary law, law determined, not by court and jury, not by standards of fairness, but by positions written by bureaucrats, attorneys, and pandering politicians for their own gain?

Did we not fight a war to end arbitrary law, and prohibit ourselves from those same seizures by attainder of the properties of the Tories and British citizens? Did we not argue, eloquently, even at the Boston Massacre for the rights of the individuals who fired those rounds? Did we not consider the natures of government, past and present, ponder upon their fall, and judge those things to be put aright that we might have a lasting peace and prosperity?

Did we not fight another war, in 1861, to establish and preserve that nation, to try to end the arbitrary rule of slavery in the south, and the equally arbitrary and unconstitutional tariffs between the North and South? Was it not the purpose and the intent of the constitutional 'commerce' clause to preserve the free, and regular flow of commerce between the states, not by regulation to terminate certain commerce disapproved by persons in the federal government?

How may we lawfully do those things by the power of the state and federal government that we may not lawfully do as private individuals? Are not those powers engaged, created, and then passed to the hands of the states for those uses that are best preservative of the rights of those very individuals?

The states act in several manners... the legislative, the judicial, and the executive branch. They may also act by their federal representatives in the Senate, and by the representatives of their people in the House, but such are still actions by the state, under the state mandate. There have been myriad court cases over these last two centuries, attempting to establish both what the law is, was, and may be.

The ultimate foundation, and intent of law was to preserve to the people that which is their own. It is from this intent that criminal law arises, to punish those who worked against the rights of property, against the rights of persons to not be maliciously harmed. It was for these purposes the criminal and civil courts arose, to preserve the rights of the people, to punish and to restore, respectively.

We fought in the courts in Yick Wo, to attempt to remove that arbitrary law by selective enforcement, we fought in Cummings v. Missouri and Ex Parte garland to remove that power from the hands of the state governments, for the moment that they may target the law to the detriment of any, they may target the law to enrich the few at the expense of the many.

The battlefield has been wide and varied, covering centuries, some steps forward, other steps back. We gain hope when our rights become more important than the agenda of false and designing men, only to despair when prosecutors may not be punished for falsifying evidence, or withholding exonerating evidence. We hold our breath, waiting and wondering what abomination or hope might come from the court next... but yet, the rule of ethical law is very simple.

One should never establish a law under which the whole of the society will not be equally affected. If a thing is to be made a crime, it must be made a crime for all in the jurisdiction, from the judge to the governor to the president. Exempting anyone from the law is the fastest way into tyranny.

It takes an honest man to vote against a law which will not affect him. It takes an equally honest man to vote against a law that will benefit him, or to abstain from such a vote. It costs a tyrant nothing to vote for a law that is to his benefit, or to vote for a law that will affect others.

For the past two centuries, we have seen laws designed to divide upon race, upon religion, upon socioeconomic status, upon past acts, upon all the myriad excuses our government could find.

We find ourselves here today due to the deliberate creation and manipulation of schism, created by law designed to benefit some at the expense of others. We find ourselves here not because of malicious intent, in most cases, but because of strongly-held, intimate beliefs upon what is right and wrong, and upon the belief of those same individuals that they are strong enough to tame the lion that has slain so many good intentions.

We would not need limits in law, were we governed by angels. We are not so governed, however, so the law must lay limits as to the power of the grasping, the greedy, and the aspiring, to prevent them from laying down the law in such a manner as to deliberately interfere with the rights of the minority.

The only means by which this may be done, in instances with men of poor character or good, with persons both well-intentioned and malicious... is to ensure that not only must they live under the same law that they create, so must all their friends, their benefactors, and the whole of society, and to impress upon their minds that should they attempt to legislate beliefs, be they ever so noble, that go against the beliefs of others, that their own beliefs may be next to be legislated against.

It has ever been true that in the marketplace of ideas, only errors require force to ensure their continued and repeated purchase. That same force exists when law is used to enforce ideas against the rights of individuals, due to the beliefs of others of their unworthiness to use those rights... or an inaction is taken in enforcing the law preservative of those rights.

Should we not, rather than enforce that belief, enforce the existing laws wherein active trespasses against rights are punished, and otherwise, where there is no crime, those individuals are left alone?

Or should we continue, by creating artificial classes and schisms, the feudal insanity that led our nation to schism from its parent country in the eighteenth century?

I am an idiot... I will only and ever be an idiot, for I believe in things that may be impossible. Indeed, I make it a habit and a philosophy to engage in the mental debate of the impossible, for it is only in that way that, in truth, we may discover if it is truly impossible... or merely a cover for the desires of others.

I may be an idiot, but rights are what they are, a form and function of personal property, an essence and nature that cannot be seized without execution of the possessor. One may be a slave, one may be bound to the cart but that does not negate the right to be free... only acts as an eternal condemnation of those who would deny that right for their own benefit.

Attorneys: Necessary evil?

2010-10-23T17:53:00.000-07:00

The bar association. Loving, hating, or indifferent, lawyers seem to be part of the political and social landscape. The bar association was conceived in an effort to attempt to hold lawyers accountable, and to increase the quality of practice of law.

While the original goals may have been noble, I must question if the implementation actually accomplishes the original goals of accountability and safety, or if the practicing attorneys have established a system far beyond the original intent.

We've all heard the jokes, we've all heard the descriptions of lawyers. Multiple movies have been made about the unscrupulous attorney. It would seem that the attempt to police attorneys by those with a vested interest in preserving the respectability of that practice would be a good thing.

But is it, or has it given rise to new consequences and behaviors?The original stated goal was to attempt to self-police attorneys, and prevent those unscrupulous attorneys from practice, to protect the consumer, and to preserve the quality of representation. However, across the past seventy years, rules have been established that, in general, leave the layperson out in the cold.

These rules of civil procedure, rather than simplifying the law, often complicate it, requiring attorneys both for the interpretation of the law, as well as for the arguments of what law is appropriate, and the interpretation of simple things, right down to the famous 'meaning of the word 'is''.

Rules lawyering became famous in games, even to the point of parody.

Is the American Bar association accomplishing its goals, however, or has it created new problems which actually preserve the problems, while furthering its own ends?

There have been many instances of attorneys doing things against the best interests of the clients, up to and including failing to represent them, and choosing means of argument that are either not in the best interests of the client, or tangential to the case.

The argument by the court remains that attorneys take an oath, and have a vested interest in preserving the practice of law. However, in several instances, the prosecutor has engaged in practices of falsifying evidence, blocking exonerating evidence, and in most cases, is considered immune from prosecution for such actions.

Further, defense attorneys are generally considered immune from the consequences of failure to bring up points, even to the point of inaction or drunkenness, and are rarely held to account for their actions.

At least, prior to the foundation of the American Bar Association, any person could be heard in a court of law. Often, admittedly, there was some contention over who was human, but any 'freeman' could speak before the court, argue the law, and even make presentations of fact and law.

In many civil cases, the attorney is not paid for completing the action. In cases of probate, the attorney is paid for his time, rather than timely completion, or proper argument of the will or contract. In many cases, this can result in actions taken to prolong the trials, to the point of the attorneys fees consuming all the contents of the estate. It is sometimes in the attorney's best monetary interests to extend the suit, and thus their time involved, as long as possible. Often, as well, by contract, the persons hiring the attorney are left without recourse should the attorneys do so.

It is further to the benefit of attorneys to make the laws as confusing as possible, with as many deceptive or alternative meanings as can be raised, in order to preserve their effective practice.

This can be compared to promoting a 'lay language' which sounds good to the people, but keeping the benefits of a clerical education among the enlightened.

A good portion of the purpose of the constitution, and the republic for which our ancestors fought, was to provide means of recourse, both within and from the law. It was to provide for law that was clearly intelligible to all persons, and which had its meaning plain and straight out. Exceptions and vagueness were to be avoided, as in any case of exception, persons were under different burdens of law.

But what does it mean when the effective means of recourse is monopolized by those to whom it is most effective to preserve the most complicated means of law possible? When the laws in most (nearly all) jurisdictions require the bar association to approve your license before even quoting the most appropriate and applicable court case, where is your recourse when your attorney refuses to bring the case up?

Do you have the means, and right to effective recourse when nearly all attorneys and judges belong to the same association, an association that also simultaneously educates those same attorneys and judges into the 'art' of legalism?

What effective means of recourse might you have when those judges and lawyers make statements directly contrary to historic fact? How do you call a judge and attorney on errors in fact... when they have been educated to believe such is true, even when absolutely verifiable historical data contradicts it?

How do you hold judges, and attorneys, accountable when the only means by which they may be brought to account is by disbarment... by the same persons profiting from their continued practice?

And when judges and politicians willfully align, how can you hold the politicians, officers, or judges accountable, when the judges preserve the interests of the other parties.. who are often bar association members themselves?

It is foolishness to believe in neutrality in those who bear a vested interest in the preservation of the status quo, to do anything but to preserve that status, without outside force being involved.

When no matter how correct your argument, no matter how accurate your data, no matter how well-cited, referenced, and truthful your sources, they can dismiss the points without viewing them, or dismiss them and reject your application for relief as a vexatious litigant, where, then, is your recourse?

When they can, out of hand, reject your appeals, even with an attorney, where is your recourse and correction?

And should they have the power to arbitrarily deny you that right of recourse?

When the right of recourse itself is monopolized, does that not create a far greater trust violation and national security issue than any possible terrorist attack? When the interpretation of the constitution is left to lawyers, and not to the common people, when the meaning of terms wanders all over the map to become not just contrary to the initial idea, but absolutely abhorrent to it, where is your recourse then?

And how may you grasp it?

When the attorneys themselves break the law, and those sworn to uphold and protect the law break the law, and those sworn to uphold and protect the constitution in the making of law break the law... where is your recourse?

In matters related to civil rights, should not the refusal of the prosecutor or defense or judge or any other officer to prosecute a violation of the law, be a violation in its own right? When the prosecutor has 'discretion' to arbitrarily drop any case, or charge for different crimes in the same circumstances due to the 'class' of the violator, is that fair, just, or equal law?

And when the people themselves are denied the benefit of argument of the law before the jury, where is your recourse?

Should not you be capable of taking that recourse into your own hands, to argue both the facts and the law in controversy, as that law itself is part of the facts in the case?

Or are you stuck.. fighting a battle with attorneys who have driven the prices of that recourse out of the hands of the largest part of the American People?

I may, indeed, be a total idiot... but a necessary evil can never be aught but evil, nor can evil be done that is necessary.. only convenient.

If we mean to preserve our rights, and our liberty, we must perform our duty in keeping the law accessible to all, rich and poor, from the least to the greatest.

Otherwise.. liberty itself is damned and dead.

The case for rights: criminals

2010-10-21T06:44:00.000-07:00

As per usual for my postings, I fully expect this one to be both controversial, and subject to vociferous disagreement. This is a subject that is full of emotions and disagreement, and like any such subject, is bound to attract attention both logical, and less than savory. Do criminals have rights? Do they, when they commit a crime, give them up?

I do a great deal of reading, and a great deal of thinking. It has grown to the point where people claim I do so too much, and that my arguments are abstracted from the real world. However, in this case, the argument itself spawns from the real world itself, from the history that is my specialty and stock in trade.The question does not spawn full-blown from my brow like Athena of legend, nor does it grow like dragon's teeth planted into an army, but in the way all such arguments do, from an idea.

Our current prison system spawned from such an idea, around two centuries gone, an idea in Philadelphia, an idea of a new way of doing things, rather than the execution of felons, of a place for their penitence, and reformation. The term penitentiary comes from this root, the idea that penitence and separation were a more fitting punishment for wrongs against a society than death.

In this penitentiary, the prisoners were granted a bible, and a plain bed, food and water, and a place of solitude. The idea was to allow them to grow penitent, and to humble themselves and restore themselves to society.

Like all ideas, however, this idea was taken up by those who had power, and intended to increase it. In any case for the pursuit of power, there must be two things present, a people to protect, and someone to protect them from. From its roots in British law, conviction offered a steady stream of persons to protect the society from, and a society that was indebted to those that made the laws.

In its initial formation in this country, the nature of felony was a seizure of property, specific properties, in fact. Blackstone's commentaries on the Laws of England, in fact, touched upon this in his articles 'On conviction and its consequences'.

In effect, the felon, upon judgment, lost his right to property, lost his right to sit upon a jury, and lost his life. This was called attainder, the highest punishment any society could give. No longer was the individual a man, nor a human, but a monster to be hunted down and disposed of without qualm, no longer fit to live within society itself. This terrible consequence was only on judgment of guilt, and sentence to death.

This preserved the separation of the law-abiding from the law-breaking, and the largest punishment, and the most public spectacle, in old England, was death by drawing, then quartering. Tortures and hangings were also quite public, floggings, and hanging from a gibbet.

The idea of the new punishment was to be more humane, and more human. It was to offer opportunity for the offender to redeem himself both in the eyes of society, and his own. IT was, in many ways, a baptism by time, a remaking of the individual.

However, our politicians, in their zeal for someone to protect society from, and to control society by, decided that this was an excellent idea. It provided a ready-made excuse that emotions would dictate to us is a good one, for, after all, if one has violated the law before, does it not stand to reason that he may again? And certainly, precaution would seem to dictate that the restriction of those offenders would be a good thing, for after all, they have already set themselves against society.

From this argument spawned new laws, new arguments designed to remove the rights of human beings. After all, if a felon could not own a weapon, then certainly they would not be able to assault, maim, and kill so many. But yet, we ignore the other side of the coin. A felon is still human, still possessed of the right to live, and has no more right than any of us to demand police protection. There is no right to police protection in this nation, no matter the source.

It was always the most effective to have a vague nebulous class of persons out there that were the enemy. While targeted classes have their place in stirring up the public sentiment, vagueness has the advantage, from the eyes of the legislator, of deniability. It cannot happen to us, the reasoning goes, for we abide by the laws! That is for other people.

Lest we forget, the laws are made by those who would separate us into those to protect, and those to protect from. Moreover, by expanding the class to protect from, they expand the pool of persons entirely dependent upon their protection, which they need not give at all.

Let us also not forget that the rights enshrined within the Bill of Rights, and constitution, were deemed to be human rights, natural rights, established for the protection of all humanity, not merely the citizen. These principles were laid out in many later constitutions, to be agreeable to the federal. These rights were protected against that very government that now claims the power... to remove them for wrongdoing, and the power to eliminate them due to the violation of a law.

Why did our constitution not prevent this? It did. Article 1, sections 9 and 10 prohibit attainder. Attainder is the singular power by which any of this may be done.

"But how does this affect me?" the average citizen may cry. It affects you, because that power of attainder, and the principle of the loss of rights for the violation of a crime, will inevitably expand to the vacuum left by the people's lack of action against it. May I ask, what prevents the legislature from passing laws that declare an intimate aspect of life felonious? It is entirely possible for them to declare the excessive use of water a felony, and define excessive as two flushes of the toilet in a single day. It is equally possible for them to declare that the unregistered and unlicensed emission of co2 from any source exceeding 10,500L in a year becomes a felony for the owner of the property upon which the primary emission source occurs.

This, however, would include nearly every human being, as humans emit well over this amount every year, by simply breathing. The proof becomes a negligible exercise in mathematics, a simple statement, and you become a felon.

Sound extreme? Well, perhaps another example may be given.

You may become a felon for using, collecting, or possessing certain feathers without a license. You may become a felon for, in certain cases, engaging in the right to speech, engaging in the right to travel, or even having the temerity to fail to agree to a contract.

The nature of the power to protect, and the power to protect from, expands... and the more that the government may protect you from, the more that they may limit you in your everyday life.

It is by force, and force alone that government acts. Many of us have felt troubled through the years by the increased use of SWAT teams, by the increase in prevalence of violence by the police, but we dismissed it as a 'necessary' evil in the 'war on drugs'. We've allowed the stripping of rights from others, in order to protect ourselves... but the world gets crazier each day. We established 'free speech zones' in the capital, in order to protect politicians from ideas that may be contrary to their own. We allow persons within the United States to arrest with a self-written warrant, to incarcerate without trial, and thus to cause 'unpopular' elements to disappear... without ever speaking to an attorney, without representation, and without recourse. In our zeal for 'protection', we have established a 'constitution free zone' within 100 miles of the border.

We establish trials which, rather than the evidence being presented before a jury, and the laws being discussed, force the jury to either dismiss or rubber-stamp the actions of the prosecutor, and the charges are sealed under 'national security' as is the evidence, from both the defense, the judge, and the jury.

And we go along with it.

For our own protection, they discuss fully disarming our people, and removing the right to speak, if someone might be offended. They threaten and cajole, with lawsuit and cash, and today may seize your property it was involved in the commission of a drug crime... even if you gave no permission to allow it to be used thus.

Remember, protector and the protected. The more helpless that the government may keep you, the more force they may safely exert over you. With each encroachment, it becomes more difficult to push back, to restore your rights, and the rights of your children.

An arrest is not being taken into the station... an arrest is the mere act of stopping you. If you are stopped, and not free to go, that is an arrest, by its very definition, and is a crime without warrant, when an act has not been witnessed.

Consider the fact that prosecutors have said that there are certain crimes that are easy to convict, with minimal evidence, and they have immunity for fraudulently creating evidence to secure conviction.

The suspicion is often enough to convict.

Then ask yourselves if the idea of removing rights from felons... those same rights established to protect them from the government, and to do the same for you yourself, due to violations of the rules created by that same government, is a good idea.

After all, today the politicians present loopholes in the laws... for employees of the government, leaving themselves outside the law that is your burden.

Tax scandals, criminal scandals, drugs, sex, prostitution... and all swept under the rug by judicious application of money, which would leave any other man a felon.

Ask yourselves how this comports with the use of prisoners as laborers, to do dangerous and expensive jobs, at pennies per hour, then harvesting the outcome of their labor to pay for..tubes of toothpaste at vastly inflated prices.

Were we to do so as private citizens, we'd be convicted of involuntary servitude. It can hardly be argued that they are there willingly, or that in any other situation that they would volunteer their time, their energy, and their health for such wages.

Ask yourselves why nearly two percent of our population, a higher proportion than any other nation, are in prison... and a good four percent in addition to that have traveled through the prison system, and are now considered to be without rights.

Then ask yourselves again; "what separates us from them?"

The passage of a law,
By that very government that claims to protect you.

That flu shot? Perhaps by failing to take it you endanger others. Perhaps buying the wrong foods might endanger others. Perhaps, just perhaps, the mere fact of this posting, or the way you vote, the way you worship, the way you think, endangers others.

You might have to ask these questions.. for we are all felons in this nation, under some obscure law or other. The only difference at this point is if it has been enforced on you or not, and when they will choose to do so because you become inconvenient.

The country was established for one reason: the reason of protecting all rights within its borders. The government has no other legitimate purpose. it was for these ends that the states were given the powers of criminal justice, and for the correction of wrongs done against those rights the power of correction and punishment.

Not to 'protect' us from the things that go bump in the night at our own expense. But then.. I am a Total Idiot. What could I know?

Down the rabbit hole

2010-09-06T15:25:00.001-07:00

Today, we're taking a bit of a field trip from my usual idiocy, into more advanced and useless idiocy. We're taking a trip down the rabbit hole, not chasing a white hare, but chasing something far more elusive, and potentially far more a fever-dream or opium nightmare.

The truth. It's an intangible that the philosophers over the ages have tried to quantify, that humans have fought and died over, that people martyr themselves every day for.

Since I can't write THE TRVTH in the space allotted, we're chasing something a bit more ephemeral, a stray mote in the sunbeam of life.

Every day, people are looking around themselves, as though waking from a daze, and wondering how we got here. We, as a people, are walking zombies, mindless things that see nothing past our next television episode, our current web comic, the next game or distraction. We dehumanize each other, make excuses for each others subjugation, and we think this is normal, as though this insanity is the way things are supposed to be.

There are three truths being sought:

1:) Where the hell are we?
2:) How the hell did we get here?
3:) How the hell do we fix this mess?

Waking up from the dream is painful. We've always been more apt to close our eyes against the pain of truth, and to cling to the delusive, and elusive phantoms that trammel our minds, drawing our minds to distraction.

Where are we? We're in a land where humanity is forgotten even as an ideal, where we as a people forget who we are, our own self-worth, and the essence itself of humanity. We know where we are, we, however, refuse to open our eyes to look at it, preferring the illusion of the perfect car and life to the reality of our own servitude. We walk each day in a daze, one store to another, one advertisement, seeking something fulfilling in our own lives, even as we work away our energy and hours in longer and longer stages seeking the same rewards. We see our retirements fading, our money dwindling, see the crime in the streets and the criminals that are supposed to protect us. Scarcely a day passes in these United States when we do not have some place where the police are acting as military in incursions, where rights are not violated. Even a minute without official, government-sanctioned violations would be an improvement over what we have.

But how did it get here? How the hell did such brutality become commonplace? Is it sanity to assume that becoming more brutal to deal with brutality accomplishes anything but... increasing the brutality? Did we forget the years we spent recovering from the brutality of the shoulder-strikers and fire brigades who chose to go outside the law to 'uphold' it? What happened?

The answer to that lies within the human mind itself. We happened. We allowed small brutalities to prevent larger ones. We decided, deep in our own hearts, that doing small things wrong was all right, after all, it was for the greater good. We allowed ourselves to forget that the real thing worth protecting was our rights, and that the only way to preserve them, was to preserve them for and from others.

Over periods of time, small transgressions enlarged, grew into more powerful transgressions against the law, and then became all-encompassing traps to the unwary. Principle gave way to the letter of convenience, and even to the transgression of the letter of the law into the realm of that which the law forbade. The principle of the matter was the why, not the what. The essence of the matter was the why, not the how. Our preservation of rights were the how... not the why. The why encompassed far more.

We grew numbed to the brutality against our fellow-travellers on this road of life, even as we chose more and more to leave our 'protection' in the hands of others. We chose, for whatever reason, to establish persons to 'protect' us, without ever giving them duty to protect, nor a right within that protection. When the protection failed, or the officers of the 'law' became the agents we needed protection against, what then? More and myriad brutalities, actions against rights, actions against property and the person, actions against the very essence of life and the things to preserve it became commonplace.

We know where we are... and how we got here. How do we get out? How do we change this?

That's the hardest question of all. The answer, however, the single and solitary truth I can find in this question, is one that cannot be easier answered than saying... by exercising the rights. No matter how unpopular that exercise is, no matter how unloved you are for so doing, we must exercise those rights. It is in that exercise that the truth of the matter comes out... that those rights are presented, and preserved as our best security in an uncertain world. We, as a people, have the right to live, and from that right, and that property within the right, comes the right to preserve that life. We have the right to property, which preserves that life, and the property within our labor, which helps support the life. We have the right to liberty, the right to determine by our own hands and our own decisions what that life is to look like and to be. We have the overriding right, from all of these rights, to be treated as equals under the law, and if that right fails, we have the singular, solitary, indefeasible right to abolish the government that would make us servants under the law, and to re-establish it for our mutual benefit, that our rights might be preserved.

We, as a people, have the right, the obligation, and the duty to preserve the rights of others, as well as the responsibility to take the blame when things go wrongly from our lack of such exercise, or misexercise of those rights.

Acts of force can never be anything but acts of force. The government's obligation was to free us of those acts of force by the states, and to preserve for us the benefits of a republican form of government.

It was to preserve for us the capability of recourse without necessity to resort to violence or resistance. The purpose was to preserve for us, for our children and grandchildren into perpetuity those rights which were established, not in our government nor in contract, but within our very being.

It cannot maintain its obligation if we fail to utilize those powers with which we established it.

Think about it for just a moment... would the government fear our possession of arms for our own defense, if they were not something that required defense... against? Could not we, as the people, be educated and trained into the capability of defending our communities, without the necessity for the police force save for investigating crimes?

Do we not possess the power, the authority, and the full might of the government, as it was from us those powers were ceded into other hands?

Can we not still utilize those powers when other hands have failed, in order to restore them to hands that may use them properly?

Think about this: That each and every human being within the United States owes money that they have no true say in the spending of, no real means of repayment, and their labor is charged, their properties are forfeited, and their lives and freedom may be forfeit for their failure to pay a debt... that they did not accede to. Is this consensual, or merely a new means of binding upon us the chains of those who would be our masters?

When we, our children, and our posterity owe a debt that can never be repaid, there is a grave problem.

How deep does the rabbit hole go, my dear Alice? All the way down to the bottom, my dear. All the way down to the bottom.

And yet we support those who would have us spend money to become rich, those who would have us be in debtor's prisons to be free, those who would charge us for feeding ourselves from our own labor, those who would harm us to prevent us from harming ourselves, those who would kill us to preserve us from the pains of life, charge our descendents for our having the temerity of dying, and those who believe themselves more knowledgeable than ourselves in the 'proper' use of our own lives, and choose who reaps the benefits and penalties of our death.

I do not know about you, readers... but I do know something about holes. When you realize you are in one... it's likely best to stop digging, and to look around for the person who is preparing to fill it in atop you.

I may be a total idiot, but I recognize slavery by debt is just another form of involuntary servitude foisted off upon this country in the guise of a benefit. I also recognize that until we realize that it is not supposed to be that way, and until we realize that things don't have to be like this, that things cannot change.

We cannot, and should not go back to the ignorance of the past, nor should we determine that our rights are too dangerous in this day and age... but we should establish and preserve those human rights for the benefit of all in our borders, to preserve them for ourselves. We cannot allow the license of any right, be it the right to live, the right to breathe, the right to choose gainful employment or to employ, the right to stand or fall by our own actions, or the right to defend ourselves from the actions and inaction of others.

Simply because we have made a generation or two of errors, does not mean we need to maintain them.

The nature of rights: Humanity.

2010-07-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

What is it to have rights? What do they comprise? How are they found? The rights I speak of are human rights, rights that are found at the basest essence of the human condition.
To have a right, it is required that one be capable of possessing a property. In the circular nature of rights, it is the very ability to have rights that makes one human, and the foundation of those rights is the humanity. But what makes one human? There are two aspects, the first is the capability to have and possess property, including the property of rights.

The argument of what it is to be human has been heard across history. In our history, it has been marred by the idea that people different than ourselves are less than human.

The essence of humanity, however, is not biological. Humans may lose a limb, may lose body parts, may have their heart replaced by machines, may use the liver or kidneys or lungs of another, yet still be human. The humanity is integral into the realms of the mind. The essence of humanity is the ability to create something unique, the ability to create property. Property is created, according to the old law, by an exercise of volition, creating a right to use that which was modified.

Volition is the core of humanity. Its exercise is the essence of what it is to be human. No human being, without that exercise of volition, is human. People may attempt to block the exercise of volition, for various excuses, but that volition is still invariably belonging to the individual. Others may kill the individual for that exercise, but it does not remove their humanity, nor the essence of volition.

There are old terms for the cessation of volition within an individual. When done by the government, attainder provided for the cessation of the right of property within individual rights, be that a right to own property, or a right to one's own life. Even in the British government under King George, that volitional termination required the judgment of termination of the individual's humanity and their life.

The slave debates were about humanity, about the essence thereof, for, after all, there was no question that humans had inalienable rights. The question was, at its core, what was human. Those that possessed and supported slavery had to throw the humanity of the slaves into question in order to maintain and support the slavery, and in order to still appear ethical within their own eyes.

In all aspects of history dehumanization and alienation have been a pandemic of government. They are a contagion created by desperation, a disease transmitted by acts believed necessary to preserve the society, and have, always and without exception, destroyed the society attempting that preservation.

The act of dehumanization, of separation, of laws affecting classes, be they serfs, felons, or lords, has always been the harbinger of arbitrary law, its greatest tool, and its most powerful self-fulfilling prophecy.

It is for the fear of losing power that they are created, and it is their extension that brings that society to the brink of civil war and dictatorship.

Perhaps Trop v. Dulles stated the result the best. However, one must ask, if statelessness and the loss of the right to have rights is forbidden, how much more forbidden must be the loss of the very right to be human?

We believe, as did Chief Judge Clark in the court below, [n33] that use of denationalization as a punishment is barred by the Eighth Amendment. There may be involved no physical mistreatment, no primitive torture. There is, instead, the total destruction of the individual's status in organized society. It is a form of punishment more primitive than torture, for it destroys for the individual the political existence that was centuries in the development. The punishment strips the citizen of his status in the national and international political community. His very existence is at the sufferance of the country in which he happens to find himself. While any one country may accord him some rights and, presumably, as long as he remained in this country, he would enjoy the limited rights of an alien, no country need do so, because he is stateless. Furthermore, his enjoyment of even the limited rights of an alien might be subject to termination [p102] at any time by reason of deportation. [n34] In short, the expatriate has lost the right to have rights.

This punishment is offensive to cardinal principles for which the Constitution stands. It subjects the individual to a fate of ever-increasing fear and distress. He knows not what discriminations may be established against him, what proscriptions may be directed against him, and when and for what cause his existence in his native land may be terminated. He may be subject to banishment, a fate universally decried by civilized people. He is stateless, a condition deplored in the international community of democracies. [n35] It is no answer to suggest that all the disastrous consequences of this fate may not be brought to bear on a stateless person. The threat makes the punishment obnoxious. [n36]

The civilized nations of the world are in virtual unanimity that statelessness is not to be imposed as punishment for crime. It is true that several countries prescribe expatriation in the event that their nationals engage in conduct in derogation of native allegiance. [n37] Even statutes of this sort are generally applicable primarily [p103] to naturalized citizens. But use of denationalization as punishment for crime is an entirely different matter. The United Nations' survey of the nationality laws of 84 nations of the world reveals that only two countries, the Philippines and Turkey, impose denationalization as a penalty for desertion. [n38] In this country, the Eighth Amendment forbids this to be done.

In concluding, as we do, that the Eighth Amendment forbids Congress to punish by taking away citizenship, we are mindful of the gravity of the issue inevitably raised whenever the constitutionality of an Act of the National Legislature is challenged. No member of the Court believes that, in this case the statute before us can be construed to avoid the issue of constitutionality. That issue confronts us, and the task of resolving it is inescapably ours. This task requires the exercise of judgment, not the reliance upon personal preferences. Courts must not consider the wisdom of statutes, but neither can they sanction as being merely unwise that which the Constitution forbids.

We are oath-bound to defend the Constitution. This obligation requires that congressional enactments be judged by the standards of the Constitution. The Judiciary has the duty of implementing the constitutional safeguards that protect individual rights. When the Government acts to take away the fundamental right of citizenship, the safeguards of the Constitution should be examined with special diligence.

The provisions of the Constitution are not time-worn adages or hollow shibboleths. They are vital, living principles that authorize and limit governmental powers in our Nation. They are the rules of government. When the constitutionality of an Act of Congress is challenged in this Court, we must apply those rules. If we [p104] do not, the words of the Constitution become little more than good advice.

When it appears that an Act of Congress conflicts with one of these provisions, we have no choice but to enforce the paramount commands of the Constitution. We are sworn to do no less. We cannot push back the limits of the Constitution merely to accommodate challenged legislation. We must apply those limits as the Constitution prescribes them, bearing in mind both the broad scope of legislative discretion and the ultimate responsibility of constitutional adjudication. We do well to approach this task cautiously, as all our predecessors have counseled. But the ordeal of judgment cannot be shirked. In some 81 instances since this Court was established, it has determined that congressional action exceeded the bounds of the Constitution. It is so in this case.

What is a law in the United States?

2010-06-19T16:39:00.000-07:00

My detractors would claim that I promote lawlessness, and anarchy, but even a cursory examination of my arguments would reveal that is quite contrary to my purpose. I promote an absolute rule of law, absolute, and general. This is not a rule of law, however, to bind men's souls into the darkness which always hides tyrants, but to free them to be themselves.

The purpose of the law is to establish justice, justice for all, under that unbreakable rule of law. It is to abolish anarchy, to abolish the necessity for war between brothers and fathers, for all are bound by the same law, from the legislators to the electorate. It is a law of recourse, a law of means and ways for which to maintain the rights one has without resorting to acts of war.

It can be seen in no other light than as an act of war to remove recourse. It was said, in Paine's articles 'On War', that the state of war itself was when all recourse was removed from a man, when, in that state, there was no resort to law, nor to justice, no appeal, no power by which a man could regain his rights or his life, at that moment a state of war existed between him, and whoever would take those rights from him.

Story said much the same, in the Amistad trial. The federalist papers themselves spoke of the right, and intimately cojoined duty, to maintain and use those rights of recourse. Across the decades, centuries, and millenia, those rights of recourse have been used, and reused.

Manegold of Lautenberg spoke of the rights of man, as did John of Salisbury. The redes at Runnymede spoke of the recourses, as did Blackstone's commentaries on the laws of England. Thomas Paine's 'Common Sense' spoke of recourse, as did his 'The rights of Man.'

Those rights of recourse were sovereign rights, rights that could neither be given up, nor justly taken away. it was for the removal of those rights of recourse alone that the state of war could be justified, as a matter of self-defense.

Within the notes of Justice Story is found the story of his thoughts on recourse.

But in the next place, (and it is that which would furnish a case of most difficulty and danger, though it may be fairly be presumed to be of rare occurrence,) if the Legislative, executive, and judicial departments should all concur in a gross usurpation, there is still a peaceable remedy provided by the constitution. It is the power of amendment, which may be always applied at the will of three fourths of the states. If, therefore, there should be a corrupt cooperation of three fourths of the states for permanent usurpation, (a case not to be supposed, or if supposed, differs not at all in the principle or redress from the case of a majority of a nation or state having the same intent,) the case is certainly irremediable under any known forms of the constitution. The states may now, by constitutional amendment, with few limitations, change the whole structure and powers of the government, and legalize any present excess of power. And the general right of the society in other cases to change the government at the will of the majority of the whole people, in any manner, that may suit its pleasure, is undisputed, and seems undisputable. If there be any remedy at all for the minority in such a case, it is a remedy never provided for by human institutions. It is a resort to the ultimate right of all human beings in extreme cases to resist oppression, and to apply force against ruinous injustice.

-- Justice Story, notes on U.S. v. Libellants of the Schooner Amistad.

Before even the start of our nation, when it was barely an inkling and the pains created by Britain could still be borne, Samuel Adams wrote:

The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have receiv'd them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors: They purchas'd them for us with toil and danger and expence of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightned as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. Of the latter we are in most danger at present: Let us therefore be aware of it. Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the rights bequeath'd to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. - Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance. Let us remember, that "if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom." It is a very serious consideration, which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers in the event.

– Samuel Adams, Boston Gazette, October 14, 1771

But, yet, we have declared that the protections of the Constitution do not apply to some, that we may, by civil means, without recourse, without appeal, maintain some in prison indefinitely for the accusation, and fear of future crimes.

But who among us can guarantee that we are not felons? Who, in all this world, is not a dangerous man? Let him step forth, and I will show you a designing man in sheep's clothing.

Humanity, in and of itself is dangerous. It is a creature of force, of power, of dominion, control, of establishment of property and territory. He is a hunter, but also a healer, a steward and sometimes a wastrel. He is a saint and sinner, wrapped into one, a hope, and a horrific fear.

In this nation, we are all subject, in order for a law to be just, to the same law. The same acts, no matter who we are, must be equally illegal. The acts are what is targeted, not the person.

It does not matter who is doing the act, be it the highest executive officer, to the least prisoner in the darkest jail cell, if it is a crime, it is a crime for all.

The attainder clauses in the United States constitution equally apply to both state and federal governments. It does not matter who targets the law, only that the law is targeted. It does not matter who executes the power of that law, so long as all incidents are enforced equally. it does not matter who judges the law, so long as the law is judged equally.

The government is a creature, an incorporation of the Constitution. It can do nothing which the Constitution does not allow, and still be a legitimate entity created thereby. The moment any official steps outside of those bounds, they are not acting under that constitution, and may be treated as any other offender.

One cannot break the law... to enforce the law.

`The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment, and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it. An unconstitutional law, in legal contemplation, is as inoperative as if it had never been passed. Such a statute leaves the question that it purports to settle just as it would be had the statute not been enacted.’ `Since an unconstitutional law is void, the general principles follow that it imposes no duties, confers no right, creates no office, bestows no power or authority on anyone, affords no protection, and justifies no acts performed under it…’ `No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it.’

” 16 American Jurisprudence, 2nd Edition, section 177.

"When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional rights it acts lawlessly and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all."

- Justice William O. Douglas

Even the state constitution may not be altered to give an unequal burden of law to any person within the state.

All states are institutions, created by and under that constitution, restricted from the original powers, and established as incorporated entities under new obligations, and new restrictions. All counties, cities, municipalities, are equally bound. No incorporated entity can go beyond the purposes of its original corporation. They may not subcontract outside of those boundaries.

Those boundaries forbid the taking of any property, including the property of rights, without just recompense. For the property involved in the life of the person, there is no just recompense. For the property in the liberty, and in the right to property and right to have rights itself, there is no just recompense.

Those are things that are irrevocably the individual's, and well within the individual's right to defend.

What is punishment?

2010-06-05T05:05:00.000-07:00

I find that any idiot can understand punishment, but adults make it more complex than it is. Punishment is a taking, a restriction placed against an individual of those things which are his. The argument is not about this, but about those things that belong to a man, and the complexities adults who play at law bring to the picture.

To approach punishment, we must go back to the cases, and laws, where it was discussed. The primary of these was Cummings V. Missouri.

The Attorney General for the State of Missouri argued that punishment was only those things that were absolutely one's own, These things were life, liberty, and property, and in the nature of punishment, one could not be punished by taking that which was not his own. The farmer, recovering his cow from someone to whom he had loaned it, did no punishment. There was no punishment in retrieving stolen goods from a thief. He argued that a man did not own the right to have a job, nor anything else.

The supreme court wisely, and properly rejected this statement. According to the court in the past, our rights are not limited merely to those set down in that Constitutional bill of rights, but are a whole, indivisible, delivered via blood and toil of our worthy ancestors. They, Too, are a property.

We have a property in our own lives, a property most dear, and precious, for without that life we may enjoy no other property. We have a property in our liberty, for without that liberty, the enjoyment of our life is limited and restrained to that of the basest serf in a feudal land. We have a right within our property, as well, for without the right to property, we cannot have the property inherent in the other two rights. The fourth right is equally important, the right to defend life, liberty, and property against all takers.

But we also have a right to sue, in court of law, against all takers of our intangible property, and if necessary, to defend them. If a man attempts to restrain us against our will, it is an assault and battery. If a man stirs up a majority, and passes legislation to do the same, it is no less an assault and battery upon the individual thus restrained.

The court has repeatedly found that limiting the idea of punishment to that which seizes life, liberty and property only is false. Lesser assaults, bills of pains and penalties, are also attainder. Some of those bills and laws, refer to past acts in their establishment, and are no less attainder.

Punishment is any thing that sets the individual at a separate burden of law. While in the prison, for the protection of prisoners and others, you are restrained in the exercise of your rights for the time of the sentence. This, and the isolation from the society that you have wronged, is part of the punishment. Punishment as well as being retributive may be preventative, in order to bring about a desired prevention of the repeat of the act. It may be a separation from society, a mark placed upon the individual to forever set them apart from civilization.

Attaint, attinctus, blackened, or stained... no longer fit for society, set apart by the mark, society feels no further obligation to the individuals thus attained, save to see them executed.

Punishment is not a power of legislature. It can set guidelines, it is the judge, and jury that determine the nature of punishment, even to the point of defying the judge, and legislature themselves.

The court is not, and has never been, bound to accept the excuses the legislature gives for restriction. A setting of separate burdens of law, creation of crimes that for no other class of citizen is crime, an establishment of laws restricting where one may work, live, educate one's self, and how and where one must believe, all are punishment. They are taking rights which are irrevocably the individual's.

Restrictions upon the use of private property are also punishment. It is not a crime to use the property as one sees fit, so long as there is no danger to human life or the neighbor's property. There is no right to restrict one's neighbor's property to retain your own property value. If one chooses to destroy the value of their own property, that is their choice.

There is a right in our own sovereignty, a right to our own self-willed choosing of the future, a right that is, indeed, even the foundation of our right to life, liberty, and property. (Chisholm v. Georgia).

We have the right to have, and maintain, the best, and most-limited government for the purpose of maintaining those rights, and to alter or abolish those governments if they go out of bounds.

We have no right to try to restrict the rights of others, for any reason, by our own hands, or the hands of the government. It is no less punishment, and in many ways a far more insidious and damaging one, to use the force of government to steal that which you wish, than to use your own hands to murder, to pillage, or to enslave.

One might ask themselves... if I allow the removal of rights for those I do not like... how many do not like me? How many may be brought, by lies, or by confusion, by malice or fraud, to dislike me?

It is that security in rights that is part of the general welfare, and the purpose of government itself. We punish for violations of those rights of life, liberty, property, and the myriad other rights which are also property. The right to have an opinion is equally a property as your home, your land, and your body. The right to speak that opinion without reserve, is equally a right, not to be subject to a man's offense, but only for those things spoken and written to be knowingly, maliciously and damagingly untrue.

We have a right to self-defense, a right to worship, to believe, to walk down the street and breathe clean air. So long as you leave every other person the same right, it is a right. One does not have a right to pollute public lands, for the enjoyment of those lands, pristine, is a right. One does not have a right to kill others, except in self-defense, for the enjoyment of that life is also a right.

Punishment, therefore, cannot be simply those things that restrict life, liberty, and property, but those things that restrict, and damage those things which make the life, liberty, and property worth exercising dominion and control over. The properties of one's labor, the properties inherent in one's ideas and consciousness, the properties inherent in that very essence of the pursuit of happiness.

We do not have the right to have happiness delivered to us... we only have the right to pursuit, capturing it is up to us.

The congress has no rights, only powers, and none of those powers allow them to determine those upon whom the law is to land, but only general legislation is allowed. (U.S. v Brown.)

I may indeed be a total idiot... but at least I admit it. I still see these things clearly. I may not be an idiot in the nature of language and thought, but I approach things from ignorance and logic.

I sometimes wish, that there were more idiots out there that would.

It may have a salutory effect upon understanding to read the words of Chisholm v. Georgia, , Cummings V. Missouri, Ex Parte Garland, Aptheker v Secretary of State, and U.S. v Brown.

Who owns the nation?

2010-05-18T06:52:00.000-07:00

One of the stickiest issues of current legal thinking is that of sovereignty and ownership. The federal government maintains that it is the sovereign, and that the states and people serve it. The states maintain that the federal government and people are the servant.

Which view is correct? How do we determine it? Perhaps the best explanation was given in a very old court case, Chisholm v. Georgia.

The same feudal ideas run through all their jurisprudence, and constantly remind us of the distinction between the Prince and the subject. No such ideas obtain here; at the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the people, and they are truly the sovereigns of the country, but they are sovereigns without subjects (unless the African slaves among us may be so called), and have none to govern but themselves; the citizens of America are equal as fellow citizens, and as joint tenants in the sovereignty.

— CHISHOLM V. GEORGIA, 2 U. S. 419 (1793)

The real answer, it appears, is neither of the above. The states and federal government belong to the sovereign, each of us individually holding that shared sovereignty.

We have no right to give it up, for ourselves or others. Sovereignty is not something that can be given or taken away, it is an inalienable property. It is something that holds itself outside of law, for it is the founder of law.

We are each lords, with sovereign powers in our own rights. This does not extend to the power to remove sovereignty from the persons of others, nor does it extend to the power to, with impunity, disarm and make war against others. It extends to the right to defend the self from any unprovoked attack, no matter who the aggressor is, and the right to maintain that sovereignty with any power that is at our disposal.

We cannot simultaneously own the government, and have created it, and have it own us. One or the other will struggle to dominance... and we are inattentive in our defenses against the government.

When we consider the nature and the theory of our institutions of government, the principles upon which they are supposed to rest, and review the history of their development, we are constrained to conclude that they do not mean to leave room for the play and action of purely personal and arbitrary power. Sovereignty itself is, of course, not subject to law, for it is the author and source of law; but in our system, while sovereign powers are delegated to the agencies of government, sovereignty itself remains with the people, by whom and for whom all government exists and acts. And the law is the definition and limitation of power. It is, indeed, quite true that there must always be lodged somewhere, and in some person or body, the authority of final decision; and in many cases of mere administration, the responsibility is purely political, no appeal lying except to the ultimate tribunal of the public judgment, exercised either in the pressure of opinion, or by means of the suffrage. But the fundamental rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, considered as individual possessions, are secured by those maxims of constitutional law which are the monuments showing the victorious progress of the race in securing to men the blessings of civilization under the reign of just and equal laws, so that, in the famous language of the Massachusetts bill of rights, the government of the commonwealth 'may be a government of laws and not of men.' For the very idea that one man may be compelled to hold his life, or the means of living, or any material right essential to the enjoyment of life, at the mere will of another, seems to be intolerable in any country where freedom prevails, as being the essence of slavery itself.

YICK WO v. HOPKINS, 118 U.S. 356 (1886)

Our rights are a property. They are our gifts, given from our ancestors, to be passed down, well-honed and ready for use, to our children, maintained for our neighbors, kept bright and in good repair for newcomers into the society. Those rights of sovereignty belong, not merely to American citizens, but to any person that enters the nation. Along with those rights come duties to respect the sovereignty of others.

One might ask why I say rights themselves are a property. A property, in the strictest sense, is not an object, but a right to an object. it is a right to dominion, and control of an object. While property may involve dimunition, severance, and dissolution, inalienable properties cannot have those powers justly exercised. The right to an object in which you hold value, if that object be tangible or an idea, is property. It was for this reason that the civil court system was established, to offer recourse beyond the laws of war, beyond the powers of men and courts.

That essence of recourse is what made our country prosper. For the first time in history, property was sacrosanct, not because of law, but because to seize a property without just recompense was prohibited. Outside of that recourse, where it was not available, is the state of war, where man reverts to his individual sovereignty.

And hence it is that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life. For I have reason to conclude that he who would get me into his power without my consent would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for nobody can desire to have me in his absolute power unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom - i.e. make me a slave. To be free from such force is the only security of my preservation, and reason bids me look on him as an enemy to my preservation who would take away that freedom which is the fence to it; so that he who makes an attempt to enslave me thereby puts himself into a state of war with me. He that in the state of Nature would take away the freedom that belongs to any one in that state must necessarily be supposed to have a design to take away everything else, that freedom being the foundation of all the rest; as he that in the state of society would take away the freedom belonging to those of that society or commonwealth must be supposed to design to take away from them everything else, and so be looked on as in a state of war.
This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief who has not in the least hurt him, nor declared any design upon his life, any farther than by the use of force, so to get him in his power as to take away his money, or what he pleases, from him; because using force, where he has no right to get me into his power, let his pretence be what it will, I have no reason to suppose that he who would take away my liberty would not, when he had me in his power, take away everything else. And, therefore, it is lawful for me to treat him as one who has put himself into a state of war with me - i.e., kill him if I can; for to that hazard does he justly expose himself whoever introduces a state of war, and is aggressor in it.
9. And here we have the plain difference between the state of Nature and the state of war, which however some men have confounded, are as far distant as a state of peace, good will, mutual assistance, and preservation; and a state of enmity, malice, violence and mutual destruction are one from another. Men living together according to reason without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of Nature. But force, or a declared design of force upon the person of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war; and it is the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even against an aggressor, though he be in society and a fellow subject. Thus, a thief whom I cannot harm, but by appeal to the law, for having stolen all that I am worth, I may kill when he sets on me to rob me but of my horse or coat, because the law, which was made for my preservation, where it cannot interpose to secure my life from present force, which if lost is capable of no reparation, permits me my own defence and the right of war, a liberty to kill the aggressor, because the aggressor allows not time to appeal to our common judge, nor the decision of the law, for remedy in a case where the mischief may be irreparable. Want of a common judge with authority puts all men in a state of Nature; force without right upon a man's person makes a state of war both where there is, and is not, a common judge.

-- John Locke, Second Treatise on government, On the State of War.

Indeed, it was James Madison, one of the Framers of the constitution that stated:

In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandize, or money is called his property. In the latter sense, a man has property in his opinions and the free communication of them. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them. He has property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties or his possessions. Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, though from an opposite cause.

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.

Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and inalienable right. To guard a man's house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man's conscience which is more sacred than his castle.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property.

-- James Madison, property and liberty

And what recourses do we have? There, in the most fundamental term, are four.

The Soap Box, the Ballot Box, the Jury Box, and the Cartridge box.

This trite statement, sadly, has its accuracy in the blood with which it has been forged. The soap box, the right to convince others of the truth of your statements, and the power to speak freely of your ideas without reserve.

The ballot box, the ability to vote your just laws into existence, without diminishing the sovereignty of others.

The Jury box, the ability to nullify the law where it is outside the constitution, and act as the conscience of society. To try both the facts, and the law of the case, to remove disproportionate punishment, and abolish arbitrary legislation.

And the cartridge box... for when there is no other recourse, and any person attempts to get you bound down, helpless, for the operation of their arbitrary will.

Each of these are in danger.. the government claims the power to remove each of them for the commission of crime. It simultaneously determines what things are crimes within the nation.

Something to think about.

If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.

-- Samuel Adams

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.

-- Samuel Adams.

... whenever the Legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience ... [Power then] devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty, and, by the Establishment of a new Legislative (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own Safety and Security, which is the end for which they are in Society.

-- John Locke

If you think these things do not affect you... I pity you.

It is the good fortune of many to live distant from the scene of sorrow; the evil is not sufficiently brought to their doors to make them feel the precariousness with which all American property is possessed. But let our imaginations transport us for a few moments to Boston, that seat of wretchedness will teach us wisdom, and instruct us for ever to renounce a power in whom we can have no trust. The inhabitants of that unfortunate city, who but a few months ago were in ease and affluence, have now no other alternative than to stay and starve, or turn out to beg. Endangered by the fire of their friends if they continue within the city, and plundered by the soldiery if they leave it. In their present condition they are prisoners without the hope of redemption, and in a general attack for their relief, they would be exposed to the fury of both armies.

Men of passive tempers look somewhat lightly over the offenses of Britain, and, still hoping for the best, are apt to call out, Come we shall be friends again for all this. But examine the passions and feelings of mankind. Bring the doctrine of reconciliation to the touchstone of nature, and then tell me, whether you can hereafter love, honor, and faithfully serve the power that hath carried fire and sword into your land? If you cannot do all these, then are you only deceiving yourselves, and by your delay bringing ruin upon posterity. Your future connection with Britain, whom you can neither love nor honor, will be forced and unnatural, and being formed only on the plan of present convenience, will in a little time fall into a relapse more wretched than the first. But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, Hath your house been burnt? Hath you property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and can still shake hands with the murderers, then are you unworthy the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant.

This is not inflaming or exaggerating matters, but trying them by those feelings and affections which nature justifies, and without which, we should be incapable of discharging the social duties of life, or enjoying the felicities of it. I mean not to exhibit horror for the purpose of provoking revenge, but to awaken us from fatal and unmanly slumbers, that we may pursue determinately some fixed object. It is not in the power of Britain or of Europe to conquer America, if she do not conquer herself by delay and timidity. The present winter is worth an age if rightly employed, but if lost or neglected, the whole continent will partake of the misfortune; and there is no punishment which that man will not deserve, be he who, or what, or where he will, that may be the means of sacrificing a season so precious and useful.

It is repugnant to reason, to the universal order of things, to all examples from the former ages, to suppose, that this continent can longer remain subject to any external power. The most sanguine in Britain does not think so. The utmost stretch of human wisdom cannot, at this time compass a plan short of separation, which can promise the continent even a year's security. Reconciliation is was a fallacious dream. Nature hath deserted the connection, and Art cannot supply her place. For, as Milton wisely expresses, "never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep."

Every quiet method for peace hath been ineffectual. Our prayers have been rejected with disdain; and only tended to convince us, that nothing flatters vanity, or confirms obstinacy in kings more than repeated petitioning- and nothing hath contributed more than that very measure to make the kings of Europe absolute: Witness Denmark and Sweden. Wherefore since nothing but blows will do, for God's sake, let us come to a final separation, and not leave the next generation to be cutting throats, under the violated unmeaning names of parent and child.

--Thomas Paine. Common sense, 1775

So long as injustice exists within the society, it will come to your doorstep. The longer the wildfire burns, the more tenacious, the more powerful it grows. When fanned into the flames of war, can we stop it any longer, or are we but kindling in its path?

We all have the responsibility, the duty, and the right to stop this before it grows to that point. Have we failed in that duty?

I wouldn't know. I'm a total idiot.

The true enemy of the nation, and your liberties.

2010-04-30T05:41:00.000-07:00

I keep hearing people asking on the street of late, what the hell happened to our country? The answer is fairly simple, if one is willing to hear it.

What has happened to our country, at its deepest level, is a simple issue of unequal law. Our nation was founded, and operated on the principles of general law in greater or lesser extents, but has never fully operated within the principle established within the attainder clause (article 1, section 9 and 10) in the Constitution.

The nature of law is a principle of force, and in that principle it operates. It does not cajole, it does not lead, it simply forces people into its path, and leaves in its wake destroyed lives, and destroyed homes. It is an essence of force, the power by which the majority often controls the minority, and the power by which slaves were made and maintained.

But it is a truth, a truth that may be denied, may be ignored, and may be mocked, but a truth none the less, that the only way slavery could be maintained was via the action of unequal law. Some would have to have different laws applied than others. With great irony, it was the British that pointed out this fallacy within our law, within their letters to each other, and it was recognized by the founders as a problem. It was not corrected until far after the time allocated for its correction.

And yet, today, we still have unequal law. We still have persons forced, by power of law, to be unable to leave or enter places, where others may legally enter and leave.

This is a far cry from the ideal of 'one law for all' 'equal under the law' 'inalienable rights'.

Unequal law is furthered in three major methods of unequal application, to wit: the power of the law to define the law in a way that affects a group, the power to execute the law unequally, and the power of the law to apply the punishment unequally.

Each of these cases were specifically prohibited. Each of them had specific recourse granted. But each of them still exists today, and recourse has been placed farther and farther from our hands, for reasons of lack of means, and lack of time.

Unequal law is the essence of arbitrary law. It is the very definition of that material, arbitrary law wherein there is no rhyme nor reason to the law, no pattern, and the law itself may fluctuate before any man knows the change.

The purpose of the limitations of government was to establish a system that prevent unknowable, arbitrary law, and thereby prevented the oldest recourse of all, re-establishing a government by force. That original right of self-defense was to be guarded from all takers, precisely to prevent the government from growing powerful enough... to take the other rights with impunity.

We have a protected property interest in that equal law. It is a thing, a physical property which has no possibility of a set value, and thus the only recourse is to restore it.

It is best said by Yick Wo v Hopkins:

When we consider the nature and the theory of our institutions of government, the principles upon which they are sup- [118 U.S. 356, 370] posed to rest, and review the history of their development, we are constrained to conclude that they do not mean to leave room for the play and action of purely personal and arbitrary power. Sovereignty itself is, of course, not subject to law, for it is the author and source of law; but in our system, while sovereign powers are delegated to the agencies of government, sovereignty itself remains with the people, by whom and for whom all government exists and acts. And the law is the definition and limitation of power. It is, indeed, quite true that there must always be lodged somewhere, and in some person or body, the authority of final decision; and in many cases of mere administration, the responsibility is purely political, no appeal lying except to the ultimate tribunal of the public judgment, exercised either in the pressure of opinion, or by means of the suffrage. But the fundamental rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, considered as individual possessions, are secured by those maxims of constitutional law which are the monuments showing the victorious progress of the race in securing to men the blessings of civilization under the reign of just and equal laws, so that, in the famous language of the Massachusetts bill of rights, the government of the commonwealth 'may be a government of laws and not of men.' For the very idea that one man may be compelled to hold his life, or the means of living, or any material right essential to the enjoyment of life, at the mere will of another, seems to be intolerable in any country where freedom prevails, as being the essence of slavery itself.

There are many illustrations that might be given of this truth, which would make manifest that it was self-evident in the light of our system of jurisprudence. The case of the political franchise of voting is one. Though not regarded strictly as a natural right, but as a privilege merely conceded by society, according to its will, under certain conditions, nevertheless it is regarded as a fundamental political right, because preservative of all rights. In reference to that right, it was declared by the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts, in Capen v. Foster, 12 Pick. 485, 488, in the words of Chief Justice SHAW, 'that in all [118 U.S. 356, 371] cases where the constitution has conferred a political right or privilege, and where the constitution has not particularly designated the manner in which that right is to be exercised, it is clearly within the just and constitutional limits of the legislative power to adopt any reasonable and uniform regulations, in regard to the time and mode of exercising that right, which are designed to secure and facilitate the exercise of such right in a prompt, orderly, and convenient manner;' nevertheless, 'such a construction would afford no warrant for such an exercise of legislative power as, under the pretense and color of regulating, should subvert or injuriously restrain, the right itself.' It has accordingly been held generally in the states that whether the particular provisions of an act of legislation establishing means for ascertaining the qualifications of those entitled to vote, and making previous registration in lists of such, a condition precedent to the exercise of the right, were or were not reasonable regulations, and accordingly valid or void, was always open to inquiry, as a judicial question. See Daggett v. Hudson, 3 N. E. Rep. 538, decided by the supreme court of Ohio, where many of the cases are collected; Monroe v. Collins, 17 Ohio St. 666.

Where are we going in our society? If it be, by fear, fraud, or mistake, further to unequal law... it would seem we make our own hell to live within.

What is a right?

2010-03-25T18:54:00.000-07:00

What is a right? This question has been asked thousands of times over the course of history, been debated by philosophers and far wiser men than this total idiot, and, forgive me if I should parrot their arguments without going too deeply into them. The nature of rights was discussed by some of the greatest liberty-minded men, and equally discussed by the greatest despots.

There are those that insist rights lie in the majority, that it is the will of the majority that establishes and creates rights. This will, this power, ideally benefits the majority more than it inconveniences the minority. This is the nature of pure democracy, the power of the majority determining what all will receive, for better or ill.

This document, however, discusses rights in the nature of a constitutionally limited republic, under the common-law tradition, as understood and argued by the founders of the United States government. Rights in this system are not things established or created by social contract, not placed under the heel of the majority or minority, but discussed as intangible, but vital property. One of these rights, in fact, is a circular one, a right to have property... as well as an essential property within that right. Rights, in this system of government, are individual, existing even outside of the majority.

To understand rights, therefore, one must understand the nature of property. A property, in the loosest sense, is anything in which the individual or society places value. Any property has several essences, the first, dominion, the second control, and the third disposition. Some properties are considered inalienable, properties protected even from the action of the owner, prohibited from transfer by any means, including by consent. Other properties are considered to be alienable, capable of being transferred. There are properties in fee-simple arrangements, in arrangements of trust, of lease, and more complex contractual estate and escrow.

The essence of property is something that one has a right to, and has dominion and control over, something that one places value within, and that one has increased with his or her work. Property is not the thing, it is the right within the thing.

This seems yet another circular argument, but remember that one of our rights is to have property, and, as Madison said, also a property in our rights. This right to property in rights, is the very right to have rights. It is an inalienable property, as we establish the value ourselves, and according to our effort, defend that value. The right to have property, and the right to have rights, may well be the essence of the argument.

We have a right to live, a right shored up by the arguments of our founders, and the works of Manegold, John of Salisbury, and many of the philosophers. That right was bound within the Declaration of Independence, and recognized by the Common Law and the Constitution and laws of the states. We could not commit murder without depriving another of that right, and for that loss of right, we forfeited our own lives. We could not steal the property of others without losing that property, and making just recompense from our own for any dimunition of it. We could not take things from another's property, without recompense. If we took wood from the property of another and made it into furniture, the wood must be paid for in a fair market value, but the property within our labor remains ours.

Perhaps the best definition of a right is a property interest that leaves all others to enjoy the same property, without dimunition. If one takes the right to breathe, all others share that same right. If one chooses to defend his or her home against those who would take it, he or she still leaves all others that same right. If a person takes another person's property, he does not leave the other the same right within their property. If a person takes another person's life... he cannot give just recompense for that life.

A right, therefore, to be a right, must be something that allows all others the same use of the same right. The right to have, own, and protect property, for instance, is not the same as a right in any given property, but is a right to the property of one's own opinions, one's own hands, and one's own work. If this leads to property in a real, tangible sense, than it is a right to dominion and control over that property.

We have the right to live our lives in a way that does not diminish the lives of others. We have the right to property. We have the right to liberty, for liberty leaves all with the same enjoyment of rights. We have the right to equality under the law, without regard to our station, without regard to our past, without regard to any status humanity may place upon us. That is liberty. We have the right to property, so long as we leave others the same right. We have the right to defend all of the above against all takers, so long as we leave others free to do the same.

The moment we restrict those rights of another, our own are fundamentally insecure. We are outside of our rights when we choose to limit what rights another may exercise, while still enjoying that right ourselves.

At that moment it ceases to be a right, for we are diminishing the rights of others.

There are established ways and means of suspending these rights, as punishment for a crime until the sentence is complete. This is the means of judge and jury, as well as having the jury know the full punishment for the crime the person is being charged with. The jury is the full arbiter of both the facts in the case, the law in the case, and the moderator against the excesses of the legislature.

That is a social right, the right to a fair and speedy trial. It is likewise a right to have the punishment be of limited, express scope, and only for a very limited period of time.

Otherwise, what happens? We may make laws applicable to some, but not to others. This is called attainder. When the legislature determines those upon whom the law is to operate, rather than making general laws, attainder applies. The only just and applicable power applies to all, regardless of situation, equally.

That is the rule of law. It does not matter if the law is criminal or civil, if it only applies to some, it is attainder. It does not matter what the past of the individual is, if the court, and jury adjudicate that the person is to be limited, that is within the powers of the jury, not the powers of the legislature.

Given this power, the legislature makes monopolies rise, benefits their friends at the expense of the general public, and creates scapegoats to take the aggression and attention of the people from their own misdeeds. They give handouts on one hand, take things on another, and exempt themselves from their own laws.

This can never be beneficial to a society, even in the short run. It destroys the government, destroys the respect in the rule of law, and the nature of law. It can never be allowed to gain foothold and flourish in our constitutional republic, and even the states themselves are prohibited from exercising such powers.

But do the protections still exist? Look around you. Even this total idiot sees what has been done. Are you willing to see?

Universal health insurance?

2010-03-24T10:14:00.000-07:00

I am a total idiot. Being such, one must ask questions that may seem foolish to the outside individual, in my maundering, mouldering mind lost in untrammeled paths, ceding sense by the moment. I am a being of contradictions and paradoxes, and in my foolishness believe logic must be used to find the truth.

That being aside, the congress has just passed a bill that, in their own language, purports to extend an explicit right. Such a thing is within the power of the congress, to recognize and protect the rights of the people, however, I have wondered if they have fully thought out the nature of such a right.

The maintenance of rights is, and remains, by recognition of numerous court cases and the founder’s own papers, the purpose of government. The preservation of those rights against all takers is paramount in the nature of the social compact, and the essence of the republic.

Rights, by their nature, cannot come into conflict. If two rights appear to come into conflict, the one of them cannot be any right at all, but merely the illusion of a right.

Such, to this idiot’s mind, seems to be the case of health care. The essence of rights is that no person may have a right for which they must ask permission prior to use, gain authorization, make amends or payment. The exercise of that right must be left to the discretion of the user. Rights in the original sense, in the unalienable and fundamental sense, are not established by social contract, but by the innate nature of the human being.

We have the fundamental right to our own lives, our own properties, our own liberty, and our own ability to protect the above. Without regard to laws that purport to modify it, or to restrict it, these were the reasons for the creation of government.

From the Jehova’s Witnesses, to the cases of laundries in San Francisco, we’ve had many court cases establishing that right as a property, eligible for suit within the courts of law. Yick Wo v Hopkins went so far as to state:

When we consider the nature and the theory of our institutions of government, the principles upon which they are supposed to rest, and review the history of their development, we are constrained to conclude that they do not mean to leave room for the play and action of purely personal and arbitrary power. Sovereignty itself is, of course, not subject to law, for it is the author and source of law; but, in our system, while sovereign powers are delegated to the agencies of government, sovereignty itself remains with the people, by whom and for whom all government exists and acts. And the law is the definition and limitation of power. It is, indeed, quite true that there must always be lodged somewhere, and in some person or body, the authority of final decision, and in many cases of mere administration, the responsibility is purely political, no appeal lying except to the ultimate tribunal of the public judgment, exercised either in the pressure of opinion or by means of the suffrage. But the fundamental rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, considered as individual possessions, are secured by those maxims of constitutional law which are the monuments showing the victorious progress of the race in securing to men the blessings of civilization under the reign of just and equal laws, so that, in the famous language of the Massachusetts Bill of Rights, the government of the commonwealth "may be a government of laws, and not of men." For the very idea that one man may be compelled to hold his life, or the means of living, or any material right essential to the enjoyment of life at the mere will of another seems to be intolerable in any country where freedom prevails, as being the essence of slavery itself.

The judgment within the Jehova’s Witnesses cases was similar.

We think that the ordinance is invalid on its face. Whatever the motive which induced its adoption, its character is such that it strikes at the very foundation of the freedom of the press by subjecting it to license and censorship. The struggle for the freedom of the press was primarily directed against the power of the licensor. It was against that power that John Milton directed his assault by his 'Appeal for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing.' And the liberty of the press became initially a right to publish 'without a license what formerly could be published only with one.' 1 While this freedom from previous restraint upon publication cannot be regarded as exhausting the guaranty of liberty, the prevention of that restraint was a leading purpose in the adoption of the [303 U.S. 444, 452] constitutional provision. See Patterson v. Colorado, 205 U.S. 454, 462 , 27 S.Ct. 556, 10 Ann.Cas. 689; Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 , 713-716, 51 S.Ct. 625, 630; Grosjean v. American Press Company, 297 U.S. 233, 245 , 246 S., 56 S.Ct. 444, 447. Legislation of the type of the ordinance in question would restore the system of license and censorship in its baldest form.

If it is a right, one cannot license it, one cannot put limitations upon the places or means with which one utilizes to exercise the right, save those that are directly injurious to others. One cannot place a right within a box, and then determine the means by which it may be lawfully exercised, after taxation, nor may it establish that the exerciser may be limited by prior action. The right is universal, not to be licensed, sold, or taxed, and unlimited in both scope and bearing. It is a property subject to judicial suit for its lack.

One cannot presuppose doctors will work for free, nor donate their hours, their lives, and their time to that which does not give them gain, or even food upon which to live. Their investment of time is their own property. One cannot require someone to give their property, even for the greater good, without just recompense. To do so would be, as Yick Wo v Hopkins said, ‘nothing less than the essence of slavery itself’. To tax for the exercise of a right is also not congruent with the nature of a right. It is a licensure, and but for that licensure, a procurement or use of that right would automatically be unlawful.

One side or the other must fall. Either the doctor’s property in their own lives is immaterial, or the people’s right to health care is not a right at all. One cannot force a doctor to labour with no recompense without falling under the thirteenth amendment prohibition against slavery, an absolute prohibition extended and expanded under the 1957 treaty for the abolition of slavery, and institutions like slavery.

Where two rights appear to conflict, one right is no right at all. The right of property within the doctor's own life conflicts with the supposed right to universal health care. While one can recognize the 'right' to universal health care... the doctors do not have to provide. To force them to provide is just another means of servitude.

Where a legislative right comes up against an absolute, human right, the legislative right must fall.

Furthermore, any right under the constitutional mandate is not merely extended to citizens, but by, and under international law, extended to all who operate and live within our borders. This was recognized as late as 1910. The legislature does not have the power to alter this. If there is a right to health care, all must receive the same care, from the richest to the poorest, and all have the right to the best health care, medications, and treatment available for their problem.

No matter where they are from.

For free. Forever.

When a legislative, or executive panel determines the nature, the quantity, and the allowable costs of health care, it cannot be a right. It cannot be that a panel can defer responsibility for their decisions in a patient’s care to a doctor who is under duress to follow their orders, allowing malpractice suits upon the doctor rather than the panel.

No doctor could knowingly operate in such a fashion and still be ethical. They must give the best care, the best treatment, and the best, and most appropriate decisions for their patient’s care. To say a panel can determine what is ‘best’ and the doctor is left holding the responsibility for their decisions is also a matter of involuntary servitude.

Moreover, there can be no delay in the exercise of an established right. The right must be available immediately, and in its final form, not in the form of the choosing of the legislature. Not in four years... today.

If it is a 'right to health insurance', rather than a 'right to health care', the people should have the choice of exercising the right, or not... just as they choose to exercise the right to alter or abolish their government... or not.

As wonderful as the idea of total health insurance appears on paper, this total idiot, at least, recognizes that the only way to accomplish it is to force labor in their behalf, to ration it to those ‘deserving’ of care, and to actually create a far worse fiasco than if the system were left alone with all of its issues. It would actually be better for the nation if full deregulation took place than if we attempt to, by legislative fiat, determine that nature of care without regard to the human lives involved.

But what do I know? I’m a total idiot.

Our most valuable property

2010-03-15T17:41:00.000-07:00

Our nation shudders to the core when heinous crimes occur, and again when news of their terrible import reaches our ears. We are right to be angry, within our rights to direct that anger, and well within our rights to try to fix the problem.

Anger is a powerful force, one wrought in the deepest essence of the human soul, where in our pride, our fear, and our fury we eke our our vengeance upon those bodies that have brought us wrong.

Anger, and the associated vengeance are both necessary, and to some limited extents, healthy. They are survival essences wrought in the forge of the universe, winnowed and sharpened by time, and targeted to eliminate problems with brutal force where needed.

But is it applicable to the problem of heinous crimes? Certainly, those who violate the laws of society bear the condemnation of those very laws. Certainly, as well, we have the right and duty to see to it that justice is carried out.

But even that right and duty is limited in the nature of crimes. While we may restrict the individual from actions, within the confines of the law, we cannot restrict individuals who have not created a new crime. Those restrictions are forbidden us.

It is for the preservation of rights that we have entered into society, the preservation of the essence of that which it is to be human. A tree cannot have rights, nor can a stone, nor a machine that cannot think. We, the human being, the thinking beings have those rights.

They are not something, by tradition, to be picked up or laid down by others, and some rights were so all-compelling that they could not even be laid down rightfully or justly by our own hands, nor stolen by the hands of others, including the hands of the law.

It is, and has always been an act of war to use force to take that which is not yours. The limited interpretation of the law today cannot change that, cannot alter the fundamental purpose of the law itself.

Our greatest property of all is not our land, nor our liberty, nor our lives, nor even the thoughts in our own mind, but is, rather, the very right to have rights. That essence is core to human thought, human behavior and perception, and the very essence of our right to property... the right to sue, or if necessary, to make war to preserve that very right to have property. The right to life, the right to liberty, and the right to defend that property all reinforce the intimate essence of the property within our selves, and in that which we think, perceive, and create.

It is an essence so intertwined in who we are, that we cannot lay it down justly. We have the power, the right, the authority to protect that right with whatever means we may, should the courts fail to preserve them against takers.

That is the very substance of the Second Amendment, and those Bills of Rights through the ages: A method of preserving an intimate, irrevocable, property for which no price, no lien, no attainder, nor alienation may be allowed.

After all... should you vote to remove those inalienable properties of others.. how long until your own are removed?

Without those rights to property, and the means to defend them against all takers, are we human, or have we become property to be disposed of as well?

I am a total idiot, but how may one resist acts of war, without a force sufficient to counter the barbarians? This idiot... wonders.

Hermetic jargon and the drift of understanding

2010-02-18T06:05:00.000-08:00

I have read, with admiration, Tennekes letter on Hermetic Jargon, and it follows quite closely with some observations I had made, though states it far better than my own poor power to add or detract. It did, however, bring to this poor idiot's mind some febrile maunderings that wandered through unlit halls for a few moments, bouncing off dusty neural pathways, then tumbling to my feet, bruised and dusty from their long journey.

Tennekes, with his comparison of hermetic jargon to the tower of Babel, may have struck upon something curious, a meta-state of communication. As research grows more specialized, it also grows more separate. The mental act of 'reaching toward creation', or toward God,(to use the biblical term) requires that specialization, due to the sheer amount of knowledge that is required to understand the initial states of things from the present state. However, human nature throws up walls to communication, to protect their secrets, their research, and their understanding from others, to some extent, as well as to conceptualize and compartmentalize the ideas in ways that can be understood by others of the field. Specializations within the field do much the same, protecting their demesne with lines of language. Eventually the whole fractures under its own weight.

This was an interesting concept to me, and also lead into my fascination with history, language, and the nature of law. Contracts are designed in such a way that the terms of the contract are set 'in stone' without substantial alteration and renegotiation of the contract. The terms of the contract are written in such manner that all parties involved understand the nature of the terms, or are explained in ancillary documents that hold the common, or 'lay' explanation of the contract itself. In the case of the constitution, these would be the Federalist Papers.

Law, like science, has its own disciplines, its own trenched earthworks to try to keep the lay person at bay, its own language, its own concepts which, whilst easily understood, seem arcane to the layperson. The terms of replevin, fee-simple obligations, tortfeasance, lessors, and such seem like another world entirely. But each has concepts irrevocably imbued within them, and concepts that can usually be readily defined.

One of the curious studies my idiotic mind has wandered into is the drift of language within the legal profession itself. It's curious to me how the terms have evolved across the centuries, from the system under the Magna Carta and William and Mary of Orange, to the revolution, to today. We have evolved what is literally a monopoly over the law, with wandering priests (attorneys) trying to tell us what the law is, with unique terms and language to protect the higher orders, with its own internal hidden knowledge and a high fee for entry.

Was this always the way? I cannot say that it was. The founders intended that any person be able to both practice law, and to speak it, to interpret it, as it was written. The terms of the contract (for such the Constitution was, a contract between the people binding the states to a new federal government, setting down limits for that government, and establishing the powers thereof, and limits of the states under the government, the consideration involved being the preservation of rights preexisting the Constitution, in exchange for the powers to preserve those rights) were set down at the time in stone, with specific legal meanings, corresponding to the common knowledge of the meaning at the time, explained by those Federalist Papers and Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England.

Why does this tie in with Hermetic Jargon? What happens when one controls the learning of the terms at the time, and maintains a monopoly over not just the law, but the practice and interpretation of law? Can one not, at that moment, cause a drift in definition, deliberate or accidental according to the whims and biases of the interpreter, far, far away from the original intent, as well as the original definition?

The purpose of the Constitution was to set down a single rule of law for all to follow, no matter their situation, their placement in life, their classification or circumstances. The term attainder at the time referred to any law, or act, or ruling or regulation that removed specific properties, including the property of life... the property of liberty, the property of property itself, and the property interest within the ability to defend all of those. From those four touchstones all rights arise.

Attainder was the process by which these were stripped away, by judge or by legislative fiat. Those property rights were sacrosanct, to be only taken where necessity and the public good demanded it, and then only with fair, just compensation at current market value of the property if the Government had not been involved at all. The original attainder took something deceptive.. the right to have property at all, and this was extended to the children under the Corruption of Blood. Without the right to have property, the property in life and liberty no longer existed. The person ceased to be, and was considered blackened, tainted, or stained under the law, and outside of its protection.

The founders intended to end this, forever. Under the laws of England, if the powers had remained, their own lives would be forfeit for attacking the Sovereign. Their properties could be seized, their livestock and chattel seized, or destroyed, and their homes and families disposed of as the crown saw fit.

They proposed a system of just and equal laws, laws which affected everyone equally, without regard for color, for race, or any of the myriad other considerations which affect our law today... but the ideal drifted. The understanding changed, and the interpretation.

Read through the Federalist papers. This idiot did, and it took a great deal of time to begin to understand them. The concepts are simple, deceptively simple.

One law for all, all under the law, all bound equally thereby, all bound not to remove the rights of their neighbors, bound not to cause them harm. For the purpose of those rights, and the preservation thereof, they bound themselves, their neighbors, the people, their friends, and the government to the same iron rule. No targeted law, no legislation designed to harm or benefit any specific class, and forever made sacrosanct those rights.

Crime was about harm. If harm was done, the neighbor had the right to defend against it by the appropriate force. If there were no recourse, and life were in danger, or believed to be, there could be no time to recourse to the law, and so a state of war existed. Once the state of war was ended, and there was time and place for recourse, that state of war ended.

It did not end, however, if the only available means for recourse was through the body of the one making the harm, for there could be no recourse if he were the means of appeal. No man can sit in judgment in his own case, and not be biased toward his own causes.

It leaves this idiot to ask... what recourse may we have against a monopoly on the Law itself, and the means to recourse? What is our recourse when the most interested parties control the gateway to the recourse? How does one obtain recourse when one does not know whom to address it against, or to?

Has hermetic jargon sealed away the Rule of Law from the hands of those that created it?
This idiot... wonders.

Civil law

2010-02-05T09:10:00.000-08:00

Have we forgotten who we are? We stand here, comfortable in our majority, believing and thinking in our rights that they may be removed, and that we may vote for their removal. But yet, logic and reason itself speaks to us from the darkness, begging us to reconsider before the last brick is placed in our sepulcher.

But have we become monsters, to seal away that which is so vital to our cause, the cause of reason, of growth, of logic and humanity? Have we forgotten the greatest lesson of all, that which we make insecure for others, is insecure for ourselves?

People that have transgressed against each other deserve, and require punishment. Punishment, however, to be just must be finite, of clear terms and duration, and without arbitrary or vague action. The nature of punishment is that, to be just, it also must offer mercy, even within the mercy of a swift, painless death for those who have stolen the lives of others.

Punishment may be financial, or it may incarcerate, it may restrict, or restrain. But how often do we convince our politicians to snicker behind their hands, claiming a lack of punishment, when the restrictions go out?

The Rule of Law is simple: That which is legal for one is legal for all. That which is unlawful for one, is unlawful for all. Nothing further needs expounded on this principle.

Licensing anything is saying that, without that license, the actions taken would be unlawful. License derives from the idea that the law applies to some differently than others. So long as the Rule of Law applies, however, one cannot license that which is a right.

So what have we done? We have created registration, not for objects or things that we wish to maintain ownership over, but for human beings. Felon registries, sex offender registries, and denied them a license... for something that is their right. The right to live free, and the right to be left alone are foundational in our nation.

Are we saying that without registration, we would be unlawful to live? Can we make it unlawful for a person to exercise that simple right to be... left alone?

And if so, what does it say about the rights we retain? Should they change that licensing requirement to be general, as the Rule of Law itself requires, what would be your answer to this?

I am, as recognized by both detractors and myself, a total idiot. However, if one looks at this situation, with even a shred of rational thought, one must realize that we as a nation are moving back to a system we thought slain years ago.

Slavery. The slaves license to live was the master's will. The master had arbitrary control over the slave's life, and could execute them if they wished. They could sever families, sever limbs, without fear of punishment or retribution. They often maintained them helpless, took from them the increase of their labor, and ground them, body and soul, into the fields and mines.

Is our system of civil law so much different today? Licensing and modifying the law so some may exercise the rights, but others may not? This creates arbitrary classes which may be redefined at any point, by fear or malice.

I may be a total idiot.. but is this really where we want to go in this country?

The Constitution, and Rule of Law

2010-02-02T07:49:00.001-08:00

The Constitution itself is powerless, we are those who give it power.

The constitution, was, indeed, a paper tiger, but it was a paper tiger with a purpose, to rouse the people, and awaken them to the truths inherent within their own existence. As explained within the Federalist Papers, and contrasted by the fears within the Antifederalist papers, it was also to give the people the teeth to defend what the constitution could not. (1)

This was the purpose for the second amendment. It was, however, argued that all powers prohibited within the Bill of rights were already prohibited under the Federal Constitution (2) If we take this statement at face value, there is only one place where the prohibitions could exist, and that is article 1, sections 9 and 10. If the Bill of Attainder argument is taken to its extent within Blackstone, attainder is also the act of removing rights upon criminal conviction, wherein sentence of death applies.(3) This was the definition of a 'felon' at the time of the founding. If this understanding is assumed (as evidenced by Noah Webster's definition of attainder in the constitutional contract in 1820)(4) then attainder itself was far more prohibitive than most understand.

If the founders are taken to their word as to the prohibitions from anything but general law(5), this is also the only place wherein such prohibition could apply. (6)

The founders had long stated the dangers inherent in targeted laws, in laws designed to give one person (any person) an advantage over all others in law, or to give any person or group a disadvantage.(7)

This has been attempted to be bypassed in civil (regulatory) law.

The term 'civil law' as well, at the time of the founding was different, only dealing with laws of escrow, conflicts between private individuals, tort, estate, and dealing with contracts.(8)

The powers inherent in the Bill of Rights were not created by that document. (9) They were, rather, recognized by it as rights inherent from a prior state of law.(10). Those inherent powers were innate in all citizens, and recognized thus by the law .(11)

Those powers were established as human rights, wherein the human himself was sovereign, and all powers of government derived therefrom(12). All powers not thus established in the Federal government, or given to the states, were retained to the people, all rights were thereby retained by the people as well(13)

Unfortunately, people do not recognize that there is no protected property interest inherent in police protection, nor are they required to protect you. (14).

At that point, the inherent, absolutely vested right to life takes precedence over law. No law may deny that right, nor the comitant right to protect the protected property interest absolutely vested in that life. (15) Even police officers cannot operate in such a way as to endanger that property interest, without causing an assault and battery against the individual. (16 ).

Once an absolute property interest is vested, no subsequent act of legislature may thereby divest it.(17)

Any act of legislature that attempts to divest life, liberty, property, or the means of protection is attainder (18) and can be seen in no other light than as punishment(19) and by the operation of powers prohibited to the government as acts of war(20) and thereby as treason.

The people are the body that comprises the state(21) and moreover the sovereignty of the people themselves establishes and owns the powers of the state and further establishes and creates the powers of the Federal Government that exists to regulate the state (22) and those powers were limited by the federal constitution that instituted and established such a body. (23)

We cannot logically allow our sovereign powers to strip us of our sovereignty, nor may we allow those powers to be utilized to strip others of the protected property interests that were our purpose and intent in allowing the use of that sovereignty to that federal government.(24)

It is no less tyrannical to pretend that for a status imposed by government, and subject to its whims, that the government may force you to remove your ability to protect your property within your own life with or without due process than for anyone to make you into a slave.(25).

It is no less an act of war to use force to establish your control over others, including force to prevent the protection of your life, against any taker, including that federal government, the taker with the most power that could be brought to bear for that goal. (26).

The casus belli of the Revolutionary War were clear(27), and no less pressing nor any less tyrannical than the 'perfectly legal' civil system today. (28).

Those rights are not ours to cede, but belong equally to our children, our children's children, into perpetuity.(29).

The second amendment is our check and balance, as a people, against any government that may choose to exercise tyranny against our bodies, against our wills, and against our sovereignty.(30).

It, too, is our protector against the inclination by others to attack the unarmed, our duty to protect ourselves, our family, our property, our state, our nation, and the constitution upon which it is founded. (31).

We cannot pretend to have a power which we do not have the power to enforce.(32) We cannot pretend to have a right which we do not have the option to maintain, or enforce(33) nor can we say that they are inalienable if by simple redefinition those protected property interests may be seized.

If they are inalienable, we may not give them up, transfer them in whole or in part, transfer their control, their means, or their purpose to any outside body. They are ours, now , and indefinitely, without regard to previous condition of servitude, so long as we are human beings that have not been found by a jury of our peers to be guilty of a crime worthy of the death sentence, and even therein they may find mercy.

We cannot reach back into the past and punish people for past acts, and any restriction, no matter the nature, must be viewed as punishments for those past acts. When the court has spoken, it is far beyond the power of the legislature to add or detract after the fact.(34)
We, as a people, ceded that power and authority, and barred the government from it, as something never to be used again, to preserve the general welfare and flow of society. Any reassumption of such authority is outside of the powers of government, and is equally an act of war, and subjugation.(35)
Final commentary: See 36
Footnotes:
1 Federalist 28:

If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state. In a single state, if the persons intrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair. The usurpers, clothed with the forms of legal authority, can too often crush the opposition in embryo. The smaller the extent of the territory, the more difficult will it be for the people to form a regular or systematic plan of opposition, and the more easy will it be to defeat their early efforts. Intelligence can be more speedily obtained of their preparations and movements, and the military force in the possession of the usurpers can be more rapidly directed against the part where the opposition has begun. In this situation there must be a peculiar coincidence of circumstances to insure success to the popular resistance.
The obstacles to usurpation and the facilities of resistance increase with the increased extent of the state, provided the citizens understand their rights and are disposed to defend them. The natural strength of the people in a large community, in proportion to the artificial strength of the government, is greater than in a small, and of course more competent to a struggle with the attempts of the government to establish a tyranny. But in a confederacy the people, without exaggeration, may be said to be entirely the masters of their own fate. Power being almost always the rival of power, the general government will at all times stand ready to check the usurpations of the state governments, and these will have the same disposition towards the general government. The people, by throwing themselves into either scale, will infallibly make it preponderate. If their rights are invaded by either, they can make use of the other as the instrument of redress. How wise will it be in them by cherishing the union to preserve to themselves an advantage which can never be too highly prized!

2 Federalist 84:

There remains but one other view of this matter to conclude the point. The truth is, after all the declamations we have heard, that the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, A BILL OF RIGHTS. The several bills of rights in Great Britain form its Constitution, and conversely the constitution of each State is its bill of rights. And the proposed Constitution, if adopted, will be the bill of rights of the Union. Is it one object of a bill of rights to declare and specify the political privileges of the citizens in the structure and administration of the government? This is done in the most ample and precise manner in the plan of the convention; comprehending various precautions for the public security, which are not to be found in any of the State constitutions. Is another object of a bill of rights to define certain immunities and modes of proceeding, which are relative to personal and private concerns? This we have seen has also been attended to, in a variety of cases, in the same plan. Adverting therefore to the substantial meaning of a bill of rights, it is absurd to allege that it is not to be found in the work of the convention. It may be said that it does not go far enough, though it will not be easy to make this appear; but it can with no propriety be contended that there is no such thing. It certainly must be immaterial what mode is observed as to the order of declaring the rights of the citizens, if they are to be found in any part of the instrument which establishes the government. And hence it must be apparent, that much of what has been said on this subject rests merely on verbal and nominal distinctions, entirely foreign from the substance of the thing.

3: Blackstone's commentaries on the Laws of England. Blackstone's commentaries were the core of American Jurisprudence, and the second-most-sold book in the Colonies behind the Bible.

WHEN sentence of death, the most terrible and highest judgment in the laws of England, is pronounced, the immediate inseparable consequence by the common law is attainder. For when it is now clear beyond all dispute, that the criminal is no longer fit to live upon the earth, but is to be exterminated as a monster and a bane to human society, the law sets a note of infamy upon him, puts him out of it's protection, and takes no farther care of him than barely to fee him executed. He is then called attaint, attinctus, stained, or blackened. He is no longer of any credit or reputation; he cannot be a witness in any court; neither is he capable of performing the functions of another man: for, by an anticipation of his punishment, he is already dead in law. This is after judgment: for there is great difference between a man convicted, and attainted; though they are frequently through inaccuracy confounded together. After conviction only, a man is liable to none of these disabilities: for there is ftill in contemplation of law a possibility of his innocence. Something may be offered in arrest of judgment: the indictment may be erroneous, which will render his guilt uncertain, and thereupon the present conviction may be quashed: he may obtain a pardon, or be allowed the benefit of clergy; both which suppofe some latent sparks of merit, which plead in extenuation of his fault. But when judgment is once pronounced, both law and fact conspire to prove him completely guilty; and there is not the remotest possibility left of any thing to be said in his favour. Upon judgment therefore of death, and not before, the attainder of a criminal commences: or upon such circumstances as are equivalent to judgment of death; as judgment of outlawry on a capital crime, pronounced for absconding or fleeing from justice, which tacitly confesses the guilt. And therefore either upon judgment of outlawry, or of death, for treason or felony, a man shall be said to be attainted.

THE consequences of attainder are forfeiture, and corruption of blood.

I. FORFEITURE is twofold; of real, and personal, estates. First, as to real estates: by attainder in high treason l a man forfeits to the king all his lands and tenements of inheritance, whether fee-simple or fee-tail, and all his rights of entry on lands and tenements, which he held at the time of the offence committed, or at any time afterwards, to be for ever vested in the crown: and also the profits of all lands and tenements, which he had in his own right for life or years, so long as such interest shall subsist. This forfeiture relates backwards to the time of the treafon committed; fo as to avoid all intermediate sales and incumbrances m, but not those before the fact: and therefore a wife's jointure is not forfeitable for the treason of the husband; because settled upon her previous to the treason committed. But her dower is forfeited, by the express provision of statute 5 & 6 Edw. VI. c. 11. And yet the husband shall be tenant by the curtesy of the wife's lands, if the wife be attainted of treason n: for that is not prohibited by the statute. But, though after attainder the forfeiture relates back to the time of the treason committed, yet it does not take effect unless an attainder be had, of which it is one of the fruits: and therefore, if a traitor dies before judgment pronounced, or is killed in open rebellion, or is hanged by martial law, it works no forfeiture of his lands; for he never was attainted of treason.

4 Webster's Dictionary, 1820 edition

1. Literally a staining, corruption, or rendering impure; a corruption of blood. Hence,
2. The judgment of death, or sentence of a competent tribunal upon a person convicted of treason or felony, which judgment attaints, taints or corrupts his blood, so that he can no longer inherit lands. The consequences of this judgment are, forfeiture of lands, tenements and hereditaments, loss of reputation, and disqualification to be a witness in any court of law. A statute of Parliament attainting a criminal, is called an act of attainder.
Upon the thorough demonstration of which guilt by legal attainder, the feudal covenant is broken.
3. The act of attainting.
An act was made for the attainder of several persons.
Note. by the constitution of the United States, no crime words an attainder.

5 Federalist 57:

I will add, as a fifth circumstance in the situation of the House of Representatives, restraining them from oppressive measures, that they can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interests and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny. If it be asked, what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America, a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.
If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate any thing but liberty.

6 Art 1: sections 9 and 10, U.S. Constitution.

Art 1: Section 9, regarding the Federal government: No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

Art 1: Section 10: Regarding the states.No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

7 Federalist 51:

Second. It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable. The first method prevails in all governments possessing an hereditary or self-appointed authority. This, at best, is but a precarious security; because a power independent of the society may as well espouse the unjust views of the major, as the rightful interests of the minor party, and may possibly be turned against both parties. The second method will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United States. Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority. In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of interests and sects; and this may be presumed to depend on the extent of country and number of people comprehended under the same government. This view of the subject must particularly recommend a proper federal system to all the sincere and considerate friends of republican government, since it shows that in exact proportion as the territory of the Union may be formed into more circumscribed Confederacies, or States oppressive combinations of a majority will be facilitated: the best security, under the republican forms, for the rights of every class of citizens, will be diminished: and consequently the stability and independence of some member of the government, the only other security, must be proportionately increased. Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradnally induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful.

8 The cases of Smith v. Doe, Aptheker v Secretary of State, U.S. V. Lovett, U.S. V Brown, Cummings v. Missouri, Ex parte Garland, Yick wo v. Hopkins.

9: Federalist 83, discussions of the civil versus criminal law in relation to jury, the immiscibility of the two. Tort, escrow, and contract.

10

Instances of the licentious and outrageous behavior of the military conservators of the peace still multiply upon us, some of which are of such nature, and have been carried to such lengths, as must serve fully to evince that a late vote of this town, calling upon its inhabitants to provide themselves with arms for their defense, was a measure as prudent as it was legal: such violences are always to be apprehended from military troops, when quartered in the body of a populous city; but more especially so, when they are led to believe that they are become necessary to awe a spirit of rebellion, injuriously said to be existing therein. It is a natural right which the people have reserved to themselves, confirmed by the Bill of Rights, to keep arms for their own defence; and as Mr. Blackstone observes, it is to be made use of when the sanctions of society and law are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression

Boston, March 17". New York Journal, Supplement: 1, Col.3. April 13, 1769. quoted in Halbrook, Stephen (1989). A Right to Bear Arms: State and Federal Bills of Rights and Constitutional Guarantees

11

"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."

Alexander Hamilton, 23 Feb. 1775
"For the principal aim of society is to protect individuals in the enjoyment of those absolute rights, which were vested in them by the immutable laws of nature; but which could not be preserved in peace without the mutual assistance and intercourse, which is gained by the institution of friendly and social communities. Hence it follows, thay the first and primary end of human laws is to maintain and regulate these absolute rights of individuals."
William Blackstone, Commentaries (1765)

"But the fundamental rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, considered as individual possessions are secured by those maxims of constitutional law which are the monuments showing the victorious progress of the race in securing to men the blessings of civilization under the reign of just and equal laws, so that, in the famous language of the Massachusets Bill of Rights, the government of the commonwealth 'may be a government of laws and not of men.' For, the very idea that one man may be compelled to hold his life, or the means of living, or any material right essential to the enjoyment of life, at the mere will of another, seems to be intolerable in any country where freedom prevails, as being the essence of slavery itself."

Yik Wo v. Hopkins (U.S. Supreme Court, 1885)

12

Here is the often expressed understanding from the United States Supreme Court, that "in common usage, the term "person" does not include the Sovereign, statutes employing the person are ordinarily construed to exclude the Sovereign."

Wilson v. Omaha Tribe, 442 U.S. 653, 667 (1979) (quoting United States v. Cooper Corp., 312 U.S. 600, 604 (1941)). See also United States v. Mine Workers, 330 U.S. 258, 275 (1947).

13

"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him. ...the idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights."

Thomas Jefferson - from a letter to Francis W. Gilmor, July 7, 1786

"

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests."

– Patrick Henry

"By the absolute rights of individuals we mean those which are so in their primary and strictest sense; such as would belong to their persons merely in a state of nature, and which every man is entitled to enjoy whether out of society or in it."

- Ibid.
14

"Law enforcement agencies and personnel have no duty to protect
individuals from the criminal acts of others; instead their duty
is to preserve the peace and arrest law breakers for the protection
of the general public."

(Lynch v. NC Dept. Justice)

". . . a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen."

--Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App.181)

15 see 33

16

“When a person, being without fault, is in a place where he has a right to be, is violently assaulted, he may, without retreating, repel by force, and if, in the reasonable exercise of his right of self defense, his assailant is killed, he is justified.”

Runyan v. State, 57 Ind. 80; Miller v. State, 74 Ind. 1.

“An illegal arrest is an assault and battery. The person so attempted to be restrained of his liberty has the same right to use force in defending himself as he would in repelling any other assault and battery.”

(State v. Robinson, 145 ME. 77, 72 ATL. 260).

“One may come to the aid of another being unlawfully arrested, just as he may where one is being assaulted, molested, raped or kidnapped. Thus it is not an offense to liberate one from the unlawful custody of an officer, even though he may have submitted to such custody, without resistance.”

(Adams v. State, 121 Ga. 16, 48 S.E. 910).

“These principles apply as well to an officer attempting to make an arrest, who abuses his authority and transcends the bounds thereof by the use of unnecessary force and violence, as they do to a private individual who unlawfully uses such force and violence.”

Jones v. State, 26 Tex. App. I; Beaverts v. State, 4 Tex. App. 1 75; Skidmore v. State, 43 Tex. 93, 903.

“Citizens may resist unlawful arrest to the point of taking an arresting officer's life if necessary.”

Plummer v. State, 136 Ind. 306. This premise was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case: John Bad Elk v. U.S., 177 U.S. 529. The Court stated:

“Where the officer is killed in the course of the disorder which naturally accompanies an attempted arrest that is resisted, the law looks with very different eyes upon the transaction, when the officer had the right to make the arrest, from what it does if the officer had no right. What may be murder in the first case might be nothing more than manslaughter in the other, or the facts might show that no offense had been committed.”

When absolute rights of property have been acquired and vested by authority of law, no subsequent legislation can divest such rights.

Fletcher v Peck, 6 Cranch 87. Carondelet Canal & Nav. Co. v Louisiana, 233 U.S. 362.

18

“3. A bill of attainder is a legislative act which inflicts punishment without a judicial trial. If the punishment be less than death, the act is termed a bill of pains and penalties. Within the meaning of the Constitution, bills of attainder include bills of pains and penalties. 4. These bills, though generally directed against individuals by name, may be directed against a whole class, and they may inflict punishment absolutely or may inflict it conditionally.”

“The disabilities created by the Constitution of Missouri must be regarded as penalties -- they constitute punishment. We do not agree with the counsel of Missouri that "to punish one is to deprive him of life, liberty, or property, and that to take from him anything less than these is no punishment at all." The learned counsel does not use these terms -- life, liberty, and property -- as comprehending every right known to the law. He does not include under liberty freedom from outrage on the feelings as well as restraints on the person. He does not include under property those estates which one may acquire in professions, though they are often the source of the highest emoluments and honors. The deprivation of any rights, civil or political, previously enjoyed may be punishment, the circumstances attending and the causes of the deprivation determining this fact. Disqualification from office many be punishment, as in cases of conviction upon impeachment. Disqualification from the pursuits of a lawful avocation, or from positions of trust, or from the privilege of appearing in the courts, or acting as an executor, administrator, or guardian, may also, and often has been, imposed as punishment. By statute 9 and 10
William III, chap. 32, if any person educated in or having made a profession of the Christian religion did, "by writing, printing, teaching, or advised speaking," deny the truth of the religion, or the divine authority of the Scriptures, he was for the first offence rendered incapably to hold any office or place of trust, and for the second he was rendered incapable of bringing any action, being guardian, executor, legatee, or purchaser of lands, besides being subjected to three years' imprisonment without bail.”

CUMMINGS V. MISSOURI, 71 U. S. 277 (1867)
19 “The statute is directed against parties who have offended in any of the particulars embraced by these clauses. And its object is to exclude them from the profession of the law, or at least from its practice in the courts of the United States. As the oath prescribed cannot be taken by these parties, the act, as against them, operates as a legislative decree of perpetual exclusion. And exclusion from any of the professions or any of the ordinary avocations of life for past conduct can be regarded in no other light than as punishment for such conduct. The exaction of the oath is the mode provided for ascertaining the parties upon whom the act is intended to operate, and instead of lessening, increases its objectionable character. All enactments of this kind partake of the nature of bills of pains and penalties, and are subject to the constitutional inhibition against the passage of bills of attainder, under which general designation they are included. “ EX PARTE GARLAND, 71 U.S. 333 (1866)

20

“Sec. 17. And hence it is, that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power, does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life: for I have reason to conclude, that he who would get me into his power without my consent, would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for no body can desire to have me in his absolute power, unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom, i.e. make me a slave. To be free from such force is the only security of my preservation; and reason bids me look on him, as an enemy to my preservation, who would take away that freedom which is the fence to it; so that he who makes an attempt to enslave me, thereby puts himself into a state of war with me. He that, in the state of nature, would take away the freedom that belongs to any one in that state, must necessarily be supposed to have a foundation of all the rest; as he that in the state of society, would take away the freedom belonging to those of that society or commonwealth, must be supposed to design to take away from them every thing else, and so be looked on as in a state of war. “

The Second Treatise of Civil Government 1690 John Locke
21

"A Sovereign is exempt from suit, not because of any formal conception or obsolete theory, but on the logical and practical ground that there can be no legal Right as against the authority that makes the law on which the Right depends."

Kawananakoa v. Polyblank, 205 U.S. 349, 353, 27 S. Ct. 526, 527, 51 L. Ed. 834 (1907).
.
“SOVEREIGN, a. suv'eran. [We retain this babarous orthography from the Norman sovereign. The true spelling would be suveran from the L. supernes, superus.]
1. Supreme in power; possessing supreme dominion; as a sovereign ruler of the universe.
2. Supreme; superior to all others; chief. God is the sovereign good of all who love and obey him.
3. Supremely efficacious; superior to all others; predominant; effectual; as a sovereign remedy.
4. Supreme; pertaining to the first magistrate of a nation; as sovereign authority.
SOVEREIGN, n. suv'eran.
1. A supreme lord or ruler; one who possesses the highest authority without control. Some earthly princes, kings and emperors are sovereigns in their dominions.
2. A supreme magistrate; a king.
3. A gold coin of England, value 20s or $4.44 “ 1828 Webster's Dictionary.

22

No such ideas obtain here(speaking of America);"at the revolution, the Sovereignty devolved on the people; and they are truly the Sovereigns of the country, but they are Sovereigns without subjects (unless the African slaves among us may be so called) and have none to govern but themselves; the citizens of America are equal as fellow citizens, and as joint tenants in the Sovereignty.

Chisholm v. Georgia (February Term, 1793) 2 U.S. 419, 2 Dall. 419, 1 L.Ed 440, pp. 471-472

23

“... the Constitution of the United States, having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies, and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations, and no other crimes whatsoever; and it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," therefore the act of Congress, passed on the 14th day of July, 1798, and intituled "An Act in addition to the act intituled An Act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States," as also the act passed by them on the -- day of June, 1798, intituled "An Act to punish frauds committed on the bank of the United States," (and all their other acts which assume to create, define, or punish crimes, other than those so enumerated in the Constitution,) are altogether void, and of no force; and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and, of right, appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own territory. “

Kentucky Resolutions 1798

"The police power under the American constitutional system has been left to the states. It has always belonged to them and was not surrendered by them to the general government, nor directly restrained by the constitution of the United States... Congress has no general power to enact police regulations operative within the territorial limits of a state."

McInerney v. Ervin, 46 So.2d 458, 463 (Fla. 1950):

"The catalogue of means and actions which might be imposed upon an employer in any business, tending to the satisfaction and comfort of his employees, seems endless. Provision for free medical attendance and nursing, for clothing, for food, for housing, for the education of children, and a hundred other matters might with equal propriety be proposed as tending to relieve the employee of mental strain and worry. Can it fairly be said that the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce extends to the prescription of any or all of these things? Is it not apparent that they are really and essentially related solely to the social welfare of the worker, and therefore remote from any regulation of commerce as such? We think the answer is plain. These matters obviously lie outside the orbit of congressional power."

Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton R. Co., 295 U.S. 330, 368, 55 S.Ct. 758, 771 (1935):

24

“Government does not exist in a personal sense, or as an entity in any primary sense, for the purpose of acquiring, protecting and enjoying property. It exists primarily for the protection of the people in their individual rights, and holds property not primarily for the enjoyment of property accumulations, but as an incident to the purpose for which it exists-that of serving the people and protecting them in their rights.”

Curley v U.S., 130 R. 1,8, 64 C.C.A. 369.

25 ...I appear here on the behalf of thirty-six individuals, the life and liberty of every one of whom depend on the decision of this Court.... Three or four of them are female children, incapable, in the judgment of our laws, of the crime of murder or piracy, or, perhaps, of any other crime. Yet, from the day when the vessel was taken possession of by one of our naval officers, they have all been held as close prisoners, now for the period of eighteen long months...

The Constitution of the United States recognizes the slaves, held within some of the States of the Union, only in their capacity of persons—persons held to labor or service in a State under the laws thereof—persons constituting elements of representation in the popular branch of the National Legislature persons, the migration or importation of whom should not be prohibited by Congress prior to the year 1808. The Constitution no where recognizes them as property. The words slave and slavery are studiously excluded from the Constitution. Circumlocutions are the fig-leaves under which the parts of the body politic are decently concealed. Slaves, therefore, in the Constitution of the United States are persons, enjoying rights and held to the performance of duties....
The persons aforesaid, described as slaves, are Negroes and persons of color, who have been transported from Africa in violation of the laws of the United States.... The Court should enable the United States to send the Negroes home to Africa...in pursuance of the law of Congress passed March 3, 1829, entitled "An act in addition to the acts prohibiting the slave-trade."...
The President...signed [an] order for the delivery of MEN to the control of an officer of the navy to be carried beyond sea.... The District Judge, contrary to all [the] anticipations of the Executive, decided that the thirty-six Negroes...brought before the Court...were FREEMEN; that they had been kidnapped in Africa; that they did not own...Spanish names;...that they were not correctly described in the passport, but were new Negroes...fully entitled to their liberty.
Well was it for the country—well was it for the President of the United States himself that he paused before stepping over this Rubicon!... The indignation of the freemen of Connecticut, might not tamely endure the sight, of thirty-six free persons, though Africans, fettered and manacled in their land of freedom, to be transported beyond the seas, to perpetual hereditary servitude or to death, by the servile submission of an American President to the insolent dictation of a foreign minister....
{President Van Buren informed his subordinates that} if the decree of the Judge should be in our favor, and you can steal a march upon the Negroes by foreclosing their right of appeal, ship them off without mercy and without delay: and if the decree should be in their favor, fail not to enter an instantaneous appeal to the Supreme Court where the chances may be more hostile to self-emancipated slaves.
Was ever such a scene of Lilliputian trickery enacted by the rulers of a great, magnanimous, and Christian nation? Contrast it with that act of self-emancipation, by which the savage, heathen barbarians Cinque and Grabeau liberated themselves and their fellow suffering countrymen from Spanish slave traders, and which the Secretary of State...denominates lawless violence.... Cinque and Graveau are uncooth and barbarous names. Call them Harmodius and Aristogiton, and go back for moral principle three thousand years to the fierce and glorious democracy of Athens. They too resorted to lawless violence, and slew the tyrant to redeem the freedom of their country...

I said, when I began this plea, that my final reliance for success in this case was on this Court as a court of JUSTICE; and in the confidence this fact inspired, that, in the administration of justice, in a case of no less importance than the liberty and the life of a large number of persons, this Court would not decide but on a due consideration of all the rights, both natural and social, of everyone of these individuals.... I have avoided, purposely avoided...a recurrence to those first principles of liberty which might well have been invoked in the argument of this cause. I have shown that [the Amistad's crew members]...were acting at the time in a way that is forbidden by the laws of Great Britain, of Spain and of the United States, and.. .that these Negroes were free and had a right to assert their liberty....
On the of February, 1804, now more than thirty-seven years past, my name was entered, and yet stands recorded, on both the rolls, as one of the Attorneys and Counsellors of this Court.... I stand before the same Court, but not before the same judges—nor aided by the same associates—nor resisted by the same opponents. As I cast my eyes along those seats of honor and public trust, now occupied by you, they seek in vain for one of those honored and honorable persons whose indulgence listened then to my voice. Marshall— Cushing— Chase— Washington— Johnson— Livingston— Todd— Where are they?...Gone! Gone! All gone!... In taking, then, my final leave of this Bar, and of this Honorable Court, I can only ejaculate a fervent petition to Heaven, that every member of it may go to his final account with as little of earthly frailty to answer for as those illustrious dead....

– John Quincy Adams, delivered before the Supreme Court in the Amistad case, February 24, and March 21, 1841

26

This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty. . . . The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorise the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty

. --Blackstone's commentaries on the laws, St. George Tucker, 1803

"I ask sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people ... To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them."

-- George Mason (who opposed ratification of the Constitution without the Bill of Rights)

Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as military forces, which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article [the Second Amendment] in their right to keep and bear their private arms.

– COXE, TENCH, under pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian," Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789

But if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights.

– HAMILTON, ALEXANDER, The Federalist Papers, No. 29
27 To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

– Declaration of Independence, 1776
28 See also: 'extraordinary Rendition', 'IRS tax seizure' 'military tribunals', 'secret evidence', 'sealed charges', 'warrantless wiretapping' 'property forfeiture', 'CALERO-TOLEDO v. PEARSON YACHT LEASING CO., 416 U.S. 663 (1974)', MARTIN V. MAHONEY Credit River

We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds...[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers... And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for[ another]... till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery... And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.

– Thomas Jefferson

29

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America

– U.S. Constitution.

"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men... It is a very serious consideration, which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers in the event."

Samuel Adams, 1771

30 See 26, 29

To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.

– MASON, GEORGE,, during Virginia’'s Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 3 Elliot, Debates at 380

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any body of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.

– WEBSTER, NOAH, An Examination into the Leading Principals of the Federal Constitution Defects, and Abuses, 1774
31 "

the jury were not authorized to find him guilty of murder because of his having deliberately armed himself, provided he rightfully so armed himself for purposes of self-defence, and if, independently of the fact of arming himself, the case tested by what occurred on the occasion of the killing was one of manslaughter only."

Gourko v. United States: , 153 U.S. At 190.

Thompson v. United States: 155 U.S. at 273.

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army... We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die..."

– George Washington, speech delivered to his army, 1776

32

"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right to bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used and that definite rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of the citizen to bear arms is just one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible."

-- Hubert Horatio Humphrey, 1960

"Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily lives, and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom."

-- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"Their swords, and every other terrible instrument of the soldier, are the birth right of an American. ... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or the state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people."

-- Tench Coxe, noted federalist and friend of James Madison, writing in defense of the proposed Constitution, in the Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788

33

But in the next place, (and it is that which would furnish a case of most difficulty and danger, though it may be fairly be presumed to be of rare occurrence,) if the Legislative, executive, and judicial departments should all concur in a gross usurpation, there is still a peaceable remedy provided by the constitution. It is the power of amendment, which may be always applied at the will of three fourths of the states. If, therefore, there should be a corrupt cooperation of three fourths of the states for permanent usurpation, (a case not to be supposed, or if supposed, differs not at all in the principle or redress from the case of a majority of a nation or state having the same intent,) the case is certainly irremediable under any known forms of the constitution. The states may now, by constitutional amendment, with few limitations, change the whole structure and powers of the government, and legalize any present excess of power. And the general right of the society in other cases to change the government at the will of the majority of the whole people, in any manner, that may suit its pleasure, is undisputed, and seems undisputable. If there be any remedy at all for the minority in such a case, it is a remedy never provided for by human institutions. It is a resort to the ultimate right of all human beings in extreme cases to resist oppression, and to apply force against ruinous injustice.

– Amistad cases, Justice Story.

34 Th

e statute is directed against parties who have offended in any of the particulars embraced by these clauses. And its object is to exclude them from the profession of the law, or at least from its practice in the courts of the United States. As the oath prescribed cannot be taken by these parties, the act, as against them, operates as a legislative decree of perpetual exclusion. And exclusion from any of the professions or any of the ordinary avocations of life for past conduct can be regarded in no other light than as punishment for such conduct.

– EX PARTE GARLAND, 71 U.S. 333 (1866) 71 U.S. 333 (Wall.)

35

This case deals with the imperative of judicial integrity. In this case it was decided that; "Under our Constitution no court, state or federal, may serve as an accomplice in the willful transgression of `the Laws of the United States,' laws by which `the Judges in every State [are] bound . . . .'

" UNITED STATES v. PELTIER, 422 U.S. 531 (1975)

36 Thank you for your patience in reading this far. It is a grave task, and far more grave a thing to read. Courage, tenacity, and the very nature of freedom itself speak from these old and dusty words, but they still shine through the dust as a testament to the courage, the hope, and the vision of our founders. How long must we remain silent? How long must we remonstrate with those that care nothing for us save to steal those rights which protect us from them?

How long must we turn our faces from acts of war?

A longer quote from above:

They first persuaded them to believe that he was a deity, and then to sacrifice to him those Rights and Liberties which their ancestors had so long maintained, with unexampled bravery, and with blood & treasure. By this act they fixed a precedent fatal to all posterity: The Roman people afterwards, influenced no doubt by this pernicious example, renew'd it to his successors, not at the end of every ten years, but for life. They transfer'd all their right and power to Charles the Great: In eum transtulit omne suum jus et poteslatem. Thus, they voluntarily and ignominiously surrendered their own liberty, and exchanged a free constitution for a TYRANNY!
It is not my design at present to form the comparison between the state of this country now, and that of the Roman Empire in those dregs of time; or between the disposition of Caesar, and that of ---; The comparison, I confess, would not in all parts hold good: The Tyrant of Rome, to do him justice, had learning, courage, and great abilities. It behoves us however to awake and advert to the danger we are in. The Tragedy of American Freedom, it is to be feared is nearly compleated: A Tyranny seems to be at the very door. It is to little purpose then to go about cooly to rehearse the gradual steps that have been taken, the means that have been used, and the instruments employed, to encompass the ruin of the public liberty: We know them and we detest them. But what will this avail, if we have not courage and resolution to prevent the completion of their system?
Our enemies would fain have us lie down on the bed of sloth and security, and persuade ourselves that there is no danger They are daily administering the opiate with multiplied arts and delusions, and I am sorry to observe, that the gilded pill is so alluring to some who call themselves the friends of Liberty. But is there no danger when the very foundations of our civil constitution tremble? - When an attempt was first made to disturb the corner-stone of the fabrick, we were universally and justly alarmed: And can we be cool spectators, when we see it already removed from its place? With what resentment and indignation did we first receive the intelligence of a design to make us tributary, not to natural enemies, but infinitely more humiliating, to fellow subjects? And yet with unparallelled insolence we are told to be quiet, when we see that very money which is torn from us by lawless force, made use of still further to oppress us - to feed and pamper a set of infamous wretches, who swarm like the locusts of Egypt; and some of them expect to revel in wealth and riot on the spoils of our country. - Is it a time for us to sleep when our free government is essentially changed, and a new one is forming upon a quite different system? A government without the least dependance upon the people: A government under the absolute controul of a minister of state; upon whose sovereign dictates is to depend not only the time when, and the place where, the legislative assembly shall sit, but whether it shall sit at all: And if it is allowed to meet, it shall be liable immediately to be thrown out of existence, if in any one point it fails in obedience to his arbitrary mandates. Have we not already seen specimens of what we are to expect under such a government, in the instructions which Mr. HUTCHINSON has received, and which he has publickly avow'd, and declared he is bound to obey? - By one, he is to refuse his assent to a tax-bill, unless the Commissioners of the Customs and other favorites are exempted: And if these may be freed from taxes by the order of a minister, may not all his tools and drudges, or any others who are subservient to his designs, expect the same indulgence? By another he is to forbid to pass a grant of the assembly to any agent, but one to whose election he has given his consent; which is in effect to put it out of our power to take the necessary and legal steps for the redress of those grievances which we suffer by the arts and machinations of ministers, and their minions here. What difference is there between the present state of this province, which in course will be the deplorable state of all America, and that of Rome, under the law before mention'd? The difference is only this, that they gave their formal consent to the change, which we have not yet done. But let us be upon our guard against even a negative submission; for agreeable to the sentiments of a celebrated writer, who thoroughly understood his subject, if we are voluntarily silent, as the conspirators would have us to be, it will be consider'd as an approbation of the change. "By the fundamental laws of England, the two houses of parliament in concert with the King, exercise the legislative power: But if the two houses should be so infatuated, as to resolve to suppress their powers, and invest the King with the full and absolute government, certainly the nation would not suffer it." And if a minister shall usurp the supreme and absolute government of America, and set up his instructions as laws in the colonies, and their Governors shall be so weak or so wicked, as for the sake of keeping their places, to be made the instruments in putting them in execution, who will presume to say that the people have not a right, or that it is not their indispensible duty to God and their Country, by all rational means in their power to RESIST THEM.
"Be firm, my friends, nor let UNMANLY SLOTH
Twine round your hearts indissoluble chains.
Ne'er yet by force was freedom overcome.
Unless CORRUPTION first dejects the pride,
And guardian vigour of the free-born soul,
All crude attempts of violence are vain.
Determined, hold
Your INDEPENDENCE; for, that once destroy'd,
Unfounded Freedom is a morning dream."

The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have receiv'd them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors: They purchas'd them for us with toil and danger and expence of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightned as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. Of the latter we are in most danger at present: Let us therefore be aware of it. Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the rights bequeath'd to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. - Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance. Let us remember, that "if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom." It is a very serious consideration, which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers in the event.

– Samuel Adams, Boston Gazette, October 14, 1771

"There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation."

James Madison, 1788

"To fight out a war, you must believe something and want something with all your might. So must you do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching. More than that, you must be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out. All that is required of you is that you should go somewhither as hard as ever you can. The rest belongs to fate...:"

Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1884

Are people property?

2009-12-01T18:36:00.000-08:00

Is the United States going into a new era of slavery, and dragging the world along in its wake? A question such as this seems ludicrous at first glance, not worthy of a second thought, but.. wait. What is slavery anyway?

International law defines slavery as any practice by which a person exercises any or all of the powers of ownership over any other person. Those powers of ownership, in the legal realm, are powers of dominion and control, powers of alienation (as the legal term of transfer), lease, lien, and severance.

But how does this affect our understanding of slavery? Severance is the power to remove from the property parts of that real property (such as a tree, or rock thereupon) and transfer ownership in full or part to that part of real property. Lien is the ability to transfer the use or nominal control of a property for a fee paid to the owner, with the understanding that failure to pay that fee results in the return of that property to the owner. Alienation is an absolute transference of the property (to alienate or make alien to the original owner) and placing all such property rights in another. Dominion is absolute control over the property, the ability to do whatever one might wish with it. Control is part of that dominion, an exercise of the power of dominion, rather than its mere presence.

These things all are keys to property. They are the fundamental powers involved in all legal property litigation in the United States. One exercises dominion and control by refusing the use of one's property to another, or by allowing it with a simple or complex fee, or contractual obligation. Some properties, however, are considered inalienable, i.e. the possessor has no property rights allowing that transfer of property. These properties are held in trust, or have been vested in such a way that the powers to transferal are also specifically denied in the absolute property grant.

One of the tenets of real property, and personal property, is that once an absolute investiture of property is granted, no subsequent legislation, or court case may take it away. Those absolute investitures are mandated by both common law, criminal law, and civil law as being untouchable by later decisions, save for fraud, coercion, or actual malice in such a transfer.

Such were the investitures of our recognized, legal, civil, and human rights in the United States. They were not created by the constitution, as they existed, arguably, as a recognized legal property before it. These rights, these 'inalienable' rights, were invested absolutely in each individual as a part of the protected property established before that constitutional contract, and recognized therein as being untouchable by our legislatures.

But what does this have to do with slavery either? There is something about property that we all recognize, but rarely think about consciously. When we own property, we have to have proof that we own it. In the old days, they marked property with owner's marks, brands, stained with ink, burned with acid or etched into steel or flesh. Today, we mark our properties with registries, numbers and information unique to the property.

It is via those registration marks that we establish our dominion, control, and proprietor's right to that property. If our vehicles' VIN number does not match the information within our title to the property, we cannot exercise that dominion and control over that vehicle within a court of law, and no court of law will accede to our property interest, no matter how well vested, within it.

We do the same, however, with people. Just as we branded them, in the past, we brand them today, with registries, with numbers, allowing others to exercise dominion and control over their lives. With blandishments, apparently reasonable and proper, we tend to look away as more and more of our lives are signed over to others. We allow people to rent driver's licenses, for a period dependent upon the state, which establish our legal identity in the land. We register ourselves with numbers, for instance, our 'social security' number, unique to us, and an identifying mark allowing others to garnish the fruits of our labors, and the sweat off our brows, and in our name, to place us in debt and tax us.

We register our dogs, our cars, and our property, not our people. We place liens on property, not on people. We register things... not people. How can something be civil, and regulatory, creating a registry that does not affect the transfer of a tangible good or property, but that of an intangible? The intangible in question is life itself. How can we allow others to exercise that dominion and control over ourselves, our children, our children's children, and in the name of 'prosperity' or 'safety' or anything else, exercise that dominion and control, that assize of property gains, the registration that turns us into chattel?

But yet, we can look over, and say 'At least I don't have it as bad as the felon/sex offender/murderer'. But do we? We can, at this very date, have our properties seized on any pretense, have our homes, our bank accounts, our monies, and all real property within the United States seized with no recompense, no remuneration, and no consideration by people that do not answer to our will. Our position is precarious, inherently insecure, and the government claims the power to remove not only our ability to live, but our ability to complain, and even our ability to resist their actions.

In 1650, the first step in disarming the British was not to ban weapons for the purpose of protecting the Crown, but to ban them for the purpose of protecting the game and reducing crime. Today, the only people who may legally own arms in Britain are the British Army and security forces. They, however, have no duty to the individual taxpayer or individual safety, but to some intangible higher law.

We register the whereabouts of our criminals and our citizens, create databases to track them, then regulate further upon what we discover. The term 'to regulate' has become synonymous with 'to ban or control', but it was not always thus. It was originally 'to make operate smoothly' 'to make hit the aim point' or 'to operate within specified bounds'. To regulate a clock, you'd shave minute amounts from the pendulum, to alter the time required in its swing until it matched a reference point. To regulate a rifle, you'd test it to ensure its point of aim, firing, and such were all reliable. One regulated by rules, but no such rule had any punishment other than fine and public censure. It was a remedial system, not a punitive one.

But yet, we claim the power to imprison now with our regulation, the power to seize intangible properties immutably vested in the people, the protected property interest in their own self-defense, their lives, and even in property itself.

Can you claim not to be a slave, if they can come, without discussion, and dictate to you in your own home how you shall live? If they can tell you what you must eat, how much exercise you must do, are you still free? If they can tell you how you must speak, how you must raise your biological children, determine how much you must pay to exercise any such inalienable property right, who owns you?

Is it not an exercise of dominion and control to force a person into a 'contractual' agreement from which they cannot extricate themselves, and could not refuse to sign without facing jail terms? Is it a power of free agency and will to be told how one must pray, or where? Is it not an exercise of dominion and control to force a person, against their own will, interests, and at the cost of their own life to exposed themselves to ruin?

And is it not an exercise of dominion, and control, of the powers of ownership to declare that they must work, and exercise all the duties of a citizen, but have none of the rights of citizenship, or even human rights? Is it not an exercise in disposition to declare that they have no recourse for such a 'civil' act? Is it not an exercise in the power of severance to declare that the properties inherent in the person are no longer their own, but to be sold for the benefit of others?

Where are registries taking us, as a nation, and as a world, and is such a world truly one that we would wish to live in?

Not one I'd wish to live in, even spoken as a self-proclaimed, and recognized total idiot.

Our secret prison

2009-09-15T00:04:00.000-07:00

We are all prisoners. All of us, every last one, lives in a world where our prison walls are not made of concrete and stone, not of cold steel and glass, but of barriers built in the human society itself.

These barriers are barriers of fear, of anger, of hatred, of derision and deception, wrought and worked in the fires of political expedience and the pursuit of power. Divisions, as always, are used to force separation, and thus remove cooperation.

We humans are a divisive lot, faction-filled and apparently programmed at the genetic level to compete, to find advantages for ourselves, and disadvantages for those we dislike. What is the truth? Among all the races, among all the factions of humanity, at the core of what makes us human, we are all the same. We are born, we live, we bleed, and ultimately we die. It is the nature of things, and of humanity.

When we are young, we are filled with wonder, and the world is full of flowers, and even the clouds and heat-haze of the roads reaches into our mind and pulls forth the imagination. When young, we do not hate, we do not fear, unless we are taught to do so, and be so. When brought up together, unless someone tells us it is 'wrong' to be different, we treat each other the same. We, however, seek an advantage, and in our equality, the greatest advantage is found when we separate others from us, and from their own. Because they are different they may be singled out, forced out, isolated, and targeted. They, for whatever reason, become something alien, something depersonalized and dehumanized, upon which our anger for our own perceived shortcomings boils forth.

When we hate, we focus on that which we see is not like ourselves, but the true measure of our anger is for that which we see in ourselves, and reject. We step out, reach out, and see a world that is so very full of temptation, of shame, of wants and desires, jealousy and lust, and because we sublimate them, hide them, and deny them, we attack, so often, the people that hold the very hidden desires that we cannot admit, not even to ourselves.

The greatest advantages one can place is via the power of the law, attempting to create advantages by force and coercion. Sometimes, however, it is more expedient to simply see to it that there is a disadvantage laid upon the back of a group. This process was supposed to be eliminated by the nature of general government, and the common law. The Jim Crow laws of the south, the gerrymandering, the outlawing of firearms for unpopular classes, poll taxes, literacy tests, and so many other things were designed, not to simply prevent certain classes from voting, but to prevent them from being seen as human. But.. were they not human? I believe that they can be argued to be nothing else.

As we tried to move from the hatred of people due to skin color (without regard to any 'color' of race) there were those who recognized a great deal of power in that hatred. By creating fear, they could sway crowds, incite people into the mass mind, the mob mind, where their individuality and critical thought ceased. However, the old methods of separation were slipping. What, then, was the answer?

The power was recreated fairly simply, creating classes that had labels that could not be seen in the skin, could not be understood, and that seemed so utterly alien that the political process could declare them to be monsters. They created labels, held them up to society as monsters, then let the old inner demons run forth. But how much more dangerous is a label to be feared that can be applied to anyone, at any time, that requires no proof of veracity, no evidence, just a simple allegation? A nebulous label which you can apply to anyone, quashing their rights.

I may be a total idiot... but even I can see the terrain that path leads through. We may be prisoners, but we don't need to make every mile... the Green Mile.

Why is there so much crime? Why are so many poor?

2009-08-04T06:10:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered what is happening in our nation? Why are our people so desperate? Why is there so much hunger, so much need, so much crime, so much want? We reach out and find ourselves failing, taking new jobs, working harder, faster, longer, and sacrificing more and more in a world that seems to care nothing at all if we exist, so long as we are paying our taxes.

The answer to this question is manifold, the taxes taking a quarter of our income don't help, but the greater answer, the answer that explains why many households try to hold down two jobs for each parent, is a bit more subtle, more insidious, and far more planned.

Each time we borrow money, and promise to repay there are several things going on. That promise to repay becomes a debt, an income owed to the bank which they can work with. However, the interest on that loan has to come from somewhere, so it comes from your work.

Easy credit, no money down, no payments for six months, and we sell our souls, our bodies, and the future of our children. It's not the taxes that make us poor, it's the debt. The taxes are just another manifestation of that debt owed by our government.

Benjamin Franklin said it the best, really.

I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. Our landholders, too, like theirs, retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must wander, like theirs, in foreign countries, and be contented with penury, obscurity, exile, and the glory of the nation. This example reads to us the salutary lesson, that private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.

Letter To Samuel Kercheval, Monticello, July 12, 1816

What we often don't see about debt is its real cost. We pay more and more until we must depend on that debt to survive, depend on the sufferance of banks, and credit, and no longer are we the masters of our own destinies. They manipulate us so we cannot even get jobs without credit checks, we cannot buy vehicles via cash anymore, but only via credit; and more, and more we find ourselves pinching pennies every month, dealing with the luxuries that cost us our peace of mind and our security in our property.

Each of us are laid down in slavery from the moment of our birth, to the moment of our death. The only way out of this slavery is to rebel, but we dare not? After all, who would DARE to go against those who offer us seeming riches, free money, convenience; but who would see what we are becoming?

We no longer work to put back money for the future. Futurity, after all, knows nothing of our assets, but only our debts. And the harder we work to try to pay off those debts, at a certain point, it becomes more and more obvious what has happened, and simply to maintain the debt at a minimum level, we let it stretch out into eternity, forever growing, forever becoming more and more massive until it crushes us and we lose everything: except the debt.

Oh yes, it's a cunning and insidious thing. Our creditors, our jailors, and our slavemasters know very well what they are doing. A people without the power of credit has disarmed themselves of a weapon against those who have such. And more and more, we're inundated with the messages of its convenience.

But what happens when the debt is called due? We lose everything we used as collateral, and now they propose, once again, debtor's prisons to 'work off' the debt. We've learned nothing... and the old masters are once again the new masters...

And slavery and tyranny are here, and to maintain it, they must disarm us. And what, I might ask, is the best way to disarm us? The plan is simple. First, arrange it so the courts only hear lawyers, not the people themselves. Next, arrange it so those very lawyers are the only people raised up to the seats of government. Then, establish precedents allowing single persons, or groups of persons to be disarmed, for the public good. Expand infinitely.

If you can get away with it, also expand other classes with living limitations, remove voting rights, and in general, make it a living hell for anyone ever convicted of a crime. Remove the protections of the constitution wherever you can extort, coerce, or flat out defraud a way around it.

And make damn sure that debt is easy to get into... but almost impossible to escape. To maintain high crime levels, you need high debt levels. The more money comes out of each person in interest payments, the less money can actually be used for their own support, and so it too often is supplemented in ways that are outside the law. This continues your excuse for higher taxes for protection, as well as your ability to clamor for new laws against the class of 'criminals.'

Never mind what actual recidivism rates are, or what kind of crime it is, or even the judgment of the court and jury. That doesn't matter, what matters is the illusion of safety.

As of this moment, and for the past many decades, you have no right to police protection. I could quote many cases, but the simplest explanation is a link.

http://hematite.com/dragon/policeprot.html
http://psacake.com/dial_911.asp

Given the nature of the actions taken by the police force, of late, the rising police brutality and the increasing militarization and use of SWAT teams, can we really affford to ignore that lack of protection? And who protects us from them?

Perhaps the best question, in this total idiot's mind, is: Why is their right to self-protect greater than our right to self-protect, and if we have no longer any right to self-protect, why is there no protected property interest in being protected?

The argument that must be made in the favor of police is simply that police cannot be everywhere at once, and more than that, have no power of prescience to prevent crime. They are a reactive force, and their charter maintains reactivity due to the nature of proactive police work. Proactive work has been, and nearly always becomes the work of tyrants.

Who do the police serve? They claim 'to serve and protect', but to protect who? The easy answer is the society, but historic reference will show that such police forces grew out of the Irish poll guards, the firemen, and the political bosses. We might pay the taxes to preserve that police force, and they are necessary to the rule of law, but they are certainly not there to protect any individual, or even any group of individuals. They are paid mostly through the auspices of the government, who has many lobbying groups by those very people that assist in the creation of debt, and further, assist in the creation, maintenance, and day to day running of the ever-growing prison system, and are paid a great deal in both political favors and monetary bonuses for ensuring that those prisons remain full.

So who would believe that the government, in order to make police work easier, might remove more of your rights, offering you 'increased safety' but no protection at all?

Only a total idiot...

The real reason for racism.

2009-07-25T06:03:00.000-07:00

We stand in a crossroads, a crux point, where every move has consequences that trip us further down paths out of our control, yet we must move. We see hatred and intolerance everywhere we look, and there seems no end to it. We talk about how we must control x, y, or z, then complain about how our lives grow emptier of value, bereft of purpose, and how we've lost our way in an uncaring world.

We talk about how this group or that group ought to be restrained in the interests of the greater good, but too often we mean 'because they aren't like me'. We talk about limiting people's rights to speak about religion, about politics, because it offends us, but it really boils down to 'because they aren't like me'. But each time we limit a class of persons, we're actually accomplishing nothing toward the works of preserving our own ideals, our own liberties, and the perceived threat of others voting away our rights, our powers, our liberties, becomes far more possible.

For liberty is a living being. When we weaken her, abuse her, she becomes more vulnerable to abuse. When we cut her, she grows weaker, when we sever one part from another, eventually unrecognizeable.

The tools to weaken liberty were set out in many works... from the 'more equal than others' part in Animal Farm, to the discussions of the ubermensch of Hitler. Any time any portion is judged wiser, more capable, more knowing, better, the other will be viewed as less capable, less knowing, more foolish, and worse.

I am a 'conservative', but in the old form. I hope for days that no laws are built on race or separation. But I must ask, however, if it is not equally racist to base ideals that any race is better or more capable in one sphere than another?

Does this not add to separation rather than combination? When we say 'a black man is more capable of empathy than a white', is it not simply another subtle form of racism? It is based entirely upon race, and therefore highly suspect. Those subtle divisions are what leads us down the road we find ourselves upon; the idea that some people are less worthy than others, less capable, lesser and worse due to an arbitrary status that has no meaning.

There will always be racists, but we equally must look at ourselves. I continually hear people talking about how 'x' is more qualified... due to nothing less than the race, or the gender, or both. How they would make a better decision than 'y' of 'z' gender. My question is why it matters? Is it not another excuse to continue racism and gender issues in the guise of equality? Is it not racism to judge, for or against, on the issue of race?

If it is not... then we are no further along than when we started. It is equally racism to look for offense due to race as to give offense due to race. We've become, via the help of others who believe us incapable of decisions about racism, overly sensitive to the subject. We find more and more that we are set up, to try and fail without the 'help' of those who have appointed themselves to help us, and benefit from the positions.

Has racism become an issue that the nation cannot allow to die? Have we implemented policies that continue the segregation, even as we claim to seek to end it? Do our policies encourage weakness and dependency upon outside sources, upon laws, rather than upon self-control, self-actualization, and self-realization? Does anyone tell us that we are too weak to continue the fight? If so, then certainly they are using racism to control you. The truth is, we are all human beings, regardless of race, regardless of gender, without regard for sexuality, for religious preference. We all have our frailties, our failings, and we all have a great deal of power over ourselves and our world.

And we all have the ability to fight those who would keep us down, those who would say to you; “Don't be like the other side. Don't get an education, that's their way. Don't better yourselves. We'll take care of you.” What hubris! What gall! Why should any people be subjugated by their own, held helpless in their circumstances then told it's the 'other side' that keeps them there? We keep getting told that it's a democracy, and that we fight to preserve democracy or institute it overseas. It was, however, never intended to be a true democracy, but a republic of limited powers, with checks and balances, including checks and balances to prevent one part of the people from enslaving the others with 'good intentions'.
And yet today, racism still lives, and slavery still thrives. Not the slavery of the plantation, or the whips and chains, but slavery of the heart, subjugation of the will, and education, and reality. And it is accomplished, not by masters of the plantation, but those who seek to 'protect', without ever allowing us to realize that there is more to protection than allowing someone else to be your champion. The true champion teaches you to protect yourselves, teaches you to channel that moral outrage into building bridges, not tearing them down. The true champion teaches you to become more than you are, and be a power in the world not because of your race, but because of who you are inside.

Judged by the content of your character, not the color of your skin. Judged by your actions, your mind, your spirit, not by the melatonin or lack thereof. We are not blind to race... but only blind to the powers within ourselves, and those who seek to maintain us as a willing electorate by trying to ensure that the 'other side' has no foothold.

How often does crime become a racial issue? How often do we see juries selected not for their knowledge or discernment, but because of their race, and cases challenged not because of the facts or procedure, but the race of the prosecutor, jury, and judge? Does it not make more sense, if a judge or prosecutor are influenced by issues of race to ensure that they do not retain the office? Are there not recourses to misdirection and malfeasance?

But yet politicians would have us believe that the only route is new laws to protect one class of citizen from another. We already have laws dealing with 'racial issues'. Perhaps a better route would be allowing us, and our 'other side' to come to grips with our differences, and to recognize our similarities. But something in us cries out after all the hatred, “We have nothing in common with them!” “Why should we embrace them when they have done this to us?” Us versus them. To use an old term 'black vs white', and absolutism. So long as either side clings to the paradigm that the other side is bad, evil, and attacking them, there can be no peace. So long as there are sides, there will be war. And so long as we embrace stereotypes, they will continue to exist, as badges of honor, or badges of shame, and those with power will continue using it for the ends of power.

Even a total idiot can see that.

Fraus omnia vitiate

2009-07-10T07:03:00.001-07:00

It's an old maxim that fraud vitiates anything it touches, and in the nature of such laws, even laws are subject to its hold. This posting today is about the Common Law, the law common to all, and its nature and substance. I pray you will be patient with me, as the archaic language has infected my poor, idiotic brain, and thus, I also hope, you can understand that which I wish to convey.

Fraus omnia vitiate. Fraud vitiates everything it touches. When fraud is involved in civil contract or in the establishment of a law, all such laws or contracts are unraveled, made into nothing at all. If fraud can be proven, such laws by their natures could not exist, for they were created under both a false pretense, as well as created with understanding and assent on false pretenses.

There is also an old maxim of the republican form of government (quite distinct from the pretended 'republican' party.) Potestas stricte intepreteur: A power is strictly interpreted. No grey areas, no penumbras, powers themselves must be strictly limited, not vague in any way, shape, or fashion, and wrought in powers granted specifically and explicitly to any organization via the contractual agreements of its incorporation.

Our government, by its nature, is an incorporation. It was given specific powers as a person, so the government could last far longer than the death of any or all of its original founders. It, by itself, was given no rights, but only powers to be wielded and blocked from the assumption of certain powers, acts, and writs.

This brings us to a second common law statement: In dubiis, non praesumitur pro potentia. In cases of doubt, the presumption is never in favor of a power.

These give rise to specific remedies under the law, where the federal government was Incorporated via the contract of the Constitution, and those remedies were placed within.

In the first part, there is another old aspect of the common law. "qui tam pro domino rege quam pro sic ipso in hoc parte sequitur" He who sues for the king as for himself. We have the authorization under the common law to sue for any specific actions outside the contract. Legal immunity and sovereign immunity does not apply outside the specific powers of the contract, and the states constitutions themselves are legal contracts that instituted and Incorporated the states.

These actions are called a 'Quo warrantio' action: 'By what warrant does the entity place these burdens?' coupled with the closely related common law writ of ultra vires. 'such action is outside of the power granted to the entity'.

In the United states, these writs have been specifically moved to civil law actions, however, they are still applicable to any entity, public or private, including the government itself.

In such case it would be possible to bring an ex relatione suit, or a suit brought by a private party in a qui tam action, against those projectors of ultra vires powers, where quo warrantio has failed.

If these powers were not specifically granted, explicitly granted, and the explanatory documents did not grant them, then such powers are an act of fraud. If they were specifically prohibited, they are something quite more, an act of a highwayman, a thug, and a thief. They are acts of war against our persons, and our property, and our rights, and we are no more bound to them than we are bound to declaim that the sun is made of porridge or the moon is made of apple puree.

Our nation is based upon this old, forgotten, and what they wish us to believe as 'obsolete' common law. This common law, indeed, is the only authorized law within the nation, with all of its idiosyncrasies, and all of its faults. It is part and parcel of the 'republican form of government' that the states were required to guarantee.

This republican form of government acts not only upon the federal government, but the states and the people. There is a separation of powers and specific limitations placed therein, explained within the writings of the federalist papers, and the discussions of the Continental Congress. The powers of the people themselves are limited, to prevent them from establishing tyrannies over minorities. Targeted legislation was prohibited, through the 'attainder clause' of the contract, and reaching back in time to punish someone was limited under the 'ex post facto' clause.

No legislation, according to the founders, could be written that benefited one class at the expense of another, nor that targeted classes of persons in exception to others. All legislation had to be laid down equally, or not at all. As part and parcel of a republican form of government, this was a necessary check and balance against both the government, the people, and enterprising speculators that knew if there was a benefit, or a penalty to any person, then such an imbalance would continue to infinity, ultimately devolving the whole into tyranny or anarchy, both of which the strong prevail and the weak die.

As well, checks and balances are placed against corporations, to prevent monopoly, which is assuredly its own form of tyranny.

The nature of the Constitution of these united states is nothing less than a contract establishing a new entity, incorporating it, and then placing in its hands certain, limited powers, and then very strong Prohibitions and limitations. In that Establishment, the states and people also took upon themselves specific limitations, duties, and powers, in order to prevent tyranny in all of its forms.

All of our rights in the bill of rights were ensured for that end, not established, but ensured. Any attempt at removal of those rights, regulation of those rights, or mutilating the meaning of the words until they bear as little resemblance to the original as spam bears to real meat is an act of war and subjugation, high treason, and fraud.

They do not exist because of the Establishment of the Constitution, they exist in spite of that Establishment, and moreover to resist the powers of that very Establishment and defend that entity at the same time.

Those rights, from the right to free assembly, to freedom of speech, religion, the right to keep and bear, are not created by the government for they pre-existed it. They are created to give you indications when the government is going too far... for those things must fall before full tyranny exists.

And ask yourselves, are you free to speak, or do they attempt to regulate your speech if it offends others? Are you free to assemble, to petition, to have religion, or do they create laws for, and against such? Are you free to believe, to marry, to work as you wish, or do they create benefits for or against such statuses? Are you free to carry a weapon at your side, regardless of its nature, without interference if you are using it peaceably?

Can you stand up and sue the police should they fail to protect you? No...t hey are not there to protect, but to arrest lawbreakers and preserve the public peace.

Your right to keep and bear is the right that keeps all other rights intact. If you have no right to keep and bear, they have taken away the means of protecting your property, from the 'real property' to the immeasurably more valuable 'property in rights' that Madison and Paine spoke of. When you lack the ability to enforce that property right, your property falls, and moreover, so does your liberty and your life.

Those guards are for all, even felons, even those who are unpopular, for it is the government that determines what a felony is, is it not? Perhaps this idiot has had one too many lobotomies, imbibed a few too many insecticides, however, it would seem to me that the governments, state, federal, and local, would be the most likely sources of tyranny. However, they claim the power to establish laws that then remove those rights to resist tyranny, which is its own form of tyranny.

The rule of law must prevail. The law is either limited, or it is unlimited. The Constitution limits it, and to go outside of those limits is to negate both the purpose and function of the Constitution. The law is limited in such that the president cannot assign his powers, or those of the congress, to external persons beyond the control of the very people that gave it to him. Neither can the congress assign legislative powers to the president, nor can the congress assign judiciary powers to the executive branch.

It is our duty, or sovereign duty, our right, our privilege to resist tyranny in all of its forms. Even if we die in such resistance, it is better than the misery granted to all posterity were we not to act.

We are the arbiters, the check and balance against the government, and they seek to disarm us with cunning wiles and making the Constitution vague, in spite of the clarity of language with which it was writ.

There is only one purpose for such: The purpose of tyranny. It's well-founded in the documentation that these very actions, actions taken outside of the powers granted, are acts of war, subjugation, fraud, and slavery.

And this total idiot must ask... what it means if we stand idle.

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Do we gain any security by giving up our powers to those we cannot control? Do we gain any safety, any peace, if our will, our power, and our government all are turned against us?

It's time to bring things back to the Constitution, the intent and purpose thereof, ending tyranny in all of its myriad forms.

Even this total idiot can see that.

Who owns the government?

2009-06-26T20:26:00.000-07:00

Who owns the government?

To figure this out, we need to know what ownership is. Ownership comes down to exercise of specific rights, among those are the ability to collateralize the property, its products, or its materials. The ability to sell or transfer the goods of the property (fruit or manufactured goods) are also part of that power of ownership.

It is ownership that defines property, the rights and powers thereof that establish what an owner is. Perhaps consider this: Your labor is collateralized against the loans that the United States establishes. You pay that labor tax with your income tax, and with every thing you buy, sell, or trade. Your property is forfeit if you fail to pay, or fail to pay enough, or even in some cases if you pay too much and do not claim it.

In the old slavery days, slaves as property could not do work that was not authorized by the master, anything they owned belonged to their owner, and they required permission to have families, to travel, and could be sold at the master's whim to another. Anything they had could be seized, and it was rare to have a slave with a weapon of any sort beyond the tools and implements of farming, for fear of their rebellion.

To make a slave, it was reasoned, first they must be disarmed, then removed of the ability to own property. Then they could be dispatched, and disposed of as the owner saw fit. It was not for security of the slaves that they were disarmed, though that argument was used. It was for the security of the owner. After all, a slave, though valuable property, was only a slave. If someone killed a slave, the property owner could always sue him for the cost to gain a new slave, or even take a slave in trade.

Not only do we have to ask permission to get married, but permission for many jobs, and pay taxes on our own labor, on the gross of our income, rather than the net. We are forced, by various means, to pay those taxes or have our homes seized. We're forced to pay insurance on our land and homes, on our cars, and pay licensure for our right to drive, our right to self-defense, and even on our right to vote.

And does our 'representative republic' still have the right to representation? Do we still have the power to call our representatives on the carpet for their misdeeds? Tonight, through the house, through a storm of objections from the people, was passed legislation that was unread by anyone voting on it. It was unvetted by the hands of those that were supposed to be our representatives, and those very representatives passed it on, without review, without consideration, without actually determining what was contained therein.

Who does the government belong to? To whom do they answer? Perhaps the best answer to that would be 'what happens if you refuse to pay your taxes?' Like any fiefdom, serfs who refuse to pay lose the property they are rented by their 'betters'.

Start following the money trail, if you really want to know who owns the government, look at who signs their paycheck. It's not you or me anymore, we have no say in how they're paid, if they're paid, or even any say about whether they did a good job or not.

The ones that pay their checks, are the very people putting us farther and farther into debt. We gain more taxes, and receive less in return, and they ignore our remonstrance and our petitions and our opinion.

We don't own the government... for those who do, find those that run the IMF, and the Federal Reserve. Their names are writ large upon that title to our being.

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!

2009-06-18T07:34:00.000-07:00

I chose to start off this post with an old quote, from Samuel Adams. This particular one is from a letter written to his son, on the 4th of October, 1790. He's written many other things, and they're quite worth reading, reflective of the time and the attitudes.

Welcome once again to the blog of the Total Idiot. I really know nothing at all, croaking like a frog and parading like a parrot in front of those present out in the blogosphere. I really don't know, nor do I care who reads this, or what they think of it. Wouldn't matter to me anyway, I'm too much an idiot to ponder long upon that.

This posting explores the nature of the Bill of Rights. It also explores the attitudes of the founders in regard to it, and the remedies placed by those selfsame founders for violations of rights, immunities, and privileges involved in the constitution. Read on if you dare brave the mind of a Total Idiot.

The Bill of Rights was introduced, with great public controversy, and spearheaded by one Thomas Jefferson. There were a number of persons involved, between the Federalists and Antifederalists. The federalists in general felt that such a bill would weaken the constitution, and that all such protections against the powers were already therein. The constitution, according to their viewpoint, was a bill of rights by its nature and its prohibitions. Those prohibitions, however, could only be in one location, article 1 section 9. It was recognized that this was a contract between the people and the Federal Government by the action of the representatives of the people, to be ratified by popular vote within the states. It established no rights, and could take none away.

There is only one prohibition against the federal government, however, that directly associates with the rights of individuals or groups made up of those individuals. Article 1, section 9 of the Constitution states: No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

Some would claim, spuriously, that the constitution only limits the federal government, that the states are not affected thereby, however, there are two sections which prevent this as well. Article 1, section 10 holds the same prohibitions against the states. The fourteenth amendment, further, was already in existence, as well as the thirteenth, within those simple clauses, and another. The amendments were unnecessary, as they already existed from the beginning.

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

However, simultaneously, the constitution is limited to a specific set of powers, and no treaty can exceed those powers either. Any treaty thus doing is null and void, by its very inception as the powers contained by the office of the president cannot be faithfully executed under a treaty that nullifies the law under which his presidency is founded.

According to the founders, all such protections were already present in the Constitution. The Federalist 84 speaks clearly:

There remains but one other view of this matter to conclude the point. The truth is, after all the declamations we have heard, that the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, A BILL OF RIGHTS. The several bills of rights in Great Britain form its Constitution, and conversely the constitution of each State is its bill of rights. And the proposed Constitution, if adopted, will be the bill of rights of the Union. Is it one object of a bill of rights to declare and specify the political privileges of the citizens in the structure and administration of the government? This is done in the most ample and precise manner in the plan of the convention; comprehending various precautions for the public security, which are not to be found in any of the State constitutions. Is another object of a bill of rights to define certain immunities and modes of proceeding, which are relative to personal and private concerns? This we have seen has also been attended to, in a variety of cases, in the same plan. Adverting therefore to the substantial meaning of a bill of rights, it is absurd to allege that it is not to be found in the work of the convention. It may be said that it does not go far enough, though it will not be easy to make this appear; but it can with no propriety be contended that there is no such thing. It certainly must be immaterial what mode is observed as to the order of declaring the rights of the citizens, if they are to be found in any part of the instrument which establishes the government. And hence it must be apparent, that much of what has been said on this subject rests merely on verbal and nominal distinctions, entirely foreign from the substance of the thing.

If all rights were protected, then the only prohibitive clauses are article 1, section 9, and article 1, section 10. The states themselves were bound, and so was the government, and by that means, so were the people themselves from targeted legislation, legislation removing rights of groups, and any legislation giving a benefit or a detriment to any group of any composition. Individual actions could be tried by the court and the jury, but could not have their rights removed outside of the time that was judged an appropriate penalty by the court.

That penalty of law was designed to make total restitution between the offender and the society, and no further action could ever be taken in regard to it.

But yet by that very action, we've decided we can go back in time and wrest from the founders words the ability to place further restrictions after the crime upon those whom we have already punished.

We have decided, in our infinite wisdom, that we can ignore the requirement of warrant for searches and seizures, ignore the immunity from self-incrimination, ignore the ability of a person to assemble, to speak, to believe as they wish, and chosen to legislate our beliefs onto other groups, from marriage to the ability to have relationships.

Certainly, however, we could not be affected by doing so ourselves, right? What idiot would believe that by legislating away the rights of others, we open the ability of others to legislate away our own rights? What fool would look into the idea that perhaps, just perhaps, if we make people panicked enough over the statuses that the government creates, and the media hypes, that perhaps, just perhaps, we might damage the constitution enough that people will gladly turn over their protection, and their rights to the government?

After all, we could never have legislation that would prevent offense, or legislation preventing the ability to assemble on the most public of any venue, Washington D.C. We could never be punished for our self-defense, or that of our family, or home. No politician would ever allow legislation that would dilute our ability to oversee the vote, or our ability to redress grievances, for after all, they are our representatives, and what grievance could you give against them?

Certainly, the old maxim Potestas stricte interpretatur. and In dubiis, non praesumitur pro potentia. are obviously archaic. The founders could have never intended to limit the government today, even if that was their stated intent. Tyranny isn't tyranny, black is white, up is down, and you see five fingers.

A power is strictly interpreted, and in cases of doubt, the presumption is never in favor of a power. Archaic, eh? But look at the doctrine of 'reasonable review'... the person applying for relief must prove beyond a doubt not only abuse and unconstitutionality, but that the intent of the legislature and their power does not override their rights guaranteed against infringement. If there's a reasonable connection between the intent stated, and the actions taken, then the constitutionality is upheld.

Such great protection we now have against infringements of our rights. If the right to protect one's self, the right to speak, to assemble, to believe, to privacy, to our own homes, our own property, our own liberty means so little, then perhaps, just perhaps, the stated intent of the constitution, to prevent tyranny, is already fallen, and we must restore it to its proper state, as is our duty.

it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the numbers of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received?

Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlement assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation.

There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free--if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us! They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength but irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.

It is in vain, sir, to extentuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Have they mobilized the armies of our nation, conceived, and dedicated to the defense of the nation against her very flesh? Who then, could believe that perhaps the stated intent of such beneficial legislation might be slightly different from the actual intent? Certainly the United States would never engage its powers against us, after all, there has been no rendition of citizens to other nations for questioning without trial. Who could believe that they have engaged in active torture, against our own citizens, and citizens of other nations? Who would believe they would torture children for their own ends, or attempt to cover it up? Who would believe that they would place us further into debt, after running on fiscal responsibility, and be castigated by the 'left' for not moving fast enough or far enough? Certainly, who would believe that active army units might be employed in our cities and towns? Who would believe that the nation we love, which we call our own, might have her power turned against us by those who seek further power?

After all, have they given themselves the power of life and death against their own citizens? Can they offer orders, under the Federal Emergency Management Act, to shoot people on sight, to imprison them, to place their labor at the disposal of the executive under Executive Order? Who would believe such a thing in the Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave?

Only a Total Idiot. They have attempted more and more to turn those high powers which we granted in the beginning against us, attempt to quarter troops, both foreign and domestic, among us, and have prepared to wage war against us.

The only purpose for the accumulation of weapons and men inside the United States, is to use them.

"Civil" coercion, and protection.

2009-06-18T06:52:00.000-07:00

And once again the idiot wakes, to spew upon the internet his idiotic thoughts. While an idiot, sometimes an idiot can see more clearly employing the tools which wise men often fail to use. Today, we're going to attempt something called 'reason'. Yes, I know, it's a forgotten art, lost in the mists of time, but I would like to try my hand at it, as I have perhaps heretofore been unreasonable.

What is a civil punishment? It is a punishment based in civil law, in the law of writ, the Roman Law which was used in Europe for centuries. Civil matters under the United States, however, fall under an entirely different classification. In the United States, Civil Law deals in the operation of parties between parties. It is private law, law of contracts, of tort, of escrow, and of estate and property. At the time of the Constitution, there was no law of writ per se at the federal level. All crimes that were tried in the county courtrooms, and the courtrooms of the states were based on the old Common Law.

Civil law, at the time, was incapable of rendering punishment. It could not reach beyond the terms of the contract, and therefore was cut and dried in its application. Lesser protections were applied to the use of civil law, including the removal of the right to protection against self-incrimination. Civil law, further, could not provide a single day in jail, though contempt of the court was a matter of criminal law, and for it as well, according to the law, there must be a trial.

Where are we today? Let an idiot take you down the path of his mind.
We claim that civil law allows us today to pass restrictions on people, on classes, on behaviors and beliefs. We attempt to use it against religions, regulate weddings, give people benefits and others detriments under its umbrella, but was this really what was intended? Or did it spring full-blown out of the mind of the legislators? Perhaps the best way to examine this is to determine when the laws changed in the United states, and why. But before I get to that, let me meander back to civil law.

Civil law is law of consent. It is law that can only occur with the consent of two parties. Law that is enforced upon another party, without the agreement of that party, cannot be civil. Any contract placed in coercion cannot be a valid contract. Any contract placed against the will of the person contracted with cannot be valid, it is null and void due to fraud. If there is fraud in the representation of the contract, the contract is void. (Fraud vitiates everything it touches).

How then is civil law civil? They claim that because they were elected as representatives, as senators, that the representation of the people gives implied and direct consent for them to emplace those laws on your behalf. However, if your representation was not paying attention, not present, or not consulted, is it still law? If that representation was applied without your consent, or even against your will (as in the case of the bailouts) is it still consent?

Can you withdraw your consent to the contract? Is there any means by which to fight the contract, or is there a bottleneck in the system, and economic and other obstacles designed to prevent the hearing of the complaint?

The Supreme Court hears only a few cases a year. Those cases (about 100 in a typical year) are far outstripped by new 'civil' and criminal laws. A number of those civil laws bear criminal punishments, so let's look at how that happened.

The Louisiana Purchase of April 30, 1808, added a substantial amount of new territory to the growing United States. This also had other effects, however. It introduced a new system of law to the United States, that enterprising politicians found very attractive... the Roman Law, the pre-napoleonic code. This law could introduce adversarial trials, changed the burden of proof from the prosecutor to the defendant, and did a number of other things, including the allowal of intent to override the actual punitive nature of the law. (if the law had a rational connection to the stated purpose, it was allowed). This ended up with the first civil laws being emplaced in the 1830s.

But what is coercion? Coercion is the emplacement of a threat to attempt to force an action that would not otherwise be taken by an individual, corporation, or entity. I.E. signing a contract with a gun to your head would be extortion and coercion. Threats to life, liberty, and property were all means of coercion.

Today, however, it's become commonplace We hold people in a jail cell for six months to a year, while their monies outside the system dwindle, to break their hope, and promise them huge punishments if they go to trial. Then we offer them a switch, waive your right to trial, and we'll reduce the penalties and charges. It seems like quite a deal... but is it? Is it even legal? You are already in jail, or simply wanting it to be over with, and the offered sentence seems vaastly less than the punishment that is otherwise offered, but do you have the right to waive your trial?

There is no option for such waiviers in the Constitution, all trials and all restrictions must be accomplished by a jury of your peers with full defense.

And look at these registries; suddenly we have a 'civil' system which has criminal penalties and felony actions for failure to comply with an imposed civil code.

Is this, by reason, civil, or is it coercive, and thus a criminal law attribute?

Does it provide punishment, or merely regulation? What is the purpose of regulation? This will be discussed in the next article.

But what is civil about forcing a person to do as you wish under the threat of punishment? Where is the consentual agreement?

For instance, we choose to prevent felons from bearing firearms (and attempts at expansion of this to misdomeanor offenses have occurred, as well as outright attempts to remove the second amendment from the Constitution). The recent court cases (DC v Heller) stated that it was an individual right to keep and bear for self protection. However, does this go as far as the founders intended?

No civil matter can be coercive, but what is more coercive than giving up the power to self-protect?

What is more coercive than forcing a person to rely upon the protection of another, and then prohibiting any right to that protection, and any civil consequences for failing to protect?
(Legal Snares for the unwary law-abiding citizen).

There can be no real protection, as the police cannot be everywhere at once. They cannot prevent crime, only answer it after it occurs. So how can defending yourself from crime be a crime?

Is this rational, or logical? Perhaps my poor idiot brain cannot comprehend the logic behind it. But we push felons to the side, to the fringes of society that are most dangerous, declare them unable to protect themselves, then deny them the services they need to get back on their feet in a legal manner, and further deny them any protection, restrict where they can work, what they can do, and how they must live.

And still, no person is protected.

Perhaps I'm just an idiot, but I fail to see how logical, consentual law can be allowed to be coercive, and further disable rights by failure to follow that law which could not be agreed to, and further transfer the control of those rights to the Federal Government (alienation in property law), when those very rights were designed and purposed to prevent the action of the government. If there is a right to self-protection, there is a right to self-protection. If this is a human right, and there is no right to be protected, then the laws that prevent the best means of that self-protection must logically fall, as the human right supercedes them.

If coercion in civil contracts voids them, then coercion by the government to establish a civil contract also voids the contract.

If they can do this kind of coercion against felons, and against misdomeanors now, for fear that they may someday commit a crime, how much longer will they be until they try to protect others from the crime that law abiding citizens may someday commit? After all, the statistics show most new crime comes from those not yet in the criminal system.

Basically, if the government can restrict the very rights that were designed to restrain it, by a status created by the government, how then is that good, right, or just? How does it restrict them from taking other rights, by statuses created by the government? Can they not restrict the right, then, to live on certain properties due to a status? They are already engaged in such. Can they restrict the right to protest? Already done, they license it and require you protest when and where they say, which makes quite an ineffective protest. If they can restrict when, where, and how you may protect yourself, and further IF you can effectively protect yourself, how are you protected?

Have you ever wondered why there has been such a rise of police brutality? Could it be that they know 99% of people are unarmed, and too afraid to fight them?

Who would think that? Only a total idiot.

Making hatred.

2009-06-05T07:29:00.001-07:00

The United States has had a long, and ample history of creating internal problems. From the old problems with slavery, to problems with racial and ethnic divisions created and used by enterprising politicians, we are good at hating. We've hated so long that we've forgotten why we hate, and often have taken up the same weapons that we claim to hate.

This has, always and ever, been one of the greatest problems with hatred. We tend to forget the target, forget the reasons, and indulge in that unfettered brutality for which some of our hearts long.

What causes hate? The greatest cause is fear and lack of understanding, lack of compassion feeds into this. We fear, and we are angry for the threat the fear creates. Part of this is a near-instinctual process, wherein we tended to avoid others who appeared similar, though acting oddly, in order to reduce disease. Part of it is an educational process, by which our enforcement in schools of the necessity for everyone 'fitting in' and punishment of those who do not tends to create the situations for anger and hatred.

But why do we hate? Perhaps the answer can be found in who we hate, and how.

We are fond of our hatred, as a nation, and as a species. When we feel powerless we hate ever the more, grasping for something to control.

And that control is the core of hatred. It removes compunctions against actions which would normally horrify us, removes the civilized veneer that we hide our own ignorance and fear with, and makes us powerful for that moment. It objectifies the targets, personifies in them all of the evil and viciousness we see out there, and see in ourselves. At its base it is all about control.

Being different is not a bad thing. That is the ultimate lesson we need to learn to get past hatred, to get past the barriers which politicians and well-meaning pundits put up. It is no less racist to profile a person as being racist due to their skin color, or their ethnicity. It is no less intolerant to say that all 'x' are intolerant. Racism is one of the many cross-cultural ties that bind us, but it is also one of the ugliest.

It can be used as a club to silence dissent, as an identity, as part of who we are. If we were truly colorblind, would the race of the candidate matter, even if he or she is considered a 'minority'? Would political considerations trump the ability to do the job? Does it matter what race they are, if they are capable of doing the job for which they are elected, and doing it faithfully?

But we harp on Obama being a 'black' and Sotomayor for being 'Hispanic' and saying that such is a good thing... when it matters even less than if a penny is copper. They have no control over the person to whom they were born, and we have no control over how they lived their lives, therefore the qualifications are far more important than the race or lack thereof.

Let's look at who we hate.. let's pick an easy target, shall we? In my search for hated persons and classes, the Judaic race, the African Americans, the Native Americans all got thought of.. but there are more classes that transcend these. In the cases of the African Americans, it's people seeking power once again that keep that brew mixed and fermenting, the Hispanics have much the same going on, as do the Caucasian and all the other races. To have a protector, you must have a boogeyman, and what better one than the tyranny of the 'other races'? What is more vague, and therefore more likely to continue, easy to blind yourself against things that are similar and focused on any slight or fault done by one of these 'oppressors'? Is it not also racist?

There are very few groups of persons we hate that cross racial or ethnic lines. Perhaps the most powerful hatred we have is visceral, and directed against those that transgress against the laws of our society. We look at history of the United States where people not guilty of capital crime were restored their rights, powers, immunities, and priviliges at the end of the sentence, their sentence was spent, and they were made peaceable again with the society until they once again transgressed.

Today, however, we want our pound of flesh, from the heart. We claim to do it without blood, but we look at the felon once again as a second class citizen. We feel a moral superiority that 'at least we haven't broken any laws', or 'at least I didn't do that'. The smug certainty we hold leaves little room for seeing the trials and travails of humanity that they undergo due to a spent punishment.

If the punishment was insufficient, what more could we do to them to make it so? If it was judged sufficient, how can we as people assume that they have not paid enough, if the court and jury believed they had?

Let's focus in a little closer. You have your murderers, your drug offenders, your larcenists and arsonists, you have your manslaughter, your property offenses and then you have your deviants and sex offenders.

Among these who is most likely to recommit their original or a related act? Would it be the murderers or sex offenders? No, actually, it's not. The murderers and sex offenders have a lower reoffense rate than any other class of criminal.

We see these sex offenders out there, and our instinctual response is 'kill them, mutilate them, open their corpse and torture them'. What is it in us that goes so far? It's not just a righteous indignation, it's something of a more visceral fear... a fear that in the correct or incorrect circumstances we'd be the same. It is a lingering guilt, a shame, over our own sexualities. We see this same shame against those accused of homosexuality, and in some cases people speak against it, but who dares... speak about attacks against a sex offender?

Only a total idiot would, or a sex offender, goes the reasoning.
But let's look at things a bit closer.

Compared to non-sex offenders released from State prisons, released sex offenders were 4 times more likely to be rearrested for a sex crime. Within the first 3 years following their release from prison in 1994, 5.3% (517 of the 9,691) of released sex offenders were rearrested for a sex crime. The rate for the 262,420 released non-sex offenders was lower, 1.3% (3,328 of 262,420).

The first 12 months following their release from a State prison was the period when 40% of sex crimes were allegedly committed by the released sex offenders. Recidivism studies typically find that, the older the prisoner when released, the lower the rate of recidivism. Results reported here on released sex offenders did not follow the familiar pattern. While the lowest rate of rearrest for a sex crime (3.3%) did belong to the oldest sex offenders (those age 45 or older), other comparisons between older and younger prisoners did not consistently show older prisoners’ having the lower rearrest rate.

The study compared recidivism rates among prisoners who served different lengths of time before being released from prison in 1994. No clear association was found between how long they were in prison and their recidivism rate.

Before being released from prison in 1994, most of the sex offenders had been arrested several times for different types of crimes. The more prior arrests they had, the greater their likelihood of being rearrested for another sex crime after leaving prison. Released sex offenders with 1 prior arrest (the arrest for the sex crime for which they were imprisoned) had the lowest rearrest rate for a sex crime, about 3%; those with 2 or 3 prior arrests for some type of crime, 4%; 4 to 6 prior arrests, 6%; 7 to 10 prior arrests, 7%; and 11 to 15 prior arrests, 8%. Rearrest for a sex crime against a child The 9,691 released sex offenders included 4,295 men who were in prison for child molesting.

Of the children these 4,295 men were imprisoned for molesting, 60% were age 13 or younger. Half of the 4,295 child molesters were 20 or more years older than the child they were imprisoned for molesting. On average, the 4,295 child molesters were eeleased after serving about 3 years of their 7-year sentence (43% of the prison sentence).

Compared to the 9,691 sex offenders and to the 262,420 non-sex offenders, released child molesters were more likely to be rearrested for child molesting. Within the first 3 years following release from prison in 1994, 3.3% (141 of 4,295) of released child molesters were rearrested for another sex crime against a child. The rate for all 9,691 sex offenders (a category that includes the 4,295 child molesters) was 2.2% (209 of 9,691). The rate for all 262,420 non-sex offenders was less than half of 1% (1,042 of the 262,420).

Of the approximately 141 children allegedly molested by the child molesters after their release from prison in 1994, 79% were age 13 or younger.

Released child molesters with more than 1 prior arrest for child molesting were more likely to be rearrested for child molesting (7.3%) than released child molesters with no more than 1 such prior arrest (2.4%).

Rearrest for any type of crime compared to non-sex offenders released from State prison, sex offenders had a lower overall rearrest rate.

When rearrests for any type of crime (not just sex crimes) were counted, the study found that 43% (4,163 of 9,691) of the 9,691 released sex offenders were rearrested. The overall rearrest rate for the 262,420 released non-sex offenders was higher, 68% (179,391 of 262,420).

The rearrest offense was a felony for about 75% of the 4,163 rearrested sex offenders. By comparison, 84% of the 179,391 rearrested non-sex offenders were charged by police with a felony.

Reconviction for a new sex crime Of the 9,691 released sex offenders, 3.5% (339 of the 9,691) were reconvicted for a sex crime within the 3-year followup period.

Reconviction for any type of crime Of the 9,691 released sex offenders, 24% (2,326 of the 9,691) were reconvicted for a new offense. The reconviction offense included all types of crimes.

Returned to prison for any reason Within 3 years following their release, 38.6% (3,741) of the 9,691 released sex offenders were returned to prison. They were returned either because they received another prison sentence for a new crime, or because of a technical violation of their parole, such as failing a drug test, missing an appointment with their parole officer, or being arrested for another crime.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice.

Let's look at this a moment. 5.3% vs 1.3%... sounds like a hugely higher risk.

At the risk of being idiotic, let's look at the math there.. 517 sex offenders vs 3,378 non-sex-offender prisoners. Which is more likely?

They say that sex offenders inevitably reoffend.. but does 5.7% (on the maximum end, depending on the nature of the crime, reoffense rates drop to as low as 1%) and there is less likelihood of reoffending the longer that the person is without an offense.

Let's take 700,000 offenders and assume a steady rate of 6% (the number as of last year that were on the registry) and exceeding the offense rate proposed by the data.

Let's also assume none of them die until the sequence terminates.

According to my spreadsheet, the first year 42,000 would reoffend, assuming static reoffense rates, and assuming that there is no changes in supervision, hormones, etc, or new offenders coming into that set.

How many years does it take for them all to reoffend at that rate? About 218. Now, the study notes something else.. that offense rates decrease the longer the offender goes without reoffense. At this point we've got a scale that increases closer to the origin, and approaches something indistinguishable from 0 at infinity.

The initial decay is fast.

So.. how do we have 700,000 offenders on the registry without hearing about 42,000 Lundsfords, Kankas, or Walshes a year?

The statistic is misleading. A 'reoffense' can be as little as public indecency, at this point, and the microscope is on them. If you are in public and rip out the crotch of your jeans picking something up, even if no flesh is exposed, the offender can be cited. Some indeed choose new victims, some choose young victims, but these are in the minority as well. (7.3% of the total of multiple child molesters versus single-offense child molesters at 2.4%.) This is a great difference from 90% to 100%.

You have a non-hetrogenous group, being dealt with in a hetrogenous and punitive manner, seeking further control. Precedents are being established that allows them to 'regulate' due to past offenses the possibility of future offenses. This gives them a huge amount of power. Perhaps this would indicate why they shifted from the 'black crime problem' to one that nobody was willing to defend. Race will always have defenders... and registered sex offenders, when defending themselves, are considered to be 'in denial' or 'making excuses'. It's a catch 22. Even if you are innocent, there is no way out.

Power and control, gentlemen. Any idiot can see what you've had done to you. Maybe' it's time to look other directions and at why you hate.

Besides.. how many of you have said 'I'd tap that', and then found out the person was underage?

And how many politicians got a pass on it after the 'Boys Town' scandal of the 80s?

It would seem an act of total idiocy to question the official line when a boys prostitution ring (and not always a consentual one) was linked through the congress and white house, and the story got buried. It would seem an even greater act of idiocy to claim that the government would potentially hide evidence and such a story in such a way that several of the persons later were involved in the legislation attacking such offenders, and were further accused of indecent acts against underage individuals in the congressional offices themselves?

After all.. who would believe such a story about those who pushed the legislation the most...

Only a total idiot.

How did we get here? An idiot's take.

2009-06-05T06:43:00.000-07:00

Our people, our nation have walked with open eyes, but quite blindly into the pit trap that is ahead of them. Shuffling forth like a crowd of grasping, hungry zombies after the nearby person atop the ice cream truck (with the music playing in the background for true horror), we've managed to destroy our freedoms, our liberties, and even our representation in our own government. So how did we get here? This article, and the next few articles will address this.

Suffice to say that we as a people got here with the best of intentions. "Good intentions", as said by Daniel Webster, "Will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."

This is not, however, to accuse the putative 'masters' of being the only ones at fault. We tend to forget that we too have a place in the process, and our good intentions often feed into the grasping and manipulative hands of those who would harm us.

The keys are manifold, and often in our own hands. We see perceived injustice, and say 'there ought to be a law' while ignoring that there may well already be.

Here are the key events that got us here.

A good part of the start of this was at the very beginning of the nation, when the Articles of Confederation were dying a death of a thousand cuts from internal stresses and loose monetary policies. The Bank of England provided loans, and the people of the Several States used those loans to back currency, often at large inflationary rates, allowing foreclosures on the properties that ended up owned by the banks by their backers. Rebellion was occurring, no standing army existed, and liberty was as much a myth as any dragon or unicorn. The nation was protected solely by the might of individual arms, and the mustering of those arms took time.

The issue of slavery as well was on the minds of the population. While the founders wrestled with its thorny grasp, they recognized that men must be free. At the same time, they recognized the economic hardship that such a takings would cause in many parts of the nation, as well as recognizing that said nation was also going to be recalcitrant in giving up its property. They set a date for correcting the situation, a date of 1808. It was not addressed until sixty years later.

There were other forces at work as well. On July 14, 1803, the treaty authorizing the Louisiana Purchase reached Washington DC. Napoleon had ceded the lands involved for a cash sum of 15 million dollars, a bauble according to the value of the total land area, resources, and materials involved. This however had another effect, the effect of introducing new law through the Louisiana territory, the civil law under the Roman tradition. Regulations, definitions, and many other things began replacing the Common Law as early as 1838.

On November 6, 1860, a lawyer was elected president. His name was Abraham Lincoln. He selected members for his cabinet from among his political opponents, to get a number of opposing views. Their advice was often barbed with traps, particularly the advice of Stanton. The president often walked the tightrope between political destruction, and solvency. When the southern states pronounced their secession from the union, Stanton (the secretary of war) was counseling Lincoln that the union was inseparable without a dissolution, threatening the continuity of the United States as it was seen at the time. Without the Confederate states, the Federal Government lacked a simple majority, preventing any legislation from being passed, any work from being done, any declarations or resolutions from being accomplished. The Union was at a standstill.

Abraham Lincoln at this point declared an emergency, and declared Martial Law, under the assumption of emergency powers. The Supreme Court struck this down in Ex Parte Merryman, but it was ignored by Lincoln. Lincoln then by executive order passed legislation allowing the Congress to operate without a quorum, by suspension of the normal rules of operation, they could pass legislation 'without contention'.

In other words, if nobody was there to say no, then the writ was law. This situation still exists today, with the suspension of the rules, and passage without contention. It would appear that Lincoln was drafting legislation to return the U.S. to the constitutional situation while he was murdered, but this is beyond the scope of this document.

Numerous powers were attempted at this time, from the case of Texas v White, to the case of Cummings V. Missouri and Ex Parte Garland. The issue of firearms came up, and the north fought to maintain the individual right to keep and bear arms even for the 'insurrectionist' south.

The passage of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments with interim (appointed) state governments complicated the mix. (Again beyond the scope of this document).

During this time an experiment with a national reserve bank ended, with another run on the bank. The experiment was repeated after the passage of an income tax amendment, and the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, in 1913. At this point, so long as the reserve bank did not have a run on too many banks at once, the system was seemingly secure. A financial boom time followed, the 'Roaring twenties' fed as well by the industrial complex of the First World War. Borrowing to invest had become common, and a fatal flaw. On Black Friday, the nation's fortunes plummeted. Loose monetary policy and lack of oversight of the Federal Reserve and lenders had caused an inflationary bubble, which popped and caused massive unemployment.

Due to this unemployment, the 'Bonus Army' came to Washington D.C. in order to attempt to gain an advance from their promised bonus bonds, due to the financial hardship. This left President Wilson in a bind, knowing the treasury did not have enough funds to pay the full amount of the bonds, and that the Federal Reserve refused to allow the bonds to be paid, he felt he had to refuse. Against orders, and ignoring repeated orders, the Army marched across the Potomac and chased the Bonus Army from the grounds of Washington D.C. (to this day rumors of atrocity abound, it's impossible to say what really happened, the official account was a child dead by tear gas, and several saber wounds in various people). Around the same time, numerous news and media agencies were bought up, forming a new 'associated press' that only had its independence in name.

This paved the way for Franklin Delano Roosevelt to gain the White House. In 1933, there was a national emergency declared by Congress, and the powers latent since Lincoln were activated once again, and have never to this date been deactivated, as the Congress in their panic allowed that only the president could declare an end to the emergency.

The president then declared a paper currency, dictated the seizure of all gold coins, bullion, and silver to back the currency and to be delivered to the Federal Reserve. The Internal Revenue Service was given extraordinary powers to seize property.

Desegregation in 1957, and use of the army in Little Rock did little to quell the powers of government.

We fast-forward a few years, to the Vietnam war, and a media more capable of using photography and film to influence the public. The power of the media and television, illustrations carefully chosen created a swell of anger in the people at home, against our soldiers and our government. The cold war begins, various presidents pass executive orders allowing the seizure of any property, including labor, and redistribution as the nation requires. The Watergate tapes, the scandals of multiple presidencies, a soaring national debt funded by the same bankers as back in the beginning, distracting the people through the media further, busily giving them people to focus on and hate, overemphasizing the problems of racial inequality, and legislation introduced to maintain it, claiming to be operating to remove it...

Are we really so much better off today?

Or are we all slaves already... this idiot wonders.

It would seem to me that government ownership and debt have made us entirely under their power, and as we must request permission to travel, permission to farm, permission for industry, permission for manufacture, permission to use our own lands and our own vehicles, permission to own our vehicles, our weapons, and even to have children and be married.. that we are fully owned by the government.

And this idiot wishes he were too stupid to be terrified of what that means.

Idiotic realizations

2009-06-04T06:20:00.000-07:00

I have looked back into the span of history, at the conditions and needs of the early colonists. I've searched fro and pondered the meanings of words, of legal terms with a known connotation. I've rooted through many hundreds of pages of cases and legal understandings regarding contract law, criminal law, and history, and come to a set of very dumb questions.

What is the nature of the document?
What is its purpose and intent?
What limitations does the document place against the powers it establishes?
How does this compare with today?

These questions are fairly thorny ones. This idiot tends to over analyze, so I've attempted to simplify. The following are the moronic maundering of this total idiot.

The constitution was, is, and remains a civil document, a contract between the people and the federal government. Though representatives of the people came from the Several States under the constitution, it was the people that ultimately had to allow the ratification of that document, and establish a new entity, the federal government. By incorporating that government via civil contract, it could outlast its own creators, and establish a power to perpetuity, according to the terms of that contract. The original contract, if you notice, bore no punishments, no pains and penalties for violations, though it did bear the limitation of attainder for death for making war against the United States, her people, or the Constitution as an attainder of treason. The remedy for the misuse of those governmental powers was twofold.

1. All laws made outside of the authority explicitly granted in the original contract were null and void, deemed to never have had the capability or authority for existence.
2. Any act against the people would be met by whole force, as an act of treason and war.

The purpose and intent, as well, of that constitution was fairly visible. Looking at the history, our budding confederacy of states had just gone through a revolutionary war, seceding from the power and authority of the Empire of Great Britain, and forging for themselves hard-won liberty in the process. This road was difficult, however, banks were established and writs of credit issued, bills of paper that were unbacked by the state banks, and the people were rapidly defrauded of great amounts of gold, property, and liberty. Rebellion stirred when the newly formed state governments attempted to tax, and there was potential for invasion on every front. Loose monetary policy and attempts at barring trade between states led to potential war between states, and armies levied in one state threatened the perceived well being of another.

Amid this turbulent backdrop were men who were determined to ensure the survival of the new colonies, and to prevent them from being snapped up, purchased, or flat-out fraudulently stolen by the British Government and their banks. They established a constitution to:

establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

Today's 'flavor' of law puts a great deal of weight on intent of the law, rather than the rights of the people, quite in opposition of the original intent. In cases where rights and powers came into argument, the weight of proof was to be against the power, not the individual right.

The rights, indeed, were seen to pre-exist the constitution, and to be outside of the authority of that document. No rights were created, or destroyed by its establishment, and they were protected from infringement not by the bill of rights, but by article 1, section 9, and article 1, section 10.

article 1, section 9. No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
article 1, section 10. No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.

What is a bill of attainder? A bill of attainder is any document that attempts to by writ remove any property from a person, without due process of law, the court, and the jury. According to the writers of the constitution (Madison, Hamilton, Adams) and the first supreme court justices (John Jay) the rights that were established outside of the government were also property, because by having property within those rights, one could file suit in a court of law for infringement of those rights, and further had the right, duty, and power to protect them by force of arms if necessary.

The rights to life, liberty, and property were the keys to the pursuit of happiness, and the adjunct right to defend such property against all takers was also important. Your liberty is, and was, expressed in your rights.

The government claims the power at this point to remove rights, not simply by the rule of law, but by whim, claiming that it is their provenance that establishes those privileges, and their power to determine the means by which they may be used. If your right to defend your life is a privilege, then is your life your own? This idiot must ask: if a people are limited in the operation of their rights to only what is permitted, are they rights? If someone else controls how you must live, how you must work, how you must eat, how you must sleep, how you must think, how you must travel, how you must vote.. are those rights still your own property? Property boils down to control of a subject. It would seem to this idiot that the control of the subjects is strongly within government hands.

Can you travel outside the country and return without their permission? Can you travel as you wish within it without showing your identification? Can you rely upon the officers of the law to actually protect you, or has the government chosen to indemnify them from that purpose? Does your nation or state control more of your life today... than you do?

Sure, we eat, we sleep, we drink when we wish. We watch our televisions and see our stars in the limelight without ever seeing the pasty makeup that's plastered on their faces, or even understanding what has been done to us.

We bemoan the standards of education dropping, but what do we do about it?

We sit and gripe in a coffee shop, kvetch about the winery. We're angry, we're hurting, but we're unfocused, unable to grip and grasp the enormity of what has been done to us.

I know of very few with no debt whatsoever for their personal debt, and none without debt from the government.

We are bound, eternally, to serve the government, on pain of prison. We can never pay off our debts, nor can we ever get beyond them. They establish for us, in our misery, scapegoats and whipping boys whom we reach out and gleefully flay. They propose laws for 'our own good' destroying our economies, our work, our futurity in its entirety, and we still sit back and watch them, and do nothing.

Oh yes, there are words for what has been done to us. We sit idly, supplicating the throne for surcease from our misery, and by the supplication we have time to have further chains bound down upon us.

Yes, there are words... and the word is slavery. By international law, we, as the people, are slaves. The government, established to serve us, and given power to protect our liberty, has chosen instead to make war against us, and to take up ownership of our lives, our property, our very existence and that of our children.

This is partly our own fault, and partly the fault of our parents and grandparents, and greatly the fault of our elected officials that for scraps from the table of power, are perfectly willing to continue selling us.

We can't let it continue... and any idiot can see that.

An idiot's crisis

2009-06-01T08:03:00.000-07:00

Many people come to crisis in the world we live in. Crises often occur when we least expect them, and the most troubling of these is crises of conscience. I am suffering one such, having read through numerous other websites of late, some of which I will be discussing shortly, and old books, magazines, newspapers.

What is real and what is not is always subject to interpretation. Courts exist to try to try criminals, to determine contracts and their real intent, and to attempt to hold the rule of law to our society. Today you're going to read one idiot's take on the law.

Our rule of law was specifically designed to avert tyranny.
We established the rule of law, not for the purposes of simple security against outside forces, but also against inside forces. Perhaps we remember that Concorde and Lexington both were sites of armories, and increasing encroachments of the British brought their armies to bear to collect those arms, as they were effective means of defense against the governmental and private excesses of powerful forces from Britain and elsewhere. A fuller picture can be understood by reading the writings of John Locke, Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, James Madison, and others, reading the newspapers of the time, and exploring the groundwork that was discussed in the Constitutional Convention itself.

The purpose of the constitution was not merely to establish a new government, but reading in its preamble, to establish the benefits of liberty for our founders, and all their posterity. They had numerous blind spots, none the least of which was the view among some that people with different colored skins were not human. They had a revolutionary vision, a vision of establishing a government where tyranny could not exist. A good many of them knew that this establishment would require the ending of slavery, and the ending of tyranny against all persons, regardless of how they were situated. They established the constitution of the United States to these ends.

Several of the states would not ratify the constitution without further assurances from the government. The Federalist Papers discussed the bills of rights in the Federalist 84, and proposed that such a bill of rights would be dangerous, as it would focus people upon what was enumerated, and people would forget the things not listed. Hamilton claimed in those writings that there were no powers granted to do such things, and thus proposing guards against things that could not be would suggest that the government had power to do them.

We live in a very different world today, a world where government power is near unlimited. This blog is designated to expose tyranny, of as many sorts as possible, and to expose them to the light and burn away the shadows hiding them. This idiot will be your guide in a changing, shadowy world, where your history may not be your own, and the truth is as ephimeral as the morning dew.

Obvious tyrannies are easy to look at, emotionally charged tyrannies far more difficult. Let's remove the blinders from your eyes, shall we? Anything our nation does to any citizen, can be done to all citizens. Anything our nation does to noncitizens in our name, can be done to our citizens. We are the guardians, and the supervisors of our nation, and it is by our authority, our power, and our supervision that they claim to do the things they do.

Did you vote for torture for persons in Guantanamo bay? Did you vote for the abuses in Abu Ghraib? Did you vote for the ability of the president to make legislation, prohibited by the Constitution? Did you vote for the ability of the congress to force you into mandatory identification cards that they can track anywhere you go? Did you vote for zoning ordinances to tell you what you can, and can't do with your land? Did you vote for the ability of the IRS to take your property at any time on suspicion of wrongdoing, without any legal process or necessity of return due to fraud or mistake?

Did you vote for making people homeless, for bailing out big businesses, for making reserve monetary systems that do nothing save making the rich richer, and the poor poorer? Did you vote to allow other nations to leverage the national parks, national parks you own, in order to support a growing and topheavy national debt?

Did you vote to support thousands of industries dumping the costs of their retirement upon your backs, upon your children and grandchildren, costs that cannot be borne or paid? Did you vote yourselves into servitude for the very government that is supposed to serve you?

Or... did they usurp these powers? Did they take them, pull them away from their rightful owners, and give them to themselves as a gift? Tyranny begets tyranny, and the greatest tyranny of all is the idea that any group has the power, the right, or the authority to take away the rights of others for the 'greater good'.

Isn't it interesting how so many disasters lead to greater power for the president, the congress, and external governments? Isn't it curious that the military is augmented repeatedly, and stationed on our own soil to preserve 'order' at the cost of liberty, at gunpoint?

Of course, they could never be used against us... to say so would be the rankest folly! After all, no government in history ever used their legitimate military against their own people. No elected leader ever became a despot... and we're too educated to ever elect someone because they present themselves well rather than for their actual qualifications. There's never been anyone manipulating ballots, or playing games with the electorate, no faithless electors, no bribery, coercion, or blackmail. Such things just don't happen in our nation, right?

Or have we closed our eyes in this nation so much that it seems a truism of life now? From the firefighters in Chicago in the 1800s, the militarization of the police today, the strongarm tactics back then assuring a 'proper' vote (on penalty of pain or death), police investigating themselves, and the rule of law breaking down farther as the police use fear to try to gain respect?

You don't gain respect through fear, you gain respect through constancy, through honesty, through compassion, through strength, through learning how not to exercise the powers you hold when they are not needed. You gain respect, and the rule of law, not through criminalizing things, but through working out ways to make the law even, level, and powerful, while still being human.

We have no right, power, or authority to regulate away the right to life, to liberty, to property, or to the ability to defend any of those, all of them, against tyranny.

Any idiot can understand that.

Trends and stupidity.

2009-05-31T13:36:00.000-07:00

I've noticed a trend in our society, looking to the government for protection. We talk about the government as though it is the panacea, the holy grail that will cure all of our ills, the ark of the covenant to destroy all evil.

It is, however, something subtly different, something disturbingly so at the visceral level when you think about it. It's a tool, much like any other, capable of being abused as a weapon, or used as a constructive tool. With any tool you can build or you can destroy.

With any tool there are safeguards in place, from the safeties of a firearm, or the lockouts on some construction and mining vehicles designed to keep them operating safely.

Just so, there are safeguards on our government, locked in at the beginning.
However, enterprising individuals have chosen to cut out the safeguards, to bypass them in the name of reducing time loss, and making things easier. There are a lot of safeties on industrial machines. From removing their power supplies and fuel, to removing the ability to move the drive or hydraulic units, safeties are there for a purpose, to keep you safe. Your safety was far more important than your convenience in most cases.

But what happens when all that is inconvenient is removed? You don't bother engaging that brake on the track of your rig, you forget to lockout the ignition, you forget to disconnect the power to the motor, and while you're doing maintenance, the unit slips, applying power to you, and mangling you beyond recognition. Any single one of the safeties would have potentially saved you, but you locked them out.

I'm an idiot, and even I see that's a bad idea. It's like working on an augur for moving coal, and trying to free the movement of the shaft with a heavy crowbar. You know the augur has more than enough power to pull you in, and wrap the crowbar around it. You also know that you're behind schedule.

Is it really worth it to stick that bar in there and hit that piece of stone jamming the system up? Is the risk worth the reward when you're crushed and bleeding, and someone else has to clean you out of the machine and tell your family that you're dead?

Our government is both a machine, and an operator. We are supposed to operate the machine carefully, and our representatives and senators are our operators by proxy. With effective supervision, and warnings, and safeguards, even an idiot can operate the machine of government. Any operator of a machine will try to take out safeties for convenience when the owner isn't watching. A flip of a switch here, a wiring around there, and a change in the hydraulic piping there, insufficient maintenance at another point... and you have all the makings of a disaster. A single replaced part can have profound effects on the rest of the machine, causing catastrophic failure... a misrated bolt replacing a rated, hardened, and nitrided surface, for instance, or an improperly set up blasting rig.

In our government we forgot that our senators and representatives are our employees, not those of the government. That government is our property, and we use them to oversee and maintain it. It's our job to maintain the supervision over those employees, including and up to the firing of them (by firing squad if necessary). It's our job to make sure they don't put their heads, hands, or other parts into the machine, or try to force others to do the same. It's also our job to make sure that they're not making deals behind our backs to sell our government, our inventory and stock, or allowing thieves in the back door to loot the place when we're not looking.

How did we get prepped for the greatest disaster in history? It's either sabotage, gross negligence, or both of the above. We've got a top heavy debt, a monetary system based on that debt, and no assets for the payment of the debt. We've managed to build industrial grade bureaucracies that burn huge amounts of fuel and do nothing but manage to get their operators a paycheck, and we can't even fire them. We have the government and the operators working to take the few controls we have left, and the ability of hiring and firing from our hands and give them to someone else, in treaties that remove our sovereignty and make us further subject to others who were our competitors until we stopped paying attention and they started a takeover with our own employees collusion.

What does this mean to us? I may be a total idiot, too stupid to shut up... but even I can see at that point you need to fire the operators, reassess the plant, and figure out where the hell things got screwed up and make sure the safeguards against it are strong enough to work. You also need to make sure that good habits are enforced, and bad habits leave the habitual offender working cleaning the port-a-potty until they shape up.

Even a total idiot can see that.

An idiot's musings.

2009-05-29T18:25:00.000-07:00

There are days in life when you look around and realize that... you are a total idiot. When you reach out into the darkness for the handhold you know is there, and then realize... you're not in the ladder shaft you thought you were, or when you step out onto the catwalk and realize that you removed the flooring for maintenance, and your foot just found empty air.

Like when you get in your car, back up, and realize you didn't open the garage door.

I am such an idiot. My idiocy goes beyond the norm. This blog, however, isn't about the stupid mistakes people made, it's about recognizing mistakes people are making.

Our world is a crazy place, beset by economic turmoil, debt, greed, and so many things out of our control. Any idiot can see that.

How many people, though, are stupid enough to say what they actually think? How many are dumb enough to question, to challenge, and to recognize their own idiocy?

How do we as people learn if we don't?

They tell us not to question, but only to accept that which is ladled to us, to accept the meagre scraps which are allotted to us... and that this is not slavery, that this is not control, it's all for our betterment, for we are too stupid to know what is good for us.

They tell us that we must be controlled against our baser natures by force, that we cannot control ourselves, but out of our own body of the people they will raise up those who can control us.

They say it is a pandemic, cascading through human society, but if so, are they not as guilty as any of us of being contaminated by it?

Who are they to judge us inferior? Who are they to say that we, as a people, deserve no power, no dignity, no respect, and are not worthy of or capable of protecting ourselves or others save by their magnamity and largesse in choosing our protectors for us?

If we cannot be trusted with our own protection, and knowing what is best for us, would it not be best to allow it?

Or would it be a descent into certain slavery? We throw around the term of tyranny lightly, like a kite buffeted by the wind, but when its hurricane comes full force upon us, we close our eyes tighter, ignoring the effects it has upon us.

Is it 'better' thus?

If we can remove the rights of others, can it not be said that others can engage to remove our own rights?

What is a right anyway?

Rights are by necessity individual. Our choices are the definers of our rights, our belief and faith in their necessity the arbiters of the actions required to maintain them. Our founding fathers believed that any man attempting to remove the rights of another, to create a 'civil death' via attainder or targeted legislation was a tyrant.

But, I am an idiot. Perhaps I know nothing at all, but I do know that I'm too stupid not to speak, and too ignorant to be cowed by the forces arrayed to prevent so speaking.

I am perhaps an idiot to believe that offense is a choice of the listener, and perhaps too an idiot for believing in the sanctity of communication and thought that I disagree with.

I am an idiot as well, perhaps, for believing that the best guardian of our own interests is we the people ourselves, limited by the knowledge that the rights of all are equally sacrosanct, and equally their personal property.

If we move the control of the exercise of any right to another, that person controls how we use those rights, how we live, how we work, how we breathe, and ultimately, how we die. No court in the united states can permanently alienate the property of our rights outside the sentence, nor can any court, legislator, or executive choose to limit those rights for any class of persons at all, from the whole class to the least person in the society.

So too are we the people limited... if the government cannot create, enforce, or interpret law to limit the rights of any of our people, we cannot vote those rights away. This is a constitutional limited republic, and ultimately the best safeguard of our lives, our liberty, our property, and our happiness.

Even a complete idiot can see that.