The Federal Government: To Alter or To Abolish?
by KERRY L. MORGAN
Part 5: Incomplete Remedies: Voting, Secession, Nullification and Armed Revolution
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Even if we want freedom, understand its foundation in law, and recognize that God wants us to enjoy our rights despite our own desire to covet our neighbor’s property through civil government, we may still err in fashioning solutions. As noted in a prior Essay “What Can We Do Now that Our Freedom is Taken?” we introduced the idea that the federal government has taken our freedom and has become the greatest threat to its recovery. Also discussed was the need to rely on law rather than violence, in addressing this threat. A Congress of States was proposed as a means to reduce the federal government’s power so that it would be explicitly barred from crushing our unalienable rights. Also considered was the idea that it may be desirable or necessary to simply abolish the federal government in order to preserve the American People and the nation.
Attention was then turned to the foundations of recovery in “What Foundation will Support Recovery of our Freedom?” We considered that there are very few who can be counted on to lead the recovery of freedom who are concentrated in any one party, place or institution, and that there are many who will oppose a Congress of States. We saw that the principles of Declaration of Independence and its reliance on the laws of nature and of nature’s God are the best foundation to support the recovery of our freedoms and God-given unalienable rights. We noted that the right to alter or abolish any civil government was a critical unalienable right.
In “God is no Caesar, Caesar is no God,” we discussed God and civil government more abstractly. It was concluded that God empowers a People to establish their own form of civil government by their free consent. We uncovered false assumptions about God and civil government. We discussed the federal governments current lawlessness in broad strokes and concluded by alluding to the insanity and irrationality of our present federal regime. Indeed, God is much more reasonable than our government when it comes to the exercise of power and the security of rights. God believes that each person is capable of self government, volition, and even love of one’s neighbor. In this respect God is no Caesar. The untethered state believes in control, force and violence. In this respect Caesar is no god.
Following up with “Every Evil Under the Sun,” we undertook a deeper examination of Congress and its failure to resist theft of our wealth. We discussed how office seekers manipulate us to get our vote by appealing to our own human vices. Chief among these vices are coveting, theft and the idol of political party. Each election calls upon us to present our offerings to our party. We offer our vote. Our elected officials offer us our neighbor’s money. Elections tempt us to covet our neighbor’s property through governmental programs and elections. We saw how political parties have become idols which we choose based on their promises to steal from our neighbors and make war upon our foreign neighbors. We were challenged to set these common evils aside and voluntarily choose freedom, yet recognize that fighting the evil within each of us is harder than resisting the federal government itself. The real battle to recover freedoms must start within ourselves. A Congress of States cannot solve the problem of human vice, but it must be aware that appeals to our weakness keep us from moving toward freedom.
We now turn to an examination of some crucial remedies which a Congress of States will certainly take up and consider. These are good remedies but may not be sufficient remedies or even well thought out remedies. A Congress of States must evaluate them but not choose them in lieu of the more complete remedies of either Constitutional amendments or abolition of the federal government. We are talking about the problems associated with “solutions” such as enhanced party participation, voting, secession and nullification. These are not wrong in and of themselves. They are certainly legal and Constitutional options. But they are not the best we can do. In the end, they will be insufficient if only abolition will do to recover freedom. Yet, as solutions they must be considered though for the reasons discussed here, they may not suffice.
A. MORE PARTY PARTICIPATION AND VOTING?
What ought we to do in the face of federal tyranny indoctrinated into our souls by our system of government controlled education and by our favorite political party? Yes, our school and party have brought us this tyranny. What party are we talking about? We are talking about your favorite political party. Surely you can’t mean the Republican Party! They are the ones that are going to save us. Nor can you mean the Democratic Party. They are the ones spending us into prosperity. Friend, how naive can we be about parties and what parties are doing to “save us” and “help us?”
The ugly truth about these parties is this: we uncritically accept the flag waving claims of our party because we are inflamed by the outrageous conduct of the other party. Every presidential election deals us this set of trick cards. You don’t really like your candidate but the other candidate is evil. Your candidate is not very good, but the other candidate is worse. This is all moronic prattle. You’re talking like a parrot. What’s wrong with you? You are addicted to your party. It has closed your eyes to reality. Don’t you see that your Pavlovian focus on demonizing the other party is just a stalling tactic one designed to let the federal expansion continue. All the while you’re thinking: “My party won, we are safe.” But the federal government keeps growing and growing. It acquires more power and you lose more rights. And here you are thinking you have won. Those are the thoughts of a well heeled slave, not a free man.
We must see that no matter who wins, the Republican and Democrat are united on this one point that the size and power of the federal government has, must and should continue to expand. The left and the right are not opposed to each other on this point. The left and the right support the state and its expansion.18 The left and the right are the state. If you vote for the Republican or you vote for the Democrat because they are the only game in town and you ignore all the other candidates, you are voting for the state. You are voting for unlimited government. You are voting against your own rights which God Himself placed in your hand. You are voting for a Congressional representative that spits on the Constitution. You are voting for a President who thinks he’s above the law. You are voting for men and women who will continue to appoint judges who claim to be the living embodiment of the law.
At the end of the day, you are voting for your enslavement. You don’t mind being a slave to the state if it is brought about by your party. You just don’t want to be a slave if the other party requires it. This thinking makes no sense.
Can you actually hold fire to your chest and not be burned? God said you have certain rights from Him but the candidate you just voted for says you don’t have those rights. God says parents have an obligation and right to direct the education and upbringing of their own children, but the candidate you’re voting for says you better not try it without their permission, approval, oversight, and control. God says your property is your property, but your party favorite the good guy says that your property will remain zoned, taxed and regulated. Yet, you assure yourself that the election of your candidate next time will improve things. This is just the blind leading the blind. How many have stumbled into that ditch after you? Can’t you see that your devotion to the party voting machine has made us all the slaves of our D.C. masters? Partisan politics are not the cure. Today’s partisan politics are the disease of the body politic. More cheerleading for your party is not the answer.
What about secession? Should the States secede from the Union? The Declaration refers to “the Right of the People to alter or to abolish” a government. Altering the federal government is different from leaving it. Abolishing the federal government is certainly different than running away from it. The Revolution left the English government in place on the other side of the ocean but sought to dispossess it on this side. Frankly, if 10 or even 20 states, geographically connected seceded, do you actually think the federal government would just let them go their merry way? That is not what King George did. That is not what Abraham Lincoln did. The conduct of the federal government during the Civil War should have taught us all that no nationalistic government is inclined to let States secede without an armed struggle. If we are eventually compelled to “institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as seem most likely to secure our safety and our rights,” it will not be by secession. Even if those 20 states do manage to secede, they must at least consider what form of confederation will serve their common interest in defense from federal aggression.
Now hold on a minute. What are we saying about the Southern Confederacy and the Civil War or “war of northern aggression?” Are we saying the Confederate States had no right to secede from the Union? Are we saying secession is not the answer? Perhaps you can’t get involved in a Congress of States unless it is for secession, or comes down on secession on the “right side.” Perhaps a Congress of States is just some Yankee plot? Or perhaps you can’t get involved for the opposite reason? Perhaps a Congress of States is some kind of states rights scam that will be used to eventually oppress the rights and equality of American citizens and let the states run hog wild crushing the freedoms of the people, women and of racial minorities?
Calm down. We are saying that all those discussions and arguments whatever their merit, simply do not avail us here. What of secession? That is not what is being proposed. We have not come this far to run away from the United States federal government a government we made by law and we can just as well unmake by law. We have not come this far to secede from the federal government, leaving our nation half slave to it and half free from it. We have not come this far to invite war against a State, or States or to merely separate ourselves. There may be a certain amount of naivete in thinking a Congress of States can organize and recommend back to the States that they abolish the federal government without an armed federal response of some kind. But that is the only realistic option.
If we entertain the idea that a State has a right to secede, fair enough. But ought we not also evaluate how it may end? What State can withstand the modern equivalent of the Northern Army? It matters not if a Republican or Democrat President is in Office. Both parties agree that the Union must be kept intact at all costs. That means killing the people involved in secession. Both parties love war and war making. Both parties see war as glorious and thereby would make it easier for soldiers to feel good about killing Americans, State by seceding State in order to save “America.” The U.S. military power will be directed against any such State or States. Eighteen-Sixty style Southern secession set forth a federal responsive blueprint. Military rule. Martial law. Financial assets frozen. Imprisonment without trial. Suspension of rights. No habeas corpus. Federally sanctioned murder. Just look at how Japanese Americans were treated after Pearl Harbor or how Arab-Americans in this Country were treated after 911 and you can begin to get a flavor of the modern lash. The Siege of Petersburg took nine months. Today it would take 90 minutes. Think about it a federal war against the State of Montana for instance, with unmanned drones in the air and FEMA camps on the ground. It would end quickly and badly.
A Congress of States can show us the way to take back what is rightfully ours and to take it back branch by branch, department by department and agency by agency. We the People, by and through the States we created, then created the federal government. We created it by law and we may alter or abolish it by law, by and through our state representative assemblies in a Congress of States. Yes, we may abolish a government by the use of law. We may abolish this government by the law. We may abolish the United States government by the rule of law. The British aren’t coming The People must come, State by State, line upon line, precept upon precept. (Isaiah 28:10.)
America is bigger than any form of government. Our nation is not synonymous with the federal government. Our nation is not our flag. Our nation is not our Great Seal or “in God we trust” on the debased coinage. Whether or not we have a President will not change the fact that our nation will continue because the American People will continue. Whether or not we have a Congress will not change the fact that our nation will continue because the American People will continue. Whether or not we have a Supreme Court will not change the fact that the American People will always resist being ruled by judges who are unaccountable to the written rule of law. We formally became a People in 1776 and had no national government. We can be a nation in 2014 and beyond, without a national government, especially if that government will not yield and submit to the Law of Nature and the law of the land.
Many States have adopted declarations of sovereignty reclaiming their Tenth Amendment recognized and reserved powers. These declarations, however, are relatively weak and somewhat misguided. Why? Because they merely affirm a State’s sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment over all powers not enumerated and granted to the federal government. They do little more. So what if a State affirms its sovereignty? What if it nullifies this or that federal law? What is it actually going to do?
For instance, the federal government has entered into the field of domestic law enforcement. The vast bulk of the criminal law, however, has always been a state function. Are the states prepared to further resolve that they will not permit the prosecution of their citizens in a federal court for so called “federal crimes” that have no Constitutional basis?
Or consider this. Why not have the state legislatures resolve to require every federal official authorized to carry a firearm in the course of their federal employment within that state, submit to an extensive state background check? Why not make those background checks include a state criminal prohibition against carrying a firearm if the agent’s federal agency, Bureau or Department has a policy, practice or regulation that is inconsistent with any state policy, practice or regulation? Why permit armed men to openly operate in a state, enforcing a federal policy, practice, regulation or law which is inconsistent with state policy, practice, regulation or law?
Why not adopt a state law requiring all federal employees and officials operating within that State to first register with the State as foreign agents? Why not pass a law authorizing the state police to arrest and take into custody any federal agent whose official conduct contravenes a list of state defined federal unconstitutional acts as defined in state law? This is nullification with teeth. You say the federal courts will declare those state laws preempted or unconstitutional. The Courts do not enforce their own orders. They must rely on the executive branch to do so. We are right back where we started. Will a state then pass a law making it a state crime for a federal executive official to enforce an unconstitutional law or unconstitutional federal court order in that state against a state citizen or state official? Not likely.
What we have been sold by nullificationist, is bravado nullification. Bravado nullification is what state officials do prior to reelection. It is reelection talk. Even if the true nullification advocate believes it to be more, the sponsors of these state resolutions do not appear to have comprehended the details of what they are resolving. Any state nullification law worthy of Thomas Jefferson19 must include measures of its own for providing that no unconstitutional acts shall be exercised within their respective state boundaries.
This line in the sand must inevitably lead to the Governor and State Police on the one hand refusing to release a federal employee from a county jail or state prison after conviction in a state court for violating a state law which nullified a federal law sought to be enforced by the federal employee. On the other hand, the President and national guard, having obtained a writ of habeas corpus from a federal court, will stand outside the state jail or prison and demand the release of the federal employee on the basis that the state nullification law is unconstitutional. When these two forces are actually in place, then you will know that any specific nullification act is real. Unless the standoff de-escalates by withdrawal of federal troops, the President will move to arrest the Governor instead. Then you will finally know that a Congress of States must recommend abolishing the federal government. Then the state Governors and legislatures will finally know that unless they take action, their fate is to live out their days in a federal penitentiary.
We are not generally proposing that states nullify individual laws passed by Congress as a long term solution. That is a popular trend now, but a short term stop gap measure at best. Nullification can buy time for a Congress of States and the States to act. Dr. Tomas E. Woods, Jr., has presented the best case for nullification.20 His approach may be worth implementing in the short run, but it cannot be the central or primary focus of a Congress of States. At best it is only a stepping stone to force the issues to the forefront, but the state nullifiers will have to put some teeth in their resolutions. As previously alluded to, nullification’s “teeth” means state laws must result in the state prosecution of federal agents in state courts who act unconstitutionally as defined by state law in that state’s jurisdiction. Otherwise, nullification measures lack an essential element they fail to actually do anything except thump the state government’s chest.
If federal law mandates or prohibits an act, and the state says that law does not apply here, at some point the federal government will prosecute those state officials who obstruct federal law. They may not wait for the state to prosecute a federal employee and try to jail break him or her after the trial. Federal Marshals will first come with federal subpoenas for records and document to identify the nullification co-conspirators. Does your state have a law prohibiting the enforcement of federal subpoenas to investigate nullification measures? Does your executive have a privileged plan to nullify those subpoenas or their enforcement? If not, your are just playing games. Maybe your private organization is just raising funds for its own glory?
After that, the federal government will come and arrest the Governor, or the State Attorney General, or the County Sheriff or Prosecutor, or the local Police Chief or Prosecutor etc., for violating a federal law. What plan is in place? Is there a state law covering this matter? Perhaps your legislature is too busy debating revised occupational licensing requirement for barbers to deal with nullification? While your state legislature fiddles, Rome burns. The federal government will incarcerate state executive branch officials for violating federal law. Is your State willing to bust these officials out of federal lockup? Is your Lieutenant Governor (what’s his or her name, anyway?) ready to send in the State Police to obtain their release, with pistols drawn against federal machine guns pointing back?
Is your State Governor willing to call up the President with his one phone call from federal lockup and say:
Mr. President, you are holding in federal custody myself, and/or a state official charged with violating a federal law which my state has nullified. I would appreciate you ordering the U.S. Marshals to release us and tell your federal Prosecutors and U.S. Attorney General to withdraw the charges. I’d hate to send over my State Police and obtain release by force. What will it be?
If we have such a Governor, let him or her stand up and be counted. Perhaps the Governor could time his or her call to the State Police when they return from a joint State-Federal task force training exercise against terrorism? He could say “Go over to federal lockup and use whatever force it takes against those federal officers you just trained with and ate lunch with and shared family photos with, to get me and our people free.” Let us dwell no more with bravado nullification. Besides nullification does not get to the real problem which is this: the federal government is out of control.
Consider federal control of land. The federal government owns about 30% of the land in the United States. This was not the way it was supposed to work out under the principles of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, Article 1, section 8, or Article IV, sections 3 and 4 of the U.S. Constitution. The deal was that as States came into the Union, the States would retain sovereignty over their land according to Article I, section 8.21 The top 10 list of States with the highest percentage of federally owned land looks like this: Nevada 84.5%, Alaska 69.1%, Utah 57.4%, Oregon 53.1%, Idaho 50.2%, Arizona 48.1%, California 45.3%, Wyoming 42.3%, New Mexico 41.8% and Colorado 36.6%. This is not land all devoted to military forts, dockyards and arsenals. Can it be said that 85% of Nevada is a dockyard — in Nevada?
Are these States going to resolve to not only kick the federal government out of their States, but also resolve to escort the agents of the United States Department of Interior off the premises? Will a State resolve that agents of the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Bureau of Reclamation, please leave? Or perhaps arrest federal agents and put them in a state jail when they interfere with the state in the exercise of jurisdiction over its own recovered land? Is a state willing to refuse the U.S. Marshall access to the state jail when he comes to free the agent with his federal writ of habeas corpus? No, because the Tenth Amendment resolutions are toothless tigers. They are little more than partisan dope for the masses which the party can parade before an election to show how tough they really are. Political addicts, however, have to start somewhere on the road to recovery.
The 2014 armed standoff between Cliven Bundy and the United States Bureau of Land Management is a perfect opportunity for a demonstration of state nullification by Nevada. While the federal agency agreed to release around 400 head of cattle it had seized from rancher Bundy, it still insisted that Bundy owed roughly $1 million to the government because, for the last two decades, he failed to pay a fee for letting his cattle graze on federal land. Bundy claims that he owes the agency nothing because of prior agreements in-place for years. Thoughtful observers recognize that the conflict is far from over. The most likely response will involve a wide reaching hybrid operation with the Sheriff’s Office or Nevada State authorities and federal officials.22 It is hard to conceive of Nevada as standing up for anything when it is working with the federal government’s agents hand in glove to further entrench federal control of “federal” land in Nevada. If nullification cannot be made to work here, then its all just talk.
Looking at Tenth Amendment resolutions also reveals very little about the fact that the Amendment reserves power to the People, not merely the States. Much is made of the reserved power of the States. Virtually none is made of the reserved power of the People. Too little is said about the unalienable rights which God has given to every man. Furthermore, nothing is resolved about the purpose of civil government, whether state or federal, being to secure those rights. In fact, the problem with modern secession talk and Tenth Amendment lingo is that it is inordinately focused on State power. Even then, that focus is on the mandates of the federal government that are “unfunded.” One would think that if the federal government merely increased the bribe it offered to the states, that these resolutions would simply go away. (See Senate Concurrent Resolution 4, As Adopted by the Michigan Senate, September 17, 2009).
Friend, we ought not be particularly interested in building up State power. The Tenth Amendment refers to the powers reserved to the States, but it also refers to the powers reserved to the People. Little is said of the power reserved to the People in the Tenth Amendment movement literature. Much is said of the power reserved to the States. In fact, an emphasis on the Tenth Amendment alone will lead to secession talk quite naturally, but that is not the goal.
E. THE RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE ARE FIRST, NOT STATE POWER
Go back to first principles. The focus of any civil government is not first on its own power. The focus of government ought to be on its purpose. What is the purpose? What power will secure that purpose? The Ninth Amendment reminds us of this purpose the security of rights, rights reserved to the People. It says nothing about the States. It says nothing about States’ rights. Curious how this is rarely mentioned in secessionist literature, or at least not seriously examined. Yet, the States’ Constitutions contain many of these rights in their respective “Bill of Rights,” and are the place where such rights ought to be further enumerated and then protected from State usurpation. Now how are these rights actually holding up against State aggression? Think about that if you favor State secession as the goal. We will be fighting the federal government in a defensive war on the one side and our overreaching state governments on the other side. This is not a solution.
A delineation of the rights reserved to the People is the place to begin the task of cutting the federal leviathan down to size or eliminating it altogether, not only a discussion of the power of the States. Only after our unalienable rights are front and center, ought the focus be on what power has been usurped from the People and, oh yes, also from and by the States. All in all, we must admit that the current emphasis on the Tenth Amendment pays little attention to unalienable rights. We must also discuss income taxation, property rights, the redistribution of our wealth, the war on drugs, tobacco and civil liberties, freedom of association and travel, the right to own and use guns and weapons, foreign policy, fiat money, militarism and global empire.
The Declaration of Independence does not get caught flatfooted in this debate. It plainly states that we are endowed by our Creator:
with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Thus, the first point for any Congress of States is to enumerate the Peoples’ unalienable God-given rights and then determine how the state and federal governments have injured, impaired or even destroyed them. If we only talk about the Tenth Amendment then we will never hold our State governments to the Declaration’s standards. If we only talk of secession, then at the end of the day, we will have exchanged a single federal master for 50 State masters.
State power/State rights and secession are not the answer. The States too must respect the unalienable rights of their own citizens from State encroachment. Current emphasis on the Tenth Amendment and secession has not and does not accomplish this end. It could in the future but it does not now. But this is not to say there is no place for the States. Indeed, the States are a critical element of the solution. They have a role and are the key. They can defend their reserved powers as long as they first defend what is more important the unalienable rights and reserved power of the People. Like the Barons at the meadow near Runnymede who made King John sign the Magna Carta in 1215, so too the States are poised to warn the federal government to either return to a government of limited and enumerated power or be abolished by law.
F. WHAT ABOUT ARMED REVOLUTION?
What about armed revolution? Is there a time for armed revolution for the forcible alteration or abolition of the Constitutionally created government of the United States? Is now that time? Consider two factors. The first is the law itself. Prior to any Revolution, whether accomplished by force or by law or both, the Declaration acknowledges the wisdom of the People witnessing a long train of abuses and usurpations of power, as a predicate to a defensive revolution. Are we there yet? Have we seen enough abuses and usurpations? We have. It states:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
But before a lawful revolution can occur, we must first identify and articulate in a Congress of States, each particular abuse and usurpation to which we object. This list and analysis will prove to the American People and also demonstrate to the world that the United States’s pursuit of these despotic objects has already or will invariably place us under the yoke of absolute federal despotism. A review of the federal (and State) government’s impairment of unalienable rights is a very good start for such a list or bill of particulars. But it is a list that ought to be analyzed and compiled by delegates appointed by the States for that purpose. A review of the present situation does not indicate that any such bill of particulars has been carefully set forth by the States acting in concert on behalf of the People.
Once the abuses and usurpations are chronicled, then the question will be are we to alter or abolish the federal government by law or by force of arms. This Article advocates for abolition by law and not by armed force. The reason to avoid offensive armed revolution is practical. Consider the weapons in the federal government’s hands and its proclivity to use them against ordinary people. The federal government has and will use force and violence against its own people especially when threatened or when it thinks it may be attacked. This should be obvious. Even the suggestion of individual discontent with the government raises its suspicion.
The history of FBI infiltration into any group or organization that merely suggests a possible call to arms ought to be enough to avoid this option simply out of raw fear. For instance its COINTELPRO operation (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. The FBI’s motivation is always the predictable refuge of those who seek to wrap their lawlessness in the flag: “protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order.” It is no different today with the government claiming terrorist cells are lurking in every American city. Some maintain that the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing was a dry run for the imposition of martial law on a large geographical area.
Perhaps you disapprove of organizations which the FBI has actually infiltrated, disrupted, marginalized, and/or subverted. Many of these were communist and socialist organizations. Or perhaps the women’s rights movement; or perhaps the reports of people suspected of building a “coalition of militant black nationalist groups” scared you into accepting a police state. Perhaps you even regard non-violent civil rights movement organizers such as Martin Luther King, Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress of Racial Equality, and other civil rights groups, as dangerous and well worthy of the FBI’s efforts to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize.”23
Don’t be shortsighted and fail to see what is happening. The problem is, that the government is out of control. The problem is, you are probably already on a government watch list of some sort yourself. The Missouri Information Analysis Center specifically described supporters of presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr as “militia” influenced terrorists and instructed the Missouri police to be on the lookout for supporters who displayed bumper stickers and other paraphernalia associated with the Constitutional, Campaign for Liberty, and Libertarian parties. How many other States have the same document yet undiscovered or released to the public? The Phoenix Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Joint Terrorism Task Force during the Clinton Administration designated defenders of the Constitution as “right-wing extremists.”
Moreover, a report from the Department of Homeland Security, titled “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” released by DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis, stated that acts of violence could come from unnamed “right-wing extremists” concerned about illegal immigration, abortion, increasing federal power and restrictions on firearms, and singled out returning war veterans as susceptible to recruitment. That probably includes you!
The fact of the matter is this: the federal government is steps ahead of you in thinking through an armed revolution. It isn’t going to wait for you to step onto the street with arms in hand if you have already announced your intentions on the internet. It will marginalize or destroy you long before that point. It will certainly audit, investigate, slander and indict you along the way if you do anything serious before things reach a boiling point.
The military has more machine guns, mortars and armored vehicles than you do. So does your State Police, County Sheriff and local law enforcement department. It also has destructive devices, helicopters and drones that can be dispatched to spy on you, your family and neighbors next door, and if necessary fire upon you. True, the federal government can kill you or me right now if it wants. It can send in the tanks and gas you to death and then incinerate every member of your local church to cover its crime. It can gun you down on your front porch holding your baby in your arms. But it still desires to maintain the appearance of a lawful regime.
The courts are still open, even if justice for unalienable rights is not usually found there. The average Federal District Court judge will parrot his clerk’s Supreme Court research reflecting the predictable gibberish that Congressional power is not really limited to those few objects in Article 1, Section 8, and that the Ninth and Tenth Amendments really do not mean the People have either power or rights reserved to them against federal encroachment. Neither Federal District Court or Court of Appeal judges are appointed because of their knowledge of the Constitution or the unalienable rights of human beings made in the image of their Creator. Most think the Declaration of Independence has no legal implication or impact. They may have religious training and even be members of your religious assembly, church or synagogue, but they don’t know squat about what God thinks or says concerning the rights which each of us possess rights which the Declaration pre-supposes are “self-evident.” Our legal training has made us blind to these matters. The blind cannot lead the blind.
When Congress passes a law crushing an unalienable right, the Courts won’t evaluate the law strictly to see if it is specifically enumerated and authorized under Article I, Section 8. They will grant Congress a wide berth in that department affirming virtually every exercise of its purported Article I power without so much as a blink of the eye. But if you claim that you have a right reserved to you specifically enumerated in Article 1, section 9, or the Bill of Rights, they will eye that intensely. First, they will apply a multi-tiered judicially created analysis to see if that right is fundamental or not. Second, they will decide if the government has a compelling reason or not to crush that right, and if so, third, determine if the government has chosen the least restrictive means to crush that right. They say it is just fine and dandy to crush your clear and unambiguously stated Constitutional rights for compelling reasons.
The only exception to this later rule seems to be the unwritten and suddenly discovered “constitutional rights” the Court wants to fabricate as a matter of its political will, such as abortion or sodomy or gay marriage. If you think your favorite District Court judge has a different view of judicial review, Congressional power, the commerce clause or federalism, then ask him or her to spell it out for you at the next Federalist Society Meeting highlighting the “rule of law.” Tell them you would like to read their best written opinion on the subject. “What is the cite your Honor?” You will either be ignored or lectured about Superintending Control or stare decisis. “I was just following orders” summarizes these arguments. You are asked to believe that these judicially created doctrines trump their oath of office and are superior to the written law of the land! Says who? A judge’s office, the very existence of which is wholly dependent on the Constitution itself, says he or she is bound by judicial opinions that contradict it.
So the courts are still open and elections are still held, even if we elect the same people over and over. The internet is still operational, though monitored, copied and hacked by the NSA and others. The media are still in the propaganda business and making money. For now, it’s a standoff called status quo which is another way of saying the federal government will continue to increase its power and we will continue to be stripped of our few remaining rights.
If you are thinking of armed revolution, consider something other than rising up with shotguns and AR-15’s in hand. Or, if the national government has its way, consider something other than rising up with registered pellet and paintball guns remaining in your lawful possession, against federal flash bangs, tear gas and black hooded SWAT teams with automatic weapons. Consider a Congress of States.
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ENDNOTES
18. Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., The Left, The Right and the State (2009).
19. “That the co-States, recurring to their natural right in cases not made federal, will concur in declaring these acts void, and of no force, and will each take measures of its own for providing that neither these acts, nor any others of the General Government not plainly and intentionally authorized by the Constitution, shalt be exercised within their respective territories.” Thomas Jefferson, The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. http://lonang.com/library/reference/1798-knt/
20. Thomas E. Woods, Jr., Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century (2010).
21. In connection with land, the Constitution provided that Congress may only: “exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings.”
22. David Hathaway, What’s Next for the Bundys? http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/04/david-hathaway/whats-next-for-the-bundys/
23. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO