Neal's Soapbox

Up until recently I had never given much thought to the subject of economics. I never took an economics class in school and my understanding of the subject could be best explained by, “Don’t spend more than you earn.” However, the more I’ve learned about our system of government, and the men who created it, the more I’ve realized that I’ll never understand the extent of what they did unless I gain some insight into money; how it is created, how it is controlled, and how people profit from its exchange.

If I were to ask you to find a single word to describe government, what would that word be? For the longest time if someone had asked me that I’d have said something like tyrannical, or oppressive. Now that I’ve undertaken an effort to learn more about economics I’m inclined to change my opinion; replacing tyrannical with parasitical – our government is a parasite that sucks both the liberty and wealth from those it governs.

Unlike a business that manufactures an item that can be sold to consumers, our government produces nothing; whatever funds it needs to manage its affairs it must take from us in the form of taxes; and when those taxes are insufficient it has to resort to other means to raise revenue.

Taxes come in many forms; some of them apparent and some not so obvious. The tax upon your income is one of the more obvious ones, as you can see the withholdings every time you get your paycheck. Sales tax is another that you can see if you were to look at your grocery receipt every week. There are also taxes you don’t see; such as those levied against imports and exports. There are capital gains taxes; taxes that are levied against the profit you make when selling something, such as your home, stocks, or other securities. Then there are, what I like to call, use of services taxes. These type taxes are typically small, but still there and you can find them on your phone and cable bills; taxing you for the use of the airwaves. Finally there is the most odious of all the taxes, (at least in my opinion), the property tax you pay upon your home.

There are other forms of taxation that I haven’t mentioned, but I think by now you’ve gotten the picture when it comes to how extensively you are taxed. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, if people were allowed to keep all their money until the end of the year, whereupon the government was to send them a bill for all the taxes they owed for the past year, people would revolt. If they didn’t revolt they would at least be asking why government needed to borrow so much money to fund its operations.

The process by which government borrows money is the one area I’m still sketchy on, but I think I have a somewhat rudimentary understanding of how it happens. Government does not just walk into a bank, like you or I do, and say, “Hey, I need to borrow a couple billion dollars to help us get through some tough times, or fund this or that program.” What government does is it sells securities; bonds and treasury notes; which are in effect loans whereby the purchaser gives government X amount of dollars, and is the purchaser is promised that they will either be given dividends, or paid off in Y amount of dollars once those securities mature.

When I was in the military they used to push US savings bonds on us; urging us to purchase them as an investment tool, and out of some sense of patriotic duty. The way a savings bond works is that, say you want a $100 savings bond, you pay $50 for it, and then wait a specified amount of time whereupon you get $100 in return once it matures; giving you $50 in profit. So basically you loan the government $50 and they pay you back $100; similar to how you pay interest rates to a bank for loaning you money for a new house or car. The question is, since government produces nothing it can make a profit from, where does it get the money it pays to those who purchase these bonds and other securities?

If the government spends less than it takes in from taxes then we have what is known as a budget surplus; which can be applied towards paying off those who purchased these bonds and securities; effectively paying down the national debt. If, however, the government spends more than it gets from taxes, then it has to borrow more to pay off those who seek to cash in their bonds and securities; making the whole scheme similar to a Ponzi scheme in which new investors are needed to pay for the returns owed previous investors. Which is also the way Social Security now works; those working today are not saving for their retirement, they are paying for the retirement of those who have left the work force.

Now we get to the point where things get interesting; and a bit scary at the same time. When you go to the bank to take out a loan they take into consideration what collateral you have to offer; either through your property or your income. Banks aren’t going to lend money to those it can’t recoup that money from. Well the same goes for those who loan our government money, they expect something in return for it, and there is always collateral attached to it.

One of the ways in which those who loan money to the government are assured of repayment is through the promise of taxation upon the laboring class; meaning you and I. People believe that after the Civil War they ratified the 14th Amendment to grant citizenship status to the former slaves. That’s one thing the 14th Amendment did, but there is more than one section to that amendment. Section 4 of the 14th Amendment states, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

If you’ll notice, they did not say government debt, they said public debt; meaning it is debt that we are responsible for paying through taxation. Right now our national debt sits at $26 Trillion and change. Not every person living in this country is a taxpayer; there are kids who are still too young to work, and those who don’t work at all; meaning the number of people responsible for paying that debt is smaller than the total population of this country. Right now, if every taxpaying citizen was told that they must write a check for the portion of the debt they are responsible for, the checks would be written out to the tune of $214,845. Before I retired I was making somewhere around $30,000 per year; meaning that my portion of the debt would amount to over 6 years of my labor. If that isn’t slavery, then I don’t know what is.

There’s another thing about this debt that you may not know; such as who it is owed to. When you’re talking about trillions of dollars worth of debt, a few measly $100 savings bonds just aren’t gonna make that much of a difference. There are many types of bonds and other securities the government sells to raise money; some are short term and some have longer terms before they mature to face value. For instance, a Treasury Bill might mature in as short a time as 6 months, T-Notes may take as long as 10 years to mature; paying a dividend every so often prior to their maturation date.

In any case, a boatload of these bonds and securities need to be sold to finance our government and keep its doors open for service; doing the many things people expect it to do for them. The question is, what does the government put up as collateral when it sells those bonds and securities? Well I’ve already mentioned the future labor of the taxpayers, but there is something else you may not have considered; the country itself. Land, or real property, is the only true measure of wealth. The value of money fluctuates, but those who own property are the true owners of any country.

I want you to think about something the former head of the Bank of England, Sir Josiah Stamp, once said, “Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money and control credit, and with a flick of the pen they will create enough to buy it back.” So who owns this massive debt this country has accumulated?

Did you know that foreign investors hold up to 1/3 of our national debt? Six years ago China owned $1.3 trillion of that debt; Japan owned $1.2 trillion, Brazil owned $262 billion, and other countries such as Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Ecuador, and Nigeria owned chunks of it too. So if the U.S. were to default on that debt, be unable to make even the interest payments upon it, those countries could conceivably claim title to this country, and the future labor of its inhabitants.

That should scare the bejeezus out of you; especially considering the fact that the Congressional Budget Office has issued a statement saying that by the end of this year our national debt will amount to 98% of the entire Gross Domestic Product of the US of A. That means that the money our government has borrowed will equal the entire amount of goods and services provided by the laboring class in America. That’s a staggering amount of money, and the amount government borrows shows no signs of slowing down.

There is something else people do not understand well; that being inflation. If you mention inflation people believe it to be the natural increase in prices of consumer goods and services. While the cost of doing business, paying wages and other benefits may account for some of that increase, the real reason things cost more is because the value of the money we use continues to diminish. One of the definitions for inflation is, ‘a persistent, substantial rise in the general level of prices related to an increase in the volume of money and resulting in the loss of value of currency.’

Now if you put on your thinking caps, isn’t that exactly what is happening; more money is being pumped into our system; making the money we are allowed to keep less valuable. Maybe an analogy will explain that better. Let’s say you have a government that needs to borrow a million dollars for something. There are X amount of dollars in circulation in the economy, and government proposes to sell enough bonds valued at $1000 each to raise that money. Now if you recall, the sale value and face value of bonds are not the same; they are sold for less than what they are worth upon maturation. So they may have to sell 1500-2000 of these bonds to get the million dollars they needed.

Now, when these bonds mature, how does government pay those who hold them? Remember, government produces nothing it makes a profit from, so it either has to raise your taxes to pay the interest on those bonds, or borrow more money to pay it; which creates a vicious cycle of borrowing just to sustain a system based upon debt. While that cycle continues the amount of money in circulation continues to increase; making the money in your purses and wallets less valuable – inflation; the hidden tax.

This scam occurs at all levels of government, not just the federal government. Election time is just around the corner and if you were to look at your voters guide I’m certain you’ll find at least one bond measure on the ballot; probably more than one. Each of these measures are the government asking for permission to sell bonds to fund this or that function; such as school improvements or services to the needy.

People don’t look at, or understand the consequences of passing these bond measures; they only see the function they are to serve and vote according to their feelings on that issue. Yet if you are a homeowner you should look closely at your property tax bill; you’ll find that there is a list annexed to the value of your property which outlines other fees you are assessed with for paying the interest accrued by the bonds you voted in favor of at any given election cycle. You might think the cause is good, but every time you vote yes for a proposed bond measure you are voting to raise your property taxes.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that before the constitution was amended to grant voting rights to everyone except felons, above a certain age, that you had to be a property owner to vote. One of the reasons that was the case is because the property owners would be the ones to shoulder much of the financial burden of paying for government; therefore they alone were given the vote.

Nowadays, particularly from those on the left side of the political spectrum, you hear the cry of make the rich pay their fair share. Why; because they have more money they should be required to pay more in taxes? What about those who don’t, or can’t work, and whose very existence depends upon government subsidies and benefits; should they get a free ride, not be required to pay their fair share? Do the rich get any more in government services; more bang for their buck?

The whole idea of a graduated income tax which taxes people at a higher rate based upon how much they earn, is pure socialism; it is plundering of one class of society for the benefit of another. It is also why there was a great deal of wisdom of giving the vote only to those who would pay the taxes that funded government; after all it is very easy to vote for government programs when you don’t have to pay for funding those programs out of your income.

The problem is, the rich are often only interested in creating more wealth for themselves. Can you, especially in this Covid depressed economy, afford to buy Treasury Notes and T-Bills worth thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars? I can’t. But the rich can; particularly those whose jobs lies in the financial markets and banking sectors. To them these bonds are investments, a way to spend X amount of dollars and get Y amount of return on their investment. Inevitably that kind of system breeds both greed and corruption. Here, let me give you an example.

During the Civil War Abraham Lincoln issued greenbacks as a form of currency for the North. Just as the dollar fluctuates in value on the world markets today, those greenbacks fluctuated in value depending upon a multitude of factors; including the North’s wins or losses in key battles.
At the time there were two types of money people could use; specie or fiat. Specie is something such as gold or silver; something tangible with real intrinsic value. Fiat currency, on the other hand, is paper money that derives its purchasing power because the government declares that is has value. The money in your wallet, and the money the ATM gives you when you make a withdrawal, is fiat money; it is only accepted in payment for goods or services because the government has declared it to be lawful currency; it has no real value.

During the war Lincoln needed to raise money to fund his army; so he sold bonds. Now this is where the graft and corruption comes in. Since the greenbacks fluctuated in value, they often traded for less than actual specie money; meaning if you had, say $50 in gold, you could possibly buy up to $100-$200 in greenbacks due to the exchange rate between the two forms of currency.

You could then take that $200 in greenbacks and buy $200 worth of war bonds; which was twice the face value of the gold you had traded for those greenbacks. These bonds accrued interest and often paid dividends along the way; often payable in specie, or gold. Then along came these investors and speculators, and they demanded that upon maturity the government pay off all their bonds in gold. What they had done was manipulate the market and use government to double their investments; along with earning as much as 7% interest while their bonds matured.

Of course, as I’ve already shown, the end result of any government bonds is that the taxpayers end up shouldering the burden of paying for it. With the wealth they accumulate they buy influence in government through lobbyists, campaign contributions, and funding for the two political parties. They own the government and we pay for it through higher taxes and the hidden tax of inflation; yet people think their votes matter.

Our constitution, the one you all say is so gosh darned great, was written by men who sought to establish a system in which they could use its power of taxation and debt to amass vast amounts of wealth; let alone the subjugation of those it called the people.

Take for instance Robert Morris; who is known as the Financier of the American Revolution. At the time of the Revolution the Colonies did not have a Secretary of the Treasury; that came after the constitution when Washington appointed Alexander Hamilton to that position. Morris was responsible for raising, and managing the money which funded the Revolution.

During the Revolution Morris obtained a rather sizeable loan from France to help finance the war; a loan which Morris had deposited into his bank and from which he then loaned the money to the Continental Congress – at interest of course. Morris was such a scoundrel that he wrote to his partner Silas Deane, “It seems to me the opportunities of improving our Fortunes ought not to be lost, especially as the very means of doing it will contribute to the service of our country at the same time.”

Morris was a member of the convention that produced our constitution, along with like minded individuals such as Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris; no relation. Their goal was not to establish a system which preserved the rights of the governed; rather it was to establish a system that gave government unlimited taxing power, and the ability to create debt; which as I already have shown you increases the wealth of those who own that debt.

Morris was so despised by some that the anti-federalist Samuel Bryan, writing under the pseudonym of Centinel, said this about him, “When we consider the immense sums of public money taken up by Mr. Morris, as commercial agent, to import military supplies, and even to trade on behalf of the United States, at a time when the risk was so great that individuals would not venture their property; that all these transactions were conducted under the private firm of Willing and Morris, which afforded unrestrained scope to peculation and embezzlement of the public property, by enabling Mr. Morris to throw the loss of all captures by the enemy at that hazardous period on the public, and converting most of the safe arrivals, (which were consequently very valuable) into his private property; and when we add to these considerations, the principles of the man, his bankrupt situation at the commencement of the war, and the immense wealth he has dazzled the world with since, can it be thought unreasonable to conclude that the principal source of his wealth was the commercial agency of the United States during the war?”

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your government does not care about you; it only cares about maintaining a working class of people that can keep the economy functioning so that they can tax the workers and benefit their crony friends. That is one of the primary reasons we had the Civil War; not because of slavery; although slavery did play into the picture. The primary cause of the Civil War was due to the fact that the Southern States were being hit with the financial burden of paying for the operation of government – up to 80% of it – while most of that money was being spent in the North for the improvement of the Northern States and enriching Northern business interests.

We are but serfs to this system of government; tax slaves who exist to benefit the moneyed interests. You think the FDA, (Food and Drug Administration), exists to serve you? It exists to benefit Big Pharma and all the other conglomerations which produce our food supply. The Department of Defense exists to serve the military industrial complex by maintaining a perpetual state of war; which requires an endless stream of enemies we must ‘defend’ ourselves against.

As any television crime drama will tell you, follow the money. Where the profits are being made in any system; be it political or economical, that is where the power exists; and in our country that power does not reside with you and I; were are mere sheep to be fleeced; thrown table scraps and thanking government for its benevolence. Only a slave thanks government for returning money it stole from them in the first place; and seeing as how many appreciated government handing out their $1200 checks during the Covid crisis, I’d say there are a lot of slaves who bow down and worship those who enslave them.

Well not me; I know who my enemies are, and they are threefold. First there is the government itself which passes the laws that violate my rights, restricts my liberty, and taxes me for whatever purposes it declares are for the ‘general welfare.’ Next there are those who enforce these laws upon us; both at the federal and local levels; and yes I’m talking about law enforcement. If they were defending our rights they would not be harassing and arresting us, they’d be doing it to government officials. Finally, my enemy is an ignorant and apathetic voting public who seeks to gain control of the very system that enslaves them to it. They believe that by voting they can impose their will upon those they disagree with; which is by its very nature, contradictory to equal rights and equal liberty to all.

Lysander Spooner spoke of this fatal belief that government serves the governed when he said, “In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practise this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave.”

Tell me that’s not true when so many of you don’t vote for a candidate because you truly believe they will support and defend your rights; rather you vote for them because you hate the other candidate even more. Choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil; and I refuse to cast my vote, or lend my consent to a system that was designed in such a manner as to allow evil men to hold the reins of power. As Patrick Henry so aptly stated, “Where is the responsibility — that leading principle in the British government? In that government a punishment, certain and inevitable, is provided: But in this, there is no real actual punishment for the grossest maladministration. They may go without punishment, though they commit the most outrageous violation on our immunities. That paper may tell me they will be punished. I ask, by what law? They must make the law — for there is no existing law to do it. What — will they make a law to punish themselves? This, Sir, is my great objection to the Constitution, that there is no true responsibility — and that the preservation of our liberty depends on the single chance of men being virtuous enough to make laws to punish themselves.”

So go ahead, cast your votes come November; just know this, no matter who you vote for, the system wins; and we’ll never see freedom again in this country until that system is abolished. For as long as any system exists that has both unlimited taxing and legislative powers; which can be used by a simple majority of the people to the detriment of the lives, liberty and property of the minority, freedom is tenuous at best, and non-existent at worst.

I simply choose to see the truth staring me in the face; while you choose to ignore and hide from it. I may not be free of its power, but I recognize it for what it is; a system designed from the get go to enslave the people to it; and I choose not to participate in playing the game of selecting from among candidates to decide who will be my master. That’s what separates people like me from the rest of you; we know we’re slaves and you don’t.

In closing I’d like to leave you with the immortal words of Patrick Henry, from his 1775 speech to the Virginia House of Burgesses; maybe they’ll make a bit more sense to you now that your read what I have to say:

For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.

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

Question, do you believe in good and evil? I don’t want to devolve into a theological discussion of whether there is a God and the devil; I only want to know if you believe in the concept of good vs. evil. The reason I ask is because I believe that governments are capable of being either good, or evil; and ours right now is pretty damned evil.

Have you ever heard of the Overton Window; I’m guessing many haven’t. Basically the Overton Window is a spectrum of what the public considers acceptable behavior by their government; falling in between the ranges of absolute freedom and the complete loss of freedom. Instead of trying to explain it, I think it would be better if I just provide a simple graphic showing what I mean.

People may think differently than I do, but I believe that for government to be good it must first have the consent of the people. Let me ask you something; do you consent to everything government does? One look at America today tells me that there is always a large swath of the public that does not consent to what government is doing; simply because their party is not in charge. How can you say that we have consent of the governed when, at any time, roughly 45% of the people do not like what government is doing? What we have is consent for the institution of government; not for the actions of government; which leads us to the next thing I believe about government.

I also believe that government should have a stated purpose, and when it no longer serves that purpose it should either be reformed so that it will, or abandoned altogether. It is when there are varying beliefs as to what that purpose is that we come into conflict with each other. If people would just come to an agreement as to what purpose government is supposed to serve then we wouldn’t have as much discord in this country as we currently have.

All the conflict in this country, be it between the classes, the political parties, or those holding different morals and values, all stem from the fact that the people do not understand the purpose government is supposed to serve, and the fact that the document that established this form of government was written in such a manner as to be vague; open to interpretation by those wielding the power it grants.

To prove this point all one has to do is look at the Supreme Court. They are, we are told, (a fact I don’t agree with), the ultimate deciders of all questions of a constitutional nature; their word is final. The Justices sitting on the bench at any time are supposed to base their decisions upon the constitution, correct? Why is it then that the Supreme Court has overturned itself over 200 times if the constitution remains the same today as it did when the Court handed down its first decision?

As an example, I always hear people say that if the Court swings to the right too much it may overturn itself on Roe v. Wade. How can that be when there has been no changes to the constitution regarding abortion; let alone the fact that it was a 10th Amendment issue; something that should have been left to the States to decide for themselves? If no constitutional amendment has been ratified touching upon abortion, how can something the court said in a 1973 decision be deemed constitutional, then at a future date be deemed unconstitutional?

This happens because the constitution is being interpreted by the biases and sentiments of the Justices sitting on the bench at any given time; which is why there is so much conflict whenever a vacancy occurs in the Court; as we are witnessing now with the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. If the Justices only cared about justice; if they only cared about adhering to the constitution as it was promised to the State Ratifying Assemblies; if they only cared about preserving the rights and liberties of the people, then there wouldn’t be such concern as to whether a left or right leaning Justice be seated whenever a vacancy occurs.

If our constitution were so good, if it was truly written to establish a system of government whose purpose was to protect and defend the rights of the people and the states, it would have place clear cut boundaries upon the powers of the government it was establishing, and provided a means for those the government represents to punish those who overstep those boundaries. The constitution did neither; making Spooner’s quote about it accurate, “But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”

What we have now in America is a system in which various interests seek to gain control of a system of coercion and force so that they can use it to benefit themselves, at the cost of the wealth, rights, and liberty of those they oppose. You cannot deny that fact unless you deny your own position that either the Democrats or the Republicans are evil and that the only way to fix this country is by electing more people from ‘YOUR’ party. If liberty and justice were the only things our government sought to do, then party affiliation would become meaningless; for they would all seek the same thing; but they don’t; vindicating my position.

Our government is all about control, controlling us so that it can continue to exist; to plunder us for the benefit of those it truly serves; the moneyed interests. You think government serves you; it doesn’t. Look at the FDA, it does not care about you and your health, it serves the drug companies; Big Pharma. The Department of Defense serves the military industrial complex; the Department of Commerce does not care about mom and pop stores and small businesses, it cares about big corporate owned companies and national chains; like WalMart, Lowe’s and other big box stores.

For a people to be utterly under the thumb of any tyrant there are 3 things that must fall under the authority of that tyrant; health, money and property; and today our government, and the powers pulling its strings, controls and regulates all of them. If you don’t believe me, just ask yourself why so many people are still wearing masks when so few people around them are sick. Ask yourself why people line up every year to take a flu shot, and will line up to take the Covid vaccine, when they don’t even know what poisons are in that needle they are letting themselves be injected with. They simply know that the ‘authorities’ told them it is in their best interests to do so; and they have become so indoctrinated into following orders that they will obey without question.

Is that freedom? Not by my definition, it isn’t.

Trump supporters say that their man is working hard to expose and eliminate the Deep State; yet if you were to ask them who, or what, this Deep State is they couldn’t give you a concrete answer. There is a scene in the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace where Bond and M are interrogating Mr. White and he says, “The first thing you should know about us is that we have people everywhere.” I think that, more than anything else I could say, explains who and what the Deep State are; after all, they don’t walk around displaying Deep State ID badges; they hide in the shadows controlling policy, the news media, education, and even religion.

I don’t honestly care what you choose to call them, the CFR, the Bilderberg Group, the Illuminati, the Jesuits, the Freemasons, or simply the Shadow Government; they exist and they are the ones who hold the true power in our system of government today, with those we elect being but actors chosen to play out a role; all of them beholden to the hidden powers behind the scenes. The only way to free ourselves from them is to tear the system down entirely; take away their system of control over us and they lose all power over us.

Former Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter spoke of the Deep State years ago when he said, “The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.” You see that kind of influence in government without even recognizing it; PAC’s, lobbyists, and other special interest groups vying for access to, and influence over those who are elected to represent we the people. However, that is just what you are allowed to see, you are never shown what happens behind the curtain of deceit; not unless you are a part of that deceit. All you see it the actors up on the stage; playing the roles they have been assigned; following a script; all while you naively think your vote matters.

The only way these people can maintain their control on government is if they keep us ignorant and fighting amongst each other over petty party divisions and insignificant differences of opinions over the ‘issues.’ Unfortunately, emotion is a baser, more powerful, and more seductive instinct than is logic and the quest for truth; which is why so few seek out that truth; preferring to stay locked in a never endless battle in which they point fingers at those they disagree with; blaming them for all our problems.

It is my belief that the intent of those who wrote the constitution was to, all along, not benefit those who would be asked to give their consent to it, (the people), rather it was developed to benefit the moneyed class; with business and banking being among them. This is not some half baked conspiracy theory I’ve come up with, or fallen for; it is based upon a careful examination of the things said by those who created this system of government, and the things said by those who argued over whether or not this system should be adopted. Through a study of history, (which is far from complete), I’ve seen how the moment this system of government went into effect it began to do the very things its opponents warned it would; breaking promises made during the State Ratifying Conventions; exposing the duplicity and evil intent of those who created it.

Those who drafted the constitution knew that if they were to come out and write a document stating their intent, it would be rejected; as the Revolution was still fresh enough in their memories to cause them to reject any system designed to centralize power and diminish the liberty of the governed. Through careful use of grammar and wording they weaved loopholes into it; and when those loopholes were exposed by opponents to their document they sugar coated them and told the people that these opponents feared demons that were not there; that something MUST BE DONE lest the nation fall apart.

Let me ask you a simple question; well maybe not so simple. Why is it than in many of the key battleground States where ratification was argued, were members of the constitutional convention allowed to become delegates given the responsibility to either adopt or reject the plan for a system of government they had just written? Wouldn’t you be inclined to think they were biased and would vote in favor of their creation no matter what arguments were leveled against it; what flaws were found within their plan? Does that not seem like a conflict of interest to you? To me it is like allowing the accused in a criminal proceeding to sit on the jury deciding their fate.

Even once they got their plan in place they could not reveal themselves for who and what they were, they had to be patient and begin with baby steps; such as the assumption and centralization of all debt; the reorganizing of the Judiciary through the Judiciary Act of 1789, and the push for a National Bank. Yet throughout our history they met both resistance and failure; but if they are anything, it is patient and unwavering in their dedication. Thomas Jefferson stood in their way from the get go; but fortunately Hamilton had Washington’s ear and the president listened to his Secretary of the Treasury more often than he did his Secretary of State. Later they would do battle against Andrew Jackson and his war on the National Bank; but these things do not deter them, they keep pushing and pushing until they get what they want; then they move on to their next priority; the next stage in their plan.

Did I just say plan? By golly, I did. I find it highly ironic that people call me the conspiracy theorist, yet a conspiracy is defined as a secret plan designed to do something unlawful or harmful; such as a plan to deprive the people of their freedom. Yet if facts prove that this is exactly what the constitutional convention was, a conspiracy to lay the groundwork for a system of government designed to do exactly that, then who are the conspirators; me, or those who wrote the constitution? Furthermore, if the facts prove that to be the case, then it is no longer a theory; it is an indictment, leveling an accusing finger at those who created our system of government.

Just as the drafting and ratification of the constitution laid the groundwork for things to come, the misnamed Civil War, and the aftermath, Reconstruction, laid the groundwork for things to come; things that we are experiencing right now. For instance, we can thank the Civil War, and the aggressors in it, for the 14th Amendment; which was forced upon the Southern States under duress. Then of course there was the emancipation of close to 4 million slaves; slaves who were not given any formal education or preparation for their freedom; slaves who were told they would be given 40 acres and a mule by the government that had freed them; creating a class of citizens who would become dependent upon government for their sustenance and survival.

In the years leading up to the creation of our current system of government Thomas Jefferson was writing his Notes on the State of Virginia. In those notes he said, “It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expense of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions, which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.”

People praise Lincoln for freeing the slaves, but what they don’t realize is that Lincoln had, for years, supported the position that they be colonized outside the United States; forever separating the two races. In 1862 Lincoln met with a delegation of black leaders from the North, urging them to support colonization of all freed blacks outside the United States. Frederick Douglass, a leading black abolitionist, charged Lincoln with being racist, saying that they should be given the same rights and equality in the nation of their birth.

This begs the question; if an opportunity was given to both free and enslaved blacks to return to the country of their forefathers, and they did not take it, why do they now cry for reparations for the evil of slavery? I’m not condoning slavery, or the treatment blacks got from their masters while suffering under its yoke; I’m only saying that if your ancestors had the chance to leave, and didn’t take it, why are you blaming this country for your current plight; when you should be blaming those who chose to stay in the country that had held them in bondage.

There is another president who also favored colonizing the blacks outside the United States – Thomas Jefferson. However, unlike Lincoln who just wanted to put them on a boat and say, “Here you go, here’s your new home; make the best of it.” Jefferson proposed buying the slaves, training them in skills that would help them survive on their own, and only when they were able to do so, send them to another country to live. Now whose plan sounds more humane; Lincoln’s or Jefferson’s? Yet Jefferson is called a racist and Lincoln is praised as a saint. Lincoln even attempted colonization; only to learn that the colonies he established failed because those sent to them were not given the skills and knowledge to make it on their own without a master overseeing them.

Furthermore, even though the abolishment of slavery did finally occur under the administration of Abraham Lincoln, those in the North who pushed hardest for it did not want those freed slaves living among them. All the land that was promised to the recently emancipated slaves sat in the Southern States; not one acre of it was found in any of the States of the Union.

Say what you will about slavery, about the Confederacy, but Reconstruction was not about rebuilding the South after the war so it could re-enter the Union as it had existed prior to secession and the war; it was about conquest and subjugation; the complete and utter destruction of the Southern way of life; it’s culture, its heritage, and its political systems. Those loyal to the Confederacy were prohibited from holding positions within the State governments; which pretty much applied to everyone in the South. To fill those positions carpetbaggers and scalawags flooded south after the war to add insult to injury; taking control of their systems of government and placing them under military rule until they would submit to the demands of their conquerors.

As for the freed slaves, a Freedman’s Bureau was established to help them in the transition from bondage to freedom. At its head was a Major General Howard, to whom the Southern Pastor R.L. Dabney wrote the following, “I cannot believe that means will be lacking to you any more than powers. At your back stands the great, the powerful, the rich, the prosperous, the philanthropic, the Christian North, friend and liberator of the black man. It must be assumed that the zeal which waged a gigantic war for four years, which expended three thousand million of dollars, and one million of lives, in large part to free the African, will be willing to lavish anything else which may be needed for his welfare.”

Did the Freedman’s Bureau, or the North to any extant, do anything to lift those slaves out of their ignorance and plight; to elevate them to the same level of equality they held in the North? No, they promised them 40 acres and a mule and told them that if they voted for Republicans in the elections they would get more goodies; which were to be plundered from their former captors. The North sought to keep the freed slaves in the South, where the ‘ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained ‘ could be used by the North to punish the South and take control of it through the election of Republican candidates and the utter dissolution of the Democratic Party founded by Jefferson so many years ago.

I don’t know how to say this without appearing racist, but those ‘ ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained ‘ has been used time and time again to explain the condition of many blacks living in America today. It is the very basis of the cries for reparations for slavery, and it is the fuel with feeds the fires of racial discord in America right now.

Government, and those who hold power under it, may be evil, but one thing they aren’t, is stupid. They understand human nature and they understand how to play our emotions against each other. The fertile soil for racial discord was tilled long before the Civil War; when blacks were first transported to America in slave ships owned by Great Britain. That soil was nurtured and fertilized by the importation of even more slaves by the New England Colonies; Rhode Island; Connecticut; Massachusetts, and New York.

The seeds for discord were planted when those who had suffered under the yoke of slavery were given their freedom, and told that their plight came at the hands of evil white men, and that government existed to provide them with freedom, and with all that was needed for their sustenance and survival. That belief has been taught for generations in our public schools; to the point that neither blacks nor whites know the truth anymore. Those who try to speak the truth are met with a wall of opposition; built by generation upon generation of lies and indoctrination at the hands of those who were supposed to instill in our children knowledge and critical thinking; which is why you see so many young white people out rioting and looting alongside the blacks.

The soil has been well tended, and it is my belief, (and this is just a thoughtful diagnosis of what I’ve seen happen), that the fruit of their planning and labors began sometime around 2008; right before the sudden rise of Barack Obama into the political spotlight.

Who is, or who was Barack Obama, and why was he thrust into the spotlight to take the presidential election in 2008? He was just a former community organizer turned U.S. Senator from Illinois who introduced no meaningful legislation, and missed 24% of the roll call votes in the Senate during his tenure; which was 20% than the average for any Senator. So who was he, and what was so special about him that he went from obscurity to the Democratic candidate for president in 2008?

Back when I watched more TV, and when I still had faith in our political system, I used to sit with my wife and watch shows with her. One of her favorite shows, much to my disdain, was the Oprah Winfrey show. I recall one episode when Obama came on as a guest; while he was still an unknown Senator from Illinois. I can’t recall her exact words, but Oprah suggested to Obama, or made the comment, that he would make a good president. The next thing you know this unknown entity is delivering the keynote address to the Democratic Convention in 2004. Those who give the keynote addresses are typically the movers and the shakers within a political party; those who shape both policy and the future direction of their party. So what lifted Obama out of nowhere to that position in the spotlight; which would be he jumping off point for the presidential election in 2008?

I think the whole thing was scripted; part of a plan to widen the gap and cause more racial discord in America. Republican voters hated Obama, and what he stood for; which was, in my opinion, the exact response the Deep State, or Shadow Government wanted from them. Not only was Obama despised by those on the right, he set the stage for Donald Trump. Obama’s policies infuriated the right, and when 2012 came around the GOP gave us nobody that really stood a chance against Obama; similar to what they did when they ran Bob Dole against Bill Clinton in 1996. So Obama won the election, forcing the Republican faithful to put up with another 4 years of someone they despised.

Then along comes the 2016 election and Donald Trump. I recall once seeing Trump say in an interview that he had no desire to run for office, that he was content to simply run his business empire. But Trump’s face was everywhere; he had his own TV show, The Apprentice, he was on the news all the time, and even made appearances on celebrity TV shows such as EXTRA and Access Hollywood. Like him or not, everyone knew who Donald Trump was.

Then suddenly Trump begins talking politics and he gains a following. The more he talks, the more people listen; and the more outrageous and offensive he becomes, the more those on the right who felt disenfranchised by their party, fall in line behind him. Suddenly Trump pulls it off; he wins the election and becomes president.

Trump appealed to the patriotism and the sentiment that the GOP had let corruption overtake our system of government; promising to rebuild our military and drain the swamp. Indictments against Hillary were promised; a promise he has yet to keep, and his master plan to rid our government of the Deep State has made about as much progress as his promised border wall with Mexico.

Trump did not need to be marketed, he was already well known. All he had to do was show up and people would show up to hear him; people who liked what they heard; which only angered those on the political left. So when Trump was elected, what did we see? We saw protests with people marching around chanting, “Not my president.” Again, this is exactly the response the script writers wanted; for it further divided the people of this country; deepening the animosities between the left and the right.

Then along comes this Covid virus; which the lead doctor in charge of the governments efforts to prevent its spread, (Fauci), had a hand in financing its creation while serving as head of NIAID; the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The agency which he headed funneled money into the Wuhan research center where the Covid virus originated; a virus that records indicate was created right here in the United States at the research facilities at Chapel Hill University in North Carolina. Coincidence; I stopped believing in coincidences a long time ago. As the saying goes, nothing in government happens by accident; everything is planned.

So we’ve got Covid; which forces people to stay home, shut down their businesses, social distance, stop attending church and other public events; all of which disrupt our lives and wreck havoc on our emotional status; at least it does to those who fall for the lies being fed to them about the seriousness of Covid.

The news media played their role in this whole plandemic thing to a T; spreading no stop fear; reciting case numbers, death totals, and how the only way to prevent its spread was to shut down our lives. There is nothing like a boatload of stress introduced into an already volatile situation to prime things for an upcoming presidential election; especially when the two sides pretty much already hate each others guts.

And if that weren’t already enough, we had the George Floyd incident; the Rayshard Books shooting, both of which led to protests, riots, and violence against anyone who did not bow down and support Black Lives Matter. We also saw an increase in vandalism and destruction of monuments in this country; not only those honoring Confederate leaders, but also those honoring founding fathers and other assorted historical figures. Then the fires were intensified when the cops involved in the Breonna Taylor shooting were given a figurative slap on the wrist.

We are sitting atop a powderkeg right before a presidential election; and to make matters worse, Ruth Bader Ginsberg goes and dies; leaving a vacant seat on the Supreme Court in the last few months of Trumps first term. If I didn’t know better, I’d wager the woman has been dead for quite some time; after all, not much was seen of her this past year. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but I think they may have kept her passing a secret; only to release the information at this crucial moment in time when tensions between the left and right are strained to the limits.

So here we are, going into an election where the tensions of the voting public have already been strained by multiple stress multipliers. We have two opposing candidates, one of which can barely form a coherent sentence and has refused to debate Trump; possibly for fear of being humiliated on the national stage. We have his running mate, who is almost as bad, if not worse, than Hillary Clinton was.

To top all that off we have an election where a large portion of the votes will be cast by people sending in mail in ballots; which leaves the door wide open for all kinds of fraud. We have Trump saying he might not abandon the presidency if he suspects that fraud was involved in a Biden win, and we have the left saying that they aren’t going to accept a Trump victory; with the more radical of the left saying they’ll burn the whole thing down if it is announced Trump won a second term.

I mean what could go wrong with all that playing into the election; which is less than two months away.

If the shit does hit the fan during, or after the election, I think it will give government the perfect excuse to abolish the few privileges we have left. I think no matter who wins government is going to do something similar to China’s Social Credit Score in regards to a Covid Vaccine; either you take the vaccine our your right to participate in society is taken from you. Without a Vaccine ID you won’t be able to go to your bank and withdraw any money; and even if you could you wouldn’t be allowed inside a store so you could spend it.

I also believe that the rioting and violence is going to intensify and spread into other cities where it doesn’t already exist. I think that when it does, those who try to defend themselves will be punished severely, while those committing the actual acts of violence will be left free to commit their crimes; just as they are right now.

I think this is all leading up to martial law of some sort; either the National Guard will be called out to restore order, or worse, UN troops will be brought in to do so. I think that people in this country have been so conditioned to accept infringements upon their rights and liberty that they’ll submit to anything if the government promises that peace will be restored.

If they submit to that, the prison door will have been slammed shut upon them, and they’ll never see anything remotely resembling liberty again in their lifetimes. Those of us who have predicted this, and seen their endgame, will probably be rounded up, and when we refuse to go, we’ll be shot and killed; with the media labeling us domestic terrorists, fanatical militia members, or some other name that causes the masses to think we were a threat to their safety; just like they did to Randy Weaver and the Branch Davidians.

I cannot be 100% sure of any of what I just said, but if I’m right, you’ll have wished you’d listened to me long before we got to this point in the game. The only thing I can say at this point is, only time will tell. I hope I’m wrong about all this; that the things I just said are the wild imaginations of a crazy person; but I don’t believe they are.

In closing I’d like to leave a final quote for you to ponder. The statesman Edmund Burke once said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” If the plan I’ve just suggested truly exists, and is in its final stages, those who created this system, and those who drafted this plan are some evil son of a bitches. And if they’re evil; what have you done to stand up against them?
Ponder that…

A lot of people worry about getting old and eventually dying, but that does not concern me that much; we all grow old and die eventually. What does concern me is losing my mental faculties while living due to some form of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s. I was never blessed with a good memory to begin with, and to lose the little I was born with would be a devastating loss to me.

I think one of the reasons this frightens me so much is because I witnessed it happen to my mother as she slowly slipped into the grip of Alzheimer’s. Watching someone you love, quite literally, lose their mind was probably the most terrifying thing I’ve ever had to endure. From my perspective it was almost as if the disease was slowly depriving her of the very essence that made her my mother.

Her condition eventually got to the point where she was declared incapable, (mentally incompetent is the term they used), of managing her own affairs, whereupon the state ordered that she be placed into a managed care facility; where the Alzheimer’s slowly rotted away her mind, and unbeknownst to me, cancer slowly rotted away her body until she finally passed away; putting an end to her suffering.

I don’t mention this out of any desire for pity or sympathy; I mention it because I see many of the same symptoms my mother exhibited early on in one of the candidates running for President – Joe Biden. As most of y’all know, I don’t vote; I can’t see the logic in electing people to hold positions within a system of government that, quite frankly, sucks. That does not mean I don’t pay attention to what is happening; it is wise to be aware of what’s going on in this country; besides it is sometimes downright entertaining when they make fools of themselves.

The point I’m trying to make is that Joe Biden sometimes clearly acts befuddled and has a hard time forming complete sentences; which is one of the symptoms my mother exhibited in the early stages of her illness. There is no way that the DNC, (Democratic National Committee), is not aware of his peculiar behavior, (and I’m not even going to address his bizarre penchant for sniffing hair). If the DNC is aware of this, why in God’s name would they run him unless he was the only candidate they had that stood a chance against Trump?

It wouldn’t be without precedent; having a POTUS who was in the early stages of dementia; Ronald Reagan began exhibiting signs of his illness while in office. Reagan got so bad that NBC White House Correspondent Lesley Stahl would write about his condition as follows, “Reagan didn’t seem to know who I was. He gave me a distant look with those milky eyes and shook my hand weakly. Oh, my, he’s gonzo, I thought. I have to go out on the lawn tonight and tell my countrymen that the president of the United States is a doddering space cadet.”

The thing about it is, Reagan began exhibiting signs of his illness while in office, Biden is exhibiting them and the election is still over a month away. I don’t want to go too far out on a limb by suggesting something is amiss, but it’s a good thing this fake Covid crisis happened when it did; so that Biden would not have to stand on a stage and debate Donald Trump; Trump would have obliterated him. Not that I’m a Trump supporter, but that would have been something to see.

Although I don’t like Joe Biden much, I wouldn’t wish this illness, (that is assuming he has an illness such as Alzheimer’s), on anyone; even someone I despise like Biden. That said, why are the Democrats running him when it is painfully obvious that there are times he’s lost and can’t speak coherently? That question becomes even more relevant considering the Democrats also had Bernie Sanders they could have resorted to. I have often wondered if the DNC had not thrown Sanders under the bus in the last election, choosing to fall in behind Clinton, would Sanders have beaten Trump in the general election.

We’ll never know I suppose, but it seems to me that history is repeating itself from four years ago; with Sanders being pushed aside early on to make way for Biden. Could it be that the puppet masters at the DNC knew that Sanders was just too radical for some of the more moderate Democrats, and they may have chosen to not vote had they went with him instead of Biden? But then again, that kind of thinking is a double edged sword; especially when many of the voting Democrats have become quite radicalized themselves; which brings us to Kamala Harris.

Harris is far to the left of Joe Biden in her beliefs; hell, she’s far to the left of Stalin as far as I’m concerned. She once wrote me a curt letter while serving as Attorney General in California, saying that she was under no obligation to respond to public inquiries. That alone was enough to leave a sour taste in my mouth; not that I’d let my lips get anywhere near her; who knows who she had to sleep with to get the Number 2 position.

There Neal goes, exhibiting his sexist attitudes; that women move up in the world unless they spread their legs to do so. Bullshit; I know lots of women who I admire and respect who got to where they were due to hard work and intelligence; and Harris is not one of them.

Don’t you find it coincidental that right about the time Ms Harris political career took off that she was having an affair with Willie Brown; the same Willie Brown who opened the doorway and gave her, not one, but two key positions? There’s no proof Brown gave her those positions because he was sleeping with her, but it is an undisputed fact that they were sleeping together. So you put 2 and 2 together for yourself and see if you come to the same conclusions about Ms Harris as I have.

Maybe I’m just too cynical, or perhaps it is because if you are going to understand evil, you have to put yourself into the same frame of mind as the people you are trying to understand; maybe I’ve gotten accustomed to thinking the way these slime-buckets do, but I never take anything in politics at face value; I always look for ulterior motives and hidden plans; and the appointment of Ms Harris to the number 2 slot in American politics leaves me asking lots of questions.

I think the DNC is fully aware of Biden and his troublesome behavior. Now whether that behavior is due to some form of dementia has yet to be proven; or even tested for. Funny, Biden is a big fan of testing for Covid; I wonder how he’d feel if the American public demanded he be tested for Alzheimer’s before his name be allowed on the ballot? See, my mind goes off in all different directions and I have to constantly reign it back in to stay on topic.

I think that, possibly deep down, the DNC sees the way the winds are blowing for the future of their party, and that moderate Democrats are no longer going to be their core supporters; those core supporters will be the radicals; the kind that are out protesting now; the BLM and Antifa folks who have no qualms about using violence and force to get what they want. I don’t think the voting public is quite ready to commit to that strategy yet, but the DNC is hedging their bets, so to speak.

I think what they’ve done, (and it is quite ingenious by the way), is put a moderate, (who may be suffering from a debilitating illness), in the Number 1 slot; then they put a far left radical in the Number 2 slot. If Biden wins and survives one or two terms without being declared unfit, then the Democrats having lost a damned thing; they’ve still had one of their guys in the big chair pushing forward traditional Democratic agendas. However, if he is declared unfit, or dies in office, then Harris moves on up to the Number 1 position; and the Democrats get to radicalize American politics that much sooner. A Biden/Harris ticket is a win-win for the Democrats; but that’s assuming they beat Trump in November.

Now I’m going to be brutally insulting now; but there’s no getting around it. There is a portion of the Democratic voting public that is lazy as hell. That’s why this party appeals to them; it gives them things they didn’t have to work to get. Yet even after getting all these things at the expense of others, they still have to be wooed and convinced to show up on Election Day to cast their votes in favor of whoever is running on the Democratic ticket. These whole Get Out the Voter drives have got to be a huge drain on manpower, and they must be getting tired of having to do it every time there is an election.

However, if you were to mail people their ballots, and all they had to do is make a few marks on them, sign them, then slap them in your mailbox; you’ve eliminated the hassle of having to make sure your people show up at the polls to vote on election day. Now if I were a conspiracy minded kind of guy I’d be saying, “Wait a damned minute. First we have Biden say he won’t debate Trump due to Covid, and now we’re mailing ballots to the people? It sure seems like this Covid scare is benefitting the Democrats.” Lucky I’m not conspiracy minded, right?

I fully realize that what goes on in American politics affects me, but that does not mean I intend to vote for anyone come November; I may just stay home and get drunk for all the good voting does me. I don’t think anyone gets into the Oval Office who is intent upon tearing down the Deep State; regardless of what all you Trumpettes may believe about your chosen one. Where are all these indictments Trump promised would be on the way? Oh, he’s holding on to them until after he wins a second term; I get it. SMH!!! What about Edward Snowden; who lives in exile for doing nothing wrong other than exposing the crimes of our government; why hasn’t Trump dropped all charges against him so he can return home? What about Juilian Asange who is rotting away in prison; why hasn’t Trump done anything to see him released? What about Trump’s offhand remark about taking the guns first and giving people due rights later; huh, can you explain how that’s constitutional?

Trump played the Republican voters like a finely tuned Stradivarius, and they are still singing his tune; well most of them are. He is a consummate actor who is able to read the political landscape and play off the anger and fears of those who call themselves conservatives; and people fell for it. Hell, his promised tax cut for working folks certainly proved to be a lie; at least when my tax bill came due. I ended up owing 15% more in taxes than I did last year; so what tax cut? Oh, but he was gracious enough to send me back $1200 of the money the government had already stolen from my paycheck; so thank you Mr Trump. (Obvious sarcasm intended)

If you vote you probably look at those on the other side of the political fence as if they were miles away in their ideologies; when the fact is they are much closer than you care to admit. Both sides believe that government has all this wonderful power to do things which benefit them; the only difference between the two opposing sides being what those things government needs to be doing are.

If you were to draw a horizontal line on a sheet of paper, and at the far left write, ‘absolute tyranny’ and then go over to the other end of your line and write ‘absolute liberty’ then government should fall somewhere in between those two points; the question is, where? If, as the Declaration of Independence says, government is instituted to secure the blessings of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then it becomes apparent that good government should fall very close to the extreme right of your line.

Now if government were to stick to its intended purpose, there probably would not be any need for a division in this country into political parties; as the whole body of the people would be united in one common cause; the defense of their liberty. Yet here we are with two different political parties; Republicans and Democrats; conservatives and liberals.

Those voters who affiliate with the two parties see each other as being at opposite ends of that line demarking liberty and tyranny. Unfortunately, that is not the case. While the schism, or chasm, (call it what you will), between Republicans and Democrats has widened and deepened, neither of the two parties is anywhere near the point marked liberty; they have both shifted left of center and are leaning heavily towards tyranny. It’s just the question of who this tyranny benefits that separate the two parties now. Liberty is standing way off in the distance, with only a small fraction of the American people standing guard around her.

How does all this tie in with Biden and the possibility that he is losing his marbles? Not saying this will most certainly happen, but I think there is a good chance that, should Biden win, he will be declared unfit to continue on; which will elevate someone who is a radical; someone who isn’t even constitutionally qualified, to the presidency.

Oh here we go again, more of this birther nonsense. I’m not going to argue with anyone over this, but if you had done any research into the qualifications for President you would know, without a doubt, that Kamala Harris does not meet them; she IS NOT a natural born citizen as the constitution requires for candidates seeking the presidency. However that, apparently, does not matter to either party; for neither was Barack Obama, Ted Cruz, or Marco Rubio for that matter. If you disagree with me on this, I can only suggest you research what Vattel’s Law of Nations says about the meaning of the phrase, natural born citizen; and that’s all I intend to say about this issue.

So that’s one possible outcome, or consequence of this upcoming election; one step closer to absolute Socialism; with an illegal occupier sitting in the Oval Office. Then there is the possibility that Trump wins another term; in which case, I believe the riots and protests we’ve had so far will seem like a walk in the park in comparison.

I think if the Democrats win, the Republicans will bow their heads in sorrow, maybe hold a few peaceful protests, and sit back and wait until the next election so that they can put one of their own back into office. That is assuming that there is anything left of the land of the free after 4-8 years of either Biden or Harris.

On the other hand, those on the left have already shown us what they are, and more importantly, what they are willing to do when they feel slighted; and believe me, if Trump wins another term they are going to feel that they were cheated out of the election. If that happens, all I can say is, you better have a good stockpile of guns and ammo; you’re going to need them.

Before I retired people I worked with used to ask me what can be done to fix what’s wrong in America. Honestly, that is like asking what can be done to put a bus back onto the pavement after it’s gone over a cliff.

In the final two Avengers films; Infinity Wars and Endgame, Dr Strange tells Tony Stark that out of 14 million possible scenarios he sees only 1 chance for success. I feel the same way; there is a way out of this mess, but with all the confusion, ignorance, apathy, and downright contentment with the way things are, I don’t see us taking it.

The only way out for us is if we all stop fighting amongst ourselves; put aside ALL political differences, and stand united in tell our governments; both State and federal, to go to fucking hell; leave our rights and liberty alone, or you son of a bitches will be dangling at the end of a rope before sundown.

Like I said, I just don’t see that happening; not when I go outside and I see more than 75% of the people wearing facemasks; when I see businesses letting government run them out of business over the fear of a fake pandemic? Are you kidding me?!?

If you want to fix what’s wrong in this country you are going to have to get off your knees and stop bowing down before tyrants; you are going to have to admit that, not only are those you have voted for evil, but the system itself sucks. You may also be required to do something I don’t think is possible; you may have to grow a set of balls and risk your life to regain what we have lost. And like I said, with all these people walking around with government mandated muzzles on their faces, I think balls are in short supply.

Anyway, I’m not a prophet or a seer of the future; I’m only making a few ruminations based upon what I’ve seen, and what I currently see going on. Who knows, we all may wake up the day after Election Day and all will be well in America; that is if you believe in fairy tales and happy endings. I’m a realist, and I see nothing but despair in our future; and you had better prepare yourself for it.

I awoke this morning with a dream still fresh in my memory; something that does not happen very often. Typically, as soon as my eyes open, memories of whatever dreams I had during the night vanish without a trace. As quickly as possible, (which isn’t so quick since my PC is getting old and takes FOREVER to boot up), I typed out the parts I wanted to use from that dream; before they too vanished into the void that forgotten dreams go to.

The basic story of this dream is that I was a young, (I wish), school teacher, and I had the hots for this new sandy blonde, (also single), teacher the school had hired. In this dream I did not buy her a box of chocolates; as often is the case for young suiting males from my era. Instead I bought her a .44 magnum pistol and a box of chocolates; which I brought to school and intended to give to her later in the day.

Somehow school officials became aware of my gift and called the police. Just as I was giving it to her the cops showed up and arrested the both of us for being in possession of a firearm on school property; even though it was unloaded and wrapped in fancy gift paper. The pertinent part of this dream is that, when I went to court, I had counter sued the police and chosen to represent myself; forsaking traditional legal counsel. I felt that a regular by the books public defender was sure to get me locked away, and if I wanted any chance of ever seeing daylight again, I was going to have to come up with a fancy defense of my own.

Throughout my trial I did not ask any questions of the witnesses providing evidence against me; refusing to cross examine any of them. I took my cue from the Ayn Rand novel, The Fountainhead, when Howard Roark only gave a lengthy closing statement in his own defense. It is that closing statement that I wish to share with you; for in my dream I was successful in convincing the jury to render a Not Guilty verdict; even though I had brought a firearm onto school property.

So, without further ado, here is my defense…

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, as I lay out my defense I would like for you to keep one though active in the back of your minds throughout my delivery. As I offer my defense I want you to ask yourselves who the most important person in this courtroom is. Some of you might think it is me; as I’m the one being charged with a crime and it is my future at stake. Others might think it is the prosecuting attorney, or the judge. I will tell you right now, if you think those things, you’re wrong. The most important person in this room is each of you; the 12 individual jurors who have been chosen to decide whether I shall leave this courtroom a free man, or if I should spend time in prison for violating the law. Keep that thought in mind as I offer my reasoning as to why I should not be found guilty and be sent off to prison.

In 1776 a group of 56 men signed a document that would change the course of American history – the Declaration of Independence. That document laid out, not only their grievances against King George III, it also laid out certain principles that this country was to be founded upon. Allow me to read you the passage I feel is of the utmost importance to my case, “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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

There are 3 key points in that statement that I want you to understand. The first is that our rights do not come from government, they come from our Creator. Now you may or may not believe in God, and that choice is entirely yours to make. What is important is that those who signed that document did believe that there was an omnipotent Creator who bestowed upon man certain rights. Had they not believed that our rights are derived from our Creator, they would not have mentioned that Creator, or they would have edited that part out; as they did to numerous other passages from Jefferson’s original draft of the document.

The next point I want to make perfectly clear is that those 56 men, and the men who took up arms against their King and his army, believed that the purpose all government should serve is the preservation of those unalienable rights. They did not say that the purpose of government was to create jobs, or go off and fight foreign enemies; they said government exists to secure the rights of the governed.

The third, and final point they made is that government derives its just authority from the consent of the governed. What this means is that government works for us; it gets its power from us. We tell government what it can and cannot do; and so long as government stays within the confines of those powers we should obey the laws it enacts. The question is, what are we to do when government does not confine its actions to the powers the people have given it.

As I mentioned, the Declaration of Independence also laid out a string of grievances against King George III. One of those grievances declares that their King had, in many instances, deprived the Colonists of the right of Trial by Jury; specifically a jury of their peers. When tensions had risen to a certain point the King, or Parliament, decreed that in all legal cases against the crown the charged were to be transported back to England to stand trial; depriving them of a trial by a jury of their peers.

What is meant by peers; is it simply people from the same country? The dictionary defines a peer as one who is of equal standing with another: one belonging to the same societal group especially based on age, grade, or status. What do they mean by societal group? Does that mean that the jurors in a trial should come from the same city, the same community within that city? Could it mean that if I were a garbage collector that all the members of a jury should also be garbage collectors as well?

What about knowledge and understanding of legal principles and the history that led to the establishment of our current system of government; could that also not be taken into consideration when determining whether a jury is truly of ‘my’ peers? I wonder, how hard would it be to find 12 jurors who have spent the last 20 years of their life in an intensive study of the history of this country and the ratification of our constitution.

I am not belittling any of you sitting on the jury; I’m only showing that the Colonists had grave concerns over the King’s decision to deprive them of a trial by a jury of their peers; so much so that it was included in the constitution in Article III, Section 2, “The trial for all crimes shall be by jury and such trial shall be held in the state where the said crimes have been committed.”

The civic duty that you have all been called to now perform was of such importance that the drafters of the constitution made it a part of the Supreme Law of the Land.

Various courts since then have made reference to how important the right of trial by jury is. In Toth v. Quarles, 1955, the court held, “This right of trial by jury ranks very high in our catalogue of constitutional safeguards.” Dating back to 1765, the year King George implemented the Stamp Tax, nine Colonies had made trial by jury a part of their declarations of rights.

Then in 1968 the Supreme Court of the United States held, “Those who wrote our constitutions knew from history and experience that it was necessary to protect against unfounded criminal charges brought to eliminate enemies and against judges too responsive to the voice of higher authority. The framers of the constitutions strove to create an independent judiciary but insisted upon further protection against arbitrary action. Providing an accused with the right trial by a jury of his peers gave him an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge.”

The importance of trial by jury can be summed up by saying, those who inserted that language into the constitution did not want judges, or other sundry elected officials, trampling upon the rights of the people; they wanted to leave the determination of innocence or guilt up to regular citizens like you; who will be held responsible for weighing all the evidence leveled against me against the evidence I provide in my own defense.

Once you, as jurors, have done that, and if you come to a unanimous decision of innocence, no court in the world can overturn your decision; nor can these charges ever be brought against me again; for to do so would violate the double jeopardy clause of the 5th amendment, which states, “… nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb…” That is the power that you now hold; the power to ensure that justice is served.

With that power comes the solemn responsibility of opening your minds to all sides of the evidence which is laid before you; and being fair and impartial with your verdict regardless of how emotionally you may feel about the charges leveled against me. If you’ve ever seen an image of justice it is typically shown as a blindfolded woman holding up a set of scales; scales in which only the evidence provided by the prosecution and the defense are weighed against one another. Only by doing that can you fulfill the responsibility that is now yours to uphold.

Our history as a country provides a perfect example of pure justice when, as defense attorney for the soldiers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre, future President John Adams stood for justice against the angry wishes of the mob who wanted to see those soldiers hung. In his closing argument Adams told the jury to put aside its prejudices and emotions, and base their decision solely upon the facts; which is all I ask of you now. Adams exact words were, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

Adams was successful in saving those British soldiers from the gallows; simply because the jury listened to his admonitions and found that the evidence provided by the prosecution was not sufficient to send those men off to their death. I’m hoping that by the time I’m finished I will have provided enough evidence to convince you that I have committed no crime; and therefore should be permitted to leave this courtroom a free man.

Let us now begin to address the supposed crime I am guilty of having committed; bringing a firearm onto school property. I will not deny that I did that; bring a firearm onto school property; for to me, the truth in all things is of the utmost importance, and to say I did not do that would be a lie. However, I do not believe my actions constituted a crime; and I hope to convince you of that fact. I also hope to convince you that if what I did was a crime, then the officers who arrested me should also be facing the same charges as I am right now.

The Preamble to our nation’s constitution states, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The Preamble itself grants no power to government, it merely states the purpose for which the legal document that follows is to serve. There are two key points I would like to focus on; the first of which I’ve already discussed establishing justice. That was one of the reasons this system of government was put into place. The other point is to secure the Blessings of Liberty to those who wrote it, and their posterity; which means you and I. That appears to fulfill what the signers of the Declaration of Independence felt was the purpose government should serve; the securing of the unalienable Creator given rights of the people.

Article 6 of the constitution declares, “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby.” Think about that for a moment; that man, (and in my dream I’m assuming it was a man and not a woman), is bound to uphold and defend the constitution as much as are those you elect to office. Therefore, if he were to say that I cannot use the constitution, or the Bill of Rights, as my defense, then he would NOT be supporting and defending those documents; for how can you support something if you do not allow it to be introduced as evidence in your defense?

When the constitution was being debated among the States one of the big concerns was that it did not contain a bill of rights; listing certain rights as being beyond the ability of lawmakers to infringe upon or restrict. The opponents of the constitution raised such fears that those who supported the document consented to adding a bill of rights later if the States would agree to adopt the system of government being proposed first; which was what eventually happened.

Once this system of government was up and running the States submitted to Congress their proposals for suggested amendments. Debates were then held and the lists were reduced to 12 amendments which would be submitted to the States for their deliberation. Ten of those twelve amendments were successfully ratified as outlined by the procedure found in Article 5 for amending the constitution. Once those amendments were declared ratified, they became part of the constitution, not merely additions to it; meaning that they too were the Supreme Law of the Land.

The second of these amendments states that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Now I know that in today’s society people think government is capable of writing all manner of laws; doing all manner of things. However, the Bill of Rights was supposed to take certain rights and place them beyond the will of the public, or the lawmaking authority of our legislators. Furthermore, as the Supreme Law of the Land, the constitution was to take precedence when laws written by the States came into conflict with what powers the constitution delegated to the federal government.

What this means is that neither the State, nor the federal government can enact any law that infringes upon my right to keep and bear arms; end of story. Yet throughout its history our government has done just that; passing law after law that whittles away at that right until it is but a ghost of its former self. Certain guns are off limits to the public; you are restricted from carrying guns for your own defense unless you obtain a permit from some government entity.

Let me ask you something. Do you jurors believe that you have the right to eat…to breathe? Do you require a government permit to do these things? Do you believe that the government can tell you that you cannot breathe on public school grounds? It may sound silly to you, but it lies at the very nature of a right; that rights are things you do not need permission to do; so long as you do not bring harm to another person. Fear does not justify the restriction or limitation of a person’s ability to exercise their rights.

I would like to read just a few examples of what the courts, and assorted judges, have said pertaining to a person’s right to keep and bear arms, and about rights in general.

In 1846 the Supreme Court of the State of Georgia held, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the milita, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State. Our opinion is that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right.” (Nunn v Georgia)

In 1859 the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals held, “”The right of a citizen to bear arms, in lawful defense of himself or the State, is absolute. He does not derive it from the State government. It is one of the “high powers” delegated directly to the citizen, and `is excepted out of the general powers of government.’ A law cannot be passed to infringe upon or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the lawmaking power.” (Cockrum v. State)

In 1911, in an interview for the North American Review, Justice Horace H. Lurton declared, “The contention that…the Constitution is to be disregarded if it stands in the way of that which is deemed of the public advantage…is destructive of the whole theory upon which our American Commonwealths have been founded.” Think about this one in particular; if you think that the banning of certain types of guns, or the prohibiting of a person’s right to bear them best serves the public advantage, then your thoughts contradict what these American Commonwealths were founded upon. Remember, I asked you earlier to put aside your emotions and only examine the facts.

In 1922 the court held, “The provision in the Constitution granting the right to all persons to bear arms is a limitation upon the power of the Legislature to enact any law to the contrary.” (People vs. Zerillo)

In 1943 the Supreme Court of the United States held, “The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.” (West Virginia Board of Education vs. Barnette)

And here is where my actions come in. In 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court held, “The right to defy an unconstitutional statute is basic in our scheme. Even when an ordinance requires a permit to make a speech, to deliver a sermon, to picket, to parade, or to assemble, it need not be honored when it’s invalid on its face.” (Walker v. Birmingham)

If the 2nd amendment to our constitution says that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, then it means that no lawmaker has any authority to introduce, or vote in favor of a law that does so; and if they do, the law itself is null and void; as it violates the constitution’s restrictions imposed upon our lawmakers ability to legislate our rights away; recall People v Zerillo, 1922.

I can almost hear the murmurings inside your heads now, this guy is proposing that people go around violating the laws they don’t like. Not quite. I am, however, proposing that we, as those from whom government derives its authority, have the right to ignore laws that violate our fundamental rights; particularly those which have had constitutional restrictions placed upon government’s ability to infringe or interfere with them.

You may say that there is no precedence for that; but there is. In the years leading up to the American Civil War there were slaves that had escaped their owners and made their way North to States where they thought they would be free. However, the Fugitive Slave Act required that, if caught, these slaves were to be returned to their owners. Yet people disobeyed that law and refused to return slaves to their owners. Not only that, if they were brought up on charges of violating the law, the juries found them innocent; thereby rendering the law null and void.

It is my right to keep and to bear arms; I think I have proven that sufficiently so as not to require any additional evidence. Now you may be thinking, but we have the police to protect us; we don’t need a society of people walking around with guns to protect themselves. Are you aware that the courts have held, multiple times, that the police are under no obligation to protect you?

The lower courts have held this, such as in the case of Bowers v. DeVito, where the court held, “There is no constitutional right to be protected by the state (or Federal) against being murdered by criminals or madmen. It is monstrous if the state fails to protect its residents against such predators but it does not violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, or, we suppose, any other provision of the Constitution. The Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: it tells the state (gov’t) to let people alone; it does not require the federal government or the state to provide services, even so elementary a service as maintaining law and order.”

Then of course there are the Supreme Court cases that have upheld that principle; particularly Castle Rock v. Gonzales, where the SCOTUS ruled that the police are under no constitutional duty to protect a person from harm. That was but a reaffirmation of what the SCOTUS had held in DeShaney v. Winnebego County Department of Social Services, where it declared the failure by government workers to protect someone (even 4-year-old Joshua DeShaney) from physical violence or harm from another person (his father) did not breach any substantive constitutional duty.

I do not want to come across as disparaging to law enforcement, I believe they serve an important function in society; if they would but ensure that in their enforcement of the law our rights are not being infringed upon in the process. Nevertheless there is a saying amongst many gun owners that says, “When seconds count, the police are minutes away.” Not only that, cops can’t be everywhere all the time; therefore it devolves upon us to defend ourselves.

Now I would like for you to read something that one of our nation’s founders wrote almost 2-1/2 centuries ago, “Among the Natural Rights of the Colonists are these First. a Right to Life; Secondly to Liberty; thirdly to Property; together with the Right to support and defend them in the best manner they can–Those are evident Branches of, rather than deductions from the Duty of Self Preservation, commonly called the first Law of Nature.” (Samuel Adams, 1722)

It is our right to defend ourselves, yet how can we do so effectively when the means of doing so have been taken away from us by our government? After all, isn’t that the reason I’m standing before you now, pleading that you find me not guilty; because the government has enacted a law that says I have no right to defend myself on public school property?

The very document that establishes our system of government has a clause granting government all the powers it needs to carry into execution all its specifically delegated powers. Known as the Necessary and Proper Clause, it states that is the power of Congress, “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing powers…”

Therefore, if it is the right of all people to defend themselves, their property, and their liberty, in the best manner they can; and if our right to keep and bear arms is something the government has no authority to limit or restrict, are we, therefore, not justified in ignoring any law which limits our ability to defend our self at all times…even on public school grounds? And if we are prohibited from carrying arms for our own defense on public school grounds, what gives law enforcement the right to do so?

Does that badge and uniform grant them super powers that us mere mortals do not possess? Are they not sworn to support and defend the constitution? Are their salaries not paid out the of the taxes that are withheld from our paychecks; making them our servants, not our masters? Are they above the laws that they write for us mere mortals? How can we claim to have equality in this country when we have one class; the governed, to whom all the laws apply, and another class; the governors; to whom some of the laws do not apply?

While the man who said what I’m about to quote was not born in America, his words bear attention; for they go to the underlying principle upon which all laws should be based: What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

Each of us has a natural right—from God—to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties?

If every person has the right to defend—even by force—his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right—its reason for existing, its lawfulness—is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force—for the same reason—cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

If, as the Declaration of Independence says, we are all born with the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and if government is instituted to secure those rights, then does it not make sense that the purpose of law should be to defend those rights; not take them away from us? And if the police cannot be everywhere all the time, does that mean that our right to defend ourselves is surrendered until they can arrive? No, our rights are with us constantly; they are, as our founders said, inherent and unalienable; meaning they are as much a part of us as the color of our hair or eyes, and the cannot be taken away from us or surrendered; neither by our own free will or by legislative acts of our government.

I think I have laid out a pretty solid case proving that I did not commit any crime when I carried that firearm onto public school property; now there is but one thing that I ask you to do. Take what you have heard from me and weigh it against what the judge will tell you the law says; and if your heart tells you that the law is not just, that it deprives both you and I of a fundamental right, then I ask that you render a NOT GUILTY verdict.

Only by doing that, by basing your verdict solely upon the facts, not the instructions of the judge, can you do justice to, well, justice; and see that it is served. It is within your power to do so, as held by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, “If the jury feels that the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge and contrary to the evidence…If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused is unjust, or that exigent circumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their logic or passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision.”

I now lay my hopes, and my future in your hands. Just remember, some day it might be you standing here where I now stand; when your rights and freedom are at stake. I only hope that if that day ever comes, you will have a jury who will seek to ensure justice is not served, and not simply see that the law is enforced; for as Thomas Jefferson once said, “Law if often but the tyrants will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”
As I said, this was just a dream I had; one in which truth and logic prevailed. If only dreams were real though, and the people would listen to facts and logic rather than their emotions…

When I was growing up I remember that some parents used to limit the amount of time their children were allowed to sit in front of the boob tube; or idiot box as some called it. Nowadays kids have TV’s in their bedrooms. Hell, most of them carry a portable TV in their back pockets that are capable of streaming their favorite shows 24/7; although why someone would want to watch a TV show on a 2 inch screen is beyond me.

Back when I was a kid, not only was our television viewing time restricted to a certain extent, there weren’t as many channels available either. If I recall correctly, I think there were only 13 channels on the television when I was a kid; and not all of them came in crystal clear. With the advent of cable TV the number of channels skyrocketed; with there now being hundreds of channels available to keep your minds satiated with mindless drivel.

However it is not just television programming that has expanded its reach; the film industry has taken advantage of advancements in technology as well. When I was a kid if you wanted to see a movie you had to go to a theater and buy a ticket. Then along came VHS, then DVD’s, and now you can stream movies right to your PC or phone via Netflicks; not to mention the fact that most broadband internet providers offer access to any programming you find on your TV as well as access to new releases from Hollywood.

I know a lot of people don’t think about all this programming designed to keep them entertained, but I think about it a lot. Take for instance the word programming; have you ever stopped to think what it implies? Have you ever stopped to think what computer programmers do? Programmers write programs that tell computers how to operate; or to react to data. Don’t you think it is entirely possible that everything you see on the big screen is designed with the same purpose in mind; to ‘program’ you to react in a certain fashion to stimuli?

Then of course there is the word fan; as in fans of a major sports team or celebrity. The word fan is derived from fanatic; one who is overly zealous, or extremely enthusiastic about and devoted to some interest or activity. This ties directly into another subject of interest for me; celebrity endorsements. Why do people care what their favorite actor/singer/athlete thinks; are people incapable of forming their own thoughts without outside assistance? Why do people care what clothes those people wear; do they think buying a pair of Air Jordan’s is going to make them play basketball as well as Michael Jordan did? The whole idea that there are some people who will shape their lives based upon what some celebrity or athlete thinks and wears is truly sad to me; it shows that the person doing so has no sense of self-worth, no individuality.

One of the saddest things I’ve learned is that most people are simply incapable of seeing how what comes across the TV and Big Screen shapes their opinions on so many subjects. People will watch a TV documentary, or a full length feature film, about a subject and afterwards think they know all there is to know about that subject; never stopping to ask if the facts presented, or the story told is historically accurate.

Take for instance the television mini-series The Son’s of Liberty, which was shown on, of all things, The History Channel. If you had watched that, without any understanding of the events leading up to the American Revolution, you may have come away thinking that the war was started and won by Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Paul Revere alone. Yet since it was on The History Channel people assume it is a historically accurate rendition of the events portrayed on the screen. So what happens is that people will gladly sit around their TV screens for a 3 part mini-series than pick up a book that is historically accurate, and read it. Then, when you provide them with facts that contradict what they saw on the television screen, their minds are incapable, or unwilling, of processing that information; and it is rejected.

Another example is Steven Spielberg’s film, Lincoln; which is loosely based upon the book by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals. If that film is/was your only exposure to Lincoln, and the events surrounding slavery, you would have come away thinking Lincoln was a saint. Yet history proves that Lincoln was not the saint he has been made out to be.

Lincoln may have thought that slavery was an abomination, but he certainly knew that under the constitution he had no authority to abolish it. He said as much in his First Inaugural Address, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

The problem with people today is that they often read something, but they don’t stop to think about what they’ve just read. That passage from Lincoln’s Inaugural Address is a perfect example of how people skim over something without thinking about what they’ve read. Lincoln states that he had no purpose to interfere, (which means regulate or abolish) slavery; but he added the qualification of, ‘…in the States where it exists.’ What that means is that he had no authority to interfere with the institution of slavery in the South were it was already an established institution. He did feel that slavery should not be allowed to spread into territories that wanted to become States. His reason for that was twofold. First he wanted all newly admitted States to be for white settlers only; without competition from negro settlers. Any serious study of his speeches would prove that to be the case; yet by my mentioning that I will be called a racist; for the truth is always denigrated when it contradicts the programming, (indoctrination), people have underwent in school and in the media.

The second reason Lincoln did not want slavery to spread what because of the fact that most of the Northern States had already abolished slavery, yet some of them would not permit freed slaves to live among them. Lincoln’s home State of Illinois is a prime example of that. These Northern States would end up becoming the stronghold of the Republican Party, and if slavery were to be allowed in the newly admitted States it would increase the power held by the Democrats, (which was the remnant of the party established by Thomas Jefferson; one of limited power for the central government). The North could not allow that to happen, as it ran contrary to their ideas as to what purpose government should serve.

But Neal, Lincoln did fight a war to free the slaves; it says so in the history books. Well, did your history book also include the correspondence of Lincoln himself regarding the reason for the war; did it include the Johnson-Crittendon Resolutions in which Congress laid out the reasons for the war; did it tell of how Lincoln supported a constitutional amendment that would have made slavery permanent and irrevocable in America?

All of those things are relatively easy to verify if you would but do a bit of research, yet not one of them are included in Spielberg’s glorified narrative of Lincoln. Oh, and if you still believe Lincoln deserves to be praised and honored for all he did for the blacks, then maybe you ought to read what he thought about them, “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races,-that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

Those words aren’t mine, they are Lincoln’s, taken from his 4th debate with Stephen Douglas, held at Charleston, Illinois on September 18, 1858. That too is easily verifiable if people would just do some research. But no, they’d rather sit in the comfort of their home watching a DVD than spend a few hours seeking out the truth.

Those are just two examples of how the media, both film and TV, are used to alter history; to indoctrinate you into believing lies about our country’s past. Yet there is more to how the media is used to formulate and manipulate your thoughts and beliefs. All one has to do is turn on their TV for any length of time today and look at how advertisements are showing people wearing face masks; programming us to accept this as ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’ intrusions upon our liberty to deal with a crisis; which if people would just research the facts, they would find it isn’t a crisis at all; especially one of the magnitude the news media is making it out to be.

A perfect example of how television and movie programming has shifted our opinions is cop dramas and cop movies. The cops shows I grew up watching, like Adam-12, had very little violence in them, and the things the cops did were hardly considered violations of the rights of criminals; even though the laws they may have been enforcing were violating the liberty of the people.

Look at cop shows today; especially shows like NCIS or NICS Los Angeles; where there are always shootouts, always dead perps, and the cops violate the 1st, 4th and 5th amendments with near impunity. The cops, the ‘good guys’; if you want to call them that, break into homes, detain people without charges, and use force whenever they believe it to be justified. The actions of the agents on these shows are a far cry from the actions of officers Malloy and Reed on Adam-12; that’s for sure.

The first time this became apparent to me, and I know I’m gonna piss some off when I say this, is when I saw the first Dirty Harry movie. Harry Callahan violated the rights of suspected criminals; justifying it by saying the system protected the rights of criminals at the expense of the victims. Yet our law is supposedly founded upon English Common Law, and in English Common Law Judge William Blackstone wrote, “[B]etter that ten guilty person’s escape, than one innocent suffer.”

Today cops act with qualified immunity; meaning they cannot be sued if their actions harm another, or deprive them of their rights and liberty. This ‘free pass’ or get out of jail free card, gives them the leeway to take the law into their own hands; at the cost of our rights. Our grandparents would be astonished to see what law enforcement has become; and it’s all thanks to our having been conditioned by cop shows and cop movies into accepting this as justifiable police behavior.

I’m not saying there isn’t crime, and that crimes haven’t become more violent. What I’m saying is that the rights of the people these cops are sworn to protect take precedent over enforcing the law; especially when the laws themselves violate our basic rights and liberty. But we accept it because we’ve been brainwashed into accepting it by the shows and movies we watch.

I fully understand, and actually support, what these Black Lives Matter say in regards to police brutality and abuse of power. Yet that brutality and abuse of power is not limited to, or targeted solely against blacks; it covers us all with its tyranny; and that is where BLM and I part ways. BLM and Antifa feel that this abuse of power gives THEM a free pass to commit crimes; assualts, looting, and destruction of public property. If they were truly against police brutality, then why aren’t they limiting their protests to those in the system that allow for this abuse to continue? What has a Target store, a Confederate Statue, or some guy wearing a MAGA hat done to harm them? Go to any Black Lives Matter protest and tell them that ALL lives matter and you’ll be lucky if YOU aren’t attacked. They don’t care about your rights, only theirs; and that is why I do not support what they are doing. I do support their claim that there have been egregious abuses of power by the police; I just don’t agree that they are the only ones entitled to justice, nor their mode of obtaining it.

And before I hear from the Thin Blue Line crowd; the ones who say we should unquestioningly support law enforcement, let me ask you a simple question. If there are good cops in law enforcement, (which I’m sure is the case), why don’t these good cops weed out the bad ones; AND why do these good cops enforce laws that violate the basic rights and liberty of those they are sworn to serve? Just following orders doesn’t cut it, as the Nuremburg Trials proved at the end of World War II.

We accept this behavior because we see it day in and day out on the TV and big screen; it’s what cops do to enforce the law; to protect us common folk from the ‘bad guys.’ We have been indoctrinated…programmed into accepting this type behavior; just as we’ve been programmed into accepting deviant behavior, as well as kinds of other things.

Did you know that during Ronald Reagan’s presidency the head of the CIA, William Casey, told the president, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false”? Well he did, and the question then arises, what disinformation program is he talking about, and who initiated it?

Ever hear of Operation Mockingbird? Operation Mockingbird is one of those subjects that cause people to say, “Here he goes again, delving into conspiracy theories.” Well Operation Mockinbird is not a conspiracy theory, it is a conspiracy fact. If you were alive in the 70’s you probably remember Car Bernstein as part of the duo of investigative reporters who broke the Watergate Story; leading to the resignation of President Nixon.
Well in 1977 Bernstein broke the story of Operation Mockingbird in a story published in Rolling Stone Magazine. In his expose he reported on how many journalists – some of them Pulitzer Prize winners – had joined the CIA’s payroll, and were writing fake stories to disseminate the CIA’s propaganda. He also reported on how other journalists were either blackmailed into publishing false information, or they had been given false ‘leaked’ information which they accepted as truth. Operation Mockingbird is/was real, and it was estimated back in the 50’s the CIA had control over 25 newspapers, and had 3,000 journalists working as salaried employees of the CIA, or as contracted employees. One such journalist was Joseph Alsop; whose articles appeared in over 300 newspapers across the nation.

I find it both hilarious and a bit sad that people, especially Trump supporters, have suddenly taken up the mantra of Fake News, when the news has been fake for decades; designed to shape public opinion according to the whim of the so-called Deep State. This kind of influence on the news media goes back way back before Donald Trump was even born.

Trump was born in 1946, and twenty nine years before Trump was born a U.S. Congressman named Oscar Calloway stood on the floor of Congress and said, “In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States, and a sufficient number of them, to control generally the policy of the daily press….They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers.

An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper, to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature, considered vital to the interests of the purchasers.”

If they knew back then that the media could be effectively used to shape, or shift, public opinion, what makes you think that, with all the technological advancements, they are not using it for the same function today?

You are not going to find the truth on the TV; sorry to break that news to you. (Pun intended) You also aren’t going to find the truth if you go to social media sites like Facebook; where its censors work tirelessly to block and restrict the posting of facts that prove the news media’s narrative is a lie.

If you want the truth you’re going to have to dig for it; you’re going to have to use your brain and sift through the lies to find it. Does that entail some effort on your part? You’re damned skippy it does, but if you care about the truth, you’re gonna have to do it, or else accept the lies that are being spoon fed to you by a system that is designed to shape your thoughts and keep you obedient to your masters. It’s like Carlin said, “…they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that . . . that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.”

James Madison once said that knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and for a people who wish to be their own governors, they must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives. Well, as long as you let the news media, or TV shows and movies shape and manipulate your thoughts, you are kept ignorant, and by virtue of that, kept in a constant state of bondage and servitude.

If you truly want to be free, the best advice I could give you would start with the simple sentence, TURN OFF YOUR TV. Just look at how effective it has been in transforming this country into a place where the people allow themselves to be muzzled, have their business or places where they go for food and entertainment shut down, and are willing to turn on their friends and neighbors who have not fallen for the lies being told them.

In 1790 the Irish politician and orator John Philpot Curran said, “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.” To put that into modern terms, if you want to be free you have to keep on your toes against any, and all, who would take that freedom from you. Otherwise, if you don’t, you’ll never again see freedom; and you’ll bequeath bondage and servitude to your children and their children.

We may not be able to fix the damage that has been done to our freedom; the damage is probably too extensive to do that. But we can plant the seeds of liberty in our youth; give them the knowledge so that they might do as our ancestors did, and shake off the shackles of tyranny and oppression. Maybe they’ll get it right and not make the same mistakes we did. That’s all I can hope for at this stage of the game; for as far as I’m concerned…WE’RE SCREWED!

“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe~

I would like to see a survey done, asking people if they’d ever refrained from speaking what was really on their mind among friends for fear of being ostracized from the group. I’d be willing to bet, if they answered honestly, that a large percentage of the people questioned would answer that they had. There is a polite word that society has come up with to describe this phenomenon; they call it a filter; something inside your mind that prevents you from blurting out things that might be taken as offensive or crude.

I can understand the need for a filter like that in certain situations; you certainly wouldn’t want to blurt out, “FUCK that hurt” after banging your shin in church. But I wonder how many have their internal filter settings cranked up so high so as to keep them from discussing certain controversial issues, or stating an opinion that is contrary to everyone else’s just because they don’t want people to look at them funny, or say that’s ridiculous? Do you want to know what I find ridiculous? I find it ridiculous that people keep their thoughts to themselves when they can prove that what the group thinks is not true. I find it ridiculous that social status or friendship is more important than the truth; that’s what I find ridiculous!

Psychiatrists, or psychologists, (I really can’t remember which), have stated that man is a social creature, that they require interaction with other human beings. The psychologist Maslow even placed that into his hierarchy of needs; placing it between safety and esteem. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is basically a list of needs that mankind has. It begins with the physiological needs, such as food, water, shelter, etc. Once man obtains those needs he can then move on to the next one; which is safety. Once man obtains safety, he then tries to attain love and belonging; a wife/girlfriend, and groups of friends.

While I haven’t delved into psychological studies of Maslow’s hierarchy, (I simply learned about it in leadership school in the military), I am guessing that once man attains each level of this hierarchy he would not do anything to threaten what he has obtained; unless of course he was under the influence of something, such as mind altering drugs which cause him to do things that threaten his friendships, his family, or even his health. Could that be why, once you are accepted into a circle of friends that you refrain from saying things that might threaten your status in that particular group? Like I said, I’m no psychologist, but it seems logical that this would be true; at least to me.

The problem with this phenomenon, at least as I see it, is that if people tend to keep their thoughts to themselves, they develop what is known as ‘groupthink’ or what I call the herd mentality. This phenomenon is similar to how large flocks of birds fly in these intricate patterns; changing directions instantaneously without any deviation from any member of the flock. It’s fascinating to watch…in birds…it is frightening to watch in humans; for it deprives people of their most precious possession – their individuality.

Now I’m not saying that one should be offensive, or controversial, just for the sake of being that way; that would be ridiculous as well. However, I am saying that if you know that what your group is saying is untrue then you owe it to the truth to point it out to them; regardless of whether doing so threatens your status within the group; that’s called having intellectual integrity; something I don’t see much of these days.

You see this a lot today; especially in politics. I call it party over principle; where your status in the party or ‘group’ is more important than the truth. A few years back I witnessed this first hand when I was asked to attend a local Tea Party meeting and was almost thrown out the door for questioning the positions of the candidates they were endorsing. After the meeting the guy who invited me told me that he agreed with pretty much everything I’d said, but that you cannot go around saying that kind of stuff when you’re surrounded by die hard Republicans. I told him that I thought it was a Tea Party meeting; not a meeting of the Yuba City chapter of the GOP. Although my friend had agreed with me, he kept his thoughts to himself for fear of being ostracized from the ‘group.’

I have a small group that I belong to; people I consider to be my friends. However, the thing that binds us together is not such inane things as loyalty to a political party, or fanaticism over a football team, it is intellectual integrity; we all strive to find the truth in all things. I have been taken to task, and rightfully so, for allowing my emotions to guide my reasoning process. I can only speak for myself, but I value that in friends more than I value anything else they might be able to provide me; keeping me on my toes and in accordance to the truth is more important to me than any monetary or physical benefits I could get from membership in a group.

If you were to draw a line on a piece of paper and put intellectual integrity at one end of the line, what do you think would be at the other, more extreme end; what word or phrase would you put there? I can think of but one word that would fit properly at the other extreme – hypocrisy. If you know something to be untrue, but refrain from saying it aloud in your particular group for fear of threatening your status in that group, you are a hypocrite. If you reject the truth when it is presented to you, for the same reason, (your status in a group), you are a hypocrite; for you are denying the one thing that truly matters in life – the truth.

Intellectual integrity is defined as striving to be honest and thorough in their quest to learn the truth. A person with intellectual integrity shuts down their emotional process when examining things; they rely solely upon facts and data when forming their opinions; and they courageously follow the truth, wherever it may take them. Oh, one other thing, a person possessing intellectual integrity does not fear being proven wrong; in fact they will often admit it; while those who are lacking in this quality are incapable of admitting that they were wrong. Do you want to hear a couple examples of intellectual integrity? Well here they are anyway:

– For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.

– Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.

Both those passages can be found in Patrick Henry’s famous Give me liberty or give me death speech, of March 23, 1775. Just think of how great this country could be if everyone held themselves to such high standards of integrity. Alas, it is not to be; groupthink and denial of the truth permeates society today; and this country is the worse for it.

Ever hear the term evil genius? The first time I heard it was in reference to Professor Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes stories I read as a kid. Moriarty was equal to Sherlock Holmes in his brilliance; however he put his genius towards evil, while Holmes put his talents towards apprehending people like Moriarty.

Well my friends, evil geniuses are real, and they exist among us. These type people are drawn towards power; both monetary and political; and once they obtain that power they it to control others. The thing about people like this is they tend to be very astute in understanding human nature; and they use this understanding to manipulate your feelings and beliefs. A perfect example of people like that are the pimps that are able to spot runaways and play upon their feelings in such a manner that they end up becoming prostitutes.

I couldn’t do that; convince someone to do something that is contrary to their own best interests takes a skill, (if you could call it that), that I do not possess. There is another category of people who also possess this ability – politicians. How else do you explain the fact that people vote for them when any examination of government itself, or the past record of these candidates, clearly proves that they have no regard for your individual liberty?

These evil geniuses, through their control of the media and the public school system, have brainwashed people into believing that they can’t live without the system they are a part of; and that anyone who tries, or who questions the authority of the system, are enemies to be feared and demonized. These evil son’s a bitches understand human nature; they know that people in large groups cannot think for themselves, and they play upon people’s need to belong to these groups so as to manipulate and shape public opinion.

Just look at all the fear generated over this Covid scare; it is all because of the constant repetition on the news media that this fear exists. Had the news never spoken of Covid at all, most people would not have know that there was anything out of the ordinary happened; only that it was just another bug going around that was causing some to get sick, and some to die. It happens every year with the flu, but due to the media bombardment and their manipulation of the numbers, people are living in fear; not only of the disease itself, but in fear of those who have studied the facts and refuse to adhere to the mandate to wear a face mask.

You could almost call this programmed democracy. Democracy, in its simplest form, is majority rule. The bigger the majority, the more power they have over the minority. Now if you could somehow shape, or manipulate the sentiments of a large majority of the people, (through fear), then you are in control of society; which is exactly what has happened in every crisis that we have faced.

There is a word to describe this groupthink; it is also called collectivism. Collectivism is the belief that the group takes priority over the individual. If you are a Star Trek fan you may remember the film The Wrath of Khan; where Spock dies at the end of the film. If you’ve seen it, you’ll remember his words to Captain Kirk, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” That is collectivism boiled down it its purest form.

The problem with collectivism is that it denies individuality; and by virtue of that it also denies the principle of individual liberty. Collectivism is the antithesis of liberty; for liberty is the freedom of each individual to live their lives as they please, while collectivism demands that all people live their lives without the freedom to deviate from ‘established’ norms. The problem with that can be summed up by a single question: Who gets to decide what is normal; what is acceptable behavior? An example of collectivist thought is political correctness; the inability to say things that might offend others; which is in direct contradiction to our fundamental right to freedom of speech.

Those who get to dictate what is, or is not, acceptable, control society absolutely; for the people no longer think for themselves, they have their thoughts fed to them through the public school system and the media. Their thinking ability is limited to the framework of what is acceptable behavior; established by the system itself as a means of control. Those who question the system, are therefore deemed, the enemy.

Even if people disagree, or dislike what this system tells them they must do, they comply anyway. If you don’t believe me, just look at how many people who will tell you in private that this mask wearing is bullshit, but when they go out in public they wear one anyway. They fear being ostracized, or deemed a threat; so they comply.

Those who obey these infringements upon their liberty, even though they dislike or disagree with them, cannot think outside the box that they are trapped in; that box being that we have to accept what the system tells us, even if we don’t like it. It’s quite similar to what Morpheus tells Neo in the film, the Matrix, “You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.”

The reason I bring all this up is because I see, with great sadness I might add, a serious lack of intellectual integrity among my fellow countrymen. What I do see is a preponderance of group think, or more accurately; collectivism.

The framework of our society, or more specifically our system of government allows for a certain amount of disagreement between opposing beliefs; the two party paradigm. As long as people confine their debates inside the construct of the two-party system the debate is deemed acceptable. It is when one steps outside that paradigm and begins questioning the system, and how it has become destructive of the ends for which it was instituted that they face the wrath and ire of both sides. The system cannot tolerate individuality, nor can it tolerate those who stand for individual liberty; you must choose a ‘side’, and keep your debate focused on opposition to the ‘other’ side. Step outside this box they have place you in and you become a pariah; an enemy to the public welfare and society in general.

Just look at the strategy that has been used to cause us to give up or freedoms due to the war on terror; Covid; mass shootings; and any number of other crises that the media bombards us of coverage with. It’s all programmed fear, and if you remember Maslow’s Hierarchy you will remember that security, or safety, is one of the most important needs man has. Therefore, if you can convince mankind that to obtain that safety they must first surrender their freedom, you have enslaved them without ever firing a shot or placing any shackles on their wrists.

People have become so conditioned to believe that they need government; that they could not exist without the services it provides, that anyone who questions the need for government, or the programs it enacts, is attacked and demonized.

These evil geniuses understand you better than you understand yourself. They know your fears, they know your wants and desires, and they use them against you to manipulate and control you. Just look at how readily people will turn on each other for simply not wearing a face mask if you don’t believe me. It will be the same when the vaccine comes out, and some refuse to take it; they will be ostracized and deemed a threat to the public good.

This tactic is not new; it is as old as our country itself; maybe even older. Read the history of the ratification of the constitution itself if you don’t believe me; look at how opponents to the new constitution were treated, and attacked by those who supported it; some of whom probably never even read it; their attacks were based upon their fears over what would happen if something weren’t done to remedy their dreadful situation. Boy does that sound familiar.

Look at how George Bush came out and publicly stated that “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” It did not matter that the steps Bush was taking undermined the constitution and infringed upon your basic rights; all that mattered was the patriotic fever that swept through the nation after the 9/11 attacks; you were either a patriot or you weren’t, and the truth be damned! It doesn’t matter that in 1967 the Supreme Court held, “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.” (U.S. v Robel)

It’s the same thing you see today in regards to these black lives matter protests/riots. If you question what they are doing you don’t care about black lives. If you mention all lives matter, you don’t care about black lives; you’re a racist. When people allow their emotions to guide their thoughts, the truth takes a back seat; if it’s not thrown from the bus altogether. When that happens, anyone who doubts, or questions, the narrative being spoon fed to the masses is an enemy and must be attacked. This whole belief that one cannot question the ‘official’ narrative is completely contradictory to our right to freedom of speech; to question things and seek out the truth.

I began noticing this years ago when political correctness first reared its ugly head. The idea, or concept, that certain things should be prohibited or banned because they are deemed offensive goes against the belief that people are free to speak their minds whenever they hear lies being told. People fear being labeled a racist, unpatriotic, or the catch all, a conspiracy theorist. Those in power realize this, and use that fear to control them, by ensuring that anyone who steps outside established boundaries are labeled as any, or all of those.

Are you aware that the term conspiracy theorist was weaponizedd by the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency? This is verified by CIA Document 1035-960: Foundation of a Weaponized Term, were we read, “‘Conspiracy theory’ is a term that at once strikes fear and anxiety in the hearts of most every public figure, particularly journalists and academics. Since the 1960s the label has become a disciplinary device that has been overwhelmingly effective in defining certain events off limits to inquiry or debate. Especially in the United States raising legitimate questions about dubious official narratives destined to inform public opinion (and thereby public policy) is a major thought crime that must be cauterized from the public psyche at all costs.”

It does not matter what the term is, if it is used to stifle honest debate, or silence opposition to the ‘official’ narrative, it is a weapon by which those in power control the direction public takes. Any debate outside the established boundaries is deemed a threat, and those speaking such heresy are given a label and viciously attacked.

Look at Edward Snowden, who committed no crime; rather he exposed the crimes our government was committing. He was labeled a traitor, and had to flee the country to avoid prosecution; or possibly something worse.

Look at how the Branch Davidians were demonized; called a cult, and the actions of the FBI and the BATF were justified as necessary steps to eradicate them. The same thing happened with Ruby Ridge and the Weaver family. I don’t care who you are, nothing justifies shooting an unarmed mother through the head while holding her child in her arms…NOTHING! That is the kind of evil that permeates this country, yet thanks to the propaganda and indoctrination, the victims become the criminals, and America applauds the real criminals; which is why we see this unjustified support for law enforcement; when the truth is they are the enforcing arm of tyrants.

As I said, these tactics are not something that is new to America; they have been used from the very beginning to stifle honest debate and silence opposition. As far back as 1788, when Patrick Henry had the courage, and the intellectual integrity, to speak his mind in regards to the dangers he saw in the newly proposed constitution, he was attacked by others for daring to question their precious document. He himself said, ”When I thus profess myself an advocate for the liberty of the people, I shall be told I am a designing man, that I am to be a great man, that I am to be a demagogue; and many similar illiberal insinuations will be thrown out.”

Can you not see that the same tactics are being used today against those who dare stand for liberty in a country that is quickly sliding into abject tyranny? Now they have chosen to label those who oppose the rules being imposed upon society as psychopaths. You heard me, those who stand for liberty are not being told they have a mental illness.

In an article written by Canadian economist Michel Chossudovsky, (who has also been labeled a ‘conspiracy theorist’) we read, “A diabolical process is underway which consists in “identifying” all those who are opposed to the governments’ management of the coronavirus pandemic. According to ongoing psychological studies, these opponents are categorized as anti-social psychopaths.

Accept the “big Lie” and you are tagged as a “good person” with “empathy” who understands the feelings of others.

Protest against the official truth (“big lie”), criticize government guidelines, express reservations regarding the closing down of the global economy, social distancing and the wearing of the face mask, and you will be tagged (according to “scientific opinion”) as a “callous and deceitful psychopath”.”

Is this something new? No, it isn’t; it is just using tactics that have proven effective in the past. Benjamin Rush, the father of American psychiatry, once said that an excessive desire for liberty was a mental illness; he labeled it anarchia.

It is okay to question the Democrats if you are a Republican, or vice versa, but it is not acceptable to question the system; for you will then be labeled an anarchist. I take great pride when someone calls me an anarchist; considering they probably don’t know the meaning or the origin of the word.

The word anarchy comes from the Medieval Latin word anarchia and then from the Greek word anarchos (“having no ruler”), with an-+ archos (“ruler”) literally meaning “without ruler”. Anyone who understand what liberty is, and where it comes from, would wear the label of anarchist with pride; it is nothing to be ashamed of.

An anarchist, not to be confused with someone who believes in absolute chaos, is one who recognizes that the individual is responsible for all their own wants and needs; not society. An anarchist would not ask the government to provide something which was their responsibility to provide for themselves; including food, shelter, and security.

On the other hand, a statist, a collectivist, or someone exhibiting the malady of groupthink, requires a governing force to compel others obedience to their collective will; they cannot abide individualism. The seek to subvert individualism, and individual liberty, and replace it with collective obedience to the system; which is why the system demands that people obey its laws, and not ‘take the law into their own hands.’

People think that if anarchy were to prevail, chaos would ensue; that is entirely possible, for awhile. But there is something people do not seem to understand, which is best explained by a quote from author Robert Heinlein, “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” To put that into Nealspeak, “People wouldn’t be such criminals or assholes if every time they were someone shot them.”

That is a concept that is understood universally by those who have studied, and professed allegiance to the principle of Natural Rights. Society could be self-governing, self-regulating, if it was allowed to weed out and eliminate those who posed a threat to the safety, peace, and liberty of all. Locke clearly outlined that principle in his Second Treatise when he wrote, “And hence it is, that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power, does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life: for I have reason to conclude, that he who would get me into his power without my consent, would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for no body can desire to have me in his absolute power, unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom, i.e. make me a slave. To be free from such force is the only security of my preservation; and reason bids me look on him, as an enemy to my preservation, who would take away that freedom which is the fence to it; so that he who makes an attempt to enslave me, thereby puts himself into a state of war with me. He that, in the state of nature, would take away the freedom that belongs to any one in that state, must necessarily be supposed to have a design to take away every thing else, that freedom being the foundation of all the rest; as he that, in the state of society, would take away the freedom belonging to those of that society or commonwealth, must be supposed to design to take away from them every thing else, and so be looked on as in a state of war.

This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief, who has not in the least hurt him, nor declared any design upon his life, any farther than, by the use of force, so to get him in his power, as to take away his money, or what he pleases, from him; because using force, where he has no right, to get me into his power, let his pretence be what it will, I have no reason to suppose, that he, who would take away my liberty, would not, when he had me in his power, take away every thing else.”

But can’t have that can we; why would we need prisons and law enforcement if people were allowed to exercise the fundamental right of self-defense? And after all, isn’t it law enforcement the enforcers the laws these tyrants write; you certainly don’t see Nancy Pelosi or Donald Trump arresting and killing people, do you?

But as Morpheus said, some are so hopelessly inured to the system that they will fight to defend it; which is true with well over 90% of the American people. They may not like what the ‘other’ side is doing, but if you dare say tear down the system you are a lunatic, an enemy to be silenced.
For the truth is, freedom is the most despised thing in America today; and the fear of it crosses all political lines. It does not matter if you lean Republican or lean Democrat in your thinking, the one thing neither side can abide is the individual who only wants to be free to live their live free of taxes and governmental intrusion upon their lives.

Those who both understand what liberty is, and defend it with every ounce of their being, are a dying breed; and endangered species if you will. You may applaud when we die off and leave you to your wonderful system of equality for all; but guarantee that you’ll soon be wishing we were still around to defend your rights and liberty; for this equality y’all are promoting isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. But you’ll soon find that out for yourselves….

Oh, and if you’re wondering what the title means, eleutherophobia is the irrational fear of freedom…

When the constitution was written in 1787 it was then submitted to the people, via the Confederation Congress, to be debated and decisions reached whether to adopt or reject their proposed plan for an entirely new system of government. While this mode of ratification was totally illegal, as it violated existing law, it is the fact that it was conventions consisting of the people that adopted the proposed constitution that I would like to spend a moment discussing.

What is meant when someone says ‘We the People?’ I’m not going to get into the legal argument that people and persons are two different things, and in legal terms they have different connotations; that is unimportant for the purpose of my discussion. For the purpose of this discussion I want you to think about who ‘the people’ are.

When you leave your home and go to a ball game, (not that that’s gonna happen anytime soon again), or you go to WalMart, what do you see? You see other people, right. So, are these the same kinds of people who are referred to in the Preamble where it says, “We the People of the United States … do ordain and establish this Constitution…”?

The Preamble itself grants no legal authority, it is merely an opening statement describing the purpose of the document that follows. So when it says that it was We the People who ordained and established this Constitution, it means that a group of people were accomplishing that task. The question is, to whom does the term ‘We the People’ apply to?

That may sound trivial to some, but let me assure you, it is far from trivial. On September 17, 1787 the finalized document we know as the constitution was voted upon, and then signed by 39 of the delegates who had attended the convention that produced it. When you sign a legal document you are accepting the terms found in that document. For instance, if you sign a loan agreement you are agreeing to borrow a certain amount of money, and in return, make payments to the individual, or institution that loaned that money to you.

So, when those 39 delegates signed the constitution on September 17, 1789, the constitution only applied to them; as no one else in this country had yet agreed to the conditions mentioned within it. Now comes the tricky part. These delegates were acting on behalf of their respective State Legislatures; who had sent them to Philadelphia with specific instructions to only propose amendments to the Articles of Confederation; which was the existing constitution at the time.

Therefore, those 39 men who placed their signatures upon that piece of parchment were guilty of, not only violating the trust of those who had sent them to Philadelphia, they were also guilty of violating the law; because Rhode Island was part of the Union, but chose not to send delegates to this convention. This means that the entire Union was not represented; not to mention that 2 of the 3 delegates from New York had left the convention early because they did not agree with what the convention was doing; effectively leaving New York without a voice, or a vote, in the proceedings.

So, how can anyone say that what those 39 men agreed to on that day was representative of ‘the People’? Furthermore, those in attendance during this convention were not truly representative of the broad spectrum of people making up the United States of America. Those who attended this convention were, for the most part, the upper crust of society; what we might call the 1% today. They were lawyers, speculators, bankers, and others we might call, the elite. Nowhere was the common man represented in that convention.

To put that in terms you might understand, let’s say that it was decided another constitutional convention was needed to repair the flaws in our existing constitution. Would you feel like your wants and desires were being represented if men like Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, a smattering of Supreme Court and District Court Judges, along with the CEO’s of the companies that make up the military industrial, or pharmaceutical industry were chosen to draft a new constitution?

If that were to happen today do you feel like anything they came up with would be in your best interests; that your thoughts and feelings were being represented? Well that is quite similar to what happened in 1787; men of wealth and prestige were chosen to attend this ‘esteemed’ convention; while the common folk were blissfully unaware that moves were being made that would place them under the thumb of a government with the unlimited power to tax them; (See Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1. There are no limitations upon Congresses taxing power). Not to mention that 126 years later they would pass a constitutional amendment granting Congress access to your income. Oh, in case you weren’t aware, Chief Justice John Marshall of the Supreme Court would later say, “…the power to tax involves the power to destroy…”

At this point in the game the constitution was nothing more than a piece of parchment with words written on it, and the signatures of 39 men; it was binding upon no one else. Before I go any further I feel I must make a slight detour and discuss the questions of who this government was to represent, and by virtue of that, whether it was a federal or a national system of government.

A federal government is one which acts upon political entities, such as was the case under the Articles of Confederation; where the States were the entities represented in the Congress. A national form of government is one in which the power of the central government bypasses the States and applies directly to the people. From a reading of the Preamble, the whole we the people thing, it would seem that this new system of government was a national one; as its power would reach to the lives of the people. If this were truly the case, then why did they include a Senate; where the States would have a say in what laws were to be passed; for that is characteristic of a federal form of government.

Those who drafted the constitution were acting in a federal capacity, as they were agents of the States that had sent them to Philadelphia. However, when they submitted the plan they had written it was to be ratified upon national principles; as the powers of this new government would extend to the people directly. That is why, in the opening days of the Virginia Ratifying Debates, Patrick Henry made such a fuss over the phrasing, ‘We the People.’ He understood what was happening, that we were undergoing a transition from a federal form of government to a consolidated national form; where all power would be centralized in the new system of government. Henry felt that this form, this centralization of power, was destructive to the rights and sovereignty of the States, as well as to the liberty of the people; which he himself felt he was the sentinel over.

During the convention that produced the constitution a suggestion was made that a bill of rights be included in the document they were producing. That motion never gained traction as most of the delegates felt a bill of rights was unnecessary. Yet in correspondence between James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson said, “A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences.”

So, now that I’ve laid those thoughts before you, let’s continue with the ratification process. Years after the constitution had been ratified James Madison would state before Congress, “…whatever veneration might be entertained for the body of men who formed our constitution, the sense of that body could never be regarded as the oracular guide in … expounding the constitution. As the instrument came from them, it was nothing more than the draught of a plan, a dead letter, until life and validity were breathed into it, by the voice of the people, speaking through the several state conventions.”

Here we have state conventions, supposedly representing the people, who would give life to the constitution; but were they truly representative of the people? As I already explained, those who drafted the constitution certainly weren’t, and neither were the delegates chosen for this monumental occasion; for the most part they were cut from the same clothe as those who drafted the constitution. Nevertheless there was enough opposition to the constitution to force its supporters into promising that if the States would just adopt it, a bill of rights would be added to it later through the amendment process outlined in Article 5.

Now this is where the deceit becomes obvious; at least to me. Here we have an idea, a proposal, a draft of a plan for a system of government that was only given life by the consent of the people; through the various State Ratifying Assemblies. If the people truly are the source of all political power, then do they not have the right to amend a proposed system of government so that it may, “… effect their Safety and Happiness.” (Declaration of Independence)

What happened was that the constitution was ratified and then the people submitted to this new government lists of alterations, modifications, and proposed amendments which they felt would better “… effect their Safety and Happiness.” Now this is where the question of whom this government was established to serve ties in. Since this new system had a Senate, (which was to represent the interests of the individual States), does it not make sense that it also should have some say in proposing alterations to the constitution to best protect their interests? It certainly does to me, unless you want to admit that the constitution was never intended to protect the rights and sovereignty of the States; that it was, as Madison proclaimed, designed to reduce them to subordinate authorities; as stated in a letter to George Washington in April of 1787.

So, if this constitution truly derives its authority from the will and consent of the people, then does it not sound logical that the people could propose whatever amendments they wanted, and that the government would be required to submit ALL these amendments to the various State Legislatures for consideration; as per Article 5? Yet that isn’t what happened.

Did you know that there were about 200 proposed amendments to the constitution which were submitted by the people and the States? So why does the Bill of Rights only contain 10 amendments? One argument is that some of the proposed amendments were duplicates; meaning more than one State had proposed the same amendment; so one version of these particular amendments was eliminated. That, I can understand. What I can’t understand is the fact that if more than one State felt certain changes should be made, or some right protected, why would that proposal NOT be included in the amendments that eventually made their way to the States for consideration.

Who made the decision to NOT include those amendments? After all, if it was the will of the people that these amendments be considered, then who made the decision to send those proposed amendments to the trash heap of history? The short answer is that James Madison went through these proposed amendments and discarded the ones he did not like; the ones which would place tighter restrictions upon the government he had just helped to establish.

Now I want to fast forward about 10 years to something that Thomas Jefferson wrote after President John Adams signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts. Now this was only a draft of the final document, nonetheless it expresses Jefferson’s thoughts on the matter quite well. In his draft of the Kentucky Resolutions Jefferson writes, “…that the government created by this compact [the Constitution for the United States] was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; . . . . that this would be to surrender the form of government we have chosen, and live under one deriving its powers from its own will, and not from our authority…”

Yet isn’t that what Madison was basically doing, telling the people upon whom the constitution derived its authority, that they cannot alter and amend it in any manner they please? Madison, as a member of Congress at this time, was telling the people and the States that they could not alter or amend the system of government they had consented to, if in so doing it would place limitations upon that government’s power.

I’m not going to go over all the proposed amendments submitted by the people and the States, but there are two of them I feel are important enough to spend some time discussing them. These two proposals show up in most of the proposals sent to Congress by the States; therefore it is safe to assume that the whole of the people felt that they were important changes that needed to be made in the system.

The first of these proposals deals with the fact that it was felt that the restrictions placed upon what powers government could exercise were too loose; meaning there were loopholes open to interpretation; and this proposed amendment sought to close that loophole. For the sake of commonality I will be quoting from the proposals sent by the State of Massachusetts; but if you were to research this subject you would find that these two proposed amendments were common among the proposals sent by ALL the States.

Massachusetts proposed to amend the constitution to include, “…that it be explicitly declared that all Powers not expressly delegated by the aforesaid Constitution are reserved to the several States to be by them exercised.” That means that if the constitution does not explicitly state a power, then that power does not exist. This was an attempt to carryover Article II of the Articles of Confederation, were it says, “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”

This simply would not do for Madison and crew; they couldn’t have the States proposing an amendment that would impose the same restrictions upon the government’s power the Articles of Confederation had done; effectively hamstringing his precious new government. For their plan of government to work it needed implied powers; powers that would be used effectively by Alexander Hamilton in his argument in support of a national bank; as well as in future Supreme Court decisions; so into the trash heap that proposal went.

The next proposal that never saw the light of day was a limitation upon the new government’s ability to impose direct taxes. To quote from the list of proposals suggested by Massachusetts, “That Congress do not lay direct Taxes but when the Monies arising from the Impost and Excise are insufficient for the publick exigencies nor then until Congress shall have first made a requisition upon the States to assess levy and pay their respective proportions of such Requisition agreeably to the Census fixed in the said Constitution; in such way and manner as the Legislature of the States shall think best…”

Again, this simply would not do. Madison and crew wanted a system of government that had the power of unlimited taxation; which Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 gave it. They could not allow that power to be restricted in any way. In fact, 124 years later that power would be expanded to grant Congress access to our paychecks via the ratification of the 16th Amendment; the ratification of which is still questionable.

Madison, as well as all the other Federalists, (or Nationalists if you want a better description of them), wanted a system with no hindrances imposed upon its legislative and taxation powers; and that’s exactly what those two proposed amendments did, imposed restrictions upon those powers. So into the trash heap they went; effectively telling the people that they could not alter or amend the constitution so as to limit or restrict its power.

The few amendments that did make their way into the Bill of Rights were those that dealt with the natural rights of the people; and even those have been infringed upon over the course of the last 230 years. If the government can tell you that you cannot own this type, or that type of firearm, it is a restriction upon a right government was given no authority to restrict. If you cannot speak your mind, or pray wherever and whenever you want, the First Amendment has all but been erased; not to mention that our petitions for grievances fall upon deaf ears. If government can spy upon you in your home, search your medical, financial, and other records without your consent, or with a rubber stamped FISA warrant, the 4th Amendment is all but dead.

Need I go on…I can if you don’t think I’ve made my point clearly enough?

This government has never been, nor was it ever intended to be, (at least in my opinion), designed to represent the people, or to secure their rights and liberty. Had it been intended with that purpose in mind its founding charter, (the constitution), would have included means by which we the people could punish those who violate their oaths of office to support and defend it. Look for yourself; the constitution contains no such provision; leaving us with nothing but our votes to express our will; and look at how effective that has been in restraining government.

In arguing before the Virginia Ratifying Assembly, Patrick Henry stated this about the proposed constitution, “Here is a revolution as radical as that which separated us from Great Britain. It is radical in this transition; our rights and privileges are endangered, and the sovereignty of the states will be relinquished: And cannot we plainly see that this is actually the case?”

Unfortunately for us, I think they could see that; and it was exactly what they had wanted when they gathered together in Philadelphia in May of 1787. I think Henry himself may have seen it, for he also lamented, “But I am fearful I have lived long enough to become an fellow: Perhaps an invincible attachment to the dearest rights of man, may, in these refined, enlightened days, be deemed old fashioned: If so, I am contented to be so: I say, the time has been when every pore of my heart beat for American liberty, and which, I believe, had a counterpart in the breast of every true American.”

The sad thing is, not only have the people today accepted a system which deprives them of their fundamental rights and liberty, they are so uneducated that they are unable to see the truth when it is presented to them. In short, for those of us in whose breasts the spirit of liberty still lives, we’re screwed. It is my sincere hope that some day, in the not too distant future, those suffering under the yoke of this system of tyranny and oppression we have allowed to rise up, will someday have the courage to shake off the tyranny we have bequeathed to them; and that they don’t make the same stupid mistakes we did. I say this for future generations simply because the current one is too stupid, and too apathetic to care.

And people wonder why I’m such an angry man…

Over the course of the past couple decades I’ve noticed a couple of interesting traits in people; and when I say people I’m speaking collectively, not individually. The first of these traits is, the closer you get to the truth, the more uncomfortable people become. The second, and possibly more unfortunate one, is that people do not like to admit that they were wrong; that they had been hoodwinked, bamboozled. I think these two traits are interconnected; because subconsciously people know that if they get too close to the truth they will be forced to admit that they had fallen for lies; and that bothers them at some deep level; so they try to avoid the truth at all costs.

There is a scientific, or at least, psychiatric term to describe this phenomenon; it’s called Cognitive Dissonance. In 1957 Dr. Leon Festinger wrote a book entitled A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance in which he explained that humans strive for internal psychological consistancy in their minds and that when people experience internal inconsistency it makes them uncomfortable. When this happens they tend to make changes to whatever is causing this internal stress, for lack of a better word. One of the ways they do this is to add new parts to the cognition that is causing the dissonance, or they avoid circumstances where contradictory information might induce this dissonance.

Now this may sound insulting, but if you ask me, that is cowardice; pure mental, or intellectual cowardice. I was raised to respect the truth and to speak it always; and I have little patience for those who are willing to do neither. I tend to live my life by the words of Patrick Henry, “For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.” (Speech of March 23, 1775) If you can’t do that, if you’re unwilling to do that, then I see no reason for us to be friends; because as far as I’m concerned, the truth is all that matters.

On the pathway that led me to where I am today I was faced with times when I could have chosen to reject the truth; moments when a big bright light was shone upon the lies I had once believed. I chose the logical way to overcome my own cognitive dissonance; I weighed this new evidence against what I had been taught, and when I found one position lacking, I rejected it and replaced it with one that could be supported by facts. The more I was forced to do that, the easier it became. In fact, I am still forced to do it all the time; as new facts are being discovered on an almost weekly basis.

One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to accept is that our system of government, and the document that established it, is not compatible with a country, or a people, who seek to enjoy the full benefits of liberty. Liberty and our system of government cannot coexist side by side without one destroying the other. The sad thing is, we were warned of this over 200 years ago, and we did not listen; or at least our ancestors did not listen. In fact, one of the men who tried to warn of the dangers of the proposed Constitution lamented, “Perhaps an invincible attachment to the dearest rights of man, may, in these refined, enlightened days, be deemed old fashioned: If so, I am contented to be so: I say, the time has been when every pore of my heart beat for American liberty, and which, I believe, had a counterpart in the breast of every true American.” (Patrick Henry, Speech to Virginia Ratifying Assembly, June 5, 1788)

You have been scammed America; from the moment you’re old enough to understand basic English you have been taught that our government possesses all these benevolent powers to do all these wonderful things for you, and that it is the greatest system of government the world has ever seen; created by men who were ‘inspired by God.’ It has all been a huge lie, and having to admit that to myself was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. But remember what Patrick Henry said; he’d rather know the truth whatever anguish of spirit it cost him; could I do no less?

If you are not a student of history, such as I have become; therefore you probably don’t know much about the period between when the Constitution was written and when it was ratified and our system of government went into effect. To me, there are 3 fascinating periods of American history; the period that saw our founders go from servitude under a tyrant to freemen; the period that saw them draft and ratify the Constitution; and the last dying gasp of liberty in America – the misnamed Civil War.

I hate to sound belittling, but I think that many people think the Constitutional Convention went off without any real disagreements, or arguments; that the finished document was slipped into an overnight bag and Fed Ex delivered it to the States; whereupon they read it and said, “Yeah, this looks cool; let’s adopt this new plan of government.” I’m here to tell you, it wasn’t that easy, and it certainly wasn’t that smooth a transition from our old system of government to the new one proposed in 1787.

I’d be willing to bet that unless you were home schooled by someone knowledgeable about American History, the names Robert Yates, John Lansing Jr; Melancton Smith; George Mason; Luther Martin; and Samuel Bryan probably mean very little to you; if anything at all. Yet all those men were well known and well respected; and they had one other thing in common; they opposed ratification of the Constitution. These men, and others, wrote essays and participated in debates opposing the ratification of the Constitution; and they became known as the Anti-Federalists.

I was not aware of this when I first began reading what they had written or said, but for nearly a century after the debates over ratification ended, the writings and speeches of these men were next to impossible to find; unless you undertook an extensive search of the National Archives or Library of Congress. I could be wrong, but I believe their writings were intentionally hidden away while the people became accustomed to this new system of government; before they were given the chance to read that there was, in fact, serious opposition to this new system of government.

There is something else you need to know about the writings of these men; they are disappearing once again. When I first began collecting, and studying, the writings of the Anti-Federalists, they were easily located by a simple Google search. Not anymore. The essays of Centinel, of Brutus, and other Anti-Federalists are disappearing at an alarming rate; as if they are trying to hide history from anyone seeking the truth. I have most of them, although not all of them, and I’ve been studying them extensively, and there is something I’ve discovered; almost every fear they had about the proposed Constitution has proven to be valid; the things they feared would happen, have happened.

I could spend days discussing the fears the Anti-Federalists had over this new system of government, but I won’t. What I want to do though is provide a few quick examples of how they were right, and those who supported ratification of the Constitution were wrong; or flat out liars; you choose after reading what I’m about to share with you.

Now before I proceed with my point, counter point discussion, I need to address something else. There are many people, with some of them claiming to be lovers of liberty; or Constitutionalists, who claim that the authoritative explanation of the Constitution is found in the Federalist Papers; essays written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay.

I don’t believe that to be the case; I believe the Federalist Papers were written in an effort to generate support for the Constitution when doubts about it had been given life by the writings of the Anti-Federalists. In that regard, the Federalist Papers were an ad campaign designed to induce support for the document they were trying to adopt. As a friend of mine often reminds me; if you want to learn the truth you have to examine both sides of an argument; and the Federalist Papers are only one side of the argument over whether to adopt, or reject the proposed Constitution.

My position on the Federalist Papers is supported by something I read in a book written by Abel Upshur in 1840; A Brief Enquiry Into the True Nature and Character of Our Federal Government. Upshur was a brilliant legal mind and in his book he stated, “The first commentary upon the Constitution, the Federalist, is decidedly the best, which has yet appeared. The writers of that book were actors in all the interesting scenes of the period, and two of them were members of the convention which formed the Constitution. Added to this, their extensive information, their commanding talents, and their experience in great public affairs, qualified them, in a peculiar degree, for the task which they undertook. Nevertheless, their great object was to recommend the Constitution to the people, at a time when it was very uncertain whether they would adopt it or not; and hence their work, although it contains a very full and philosophical analysis of the subject, comes to us as a mere argument in support of a favorite measure, and, for that reason, does not always command our entire confidence.”

Even if the Federalist Papers had been written with the best of intentions, (which I don’t believe they were), one must look at what the authors said, and then compare that against what those who opposed ratification of the Constitution, and then ask yourself; Who was right, those who supported or those who opposed the Constitution.

One big concern the Anti-Federalist had with this new system was the power of taxation that it gave to this new system of government. Luther Martin laid out a lengthy argument opposing this new power of taxation:

By the power to lay and collect imposts, they may impose duties on any or every article of commerce imported into these States to what amount they please. By the power to lay excises, a power very odious in its nature, since it authorises officers to go into your houses, your kitchens, your cellars, and to examine into your private concerns:the Congress may impose duties on every article of use or consumption, on the food that we eat, on the liquors we drink, on the clothes that we wear, the glass which enlighten our houses, or the hearths necessary for our warmth and comfort. By the power to lay and collect taxes, they may proceed to direct taxation on every individual either by a capitation tax on their heads, or an assessment on their property. By this part of the section therefore, the government has a power to lay what duties they please on goods imported; to lay what duties they please afterwards on whatever we use or consume; to impose stamp duties to what amount they please, and in whatever case they please: afterwards to impose on the people direct taxes, by capitation tax, or by assessment, to what amount they choose, and thus to sluice them at every vein as long as they have a drop of blood, without any controul, limitation, or restraint; while all the officers for collecting these taxes, stamp duties, imposts, and excises, are to be appointed by the general government, under its directions, not accountable to the States; nor is there even a security that they shall be citizens of the respective States, in which they are to exercise their offices; at the same time the construction of every law imposing any and all these taxes and duties, and directing the collection of them, and every question arising thereon, and on the conduct of the officers appointed to execute these laws, and to collect these taxes and duties so various in their kinds, are taken away from the courts of justice of the different States, and confined to the courts of the general government, there is to be heard and determined by judges holding their offices under the appointment not of the States, but of the general government.

Then there is this, spoken by George Mason during the Virginia Ratifying Debates, “I mean that clause which gives the first hint of the general government laying direct taxes. The assumption of this power of laying direct taxes does, of itself, entirely change the confederation of the states into one consolidated government. This power, being at discretion, unconfined, and without any kind of control, must carry every thing before it.” Mason then went on to make an accurate prediction of our current predicament, “Will the people of this great community submit to be individually taxed by two different and distinct powers? Will they suffer themselves to be doubly harassed?” Are we not taxed by both the State and federal government; making us ‘doubly harassed’? I would propose that is an accurate description of our situation, wouldn’t you? There are other passages I could have shared, but that was long enough and I didn’t want to overtax your mind; no pun intended.

That was the Anti-Federalist position; so what did the Federalists say? Well, in Federalist 12 Alexander Hamilton wrote, “It is evident from the state of the country, from the habits of the people, from the experience we have had on the point itself, that it is impracticable to raise any very considerable sums by direct taxation.”

Now direct taxation is a tax levied by government which is payable directly to the government by the person the tax is levied against. Property tax is a good example of a direct tax; the government sends you a bill, and you send government a check for payment. Another kind of direct tax is the income tax, and last year the government collected $2.7 trillion from income taxes alone. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like Hamilton was wrong and Luther Martin was right; for $2.7 is a considerable sum; at least it is for me.

Then there are all the ‘other’ taxes you pay; licenses, fees, permits, registration, so on and so forth; all of which are forms of taxation; not to mention infringements upon your rights. So I’d say, put a check mark in the column supporting the Anti-Federalist position. Shall we move on?

Another flaw the Anti-Federalist saw was in the representation of the people; they didn’t believe it was enough. Since I ended my thoughts on taxation with a George Mason quote, I’ll begin my discussion on representation with another quote from Mr. Mason, “It is ascertained, by history, that there never was a government over a very extensive country without destroying the liberties of the people: history also, supported by the opinions of the best writers, shows us that monarchy may suit a large territory, and despotic governments ever so extensive a country, but that popular governments can only exist in small territories. Is there a single example, on the face of the earth, to support a contrary opinion? Where is there one exception to this general rule?” Mason would then say, “It would be impossible to have a full and adequate representation in the general government; it would be too expensive and too unwieldy. We are, then, under the necessity of having this a very inadequate representation.”

Mason was not alone in fearing this aspect of the new Constitution, Patrick Henry also spoke out against it, saying, “I mean, when it says that there shall not be more Representatives than one for every 30,000. Now, Sir, how easy is it to evade this privilege? “The number shall not exceed one for every 30,000.” This may be satisfied by one Representative from each State. Let our numbers be ever so great, this immense continent, may, by this artful expression, be reduced to have but 13 Representatives.”

Then of course there was the words of Brutus; the pseudonym used by Robert Yates when writing against ratification, “In every free government, the people must give their assent to the laws by which they are governed. This is the true criterion between a free government and an arbitrary one. The former are ruled by the will of the whole, expressed in any manner they may agree upon; the latter by the will of one, or a few. If the people are to give their assent to the laws, by persons chosen and appointed by them, the manner of the choice and the number chosen, must be such, as to possess, be disposed, and consequently qualified to declare the sentiments of the people; for if they do not know, or are not disposed to speak the sentiments of the people, the people do not govern, but the sovereignty is in a few. Now, in a large extended country, it is impossible to have a representation, possessing the sentiments, and of integrity, to declare the minds of the people, without having it so numerous and unwieldly, as to be subject in great measure to the inconveniency of a democratic government.”

In response, Madison sidestepped the issue in Federalist 51 when he said, “In general it may be remarked on this subject, that no political problem is less susceptible of a precise solution, than that which relates to the number most convenient for a representative legislature: Nor is there any point on which the policy of the several states is more at variance; whether we compare their legislative assemblies directly with each other, or consider the proportions which they respectively bear to the number of their constituents.”

Ever have someone tell you that you’re comparing apples to oranges when making comparisons? Well that’s what Madison did right there. The Constitution, the document they were arguing about, states that there shall not be more than 1 representative in the House per every 30,000 inhabitants. They weren’t discussing the State governments they were discussing a possible new federal system of government, (if you could call it that). To be truly representative of the people of an entire country those who would be sent to represent them should be knowledgeable about their conditions in life, their needs, and all the other various circumstances surrounding their existence. Those who drafted the Constitution felt that 1 representative for every 30,000 people met that need.

Let me ask you something, do you know how many people your representative in the House actually represents? I do. I live in the 3rd Congressional district in the State of California. My representative is John Garamendi, a democrat. The total population of my congressional district is 748,104. You think Mr. Garamendi is familiar with what 3/4 million people want, need, feel? I don’t; especially considering the son of a bitch has NEVER responded to any of the e mails and letters I’ve sent him!

If we had adhered to the ratio of 1 representative for every 30,000 people, my district alone would have 24 representatives in the House; making it exactly what Mason had said, “… too expensive and too unwieldy.” So, looks to me like we need to add another checkmark in the Anti-Federalist column.

The final topic I’d like to discuss is Article 3 of the Constitution, or the establishment of a federal Judiciary; the Supreme Court. Returning to Robert Yates, writing as Brutus, we read, “It is easy to see, that in the common course of things, these courts will eclipse the dignity, and take away from the respectability, of the state courts. These courts will be, in themselves, totally independent of the states, deriving their authority from the United States, and receiving from them fixed salaries; and in the course of human events it is to be expected, that they will swallow up all the powers of the courts in the respective states.”

In Brutus 14 Yates also laid out a lengthy, and well thought out argument as to why the Courts under this Constitution would be exalted above all other power in the government, and beyond their control.

In an essay written by A Farmer, published in the Maryland Gazette, we read, “The judiciary power, has generally been considered as a branchof the executive, because these two powers, have been so frequent-ly united; – but where united, there is no liberty. In every free State, the judiciary is kept separate, independent, and considered as an intermediate power. . . . Without then the check of the democraticbranch – the jury, to ascertain those facts, to which the judge is to apply the law, and even in many cases to determine the cause by a general verdict – the latitude of judicial power, combined with the various and uncertain nature of evidence, will render it impossible to convict a judge of corruption, and ascertain his guilt. Remove the fear of punishment, give hopes of impunity, and vice and tyran-ny come scowling from their dark abodes in the human heart.”

In response Alexander Hamilton simply wrote, “This simple view of the matter suggests several important consequences. It proves incontestably, that the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power; that it can never attack with success either of the other two; and that all possible care is requisite to enable it to defend itself against their attacks.” (Federalist 78)

Maybe it was weak, as it was outlined in the Constitution they were arguing; but one of the very first things this new government did once it was up and running was pass the Judiciary Act of 1789; which basically rewrote Article III of the Constitution; establishing District and Circuit Courts in all the States.

The Supreme Court has a long history of handing down decisions that granted itself, and the federal government more power; much of it due to either their interpretation of the document they were expounding upon, or due to a loose construction of the Commerce, Necessary and Proper, and General Welfare Clauses.

I know this is a bit off course, but I think it ties in to what I’m discussing now. In Federalist 45 James Madison wrote, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.” (My emphasis)

Read that section in bold again. The federal government has no authority, according to Madison, to interfere in the internal operations, policing, or other concerns of the individual states. Yet here we are with federal agents coming into the States and policing people for violations of federal law; and the Supreme Court; as well as the lower courts, hand down decisions that predominantly fall on the side of federal authority.

So, tell me was Hamilton right; did the Judiciary turn out to be the weakest branch of the government? Thirty years after the Constitution was ratified Thomas Jefferson would write, “The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone. This will lay all things at their feet, and they are too well versed in English law to forget the maxim, ‘boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem’ [good judges have ample jurisdiction]. . . . A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government.” (Source: Letter to Thomas Ritchie, Dec 25, 1820)

It looks like we need to add another checkmark into the Anti-Federalist column; making the final score; Anti-Federalists 3, Federalists 0. Seems like the Anti-Federalists were right, and the Federalists either lied, or did not understand the dangers of the system they supported. My bet is on the former; I think they lied through their teeth and shoved this system down our throats; and now we’re stuck with it.

Those are just 3 topics out of many; you could read the writings of the Anti-Federalists and you would find that almost everything bad they said would happen if the Constitution were adopted, has happened.

Yet today you can’t even convince Republicans and Democrats that what their party proposes to do if elected violates the Constitution; let alone convince them that the Constitution is a piece of shit and should never have been ratified.

Like I said at the beginning, people hide from the truth because it is too painful to admit that they have lived their lives believing a lie. Yet the facts are there, if you have the courage to seek them out. Lysander Spooner was right, “But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”

The Constitution has been unable to prevent us from stopping government from amassing far more power than what was promised during the debates for ratification. Not only that, as Patrick Henry so eloquently warned, “The Honorable Gentleman who presides, told us, that to prevent abuses in our Government, we will assemble in Convention, recall our delegated powers, and punish our servants for abusing the trust reposed in them. Oh, Sir, we should have fine times indeed, if to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people. Your arms wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone; and you have no longer an aristocratical; no longer democratical spirit. Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all? ”

Where in the Constitution do you find our power to punish those we elect to represent us? I’ll wait while you search for it; or I could ask you to trust me when I say that the Constitution gives us no power to punish them. Yet they can send men with guns to fine, arrest, imprison, and kill us if we disobey the laws they enact.

Boy, if that does not sound like tyranny to you, then you need to have your cranium examined; for it sure sounds like tyranny to me. Just wait till this Covid vaccine comes out, then you’ll find out how tyrannical your government is; when you won’t be able to shop, travel, get a job, vote, or even get your money out of the bank unless you can provide proof you’ve been vaccinated.

Wait and see, it’s coming. But no matter, you’ll vote harder next time, or maybe Trump honestly will make America great again. If you believe any of that will restore your liberty, I have two words for you…DREAM ON.

On September 17, 1789 thirty nine people placed their signatures on a document that would lead to the establishment of our system of government once it was ratified. There were more people who, at one point or another, attended the convention that produced the Constitution, but in the end they could only get 39 people to sign it. Now I want you to think about something for a minute. In the year the Constitution was written the population of these States united was in the vicinity of about 3.9 million people; and only 39 of them had a hand in writing the document that would establish our system of government. That’s what, 0.001% of the people deciding for the rest what kind of government this country would have?

Oh, silly me, they only proposed this system, it was the people who actually adopted it through the State Ratification Assemblies, right? I wouldn’t be so sure about that if I were you. At the time the ratifying conventions were being held the population of Virginia was around 747,000 people, yet only 168 delegates participated in that State’s ratification assembly; or roughly 0.022% of the people. New York sent 57 delegates to their ratifying assembly out of a population of 340,120; or roughly 0.0l6% of the people.

Across the board, less than 1% of the people living in any of the 13 States had a hand in ratifying the Constitution; and Rhode Island refused to ratify it until well after the government had been up and running for awhile; but it is Pennsylvania that I would like to take a few moments discussing.

In the year 1787 there were roughly 434,000 people living in Pennsylvania, and they sent 55 people to their State Ratifying Assembly; or 0.012% of the total population. Pennsylvania was in a unique position as a State, as the convention that produced the Constitution was located within their borders; meaning they would be the first to read the completed document.

You may not be aware of this, but prior to the establishment of Washington D.C. as the fixed location for the seat of government, the actual location where Congress met was not fixed to any one city. From 1781 to the middle of 1783 it was located in Philadelphia, but then it relocated to New Jersey and then to Maryland all in the course of one year. Then in 1784 it again relocated to New York, where it remained until the Constitution was ratified. This is important for numerous reasons; the most important being the rules regarding how changes to the Articles of Confederation were supposed to be made.

Before I get into that though I want to ask you if you’re familiar with the passage in the Constitution that states, “This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land…” That’s found in Article VI of the Constitution and is known as the Supremacy Clause.

Well I bet you didn’t know that the Articles of Confederation also had a supremacy clause, of sorts, “And the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State…” That’s found in Article XIII of the Articles of Confederation and it basically means that every State shall abide by the laws established by the Articles of Confederation. These Articles of Confederation were, in essence, the supreme law of the land; the existing constitution.

So any changes made to these Articles of Confederation had to be made in compliance to the rules set down within that document stating how they should be altered or amended. These rules are also found in Article XVIII, and they state, “…nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.” That was the law as it stood in 1787. Let me repeat that, THAT WAS THE LAW!!!

So along came Jimmy Madison and a few other select scoundrels who said that the government established by the Articles of Confederation was not energetic enough; meaning it did not have the kind of power they felt governments should have. What they did is they convinced the States to send delegates to a convention, to be held in Philadelphia, to discuss possible ways to amend the Articles of Confederation so that the government would be able to meet the needs of the country and give their government due efficacy.

That is the premise the States were told this convention would serve, but as soon as the delegates convened the doors were locked, those inside were sworn to secrecy, and then Jimmy Madison and his cohorts unveiled their plan; abolish the Articles of Confederation and replace them with a new document that they would write. Not only did they conspire to abolish the existing form of government, they had the sheer audacity to tell the existing government the manner in which their new plan must be adopted; which of course violated existing law – Article XVIII of the Articles of Confederation.

What a swell bunch of guys these framers were! If they are what people consider honorable, I’d hate to see what they consider dishonorable!

Now this is where Pennsylvania comes into the picture. It may come as a surprise to some people, but back in 1787 there was no internet, there were no fax machines or telephones. Hell, they didn’t even have cars; so all news had to travel by horseback or by ship from Point A to Point B. As I already stated, the seat of the existing government in 1787 was located in New York; approximately 95 miles from Philadelphia. The walking speed of a horse is around 4 miles per hour. At a trot a horse can travel somewhere between 11-15 mph. At a full gallop they can move about 25-30 mph.

At a full gallop the fastest a horse could have gotten to New York with copies of the Constitution would have been 3 hours after copies had been made for distribution. Then of course Congress would have to read and debate it, which they did, before they decided what to do with it.

In any case, the dastardly deed had been done, a constitution had been written which would, if ratified, abolish the existing government and replace it with one that was created by less than half a percent of the people living in this country at the time. Not only had they violated the trust of the States who had sent them to Philadelphia, they told those who had sent them the manner in which their new system would be put into effect; by conventions of the people; which I’ve already proven was not actually the case; only a small percentage of the people participated in ratifying the Constitution.

So while a horse was galloping away towards New York with copies of the Constitution, copies of it were already being read by the people of Pennsylvania; or at least the State Legislature; and this is where it gets truly interesting. While I think it would have been a good idea to allow the constitution to be read and discussed by the people of Pennsylvania; the calling forth for a ratifying convention before Congress had even submitted their recommendations to the States is something I don’t agree with; but it is what they did.

Congress was supposed to read the proposed constitution then submit it to the States with the recommendation that State Ratifying Conventions be called to debate the document. But that took time; 11 days in fact. Some of the members of Congress wanted to send it off to the States with the unanimous support of Congress. Others wanted to amend it and then send the amended version off to the States. Others wanted to propose amendments and then send the original text and the proposed amendments off to the States. Finally, the Congress sent the Constitution, as is, to the States without any formal endorsement of it.

The failure of Congress to come out in stronger terms of either support or opposition to the proposed plan suited those who participated in its creation well; as stated by George Washington himself, “I thank you for your letter of the 30th Ult. It came by the last Post. I am better pleased that the proceedings of the Convention is handed from Congress by a unanimous vote (feeble as it is) than if it had appeared under stronger marks of approbation without it. This apparent unanimity will have its effect. Not every one has opportunities to peep behind the curtain; and as the multitude often judge from externals, the appearance of unanimity in that body, on this occasn, will be of great importance.”

Gee, sounds like good ole George did not have too high of an opinion of the intellect of those who were about to decide the fate of the Constitution, did he?

In any case, while the Congress was debating what to do with this plan, the Pennsylvania State Legislature was also debating over holding a ratifying convention before they had gotten word from Congress. There were some in Pennsylvania who, if they could have, would have ratified the Constitution on the spot; without even reading it probably. There were others who were in favor of the plan, but thought they should wait until they had received instructions from Congress. Then there was a small minority who opposed the plan outright.

It’s entirely possible that Pennsylvania wanted to be the first to ratify the document so that they would be given consideration when it came time to fix a location for the permanent seat of this new government; however tiny little Delaware beat them to the punch by 5 days. In any case, while the Pennsylvania State Legislature was ready to issue the call for a State Ratifying Assembly, certain members of the Legislature did not return after mid day break; leaving them 2 people short of a quorum; meaning they could not pass any measures or resolutions.

Throughout the proceedings the crowd inside the hall where the legislature was holding session had been hostile towards those expressing any desire for delay; and when they lacked the numbers to conduct business the sergeant-at-arms was dispatched to located the missing miscreants. Eventually two of the members were found, and drug forcibly back to the chamber so that a resolution calling for a State Ratifying Assembly could be called for and delegates chosen to attend it.

I’ve already mentioned how many delegates Pennsylvania sent to their State Ratifying Convention, fifty-five, but I did not mention the fact that most of them lived in or near the city of Philadelphia. Not only were the farmers to the west not represented in the body that would decide whether or not to implement this new form of government, they probably weren’t even aware that a new form of government had been proposed.

The same could probably be said about most of the States; with those attending the Ratification Assemblies coming from the major metropolitan centers whose interests were far removed from the rural farmers and businessmen. So much for the whole We the people do ordain and establish this constitution, right? I don’t want to spend any time delving into the professions of those who drafted the Constitution, and those who attended the various State Ratifying Conventions, but for the most part they were not representative of the people this new system of government would have power over.

In any case, Pennsylvania became the second State to ratify the Constitution, doing so on December 12, 1787; with very little opposition debate being allowed. The way opponents to the Constitution, and those who called for waiting for Congress to deliver their instructions before proceeding to call for a State Ratifying Convention, backfired on those who supported a quick ratification.

You see, those who had been treated badly, had their voices silenced or ignored, got together and wrote a document that made its way to the other States; causing them to take a more serious look at why opposition to the proposed system was systematically silenced and ignored. That document is The Dissent of the Minority of the Convention of Pennsylvania; a good read if you are inclined to read such things. This document, along with those who had attended the Constitutional Convention but refused to sign it; along with those who had left the convention early because they did not like what they were witnessing, led to a war of words in the press; and if you want to read some good political commentary I suggest you find and read the essays written by both the Federalist and Anti-Federalist authors. Who knows, you may actually learn something.

Nevertheless, on June 8, 1788 New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the constitution; meeting the requirement that 3/4 of the 13 State’s ratify it before the government could take effect. We’ve lived under that system ever since and regardless of what your thoughts on it are, the history of how it came into existence has been forgotten, lied about, or not taught at all in our public schools.

There is an epilogue to this story, if you’re interested in hearing it. No matter how Pennsylvania acted during its ratification of the Constitution there was always going to be opposition to it, but it was due to their impatience and the underhanded tactics which caused many to take a step or two back and give the document a much closer examination than they would have had its supporters in Pennsylvania not acted like total ass’s. The epilogue comes when, once this government was put into operation, Pennsylvania was the first state to learn the extent of the powers held by the government they were so anxious to institute.

I don’t think people realize that the Constitution is merely the framework for a system of government, and that it took awhile for this government to get up and running once the Constitution was ratified. For instance, one of the first things the Congress did was to flesh out the Judiciary by passing the Judiciary Act of 1789; which basically re-wrote the third article of the Constitution; something in and of itself that was unconstitutional, for Congress cannot amend the Constitution. Be that as it may, by this act the government proved right out of the starting gates that it intended to do things that its opponents had feared it would; one of which was to subvert the power of the State Courts.

There were many concerns opponents to the Constitution had, among them being the degree to which this new system of government could impose taxes. The taxing power of Congress is found in the first clause of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”

Now when discussing taxes we must discuss the different forms they may take. First of all there are two categories taxes fall under; direct or indirect taxes. A direct tax gets its name due to the fact that the entity, or individual upon whom the tax falls is responsible for paying it. Income taxes, property taxes and poll taxes fall under the heading of direct taxes, and prior to the 16th Amendment they had to be apportioned; meaning spread out equally and determined by the population of the States. This requirement is found in Article 1, Section II, Clause 3, “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers.”

So how that would work is that if there were 100 people living in country and the government needed $1,000 in tax revenue, each person would owe $10 in taxes; there was no graduated income tax as we know today; that changed in 1913 with the 16th Amendment; which gave government direct access to the money you earn from your labor.

An indirect tax, on the other hand, is a tax that, although it is paid by you it is collected by a third party and submitted to the taxing entity; government. Sales taxes are a good example of indirect taxes; you pay them when you purchase your groceries, but the store you bought those groceries from is responsible for sending the taxes they collect to the government.

Another form of indirect taxes is excise taxes. If you’ve ever flown internationally you’ll recall how there was a duty free store located somewhere inside the airport in the international concourse, and that once you began your descent into your final destination you were given customs forms so you could declare your duty free goods. They call those items duty free goods because, along with various sales taxes there is no excise tax imposed upon them.

The opponents to the Constitution feared the extent of the taxing power given to this new system of government; fearing it could reach into our homes and lay a tax upon almost everything we did, consumed, or produced.

To calm the fears of those who feared the extensive taxing power given this government those who supported the Constitution had to make promises that these powers would be used sparingly, and the manner in which they might be implemented. Alexander Hamilton laid out the Federalist, [those who supported ratification of the Constitution], position in Federalist No. 12; and I’d like to share a few things he said with you.

-It is evident from the state of the country, from the habits of the people, from the experience we have had on the point itself, that it is impracticable to raise any very considerable sums by direct taxation. Now think about that, Hamilton is saying that it is impracticable to raise any considerable sum through direct taxation, yet last year alone the government raised $2.7 TRILLION from income, and other forms of direct taxation. Another promise not kept by the Federalists.

Now comes the part of Federalist 12 that will eventually tie into why Pennsylvania was the first state to realize the full extent of what they had done by ratifying the Constitution. Another passage from Hamilton’s essay states, “In so opulent a nation as that of Britain, where direct taxes from superior wealth must be much more tolerable, and, from the vigor of the government, much more practicable, than in America, far the greatest part of the national revenue is derived from taxes of the indirect kind, from imposts, and from excises. Duties on imported articles form a large branch of this latter description.

In America, it is evident that we must a long time depend for the means of revenue chiefly on such duties. In most parts of it, excises must be confined within a narrow compass. The genius of the people will ill brook the inquisitive and peremptory spirit of excise laws. The pockets of the farmers, on the other hand, will reluctantly yield but scanty supplies, in the unwelcome shape of impositions on their houses and lands; and personal property is too precarious and invisible a fund to be laid hold of in any other way than by the inperceptible agency of taxes on consumption.” (My emphasis)

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s move on with some of the other things our government did once it got up and running. One of the things Alexander Hamilton, as Secretary of the Treasury, pushed for was for the federal government to assume the debts of the States that had been incurred during the American Revolution; which in some instances was still a rather substantial amount.

Now Hamilton couldn’t just say, “Hey States, hand your debt over to us, we’ll pay them for you”, he needed Congress to pass a law which would authorize government to assume those debts. This idea did not sit well with some; particularly Virginia, which had nearly paid off its war debts. To appease the opponents of this plan of federal assumption of State debts, a compromise was reached; primarily between Hamilton, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, where the final location of the capitol would be located closer to the South, and not up in New York or say, Pennsylvania as that State had hoped. Years later Jefferson would bemoan his decision to agree to this compromise, stating, “…all the errors of my political life this has occasioned me the deepest regret.”

In any case, assumption of the State debt was part of the Funding Act of 1790, which was signed into law by George Washington when it reached his desk. At first glance that might seem pretty generous of ole Uncle Sam, lifting the weight of that massive debt off the State’s shoulders; but hang on a second. Sure, the States no longer had to worry about paying off the debt they had accrued during the revolution, but that debt was still there; it was just the federal government’s responsibility to pay now.

Even today I think that people believe that the government either has a whole orchard of trees where money is grown, or that it just fires up the printing presses and spits money out so that it can continue doing business. Well it doesn’t; the money it gets to conduct business is collected by forms of taxation, and since the government had just assumed a massive debt it would have to levy taxes to help towards paying it off.

One of the modes of taxation that was introduced by this government was an excise tax upon the manufacture of whiskey. This new tax was miniscule in comparison to the taxes paid by manufacturers today, but it was still a ‘new’ tax; one which had not been felt by the people prior to the ratification of the Constitution.

Now remember how I told you that those in Pennsylvania who attended the State Ratification Convention were primarily from the Philadelphia area; that the convention was not representative of those living in the remote western region of that State? Well this new tax on whiskey hit them the hardest. I can almost feel their anger; after all they had just recently fought a war due to taxation without representations, and here they were, being taxed by a government they felt was not representative of their wants or needs.

So they did the same thing patriots do when faced with such a predicament; they rebelled against this tax. Pennsylvanian whiskey distillers were not the only ones to protest against this new tax; it was protested against in Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Maryland protested against it. However, since Pennsylvania had been so gosh darned anxious to be among the first to ratify the Constitution, I’ll focus my writing upon what happened there.

One of the first things that happened was the Pennsylvania State Legislature passed a resolution condemning the tax. Then those in western Pennsylvania flat out refused to comply; resorting to assaulting those who came to collect the taxes owed. In a reenactment of the Boston Tea Party, tax protestors dressed as native American Indians broke into the home where a tax collector was residing, shot the place up, and the owner of the home was threatened with tar and feathering if he did not evict the tax collector from his home.

Tensions continued to rise, as those who opposed the tax destroyed the stills of those who willingly paid the tax. Then it turned into violence when armed tax protesters showed up at tax collector John Neville’s home and an hour long gunfight ensued; with people on both sides being killed.

While all this was happening Alexander Hamilton was urging Washington to call forth the militia to quell this rebellion; his justification was that it was authorized under the Militia Act of 1792. Washington did want to restore the federal authority, but was hesitant to use force…at first. So he sent commissioners to Pennsylvania in an effort to calm down the hostilities. But Hamilton did not want a peace negotiation, he wanted to teach these rebels a lesson; so behind Washington’s back he wrote a series of essays under the pseudonym of Tully which effectively threw gas onto an already volatile situation.

Eventually Washington was faced with the choice of letting the tax go unpaid, and the rebellion against federal authority having had a precedent set, or putting down this rebellion with military force. Washington, although Pennsylvania had not called for federal intervention, chose the latter option and personally led 15,000 troops into Pennsylvania to put down the Whiskey Rebellion.

It’s ironic that when the militia arrived they could only find 150 or so protestors; all of whom were arrested then later pardoned; making the whole thing a comedy, or a farce; choose for yourself which one. However it did set a precedent that would be followed later on in our country’s history and one which would have made strong nationalists like Hamilton happy; the authority of the federal government to use force to impose the laws and taxes it imposes.

Just to name of few of the instances where government has used such force, do you remember Waco? How about Ruby Ridge? Ever hear of the Bonus Protestors and how Dwight D. Eisenhower and George Patton burned them out in our nation’s capital? How about Kent State; where the National Guard opened fire upon unarmed college students, killing four and wounding nine others?

I could go on with plenty of examples of how the government created in 1787, and put into effect in 1789 has used force to impose its will upon the governed, but I think you get the picture. I just think it is ironic, or is it karma, that Pennsylvania was the first to feel this power; seeing as how they were so gosh darned anxious to see this government go into effect.

The Whiskey Rebellion; how it was caused and how it was handled, prove beyond a doubt that those who opposed the Constitution, and the government it outlined, were right to fear the powers being given to this new system of government. It’s a shame that we have not limited government to the few powers it was initially granted; rather we have begged for it to assume more power to keep us safe, provide us with benefits, or send our young fighting men off to die in some foreign land fighting imaginary enemies and monsters of our own creation.

Anyways, as news commentator Paul Harvey used to say, “Now you know the rest of the story.”

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
~James Madison~
(Letter to W.T. Barry, August 4, 1822)

I can’t recall when I first heard this, but as a kid I frequently heard adults say that there are two subjects that should not be discussed at the supper table; religion and politics. The reason for that is because people have strong feelings on those subjects and any discussion of them always devolves into an argument; and to avoid ruining dinner it is best to not discuss them at the supper table.

For those of you thinking this is gonna be another religious rant all I want to do is show how religion and politics are quite similar in some instances, and radically different in others. Take religion for instance, it usually has some form of text that serves as the guidelines for its practitioners. In Christianity that text is the Bible and in Islam it is the Koran. So why do we see so many various denominations within them?

Take Christianity for example; its tenets are outline in the Bible, right? So why are there so many different denominations? I couldn’t even begin to name them all but there are Catholics, Protestants, Baptists, Lutherans, Seventh Day Adventists, just to name a few.

I’m not trying to single out Christians either; Islam is the same way with various interpretations of the Koran leading to divisions within it; such as the Sunni’s and the Shia’s. All I’m trying to point out is how a religious text such as the Koran or the Bible can be interpreted differently; leading to various divisions among those who read it.

Can the same not be said about our system of government as well? Our system of government exists because the Constitution was ratified in 1789. Had the Constitution not been ratified we would still be under the system established by the Articles of Confederation, right? So if this system of government is based upon what the Constitution says, why are there so many different political parties?

Although the Republicans and Democrats hold a majority of the offices in government, they are not the only parties that run candidates seeking office. For instance, there is the Peace and Freedom Party, the Green Party, the Tea Party, and the Libertarian Party, just to name a few. If the Constitution established this system of government the only explanation for the various political parties is how that document is interpreted. Keep that thought in mind while I discuss one huge difference between religion and politics.

Can you be fined, jailed, or shot for not going to church? What about if you don’t go to confession often enough, or pay your tithing, can your church send the police to arrest you? Not in America you can’t. In some Islamic countries you can; but that’s neither here nor there for the purpose of this discussion. In America we supposedly have freedom of religion; which means we are all free to either go to church or not go to church without fear of punishment.

You cannot say the same thing regarding politics; or more specifically, government. Whether you like it or not you must submit to the laws government enacts, or face fines, jail time, and even death. It amazes me that people will file suits against schools and other institutions to protect their freedom FROM religion, and the courts will typically uphold that right, yet try filing a suit to protect your freedom from government and see what happens. You’ll get laughed out of the courthouse, that’s what will happen!

I can’t speak for anyone else, but to me it is just common sense that if you are going to have an entity, (government), that has that kind of power over you, you had better damned sure know what purpose that government is supposed to serve; and what powers were given it to accomplish that purpose. Yet if you were to do a simple survey of your friends and relatives I bet you’d find that a good majority of them couldn’t tell you much about what the Constitution says.

There is another thing that people should take into consideration when thinking about their system of government, that being the motives behind those who established it. From what I recall of my high school civics class, all I remember being taught is that there was a convention in 1787 and that it produced a document that was submitted to the people for ratification; which they did. The rest of the class was devoted to explaining the structure of our government, the checks and balances, and the process of amending it; with a brief discussion of the Bill of Rights.

To say that I got the nickel tour of the Constitution is the understatement of the century; there is much more to it than that, and if you really want to know what purpose your government should serve you need to undertake a study of the process which led to the establishment of this system of government; what purpose this government is supposed to serve; and what powers were given it to accomplish that purpose.

I know it is hard to put aside your partisan ideology, it was for me, but to effectively understand what purpose our government is supposed to serve it is essential that you do so. When the Colonists decided that they had had enough of King George III’s special brand of tyranny they wrote a document that outlined the beliefs that would form the basis of American political thought. We know that document as the Declaration of Independence.

One of the most important things the Declaration of Independence does is it outlines the function ALL governments should serve. That purpose is stated as follows, “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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

That is the purpose government is supposed to serve and it matters not what form that government takes, or what powers it may be given, government must seek to accomplish that purpose for it to be just. Now I’m not talking about Uncle Sam; he wasn’t born yet; I’m talking about government in general; from the local level all the way up to the big boys in the State capitals; government MUST accomplish the purpose all governments are established to serve for them to be just.

I couldn’t begin to list the ways in which government has failed to serve its intended purpose; either of its own arbitrary will or by the will of a majority of the people. With each passing day, with every new piece of legislation, with every Executive Order, our liberty is whittled away at by those entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring that it is enjoyed equally by all.

Getting back to post revolutionary America, along comes a group of men who felt that the existing system of government did not meet the needs of the confederation; or so we were told. These men hold a convention, being given authority by their respective states to propose amendments the existing system. But do they do that? What they do is they lock the doors, swear themselves to secrecy, and they go about tearing down the existing plan so that it can be replaced by one of their own creation.

I’m often accused of being a conspiracy theorist, so let me back up and explain something to you. Many of those who attended this convention in 1787 had planned in advance to propose a system that would abolish the existing one and replace it with one they called ‘energetic’; meaning one with more power. There is ample evidence of this ‘conspiracy’, with one piece being a letter James Madison wrote to George Washington just a week before the convention was scheduled to convene.

For those of you who bandy about the title conspiracy theorist, do you even know the meaning of the word conspiracy? A conspiracy is a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.

Well gee whiz people, doesn’t that sound exactly like what the framers of the Constitution did, plotted a conspiracy to topple the existing government and create one of their own making -all in secret – and totally against the authority delegated to them by those who they represented; the States? Therefore, can it not be said that our Constitution was the child of a conspiracy to topple a system of government? There is another word for that, I think it is a coup d’état.

We are taught that the steps these men took were necessary; that our confederation was crumbling due to the ineffectiveness of its system of government. Have you ever heard of William Pitt?

William Pitt was the Prime Minister of Great Britain in the middle of the 18th century. Well Pitt once said, “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” You might want to think about that the next time you hear someone suggest some new necessary measures to keep you safe, or battle some supposed enemy.

So intent were they upon depriving the States of their sovereignty; sovereign power which was delegated to them by the true sovereigns, the people, that they would not let the States vote either yeah or nay on the document they produced; instead it was to be sent to the people directly, with instructions which prohibited any amendments the people might feel better secured their liberty.

In fact, in the final days of the convention that produced the Constitution a measure was introduced which would have allowed the people time to read the proposed Constitution, then suggest amendments, which would then be debated in a second convention. This measure was voted down unanimously by the delegates from all the States being represented; they were told to take it or leave it as is.

We are taught that the Constitution derives its power from We the people, right? Well if the people could not propose amendments to a document which framed a system of government that had power over them, how well do you think that system actually represented the people? There is another fact that I wasn’t taught in high school civics. The only reason we have a Bill of Rights at all is because ratification was unsure in certain key States, and to calm the fears that the rights of the people would be threatened by this new system of government the Federalists, (those who supported ratification of the Constitution), promised that if they would just adopt this system of government a bill of rights would be added later.

Now pay attention, because this is the important part. After the Constitution was adopted, and the system of government went into operation, the States submitted lists of proposed amendments; numbering close to 200 of them in fact. Some of these proposals were duplicates; meaning more than one State submitted the same suggested amendment. James Madison weeded out the duplicates, then he went through the remaining proposals and eliminated all those that would strip the government of any powers, or place certain qualifications upon the exercise of their delegated powers.

So going all the way back to the Declaration of Independence we were told that government derives its just powers from the consent of the government. We also have the Preamble of the Constitution stating that it was We the People who ordain and establish this Constitution. Yet we have this government saying that We the People cannot make changes to the powers given it; or place restrictions upon when and how those powers might be exercised.
Does that strike you as being a system of government that had the people’s interests in mind; or the preservation of their liberty?

That’s why earlier I mentioned that to truly understand our system of government we must understand the motives of those who created it; for their motives were, to put it mildly, shady. People today complain about special interests, and it is all I can do to not laugh in their face. Our system of government was created by men who sought to create a system that would benefit special interests.

One would do well to undertake a serious study of one Robert Morris, who was the chief financier during the Revolution, who swindled the Confederation Congress out of millions of dollars. He was a staunch supporter of this proposed plan. It was men like Morris, lawyers, bankers, and leading figures in industry that this new system of government was created to serve; we were, and continue to be, the dupes who think that just because we can vote we have a say in what government does. Lysander Spooner described us well when he said, “A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.”

People today blame the ‘other’ party for all the problems in America. It isn’t the other party people, it is government itself; and we wouldn’t have been stuck under this system of government had the Constitution not been written and ratified. The Constitution is the problem, it sucked from Day 1, and due to the ignorance and apathy of the American voter it has allowed government to exponentially expand its power, while at the same time deprive us of the liberty it was supposed to have been written to secure.

No matter how hard you vote, who you vote for, government will not change in that regard. The only solution is to abolish the system entirely, or suffer the fate of all those who place too much power in the hands of their governors – tyranny and despotism.

To quote Spooner again, “But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.” I know, those are harsh words, but the truth is sometimes harsh; but the sooner you accept that truth, the better the chance we have of correcting the problem; if that is even possible at this stage of the game.

If you really wish to learn what the Constitution says, what was promised to those who ratified it, you won’t find it on the TV or in a high school civics book; you’ll only find it if you take the effort to read everything you can get your hands on regarding the entire process that led to the Constitution becoming the supreme law of the land. That means the correspondence between the framers prior to the convention of 1787; Madison’s notes from that convention; the Federalist and Anti Federalist papers, and the various notes taken during the State Ratifying Assemblies.

Only by studying those documents will you gain a clearer picture of how our Constitution came into existence, and how those who supported it lied through their teeth to get it ratified. In closing I’d like to leave you with a final quote from James Madison. Before I do though let me say that I don’t know if Madison was speaking from the heart, or if he was speaking out of the other side of his mouth as most politicians do. Regardless, Madison’s words should come as a call for you to seek out the truth about your precious Constitution, “…whatever veneration might be entertained for the body of men who formed our constitution, the sense of that body could never be regarded as the oracular guide in … expounding the constitution. As the instrument came from them, it was nothing more than the draught of a plan nothing but a dead letter, until life and validity were breathed into it, by the voice of the people, speaking through the several state conventions. If we were to look therefore, for the meaning of the instrument, beyond the face of the instrument, we must look of it no in the general convention, which proposed, but in the state conventions which accepted and ratified the constitution.” James Madison in Congress, Apr 6, 1796

Oh, by the way, the same guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence, (Thomas Jefferson), said pretty much the same thing in a letter to Justice William Johnson a quarter century later, “On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.” (Source: Thomas Jefferson to Justice William Johnson, June 12, 1823)

Now go back to the top of the page and re-read the quote I placed there…