Neal's Soapbox

I’ll be the first to admit it I’m not that damn smart. I may spend more time reading than many people do, but that doesn’t make me smarter, just more well-read. I may also have a talent for stringing thoughts together in a manner to produce a convincing argument, but once again, that doesn’t make me smart. You want to see smart, read some of the books I do…those men were smart. I am however, very opinionated. Therefore, since these are my articles, and no one is forcing you to read them, I can pretty much say whatever I damn well please.

Today at work I was having a discussion with a co-worker about what is happening in Georgia regarding Barack Obama’s eligibility to be on the upcoming ballot. My friend told me that he had been discussing the subject with another co-worker and this person had refused to accept that it was happening because he had not seen anything about it on the evening news.

I tell you this, not to poke fun at the co-worker we were discussing, but to point out that most people simply do not wish to spend any amount of time seeking out the truth, or doing any critical thinking on their own.

Critical thinking is defined as “…is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.”

What this is all leading up to is this, the presidential election in November. I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction. Even though Barack Obama’s performance as president has been dismal, at best, I still believe that we will get stuck with another four years of that S.O.B. Allow me to explain why.

Mitt Romney, will all likelihood, get the Republican nomination, and I don’t think Romney stands a snowballs chance in hell of beating Obama. And even if he did, I don’t honestly think we would be much better off with him in office anyway.
I know a lot of people are still hanging onto the hope that Ron Paul can win, but that isn’t going to happen. Not that I have anything against Congressman Paul, it is simply that the people that truly run this country, those behind the curtain so to speak, just won’t let him win.

I have heard a lot of discussion online about the delegate issue, and how Ron Paul is only hoping to collect enough delegates to have his views entered into the discussion during the GOP convention. I suppose if he has enough delegates they will have to give him time to air his opinions in return for support of those delegates.

I have also heard that it is mathematically impossible for Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum to get the nomination because neither of them made it onto the ballots for enough states. People are asking why both of them are even bothering to continue their campaigns when they know they can’t win.

This is what I see happening. I think that the reason Gingrich and Santorum are sticking it out is so that, even though they know they can’t win, they may be able to gather enough delegates between the two of them so as to diminish the importance of the Ron Paul delegates. I think that eventually, whatever delegates collected by Gingrich and Santorum, will swing over in support of Romney, leaving Ron Paul out of the picture, and his message off the table during the convention. But that’s just what I see happening, I could be wrong.

Whatever happens, Romney is going to get the GOP nomination, leaving us with the option of either voting for him, Obama, or Ron Paul as a write in. Sure, a write in vote for Ron Paul will be a vote based upon principle, and a vote for what this country may need, but it isn’t going to change the outcome of the election. Either we are going to have Romney as our next president, or four more years of Obama. In plain English, we’re screwed either way.

So where does that leave us, what options do we have? A long time ago, George Washington said, “The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.”

If any of you have seen the very first Matrix movie, you will recall the scene when Neo is first plugged into the construct, the training program where he learns the truth about the Matrix. When someone is jacked into the construct it is possible to then upload any data they want into that person’s brain. If I had the ability to jack every single person in this country into a similar training platform, and then upload every document I’ve ever read regarding the formation of our government, the origin of our rights, and the reality of what our elected representatives have done to our republic, that most people would still look to solve this nation’s problems at the voting booth.

I’m here to tell you people, we do not have to put up with our governments bullshit if we don’t want to. We put up with it because we do not know our rights, and the fact that we built this government, and we can damn sure dismantle it if it stops serving its intended purpose.

Grover Cleveland, our 22nd President reminded us that “Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute the laws which the people have made.” In 1838, Abraham Lincoln stated, “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.”

Our system of government, as I discussed in a recent article, probably came as close to perfection as anything every created by man. So why do we sit back and let a bunch of limp dicks tinker with it and usurp all kinds of power and authority over our lives that it was never intended they have?

In 1785 James Madison wrote, “The preservation of a free government requires not merely that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be universally maintained but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great barrier which defends the rights of the people. The rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment exceed the commission from which they derive their authority and are tyrants. The people who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them and are slaves.”

In The draft for the Kentucky Resolutions Thomas Jefferson offered us a simple way out; “Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”

In his Notes on Virginia, 1782, Jefferson reaffirmed that by saying, ““[The purpose of a written constitution is] to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights.”

Note that he says that our acquiescence may be construed as an intention to surrender our rights. In other words, if we sit back and do nothing, our government assumes we don’t have the courage to stand up for our rights and put an end to their constant usurpation of power and authority over our lives.

Jefferson is also quoted as saying, “And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?” How much longer are we going to seek answers by electing people to do what is rightfully within our power and authority to do ourselves?

Yet, I share the same sentiments as did former President Franklin Pierce when he said, “I wish I could indulge higher hope for the future of our country, but the aspect of any vision is fearfully dark and I cannot make it otherwise.”

I’m sure almost everyone you know can recite the pledge of allegiance from memory, as it was something we all grew up repeating day after day in school. As a child I did it because it was expected of me. Then as I grew older, and my sense of pride in being an American grew, I did it out of a sense of patriotism and loyalty.

There is a quote, taken from what is one of my favorite movies, V for Vendetta, where V says, “Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth.” That quote has come to mean so much to me as I have learned that words DO mean things, and often not what we expect them to.

Take the word allegiance for instance, do any of you know what it means? Allegiance is defined as: “a subject’s or citizen’s loyalty to a ruler or state, or the duty of obedience and loyalty owed by a subject or citizen.” When combined with the word pledge, which means a solemn promise, or undertaking, the two mean something which bears considering.

Although the flag is simply an object which represents this country, when you take that pledge you are stating that you are giving your loyalty to the rulers of this country, and pledging your obedience as a subject, or citizen. To me, that entails surrendering my sovereign individuality, and placing myself in the position to where I am subservient to people, whose purpose is to represent me, not rule over me. For that reason, I will no longer recite the pledge of allegiance, as I do not feel the obligation to be allegiant to the government.

I could be wrong, but the way I see it a pledge is like a spoken promise. However there are also vows and oaths, both of which are similar, but are slightly more serious in nature. In 53 years I have taken one of each, both of which I take quite seriously. Twenty-two years ago I took a vow to love, honor, and cherish my wife, till death do us part. The other, an oath of enlistment, stated that I would “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same…” Notice that word allegiance right there? That is where my allegiance lies, to the Constitution, not to the men and women who sit in office and defile it.

I owe absolutely no allegiance to those men and women who have violated THEIR oaths to support and defend the Constitution. In fact, sorry for the crudeness of my language, but I wouldn’t piss on the majority of them if they suddenly burst into flames.

You see, you can read all about these conspiracies, but it is those men and women who were elected by the people of this country, to uphold the Constitution, who are to blame. If they had did their jobs, and not let the power of their offices go to their heads, we would not be in the predicament we are today. To take it a step further, if the people of this country had educated themselves as to the purpose for their government, and of their inherent, unalienable rights, then maybe we would not have elected such pathetic pieces of shit to represent us.

A very long time ago, a very wise man once said, “…how little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!” That man was Thomas Jefferson, and if he said that over two hundred years ago, imagine what he would be saying now.

Because people are so much more interested in being entertained than they are in being informed, we have allowed our government to shred the Constitution, and trample all over the Bill of Rights.

In 1956 the Supreme Court heard the case of U.S. v Minker. From their ruling we read, “Because of what appears to be a lawful command on the surface, many citizens, because of their respect for what only appears to be a law, are cunningly coerced into waiving their rights, due to ignorance.”

People, no matter how hard I try to convince them otherwise, are under the misguided belief that the government can pass any law whatsoever, and that there is very little we can do about it. Think about something Ben Franklin once said, “In free governments the rulers are the servants, and the people their superiors & sovereigns.”

Our government did not just appear out of nowhere, with unlimited powers to rule over our lives. As Thomas Paine wrote in The Rights of Man, “It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing the principles of Freedom to say that Government is a compact between those who govern and those who are governed; but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist, and consequently there could originally exist no governors to form such a compact with.

The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.”

In the case of Gaines v Buford, Justice Underwood stated, “I do not admit that there is any sovereign power, in the literal meaning of the terms, to be found anywhere I our system of government… sovereign power, or, which I take to be the same thing, power without limitation, is nowhere to be found in any branch or department of the government, either state or national, nor indeed of all of them put together.”
In fact, the very first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay, clearly stated, “…at the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the people, and they are truly the sovereigns of the country…”

We, in all truthfulness, are the sovereigns in this country, and those who represent us are our servants, not vice versa. When are the people in this country going to get that through their thick heads and grow a set of balls and start acting like it?

The public opinion rating for our government is in the cellar, yet people continue to look for an answer by repeatedly voting for more corrupt men and women to sit in that cesspool known as Washington D.C. In 1776 our nation’s founders had also grown tired of their government, and they rose up against it. I am not saying we should do the same, but the right exists, as firmly stated in the Declaration of Independence, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…”

I don’t know if there is any hope or future for this country. I do know that as long as I live and breathe I will continue to take my oath to support and defend the Constitution seriously. In the book of Numbers we read, “If a man makes a vow to the Lord, or takes an oath to bind himself with a binding obligation, he shall not violate his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out his mouth.”

If the time comes that to uphold my oath I must sacrifice my life, then so be it. I don’t want to die, but if I do, I hope to be in good company when I pass into the next life. Among what company do you hope to find yourself when your time comes?

When it comes to mankind, we rarely witness perfection. Oh, we can certainly strive for it, but it is something that is rarely achieved. I think Michael J. Fox said it best, “I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God’s business.”

When it comes to systems of government, perfection is hardly ever something the people get, even under the best of circumstances. In a speech written by Benjamin Franklin, read to the delegates to the Constitutional Convention, we read, “In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution… From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does…”

Franklin admitted that our system is not perfect, that it has faults. But later Daniel Webster is quoted as saying, “Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again.”

With all the bickering and disagreeing going on in the Constitutional Convention, it truly is a miracle that anything came out of that assembly at all. Yet what they produced was a government that was designed to represent, and safeguard the rights of, the people and the states; with an Executive branch to ensure the laws passed by the Legislative Branch were enforced, and a Supreme Court to settle all disputes under said Constitution.

This government was to be one of very limited powers, those powers being specifically enumerated, [listed], with everything else, “…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.” [Tenth Amendment to the Constitution]

In Federalist 48 James Madison asked a very important question, “Will it be sufficient to mark, with precision, the boundaries of these departments, in the constitution of the government, and to trust to these parchment barriers against the encroaching spirit of power?”

He should also have asked, “How can we expect a government to refrain from overstepping the limits upon its power when the only true barrier to such encroachments is by resistance to such encroachments by the people?”

Thomas Jefferson spoke of this resistance when he said, “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.”
In his Declaration and Protest of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The greatest [calamity] which could befall[us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers.”

Yet here we are, over two hundred years later with exactly that; our Constitution lay in tatters at our feet, and the Bill of Rights has been shredded, leaving us in worse shape than were the colonists who fought a war to gain their independence over 230 years ago. The sad part about it is that we have done it to ourselves, by our ignorance, our apathy, and, to be truthful, our cowardice.

The colonists who rose up against the mightiest army on the planet at the time suffered far less at the hands of their government than we do now, yet they said enough was enough and mustered up the courage to either gain their independence, or die. And here we are, in the year 2012, begging our elected representatives to pass more laws which further enslave us. How pathetic is that?

In a speech delivered to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, James Madison stated, “[T]he powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction.”
In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton wrote, “There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”

Yet not only do people today refuse to demand that their elected representatives restrict their actions to those powers granted them by the Constitution, but they ask them to pass laws which clearly overstep the limits that document places upon their powers.

Lest you forget, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and anyone who violates it is, in fact, a criminal. That goes for every government agency which imposes restrictions upon the ability of the people to freely exercise their rights, all the way down to the lowly law enforcement officer who enforces unconstitutional edicts. To claim that these people are only doing their jobs is both ludicrous and asinine. I could hire an assassin to kill you, and if he succeeded and was caught, could he claim that he was simply “doing his job”? No, the law is the law, it applies equally to all, and all who violate it should be held accountable for their actions.

The founding principle upon which this country rests is thusly stated in the Declaration of Independence, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…”

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, most sacred right- a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to excercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize and make their own, of so much territory as they inhabit.” This was right before he placed his foot in his own mouth and squashed the rights of the Southern States to do the very thing he claimed to support.

People today talk about a democracy, they talk about their rights, they go to the polls and cast their votes for people they know very little about, and most don’t have the first inkling when it comes to what their government is supposed to do, or how their rights have slowly been stripped away. Still they look to the same body of people to fix the very problems that they themselves created. If it weren’t so pathetic it would be hilarious!

Freedom is as much a state of mind as it is a state of existence. First you have to know what your rights are, and then you have to be willing to stand up for them. If you can’t do these things then you may as well admit that you are a slave.

I know I’ve used this quote before, but it best expresses my sentiments, and I will continue to use it until Samuel Adams words sink in, “If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget they ye were our countrymen.”

I am sure that many, even those who weren’t alive at the time, remember the famous speech given by Martin Luther King Jr., in which he said, I have a dream. Has it ever crossed your mind that the drafters of the Constitution had a dream as well? The dream they had can best be expressed in the Preamble to the Constitution, in which they said, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”

We’ve all heard the term the American Dream, but we really know what it is, or upon what it is founded? Some people consider the American Dream as owning a home with the traditional white picket fence, and a family with 2.5 children. Yet according to Wikipedia the American dream is stated as, “…life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement” regardless of social class or circumstances of birth…”

The American Dream has, as its roots, the Declaration of Independence, which states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”

There are many people in this country who THINK they are living the American Dream. They THINK that, just because, they have a job, own their own home, and are free to watch as much TV and drink as much beer as they want, that they are living that dream. Consider what Jefferson once asked, would we “…in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom?”

I believe that to be the case, America has gotten soft, that we have let the eternal flame of liberty die down to the point it is barely kept alive by a small percentage of the occupants of this once great nation

Alexander Fraser Tytler is accredited with saying, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.”

IN 1850 Frederic Bastiat penned his book The Law, in which he said, “But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect.”

Bastiat furthermore writes, “Self-preservation and self-development are common aspirations among all people. And if everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted, and unfailing. But there is also another tendency that is common among people. When they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others. This is no rash accusation. Nor does it come from a gloomy and uncharitable spirit. The annals of history bear witness to the truth of it…”

These men were great THINKERS, whose thoughts and opinions often went against the general public sentiment. I can relate to them because much of what I talk about when I write goes against what most people currently believe, i.e. the general consensus.

English author Samuel Johnson, who wrote the Dictionary of the English Language, once wrote something that I feel to be the most important statement I’ve ever read in regards to people. He said, “Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.”

The truth about how far our government has changed, from one which was designed to safeguard our unalienable rights, to one which takes it upon itself to decide which rights it will allow us to exercise, has been is out there for anyone who wishes to see, and accept. The truth about who actually runs our government, who shapes our national policy, and who holds us under their thumbs as indentured servants to them, is out there, for those with an open mind and the initiative to find it.

The problem is that people need something to believe in. When someone or something threatens their beliefs, or their hope, people react with predictable outrage. When you realize that most people do not want to know the truth because, in so learning that truth, it will threaten everything they have ever believed in, you can begin to see why things will NOT get better in this country.

It is my belief that we have gone way past the point of no return; that our government has gotten too big, too powerful, for us to restore it to the one envisioned by our founders when they drafted the Constitution.

The other evening I was listening to an online radio show in which one of the hosts talked about how he had gone around asking people the following question, “What is your purpose in life?” I’ve thought about that long and hard since hearing it. I don’t know whether it is my purpose to record the downfall of our nation, or to keep the flame of liberty alive for anyone wishing to rekindle it. In the Matrix Reloaded, the Keymaker states, “We only do what we’re meant to do.”

Many, many years ago I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. When our founders drafted the Declaration of Independence, they closed it with the following statement, “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

Whether my efforts to keep the flame of liberty alive, amongst a people who don’t seem to care, will succeed is yet to be seen. All I know that it is what I was meant to do; I realize that and accept it.

So, I will continue to write, espousing the principle of liberty and constitutional limits upon our government. I will do so until the government decides that I have become too much of a nuisance and squashes me like a bug, or my belief that this country is going to eventually end in tyranny is proved correct.

In either case I will go to my grave, however that happens, knowing that I have done my best to serve the purpose for which I was brought into this world. I would hope that all you reading this will be able to say the same thing when your time comes.

For the longest time I’ve had this idea for an article and, for one reason or another, kept putting it on the back burner for later. The other day I just finished reading a book entitled From Sovereign to Serf, and in the process of reading, there it was, my idea, in bold letters right in front of my face. The fact that someone else had, not only, thought the same thing, but actually published it in a book was enough to get me off my ass and start thinking about how to say what I wanted to get across.

You all know by now that I have written extensively about the Constitution; about the various branches and powers given to our system of government. However, I have been remiss in mentioning that there is a fourth branch of our government, whose purpose is equally as important as that of the President, the Congress, or the Court. The fourth, unmentioned branch is we the people. As residents of these nation we not only have the right of suffrage; of voting for those who will represent us in government, we also are saddled with the responsibility of ensuring they stay within the actions of these elected representatives stay within their constitutional limitations.

A reader of my columns often sends me e-mails saying it all boils down to “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” or who’s watching the watchers? I may be wrong, but I take that to mean that we are the watchers over our government, but who is watching over us to ensure that we do our job properly?

There is enough evidence to prove that our founders felt we were to play just as crucial a role in the operation of our government as any of the actual mentioned branches in the Constitution, but I will allow the following quote by Jefferson to suffice, “We, I hope, shall adhere to our republican government and keep it to its original principles by narrowly watching it.”

I’m not going to go into detail about all the infractions and violations of the governments Constitutional mandate, as I am, quite honestly, tired of repeating myself. Let be enough to say that our government no longer even faintly resembles the one envisioned by our founding fathers.

To quote from the movie, V For Vendetta, “How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. ”

Our nation’s founders were, not only, educated in the various systems and forms by which government manifests itself, but they were also studiers of human nature. Our founders understood that unless a miracle occurred, the system of government they established would soon evolve into something quite different, and at the cost of the rights and liberty of the people whom it was established to protect.
In a speech before the Virginia Ratifying Convention, our future fifth president James Monroe, said the following, “How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism.”

Thomas Jefferson once asked, “Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction.” I think anyone who is honest with themselves will know the answer to that.

I am known to say that our country is going to fall, and I think that many misunderstand my words. To quote again from V For Vendetta, “Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth.” You see, all through history nations, and empires have risen and fallen, all the while the people still occupy the geographic space which those nations and empires comprised. People are under the impression that when I say this nation will fall that it will simply cease to exist. That is far from what I mean, as people will still inhabit this land.

James Madison once said, “As the people of the United States enjoy the great merit of having established a system of Government on the basis of human rights, and of giving it a form without example, which, as they believe, unites the greatest national strength with the best security for public order and individual liberty, they owe to themselves, to their posterity and to the world, a preservation of the system in its purity, its symmetry, and its authenticity.” [emphasis added]

Madison also stated, “Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks — no form of government can render us secure. To suppose liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.”

I think Jefferson was right, in the enjoyment of plenty we have forgotten what it means to be free. In comments left on my blog I was recently told, and I hope the person who said this does not take offense that I used their quotation without first asking, “You are a gift of memory to the remnant. A signpost to searchers. A beacon on the hill.”

Once I hit the send button on my e-mail program I know not how many people read my columns, nor what they think about them…unless of course I get some sort of feedback. Mark Twain once said, “In the beginning of change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot.”

I can only hope that my cause succeeds, that America is restored to being a land governed by a system of government which respects the unalienable rights of the people. In the meantime I do know that the path I have taken is a lonely and often frustrating one.

Journalist H. L. Mencken once said, “The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.” I find that to be so true; most people are willing to allow their government to pass laws which infringe upon their rights because in sacrificing those rights they feel a little bit safer.

James Madison once said, “I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” It is my belief that our nation, our republic, began to be dismantled right after the end of the War of Northern Aggression, or what is commonly known as the Civil War.

In the 150 years since then we have seen the scope of power and authority of the government expand, almost exponentially with each change of the executive. Government now intrudes upon almost every aspect of our lives, and we hardly even question it any more. Those of us who do are labeled as nut cases, derided, and called unpatriotic. Yet it is we who are the true patriots; men and women who are willing to think on our own and to stand up for our unalienable rights.

Leo Tolstoy once said, “Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking.”

Those who refuse to think for themselves, who are unwilling to devote the time and energy to finding the truth are sheeple; people who obediently accept whatever lie they are told, and whatever infringements of their rights are forced upon them.

I understand why they are like this, and I understand that there is probably not much I can do to change them in their behavior…but it does not mean I have to give up. Like it or not, this is my purpose in life, to keep the flame of liberty alive for anyone who has eyes to see, and an open mind to embrace.

In 1993 I took my very first baby steps of learning the truth; undoing all the lies and propaganda I had been spoon fed for the previous thirty-five years. This journey began with me writing letters to my elected representatives over the issues of illegal immigration and gun control. It wasn’t until I heard the term North American Union on the Lou Dobbs show that I began to learn the real truth…a process which continues to this day.

Many of you may have heard the word plateau used to describe points in a process in which you hit a wall and make no further progress. Weightlifters use it, as do people trying to lose weight. I remember one time when I was taking Kenpo Karate classes in the Air Force. I just could not stretch my legs far enough to do the splits. One day my instructor came up and said that I had hit a plateau, that I needed something to help me progress further; he said that my inability to do the splits was not a physical limitation so much as a mental one. As soon as he said that he kicked my rear leg out from under me and I went all the way down into the splits. Was he taking a chance that I may have been hurt, or did he realize that I needed to break through a mental barrier that was prohibiting me from progressing?

I tell you this story because unless you are willing to overcome certain mental barriers you will never learn the full truth about the nature of the evil which has been perpetrated against you by your government.

As with all plateaus, once you break past them you find you are capable of making progress again in whatever your endeavor. Often, breaking through these plateaus also become major turning points in your life.

In late 2004 I had hit a mental plateau and I felt I was stagnating. Then in 2005 I read an article on News With Views dot com that really opened my eyes and helped me break through a mental plateau I had hit. I had always been a huge fan of the film The Matrix, but one day I stumbled across this article entitled The Real Matrix, by Steven Yates, The Real Matrix Not only did this article help me break past my plateau, it was also a major turning point which opened up my eyes things I had never even considered before.

In 2008 I actually began to have some hope when rumors of a certain Texas Congressman named Ron Paul began circulating on the internet. He was said to be a firm supporter of the Constitution, an enemy of the Federal Reserve, and did not support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; all things I too felt strongly about. Now it is 2012 and Ron Paul is back, with even more support than before.

However, in the four years between his 2008 bid for president and now, much has happened; and that is what I would like to discuss now. First of all we have seen the growth of the Tea Party Movement, and a general awakening of the people in regards to the abuses of power by those elected to represent the people and safeguard their rights.

Secondly, we have seen, and I don’t care if you believe me or not, as the evidence is all there to support the truth, an illegal usurper sitting as president of the United States. Now this is one sticking point I have with Ron Paul, and it is a major thorn in my side when it comes to supporting him. If he is such a firm adherer to the Constitution, why has he not championed the cause of bringing the truth out about Barack Obama’s eligibility to hold the office he holds? When the history books are written the election of this illegal usurper to the office of president will go down in history right next to the Civil War as one of the most egregious blows to the Constitution…yet Ron Paul remains silent on this important issue. I leave you to form your own opinions on the matter, but it has caused me to question my support for him to the point I still don’t know if I will even bother voting in the next presidential election.

What else has happened in the past four years? Oh yeah, we had Obamacare shoved down our throats, the full effects of which won’t go into effect for years to come. We recently had the NDAA passed, which contains provisions grant a sitting president to indefinitely detain anyone they consider a terrorist. Coming from a Democrat, this alone sounds awfully familiar to the tyrannical language and intent of the Patriot Act if you ask me. We also saw the United States lead a coalition to overthrow the legitimate leader of Libya. This illegal use of military force against a sovereign nation, led by a President and Secretary of State who both campaigned on no more wars and military interventions. On top of all this, our national debt has gone up to over $15 trillion.

Does this sound like CHANGE to you or does it sound like four more years of the same old shit? How much more of this crap are you people going to put up with before you realize that there isn’t a damn bit of difference between the Republicans and Democrats. Sure they’ll campaign on smaller issues with a degree of difference but we still intervene in the affairs of other nations, our government continues to spend way beyond its means, and in the process shoves more unconstitutional laws down our throats.

So here we are in 2012 with Ron Paul making good showings in the early primaries. It is still a long way to the Oval Office with many traps along the way. He has to get through the primaries and into the convention unscathed. Then he has the arduous task of getting enough delegates to nominate HIM to be the GOP candidate. If he is the Constitutionalist every one claims he is, do you honestly think the Neo-Con led GOP is going to allow that to happen?

What I would now like for you to ask yourself is what if Ron Paul comes up short, a close, but no cigar scenario…what are YOU going to do for the next four years? In the past four years, although I was sad that Ron Paul had not been elected, I DID NOT stop learning, nor stop writing. In fact, what I have learned has led me to a point that many have commented on due to my recent commentaries…a point in which I seem to have lost all hope and given up.

Au contraire my friends, I have not given up the fight for freedom, not at all. I have however, lost all hope in solving our nation’s problems at the voting booth. Freedom is as much a state of mind as it is a state of reality. I have come to realize that until people have this burning desire to be free, free of all government shackles and interference in their lives; that not a damn thing is going to change in this country.

For years I wrote about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, citing quotation after quotation, trying to get my point across…to only fall upon deaf ears and minds unwilling to see the truth. I had hit another plateau, was stuck in a rut seemingly with nowhere else to go. I even considered giving up, just preparing myself for the eventual downfall of this once great nation.

Then a door was cracked and I got a glimpse of another truth, only a glimpse, but it was enough to rekindle my desire to learn more. Unfortunately the information it lead me to was so complicated, so unbelievable, that I myself doubted it. I knew that I questioned it then my readers would certainly question it, as well as my sanity for even considering it to be true.

A short time back a friend of Jeff Bennett, who runs the Federal Observer, among other things, released a book entitled From Sovereign to Serf, available for purchase here: Serfs Up

My copy arrived this week and it has clarified and simplified the information that I had only gotten a glimpse of earlier. This book is another major turning point in my life, as I will never look at things the same way again.

There are people in varying stages if illumination in this country. Some are still sound asleep at the wheel, insulated from even the slightest glimmer of truth, held in captive state by whatever they see and hear on their TV’s. Others realize something is wrong, but have no clue as to what IT is. Still others understand the danger to our way of life posed by the FED and the groups who actually control things in Washington D.C.

The first group of people probably wouldn’t get past the first chapter in this book without putting it down because it had no pictures. The second group would probably read a bit further, but put it down because it was too complicated. It is for the third group that this book should be read. They are the ones who care enough anyway to have gotten this far in their own personal education process to read, and comprehend, the material contained in this book.

All I know is that I have not given up the fight for freedom, and I never will until the day I die. I have come to realize that it is a personal fight and that electing some champion of the Constitution IS NOT going to solve a damn thing. Freedom will start when each person makes the personal decision that they no longer wish to be a slave to an oppressive master. On person can be silence, two or three squashed like bugs. A couple hundred here or there and they utilize those provisions in the NDAA and we are never seen or heard from again.

But think if you’ve ever seen the movie V for Vendetta, think about the last five minutes of that film, when people, in numbers large enough to make a difference, grow a set of balls and make a stand, united together, for their rights and their freedom; then, and ONLY THEN, will things change in this country. I can write until my face turns blue and my fingers fall off, but until people make the choice to be free, the will continue to be slaves.

You have a choice to make, continue believing that you can change things at the voting booth, and come up empty handed time and time again, or you can proceed to Plan B and take action yourselves to free yourself from oppression.

I may continue to write, I may not…at least not as frequent as I now do. I am just one person, and if I have failed to motivate people into stop believing in the left/right, liberal/conservative nonsense, then what good will I serve trying to get people off their couches and into a book that could free them if they applied what they learned in it?

I think those who wish to be free will either have found the means to do so, or will read this book and make the choice themselves. I cannot do it for them, and I have no intention of carrying their slack any more.

Whatever their choice will be, this country is going to fall, and soon if people don’t make a decision about whether they will stand up for their freedom, or sit back and hope that their benevolent government will care for them when the shit hits the fan. All I can say is, if you are among those in that second category, stay away from my house when all hell breaks loose, I will have my scope trained on people like you.

In 1791 Thomas Paine wrote a book entitled The Rights of Man in which he said, “When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.” I can relate to how Paine must have felt when he wrote those words because disgust is the overriding sentiment I feel towards a good many people in this country.

Although there has been a renaissance of sorts, an awakening by citizens concerned with the actions of their government, has it come too late in the game to make a difference when it comes to preserving our few remaining unalienable rights?

In his 1850 book The Law, Frederic Bastiat describes exactly what has happened in this country, “But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect.”

Few may know the name James Wilson, but he was one of our nation’s founding fathers, and was one of the six original Supreme Court Justices selected by George Washington. In 1791 he wrote a series entitled Lectures on Laws, in which he states, “Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which has not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind.”

In an 1829 speech at the Virginia Convention, James Madison declared, “It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot be separated.”

Our rights have been attacked since nearly the earliest stages of our nation’s history. In 1798 President John Adams signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts to protect our country in a time of national crisis. Yet these laws were so offensive to some that Thomas Jefferson was compelled to draft the Kentucky Resolutions, in which he stated, “Resolved, That the several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government…that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force…”

Now, here we are two centuries later facing a so-called global war on terror, under the banner of which our government has passed countless laws which render our Bill of Rights, for all intents and purposes, obsolete. Just recently Barack Obama added insult to injury when he signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which gives a sitting president the power and authority to indefinitely detain anyone they consider to be a terrorist threat to this country.

As if that wasn’t enough, sitting in committee is a bill, S 1698, introduced by Joe Lieberman, the purpose for which is “To add engaging in or supporting hostilities against the United States to the list of acts for which United States nationals would lose their nationality.”

I am not going to engage in a lengthy discussion of whether or not our country faces serious threats by potential terrorists from all over the world, as it is not the point. The point is that under the banner of this so-called War on Terror our rights are being taken from us at an alarming pace, and aside from a small percentage of people, nobody seems to notice, or to care.

Going back to Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man for a moment, let me provide you with something to think about. Paine also stated that “Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured.”

Even the Supreme Court, in the case of Bell v Hood, stated, “History is clear that the first ten amendments to the Constitution were adopted to secure certain common law rights of the people, against invasion by the Federal Government.” They did not make any qualifying statement saying that under certain circumstances our rights could be temporarily infringed upon, it simply said that the Bill of Rights was put in place to prevent the government from EVER violating those rights.

In another case the Court opined “It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of the liberties … which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile.” Think about that whenever you begin feeling that a few violations of your rights is acceptable just to that you can feel a bit safer from terrorist attacks. You may say to yourself that as long as you aren’t engaged in terrorist activities, or supporting groups who do, you have nothing to fear. Yet Paine warned that “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

Many do not recall what happened in this country to American citizens during World War II. Although of Japanese descent, American citizens were detained and sent to internment camps JUST BECAUSE our government feared that they may pose a threat to national security.

It is not too far a stretch to imagine that those of us who openly question the actions of our government, belong to a local militia group, wish to see the FED abolished, or a whole host of other issues, could find ourselves labeled as domestic terrorist terrorists and interned in a FEMA camp should our government feel threatened by us.

You may feel all safe and secure in your little cocoon, believing all the lies being told to you by the media and the very men who are robbing you of your rights, but there are those of us who have had just about enough of their tyranny and are saying enough is enough already.

I would like for you to read something that Alexander Hamilton wrote, which comes from Federalist #33, “If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.” Read the underlined section as many times as needed to let it sink in, as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify…

Lest you have forgotten, our nation was founded by men who had their rights infringed upon, whose peaceful petitions to their lawful government had gone unanswered, until they decided it was time to fight back.

I am not a big fan of Abraham Lincoln as I feel it was he who really took the first steps towards consolidating the power of the federal government at the expense of the rights of the states and of the people. Yet two things he said I am in complete agreement with.

First off, in his inaugural address he said, “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.”

And secondly, he said, “Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

Our government has clearly shown that it is content to pass laws which violate our rights, which is in direct opposition to the purpose for which said government was established. Once they have a taste for that power and authority, they are not likely to give it up without a fight. Johan Wolfgang von Goethe once said, “None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.”

YOU may believe that the Constitution authorizes the government to do these things, but YOU would be wrong. In The Rights of Man, Paine wrote, “A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an ideal, but a real existence; and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting its government. It is the body of elements, to which you can refer, and quote article by article; and which contains the principles on which the government shall be established, the manner in which it shall be organised, the powers it shall have, the mode of elections, the duration of Parliaments, or by what other name such bodies may be called; the powers which the executive part of the government shall have; and in fine, everything that relates to the complete organisation of a civil government, and the principles on which it shall act, and by which it shall be bound.”

Our Bill of Rights is part and parcel of that Constitution, and therefore it is the supreme law of the land, which all our elected representatives are bound by oath to obey. When a government becomes destructive to the principles for which it was established, it becomes obsolete. Or, as Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…”

In a recent article I read that only 12% of the people in this country are happy with the conduct of their government. Yet 50% of them intend to vote in the hopes of finding a candidate who can put this country back on the right track.

My question then is as follows; how much longer are we going to seek to find a solution to our problems, seek to have our rights restored to us, by the very people who have shown no inclination to confine themselves to the powers granted them by the Constitution, or uphold their sacred oath to safeguard our rights?

The sad truth is that our Constitution, and our Bill of Rights are dead, they are meaningless documents that the vast majority of people in this country do not understand, or care to even try. People are much like the characters in the film the Matrix who have absolutely no clue as to the reality that is just outside their cocoon. And that is why I can relate to Paine, because I can scarcely avoid my own disgust when I see what the people of this country have allowed to happen to their God-given rights and liberty. Our nation’s best days are well behind us, and James Monroe saw it coming, because in the Virginia Ratifying Convention he is quoted as saying, “How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism.”

I’m sorry I was so long-winded, but I had a lot on my mind and I wanted to get it all off my chest. As my good friend Jeff Bennett said at the close of his radio show the other night, “If I have offended you, I offer no apologies.” Couldn’t have said it any better myself…thanks Jeff.

While most Americans were preparing for, or engaged in celebrations for the New Years, Barack Obama hammered another nail into the coffin of liberty by signing into law the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act.

Both political parties accuse the other side of fear mongering, yet the government as a body is just as guilty of it as is each party. We, the people of this country, have become so terrified of the big bad bogeymen terrorists that we barely even blink when our rights are stripped from us to protect us from THEM.

Most people don’t even realize the implications of what the NDAA does, or allows, a sitting President to do. I urge you to watch the Bourne Ultimatum to get an idea. Imagine those type actions on American soil, directed at American citizens…then you’ll get an idea of what Barack Obama just signed into law.

There is a scene from the movie which sums up nicely why some people are so up in arms about certain passages in the NDAA. It goes as follows:

Noah Vosen: It is now the umbrella program for all our black-ops. Full envelope intrusion, rendition, experimental interrogation – it is all run out of this office. We are the sharp end of the stick now, Pam.

Our nation’s Constitution and all duly ratified amendments are the law, which all people, including the President and Congress, are bound to obey. Yet, by his affixing pen to paper, Barack Obama has done away with the Sixth Amendment and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

You say the President has promised it does not apply to American citizens…yeah, go ahead believe that if you will…I don’t. Thomas Jefferson once warned, “It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.”

They say this is ONLY directed at suspected terrorists. Have you NOT heard the terms homegrown terrorism, domestic terrorists? To whom do you think those terms apply? Do people not remember that back in 2009 the Missouri Information Analysis Center’s report which classified militia members as possible terrorists? Do they not remember that this same report said that people who display Ron Paul stickers, or speak out taxes and the FED may also be considered as possible terrorists? These are AMERICANS they are talking about in this report, so don’t tell me that the NDAA is directed only at suspected Islamic terrorists, it is directed at ANYONE the government wants to make DISAPPEAR.

One of the very reasons our founders went to war with England, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, was; “For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury…”

In October of 1788, James Madison penned a letter to Thomas Jefferson, in which he said, “Should a Rebellion or insurrection alarm the people as well as the Government, and a suspension of the Hab. Corp. be dictated by the alarm, no written prohibitions on earth would prevent the measure.” Looks like Madison was right, as he called the protection provided by Bills of Rights as nothing more than “parchment barriers.”

We all know the story of the Boston Tea Party, how a group of patriots, dressed as Indians, dumped all that tea into Boston Harbor. Well, consider this; were those same men alive today, and decided to pull a stunt like that, in today’s political climate, they too would be considered domestic terrorists, and if found, shipped off to GITMO to never be heard from again. Yet they are revered as American heroes. But, anyone today who speaks out in support of the VERY SAME principles those men believed in is now considered a terrorist threat by our government.

You may not see it this way, but many of these people who so openly advocate against further governmental intrusions upon their rights are fighting for YOUR rights as well. Whether you choose to exercise those rights is your choice, but they nonetheless are yours…and they are unalienable…no government on earth may take them from you!

There is a quote attributed to Pastor Martin Neimoller which I would like to leave you with to ponder.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

That’s what I, and so many others, are doing…speaking out for you…before it’s too late.

There are times that I ask myself if I am the one that is strange, engrossing myself in books instead of other things like television or sports, or if it is everyone else who is strange and I am among the few surviving normal people left in America. I doubt I’ll ever get an answer to that question; however the fact remains that I love to read, particularly books on our nation’s history, the philosophies of our founders, and those of the men who influenced them.

There is a huge difference between watching TV and reading. When you watch most TV shows the plots are easy to follow, there are images to keep your attention focused, and you just sit back and enjoy it…it is a passive act. Reading, on the other hand, requires that your mind absorb the words, ponder them, and come to your own conclusions regarding the information you have read. To put it plainly, reading requires you to THINK, while television DOES NOT.

Sometimes when I am reading a passage will stand out, screaming for me to utilize it in one of my articles. Today was one of those days as while reading Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the very opening paragraph jumped out at me as if I had never read it before. What I read was, “Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour; a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.” Those words, although written over two hundred years ago, apply just as equally to the purpose for which I write now as they did when originally written. The thoughts and ideas I am about to cover have, for the most part, fallen out of favor and are no longer commonly held beliefs by the citizens of this country.

Regardless of whether these beliefs are accepted today is irrelevant, as they were the prevalent beliefs of those who were alive at the time our Constitution was written. Not a sole alive today was present at the convention in Philadelphia which gave birth to our Constitution, therefore, how can any person alive today presume to understand the intent of the delegates to that convention…UNLESS they study the writings of those same men who were?

Do you honestly expect a government, which is intent upon depriving you of your rights, if going to openly tell you of their goal? I can just hear the President now when he gives his next State of the Union Address, “My fellow Americans, over the course of the next year I propose to enact laws which will deprive you of the rights protected by the Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments.” If you believe that, well, there is no hope left for this country.

It is up to YOU to seek out the truth, to not rely upon those whom you have elected to tell you what the truth is… there is a difference. It is up to YOU to search for knowledge, and not rely upon some paid corporate stooge, posing as a journalist, to tell you the things you need to know. That is why I read, and that is why I write. I read because I do not trust ANYONE to tell me the truth, I prefer to seek it out, or at least verify what I have been told. I write because our children have NOT been taught the principles which guided our nation’s founders, and which form the foundation upon which our system of government rests.

A vast number of people are under the mistaken belief that we have a living Constitution that is subject to change as our nation changes. Yet there is sufficient evidence to prove that is not, in fact, true. During the first session of Congress after the ratification of the Constitution, Representative James Left-Eye Jackson of Georgia stated, “We must confine ourselves to the powers described in the Constitution, and the moment we pass it, we take an arbitrary stride towards a despotic Government.”

In an 1821 letter Thomas Jefferson warned, “Time indeed changes manners and notions, and so far we must expect institutions to bend to them. But time produces also corruption of principles, and against this it is the duty of good citizens to be ever on the watch, and if the gangrene is to prevail at last, let the day be kept off as long as possible.”

Gangrene is defined as “a serious and potentially life-threatening condition that arises when a considerable mass of body tissue dies.” Why would Jefferson call a change in principles gangrene unless he realized that if we stray from those which guided our founders in drafting the Constitution it would bring about the death of our republic?

In my conversations with people I have found that few have actually read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Fewer still have taken the time to read the writings of the men who inspired our founding fathers when writing them. The writings of these men should have been part of the curriculum in every school in America, but they weren’t.

What I am about to attempt is to cram what you should have learned in school into a single article. These are things that form the very foundation upon which our nation rests, and EVERYONE should be able to recite them from memory. So, forgive me if I go overboard with the quotes, as the things I am about to discuss are not my thoughts, my interpretations…they are the thoughts of the men who wrote our nation’s founding documents, and those of the men who inspired them.

In writing this article I will draw from a wide range of sources, among them quotes from Thomas Paine, John Locke, The Federalist Papers, and, even though it was written AFTER our nation’s founding documents, The Law by Frederic Bastiat. While the concepts I am going to discuss may sound radical to many, they were, in fact, commonly held beliefs by the people who established our system of government.
There are those who say that the thoughts of a bunch of old dead men no longer apply to us today. They couldn’t be more wrong. In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “History, by apprising the people of the past, will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.”

When we attempt to understand the why, the reason our government was established, we MUST adhere to the principles of the men who created it. James Madison stated it thusly, “Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.”

Finally, for those who believe that our Constitution is a living document, in the 1905 case of South Carolina v. U.S., the Supreme Court ruled, “The Constitution is a written instrument. As such, its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when it was adopted, it means now.”
You can believe what you want, accept the lies you have been told, or you can open your eyes, and your mind, to the truth, and begin to understand the truth. I can only provide the facts to you as they are; it is up to you to accept, or reject them. But, as Winston Churchill once said, “The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.”

As I said, what I am about to discuss should have been taught in school, and is but a snapshot of the material I have researched in preparation for this project. Nonetheless, it will all be factually based and backed up by quotes from the men who bequeathed to us the precious gift of liberty. I just hope that there will be enough open minds to receive what I have to say.

to be continued…

“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.” Buddha

“The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.” Winston Churchill

It seems that more and more Americans are becoming fed up with their government, as the approval ratings for both Congress and the President hover near record lows. This can be attested to by the increasing numbers of people who have come out in support of Ron Paul. The 2012 Presidential elections may give us a clearer picture as to how many of disgruntled voters there really are, but will they tell the whole picture? Will they be voters who are simply disgusted by the constant bickering and gridlock between the two parties; will they be people who want a return to a more responsible and limited government as outlined by our Constitution; or will they be people who have finally come to understand that there is something else going on besides incompetence and partisan rivalry?

The truth is out there, but I have found that many people are either too damn lazy to seek it out, or too afraid to accept it when it is presented to them. I don’t know whether they have been so effectively brainwashed into believing a lie, or whether they find comfort in remaining ignorant, but the fact is that most people have absolutely no idea of what the function of their government is, and how corrupted our system has become.

When I still hear people talk about our two party system where we are given a choice between Republicans and Democrats I am convinced that the average voter is oblivious to reality; that there is no real difference between the two parties.

You can believe that when you cast your vote that you are voting for change, for representatives who may begin to take their oath to uphold the Constitution seriously, but they won’t. Once they get initiated into the system whatever high and lofty goals they held are shattered by reality, that they don’t run things, they are merely given orders to follow by those behind the scenes who really control things in this country.

In a 1912 speech entitled The Progressive Covenant With The People, Theodore Roosevelt said, “Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare they have become the tools of corrupt interests, which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.”

In 1913 Woodrow Wilson is attributed with saying the following, “Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the Field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”

Yet people refuse to accept that our government no longer represents the will of the people; that it no longer cares about its sworn duty to preserve and protect our unalienable rights. Because people are too lazy to seek out the truth, they now believe that the sole function of our government is to make our lives easier, safer, and more secure. Gandhi once said, “An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.”

Therefore, whether or not you choose to believe that the primary purpose for your government’s existence is to preserve your rights is irrelevant, it remains the truth. , There is an old Latin saying, “Ignorantia juris non excusat”, which paraphrased means, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.”

The Constitution may not mean a damned thing to you any more, it may merely be a document from our nation’s history, but it remains the Supreme Law of the land. George Washington once said, “Let the reins of government then be braced and held with a steady hand, and every violation of the constitution be reprehended. If defective, let it be amended, but not suffered to be trampled upon whilst it has an existence.” Yet trampled upon it has been, as well as have been our unalienable rights.

Going back over two centuries to 1775, in the Farmer Refuted, Alexander Hamilton stated, “The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms and false reasonings is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges. You would be convinced, that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, and that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice.”

Hamilton went on to say, “I shall, henceforth, begin to make some allowance for that enmity, you have discovered to the natural rights of mankind. For, though ignorance of them in this enlightened age cannot be admitted, as a sufficient excuse for you; yet, it ought, in some measure, to extenuate your guilt. If you will follow my advice, there still may be hopes of your reformation. Apply yourself, without delay, to the study of the law of nature.”

On inside of the Jefferson Memorial there are several quotes by Thomas Jefferson. On panel number 3 the following quote is inscribed for all to see, “God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

Think about that for just a moment would you. If our liberties, our rights, are a gift from God, then anything, anyone that attempts to restrict them cannot be of God. In the Book of Matthew, Chapter 12 we read, “Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit.”

If our government was established to preserve and protect our unalienable God-given rights, and, through legislation, restricts those rights, then by their actions we must come to the conclusion that it is evil. Furthermore, if that be the case, then those who continue to elect representatives who show no desire to protect those rights are either, a) ignorant as to the nature of their rights, or b) influenced by something other than God.

The philosopher Plato once said, “The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs, is to be ruled by evil men.” Or, as Edmund Burke once said, “Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.”

Playwright Arthur S. Miller is quoted as saying, “Those who formally rule take their signals and commands not from the electorate as a body, but from a small group of men. This group will be called the Establishment. It exists even though that existence is stoutly denied.” Therefore, if our government is taking its orders from this Establishment, then if the purpose of that Establishment is to deprive us of our rights, it too must be evil.

While some may see this battle as merely a battle to restore our country to one of limited government, confined to the specific powers enumerated in the Constitution, I, as do many others, see it as a spiritual battle as well. I believe that is why I have such a hard time convincing people of the TRUTH. As my good friend Jackie Juntti recently told me in an e-mail, “I firmly believe that until The Holy Sprit removes the scales on their eyes they shall not see or hear TRUTH.”

In the Book of Isaiah we read, “You shall indeed hear but never understand, and you shall indeed see but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are heavy of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should perceive with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn for me to heal them.”

As long as people look at this as simply a temporal fight over an out of control government, or even a corrupt group of men who exert enormous power and influence over that government, we WILL NEVER prevail. Whether or not you choose to accept that fact is up to you, but as Morpheus told Neo in the film the Matrix, “I didn’t say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth.”