Neal's Soapbox

Before I wore it out (literally) I used to own a t-shirt that said: It’s not about right versus left, conservative versus liberal. It’s about liberty versus tyranny. What many fail to realize is that what is considered left or right is relevant to your current position. Allow me to explain what I mean by that.

Let’s say you are standing side by side with a long line of other people, and I’m about a dozen people down the line from you; which side doesn’t really matter. Now if someone were to ask you who was on your left, or right, your answer would be different than mine due to our different positions in the line.

So, when people use the terms left and right, or even liberal and conservative, it is a matter of perspective based upon something known as the Overton Window. The Overton Window does not use the terms liberal or conservative; what it describes is the window of what is considered acceptable beliefs/behavior on a sliding scale between complete freedom and complete governmental control of our lives.

Imagine you had a 12-inch ruler, like this:

Now if you were to place Absolute Freedom at one end of the ruler, and Absolute Government at the other, that would be your sliding scale. The Overton Window would be like what you would see if you took a piece of paper and cut a 1 inch square out of it and placed it over the ruler; like this:

What you see inside that cut out square is what is considered acceptable by the majority of the people. However, that window can be shifted; either to the left or the right; towards more freedom, or more government. So, when I hear people use the terms left and right in regards to their political positions, I have to ask myself; where on that sliding scale are they in comparison to those they oppose?

There is a graphic I found that may help in understanding what I just described; although on either extreme it simply refers to the amount of freedom enjoyed by the people who are governed:

To understand the political positions of the two primary political parties in America today, we must know the definition of the term they use to describe themselves; either conservatives or liberals. The word conservative is defined as one who is opposed to change; one who adheres to traditional values. A liberal is one who is open to change, or reform; one who is not bound by traditional values.
On the surface, that sounds all well and good; especially if you consider yourself to be a conservative. But, if you enter the Overton Window into the formula, what is considered a conservative position today might have been considered a liberal position fifty…twenty…even ten years ago; it’s relevant to our current position on that sliding scale that determines how much freedom we enjoy.

Unfortunately, we’ve been shifting on that scale from total freedom to total government ever since the Constitution was put into effect back in 1789. You may call yourself a conservative by today’s standards, but your parents and grandparents would probably have thought your beliefs were more liberal than they were conservative. Like I said, it’s all relevant to where we are on that sliding scale.

That is why I harp incessantly upon the importance of knowing the purpose government should serve, while not basing your beliefs upon the political party platforms of whatever parties exist in today’s political climate. To do that, all one has to do is refer to the Declaration of Independence, where it states: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men. (My emphasis)

That right there is the purpose government should serve. However, there is something else people must take into consideration when discussing the function of government; that being what kind of government are we talking about. Even if you live in a small town, that town has some form of government; be it a mayor, or a mayor and a city council. Then there are the county governments, the State governments, and finally, the central, or federal/national government; and there is a huge difference between the two when talking about a central government.

After the Revolution ended, when they transitioned from 13 British Colonies to 13 States, each State was considered sovereign and independent; much like each country in Europe, Africa, or South America is a sovereign and independent country. Our country’s first attempt at a centralized government, under the Articles of Confederation, explain the relationship between the states and the central government quite clearly in Articles II and III, where they state:

Article II.
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.

Article III.
The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever.

Under that system, each State was treated as if it were an individual; each given a single vote. Not only that, the Congress could not draft a piece of legislation, then hand it off to an Executive to decide whether to sign or veto it; simply because there was no Executive! For any measure to become binding, it first had to be agreed to in the Congress, then by the unanimous vote of every single State Legislature; leaving the power where it should be; localized and in the hands of those who directly represented the people.

That system stood in the way of those who thought that power should be centralized; especially when it came to matters of taxation; a single state could defeat any taxing measure by simply voting against it in the State Legislature; which is why that system had to go; to be replaced by one which gave the central government more power, without depending upon the approval of the States for any measure.

Ah, but Neal, that’s where you’re wrong; the Senate did represent the States before the ratification of the 17th Amendment. First of all, I don’t believe the 17th Amendment was lawfully ratified; just like I don’t believe the 14th and 16th were lawfully ratified; but that’s a topic for another day.

Yes, there were two bodies in Congress; each of whom represented different political entities. There was the Senate, that represented the States, and there was the House, that represented the people. However, gone was the requirement that a vote be unanimous in support of the measures that would go before Congress.

I honestly don’t know how much thought, or study, people have given the concept of representation in government; but the difference in beliefs held by the delegates of the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 were enough to where they almost prevented the Constitution from coming into existence. There were those who wanted representation in both Houses of Congress to be equal, and there were those who wanted representation in both Houses to be based upon population. In the end, a compromise was reached in which representation in the Senate would be equal, and in the House, representation would be based upon population.

That may not seem to be of much importance, until you consider that while this was happening, there were two distinct economies and cultures making up these States united. The economy of the Northern States was predominantly centered around business; commerce and banking. The South, on the other hand, was predominantly an agrarian economy; one in which agriculture was the primary means of providing income for those who lived there.

As America was new on the world stage, those who manufactured goods faced stiff competition in the marketplace from those countries who had well established industries. This new government, whose founding charter, (the Constitution), which was written by those involved in commerce and banking, sought to create a system which would give them the power to elevate America into an economic power capable of competing with global competitors. However, to do so they would need to impose tariffs upon goods coming into the country so that America’s fledgling industries could compete in the open marketplace.

Those tariffs were felt the most in the South; which imported much of what it did not produce itself. Opposition to those tariffs led to the Nullification Crisis in the 1830’s, and eventually the Civil War in 1860. Yet, I’m not here to talk about tariffs; I’m here to talk about how representation allowed for those tariffs to be imposed in the first place.

A majority vote in the Senate today is 51 votes, and in the House, it is 218. Back then those numbers were even smaller. As America began to grow, those coming into this country sought jobs, and there are more jobs in industrialized areas than there are on farms and plantations; even assuming there was no slave labor force to do most of the work. So, it is natural that the population of the Northern States would increase faster than it would in the South. This increase gave the industrialized states an advantage in the House, and as new States were added to the Union, the battle was over whether or not to allow them to enter the union as a free, or a slave State; as the majority would then secure control of Congress.

It’s important that you understand that, although there was opposition to the institution of slavery in the North, the battle was for preventing the spread of slavery into newly admitted States; which would take away the North’s ability to control Congress. Abraham Lincoln almost said as much in his 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.

If you’ll note, he only said that he felt he had no lawful authority to interfere with slavery, ‘where it exists’, not in regards to whether or not it should be allowed to spread throughout the rest of the Union. Lincoln’s concern, his primary reason for sending troops into the South is best explained by something he said in a letter to newspaper editor Horace Greeley: My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.

I truly think that Lincoln felt that the Southern States would give up when they saw the might of the Union Army; but after the first major battle at Manassas, Lincoln realized that was not to be. Yet he could not back down now; not if he hoped to save face and continue to be supported by the newly created Republican Party.

So, Lincoln waged war against the South, who only sought to exercise their right, as outlined in the Declaration of Independence: That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Slavery may have been an issue that led to secession, but it was not the cause of the war itself; that was fought because Lincoln could not afford to let the South separate and form their own country; as they were paying most of the tariffs/taxes that funded the programs that benefitted those for whom this government was created to serve – banking, commerce and industry.

On December 10, 01860, the Chicago Daily Times spoke openly in an editorial in regards to what must have been on the minds of Lincoln, and every Northern member of Congress: In one single blow our foreign commerce may be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwise trade would pass into other hands. One half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves. We should lose our trade with the South, with all its immense profits. Our manufactories would be in utter ruin. Let the South adopt the free trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue, and these results would likely follow.”

The North needed the South, while the South did not need the North. The South was the government’s cash cow; it’s source of revenue to fund its operations – and it could not allow it to leave.

So, how did a discussion of the Overton Window devolve into a discussion of the Civil War? The answer is, it didn’t; it merely shows you how that window had slid along that scale from more freedom for the governed, to less freedom. If government is, as the Declaration of Independence says it is, instituted to secure the rights and liberty of the governed, then a government that seeks to use its power to benefit one class of people, at the cost of their tax dollars and their freedom, then the Overton Window has shifted away from freedom, towards more government. That also means that, what it means to be a conservative today is not the same as what it meant prior to the Civil War.

In 1849 a fellow by the name of Henry David Thoreau, wrote a book entitled Civil Disobedience. He begins his book by stating: I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe- “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

Using the Overton Window, words like that today would fall outside what is considered politically acceptable speech, or beliefs; it would be considered, not only radical, it would be considered unthinkable. If you don’t believe me, just tell anyone you know that you think that we’d be better off without any kind of government, and see how people respond.

Yet, as terrible as the Constitution is, that is almost how things were at the beginning; when our government first went into operation in 1789 – it exercised very little power over the lives and liberty of the people. In fact, in his first inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson described ‘good’ government as follows: Still one thing more, fellow-citizens — a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

While the constitution was still merely a proposal for a new system of government, James Madison, one of its authors, wrote the following, detailing the powers that would be exercised by the new government, and those exercised by the states: 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)

Does that last sentence sound anything like our federal government today? Please, do not answer that it does; not when our current Buffoon in Chief has said that we must take a vaccine if we want to keep our jobs; assuming we work in places with 100 or more employees.

So, either Madison flat out lied about what the Constitution would do, or that document isn’t as good as they said it was in preventing government from overreaching its authority. In either case, Lysander Spooner was 100% correct in stating: 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.

But Neal, times have changed; we live in a far different world than they did back in 1789. Yes, times have changed; I’ll admit that, but I’d like for you to read two quotes when you consider how much we should allow government to encroach upon the freedoms it was ‘supposedly’ established to secure. The first quote comes from George Washington’s Farewell Address to the People: If in the opinion of the People, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.

Have there been amendments to the Constitution, granting government increased powers, or have these new powers come through usurpation, (look the word up, you might learn something)? If they have come through usurpation, then what is considered acceptable, that Overton Window this whole thing is about, has shifted away from freedom towards less freedom. That means what is considered conservative today, would not have been considered conservative by men like Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, and a whole host of others.

The next quote comes from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to judge Spencer Roane in 1821: Time indeed changes manners and notions, and so far we must expect institutions to bend to them. But time produces also corruption of principles, and against this it is the duty of good citizens to be ever on the watch, and if the gangrene is to prevail at last, let the day be kept off as long as possible.

While I, myself, do not want or need government, I can see that, if it served the purpose it was supposed to, it is something I could live with. As Thomas Paine wrote: Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

Therefore, if we MUST have government, and if you think that government does not have the requisite powers needed to run this country, then do not let them assume those powers by usurpation; let the Constitution be amended by the proper means, so that these new powers have the consent of the governed.

The unfortunate thing is, we have slid so far on that sliding scale, allowed government to assume for itself what powers it will exercise, that it is too late to hope for a restoral of the principles, true conservative principles, to be restored in this country. Overton’s Window is now nearing the point where we have no freedom whatsoever, and anyone who seeks to regain the freedom that is their birthright is seen as a threat to society.

So, where does that leave us? I really don’t know what lies in the future; not when the overwhelming majority think that they can undo 232 years of damage to their freedom at the voting booth. I do know that doing the same thing they have been doing isn’t going to do a damned thing.

If we want our freedom back, we’re going to have to risk something to take it back; government isn’t going to give it back to us without some kind of a fight.

The Declaration of Independence states: Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

I suppose the only question worth asking at this point is; How much discomfort are you willing to bear before you realize that it isn’t the left or the right that is the cause of your suffering, it is the system you’ve supported and complied with for all your lives?

If you get a splinter that causes you pain and discomfort, the only way to rid yourself of that pain and discomfort is go get rid of what’s causing it. Well, government is a sliver; hell, it’s a cancer that is eating away at your freedom. So, what are you going to do about it? As the immortal Patrick Henry said in 1775: I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Authors Note: May contain thoughts, ideas, and language that threaten your beliefs. Proceed at your own risk.

There is a commonly repeated analogy that if you put a frog into a pot of water and gradually turn up the heat the frog will not notice the change in temperature and will stay in the pot until it is boiled alive. Since I’ve never captured a frog and tested that theory, I have no idea if it is factual, or not. Nonetheless, it does serve as a fitting analogy to explain what has happened to the people in this country; and why we’re in the pickle we currently find ourselves in.

There are many ways to enslave a people; to control and manipulate them. You can use force, but that often results in an equal, and corresponding, use of force against those who seek to control others. You can try to convince or persuade people to accept the things you are trying to impose upon them; but that is not always effective. No, the most effective way of controlling and manipulating people is through the use of fear.

Fear is probably the most powerful of all human emotions; causing people to do almost anything to escape that which causes them to be afraid. It’s kind of ironic how people idolize heroes; those who look fear in the face and overcome it to do amazing feats of courage; yet at the same time they allow themselves to be controlled and manipulated by their own fears. Those who govern know this, and they use it to their advantage to increase their power, while diminishing our God-given rights and liberty. As Rahm Emmanuel so aptly said: You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.

There is an old saying, that I believe draws its origin from Ecclesiastes, Chapter 1, that says: There is nothing new under the sun. If fear is being used against us now, it was used against those who came before us, and those who came before them as well. Those who seek power and dominion use fear, well, because it works! Why stop using a tactic that works, right? To use a football analogy; if you’re kicking your opponent’s ass with your passing game, why switch up and begin running the football?

There are certain phrases one can use to identify those who are reacting from a fear-based position rather than a position founded upon logic and reason. For instance, if you hear someone say something like, there should be a law, you know they are not thinking logically; they are reacting emotionally. Then there is my all time favorite; Something must be done. If queried, those saying that could not tell what should be done, all they know is that there is something frightening going on, and ‘something’ must be done about it.

Fear people, plain and simple; the most effective tool to control YOU!

In our modern age we are more susceptible to fear than ever before. In olden times, news of events took days, sometimes weeks, to get from one place to another. Now, with all this modern technology that allows for the immediate dissemination of information, fear can be broadcast to the entire globe simultaneously.

Have you ever heard someone say that they don’t mind talking to individuals, but they hate talking to groups? There is a reason people say that. You can reason with an individual; or at least there is a chance that you can reason with an individual. However, the dynamics change when you’re trying to talk reason to a group. Group dynamics are powerful influencers of people’s behavior; they aren’t likely to do or say anything that will threaten their position, or status, in their group. And what is the largest group if not the entire population of a country, or a planet for that matter?

Therefore, if you can introduce fear, not on an individual level, but on a nationwide level, you can control and entire country; get them to do/accept things they wouldn’t normally do/accept. And where do most people get their information? Why, the news media. Even though many claim not to trust the news media to tell them the absolute truth, they still tune in and watch it anyways to get their daily fix; kind of like news junkies if you ask me.

Have you ever noticed how negative the news is these days; how almost every story is about a shooting, a disaster, a CRISIS of some sort? Yet they always seem to make time to tell a story, even a brief one, about something good; how one person is, as Lester Holt of NBC says, making a difference. There is a reason they do that; it gives people hope that there is still good in the world; that its not all dark and evil. I’ll return to that thought later, so keep it in mind as we move forward.

As I said earlier, there is nothing new under the sun, and if fear is currently being used as a tool to manipulate us into surrendering our rights and liberty, it has been used in that past as well. A perfect example of this is how, in 1787, the people were told they were in a dreadful situation, that if ‘something’ weren’t done, the union would splinter apart.

One of those who saw clearly, saw through the fear mongering being used to generate support for a stronger, more centralized, system of government, was Samuel Bryan, who, writing as Centinel stated: But our situation is represented to be so critically dreadful, that, however reprehensible and exceptionable the proposed plan of government may be, there is no alternative between the adoption of it and absolute ruin. My fellow citizens, things are not at that crisis; it is the argument of tyrants.

Bryan also explained how ‘fear’ was being used against the people: The wealthy and ambitious, who in every community think they have a right to lord it over their fellow creatures, have availed themselves very successfully of this favorable disposition; for the people thus unsettled in their sentiments, have been prepared to accede to any extreme of government.

He then went on to say what the end result would be if the people succumbed to their fears: I shall now proceed to the examination of the proposed plan of government, and I trust, shall make it appear to the meanest capacity, that it has none of the essential requiresites of a free government; that it has none of the essential requisites of a free government; that it is neither founded on those balancing restraining powers, recommended by Mr. Adams and attempted in the British constitution, or possessed of that responsibility to its constituents, which, in my opinion, is the only effectual security for the liberties and happiness of the people; but on the contrary, that it is a most daring attempt to establish a despotic aristocracy among freemen, that the world has ever witnessed.

I bet you weren’t taught that in school, were you?

We are taught, mistakenly I might add, that our Constitution was written by great men, that it was divinely inspired, that it secured to us our rights and liberty by a Bill of Rights, and that it has all these wonderful checks and balances to protect against encroachments of power by the various branches. That is what we are taught – but it is a myth; the Constitution was written by men who had been frustrated time and time again by the limitations upon their lust for power imposed upon them by the Articles of Confederation.

However, the people were (relatively) content with things the way they were, so those seeking more power for themselves had to resort to fear to accomplish their goal of creating, and implementing, a system that would give them absolute power over the people. While, in my mind, those who drafter our Constitution were evil, they were quite clever in cloaking their ultimate goals in wording that hid their true intent; while at the same time providing enough loopholes within the wording of their ‘document’ to allow for a gradual, but inevitable, increase in their power over us.

Yet there were those who saw through their deception, and tried to warn the people of the impending danger this proposed Constitution posed to their rights and liberty; as well as the sovereignty of the individual states. Among them were, the aforementioned Samuel Bryan, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Luther Martin, and various others; all being assigned the name of Anti-Federalists; which in and of itself was a deception, for these Anti-Federalists were the ones who supported federalist principles.

It was those who passed themselves off as Federalists who were, in reality, nationalists; seeking to usurp the sovereignty and authority of the states, and consolidate it into a centralized government of their creation; one which would give them the power and authority to tax without limitation, and pass laws that would ultimately lead to the loss of the rights and liberty of the governed.

Since I broached the subject of taxing without limitation, and since I know that there are some who are skeptical of that, let me tell you about a current taxing scheme being proposed by government right now. Ever hear of Senator Richard ‘Dick’ Durban? Well, he has introduced a bill that will raise billions in tax revenue by raising taxes on tobacco products. I’m not talking about a five-cent increase, or a fifty-cent increase for that matter; Durbin is proposing that those who smoke cigarettes will end up paying close to 20% of their annual income on taxes upon those cigarettes. His proposal will also raise the taxes on pipe tobacco and dipping snuff; with a 1,651% increase in taxes on pipe tobacco and a 2,035% increase on dipping snuff.

Don’t believe me? Go research the Tobacco Tax Equity Bill for yourself.

Remember those Anti-Federalists, the ones who warned of the dangers posed by the proposed Constitution? Well one of them, writing under the pen name of Brutus, said the following about taxation in his 5th essay: To detail the particulars comprehended in the general terms, taxes, duties, imposts and excises, would require a volume, instead of a single piece in a news-paper. Indeed it would be a task far beyond my ability, and to which no one can be competent, unless possessed of a mind capable of comprehending every possible source of revenue; for they extend to every possible way of raising money, whether by direct or indirect taxation. Under this clause may be imposed a poll-tax, a land-tax, a tax on houses and buildings, on windows and fire places, on cattle and on all kinds of personal property: — It extends to duties on all kinds of goods to any amount, to tonnage and poundage on vessels, to duties on written instruments, newspapers, almanacks, and books: — It comprehends an excise on all kinds of liquors, spirits, wines, cyder, beer, etc. and indeed takes in duty or excise on every necessary or conveniency of life; whether of foreign or home growth or manufactory. In short, we can have no conception of any way in which a government can raise money from the people…

But these taxes are for legitimate purposes, aren’t they? I don’t know, are they? How would the average voter know when they haven’t read the Constitution; dissected the phrasing to determine what it really says? Let me ask you something, does the Constitution specifically mention that it is within the government’s authority to take tax dollars and use them for all the social service programs we currently enjoy, or send a single dime of our tax dollars overseas in the form of foreign aid? If you believe that is within the function of our government, please tell me which Article and Clause says so; I’ve been unable to find those powers specifically listed among the powers delegated to government by the Constitution.

If you were to take every piece of legislation that is either currently underway in Congress, or those that have been passed within the past 40-50 years, then compare their purpose against the powers given Congress by Article 1, Section 8, you would most likely find that nothing Congress does is within its authority to do. So, how does Congress get away with it? Well, that’s why we’re here; to learn the truth.

One of the biggest problems is the overall ignorance, apathy, and complacency of the American people. Even James Madison, one of drafters of the Constitution, and our 4th President, said: Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives. So, if you don’t know what the Constitution says, or more importantly, what the wording means, you are ignorant. It’s that simple; and they are using your ignorance as a weapon to enslave you.

As I also said earlier, fear is a powerful tool, and all they have to do is use an existing crisis, or create a crisis, which will in turn create a climate of fear; fear that is then used to justify new laws, new taxes, new encroachments upon your rights and liberty. Yet Patrick Henry, probably the most ardent champion of the people’s liberty this country has ever seen, once said that: Fear is the passion of slaves. Yet, even if you do not succumb to your fear, if you are ignorant as to the purpose, function, and limitations placed upon the powers delegated to government, if they can word it in a way that sounds convincing enough, most people will accept it without question. Isn’t that the same tactic scam artists use to deprive their victims of their money? So, it could be said that government is a large-scale scam; with the problem being that the people acquiesce to it due to their belief that they ‘need’ government.

One of the biggest loopholes written into the Constitution, aside from the power of unlimited taxation, is the Necessary and Proper Clause. Those who argued in support of it said that without that clause, they would have had to list every conceivable power the government might have to exercise to accomplish the specific powers delegated to it. Those who argued against that clause felt that it was a window by which all manner of evil and usurpation would enter.

It was no sooner than the administration of George Washington that the intent of the Necessary and Proper Clause was put to the test. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson took the word necessary to mean that which was essential for the exercise of a specific power. Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury, (imagine that), took it to mean anything that made the exercise of those powers more easily accomplished.

To explain the difference in their ideologies, imagine that I were to delegate the authority to you to build a home for me. Using Jefferson’s understanding of the word necessary, you would be allowed to purchase lumber, cement, nails, and the tools necessary to construct that home. Using Hamilton’s line of thought, you would also be justified in purchasing the lumber mill where the wood was cut, purchasing the trucks that delivered the materials to the job site, as well as anything else that made it ‘easier’ to accomplish the goal of building my home.

Washington sided with Hamilton, and the precedence was set; a precedence that has been exploited time and time again to expand the powers of Congress to cover everything of the minutest detail. If you’re interested in learning more about this, I suggest you study the founding of the first national bank during George Washington’s administration; all at the behest of Alexander Hamilton I might add; the same Alexander Hamilton who proposed an elective monarchy during the Constitutional Convention!

Yet the biggest, at least in my opinion, loophole is the creation of the Supreme Court; which serves as the final voice in all matters of a constitutional nature. Is not the Supreme Court a part of the government? Therefore, as part of the government we are letting 9 appointed, not elected, but appointed officials of the government decide what is, and what isn’t constitutional, as well as what powers the government shall be allowed to exercise; as well as the limitations upon a states ability to oppose federal encroachment upon its power.

But the Supreme Court is unbiased Neal. Are they? Then why does it matter one iota to you whether new justices are appointed by a Republican or a Democrat? Not only are the justices biased politically, they aren’t even consistent with upholding decisions handed down by previous sessions of the Court. If they were truly unbiased, the only way they could overturn the decision of a previous Court would be if the Constitution had changed, (been amended), since the first decision was handed down; such as with how the 13th Amendment allowed the Dred Scott decision to be overturned. Yet the Supreme Court has overturned its own rulings over 200 times!

What does that tell you? It tells me that there is no consistency in the Court; that it is open to the changing sentiments of the public, or current conditions in the country; not remaining true to what purpose and powers people believe the Constitution delegates to government. Yet the people look anxiously every year for new rulings from the SCOTUS; which is like waiting for the government to decide how it interprets the law on any given day. To me, that’s like letting the fox guard the hen-house; but hey, what do I know?

The biggest flaw, or fallacy in that line of thinking is that government has the power to decide what its powers shall be; not those from whom government supposedly derives its authority – the people. Since we are supposedly the true sovereigns, (see Chisholm v Georgia, 1793), then it should be those who government derives its authority from that get to decide the limitations upon the power delegated to those who govern. It was this very obstruction found in the Articles of Confederation that led those power-hungry bastards to draft their precious constitution; with all it’s loopholes.

A government that was truly representative of the people, and subject to their will, would provide a means by which those who elect others to act in their stead the power to punish their representatives should they abuse the trust placed in them. Please show me what Article and Clause authorizes us to punish those we elect. I’ll await your answer with anticipation!

The truth is, we have no power to punish them; a fact Patrick Henry made abundantly clear: 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.

Yet they have the power to enact laws, laws that we are bound to obey by threat of fines, jail time, and even death if we resist the authority of those who enforce those laws upon us. So, tell me, does that sound like the way a servant treats their masters; by punishing them when they violate laws that they had no authority to enact in the first place? Yet people say that we live in the land of the free. My ass!

Yet there is another thing that people today also fail to realize; the nature of compacts and contracts. In 1791, Thomas Paine, the man whose pamphlet Common Sense, stirred the hearts and minds of the Colonies towards independence, wrote a treatise he called, The Rights of Man. In that treatise, Paine writes: There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the “end of time,” or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it.

Two years earlier, while serving as our ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to James Madison in which he discussed the same idea. Jefferson stated his position as follows: The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water. Yet it is a question of such consequences as not only to merit decision, but place also, among the fundamental principles of every government. The course of reflection in which we are immersed here on the elementary principles of society has presented this question to my mind; & that no such obligation can be so transmitted I think very capable of proof. I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, ‘that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living’: that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.

To understand the implications of that, we need to understand what a constitution actually is; it is the act of constituting, or establishing, a system of government. That cannot be done by those who have died, or those yet unborn; it must be done by those who are living. This brings us to the next point; that a contract, or compact, only binds those who enter into it, and agree to its terms. If I were to enter into a contract with you, that contract could not bind anyone else to its terms; not even our offspring; for they would be free to either continue that contract, or let it expire.

To explain where I’m going with this, in 1787 fifty-five men gathered together and drafted a constitution; which is either a contract or a compact to establish a system of government. For that compact/contract/constitution to be binding, it had to be submitted to those it bound; the people. While I don’t know the specific numbers, I can guarantee you that not every citizen in the 13 States had a say in whether or not they chose to accept the terms of this compact/contract/constitution. By the very fact that there was a very vocal opposition raised to the ratification of the constitution, we know that not everyone wanted it to be implemented.

So, for the sake of argument, let’s say that each State held a ratifying convention, with 100 people being chosen to debate whether or not to decide whether the constitution would become binding upon everyone else. As each individual is sovereign, “but they are sovereigns without subjects…with none to govern but themselves; the citizens of America are equal as fellow citizens, and as joint tenants in the sovereignty” then how can a small group of people agree to something, such as a constitution, that binds everyone to it, without also being a violation of the sovereignty of the individuals that comprise a society? That’s like saying you have 1,000 people in a room, and 100 of them agree to do something, and the other 900 MUST comply…or else.

To take that one step further, a compact/contract/constitution, only binds those who enter it willingly; by giving their consent to it. Have you ever formally consented to the Constitution? Have you ever signed a piece of paper, or voted openly to support the document, and the government it establishes? I took an oath to support and defend it when I enlisted in the military, but the way I see it is that my oath expired on the same day my final enlistment did; I am no longer bound by that oath.

So, to paraphrase both Jefferson and Paine, how is it that we have a government today; a government that was established by men who have long ago passed away, yet remains binding upon you today? I’m going to provide you with a couple of quotes to consider, although I am going to present them out of order as they appear in the source I found them in.

The first quote states: If any considerable number of the people believe the Constitution to be good, why do they not sign it themselves, and make laws for, and administer them upon, each other; leaving all other persons (who do not interfere with them) in peace? If you wish to be governed by the government established by the Constitution of 1787, why do you not willingly, and openly, pledge your support for, and allegiance to it; while leaving those of us who do not want to be governed free to live our lives not subject to its authority?

The second quote is even more powerful: If the people of this country wish to maintain such a government as the Constitution describes, there is no reason in the world why they should not sign the instrument itself, and thus make known their wishes in an open, authentic manner; in such manner as the common sense and experience of mankind have shown to be reasonable and necessary in such cases; and in such manner as to make themselves (as they ought to do) individually responsible for the acts of the government.

As those you elect are supposed to represent you, you are ultimately responsible for what they do while serving you. Therefore, if your representatives deprive me of life, liberty, or property, without my consent, it should be those who support them who are held accountable; as they are merely agents acting on your behalf. How would you like it if I was arrested for violating one of the laws enacted by your government, yet when I went to court you found yourself held accountable because your government had deprived me of my rights, liberty, or property? I bet that wouldn’t sit too well with you, would it. That is why government gets away with all that it does, because neither it, or those who elect tyrants, are held accountable for the crimes their government commits against the rights, liberty and property of the people.

Government today is like the ground we walk upon, or the air we breathe. That may not make any sense to you, so let me explain. When we are born, the ground is always there for us to put our feet upon, and the air is always there for us to breathe. So it is with government; it is something that exists; something we do not question the existence of, the purpose for which it was established, nor the abuse of power it is guilty of. We just accept that government is there, and we hope, (getting back to that point I asked you to remember earlier) that we can improve our lot in life, or improve it by voting for a better quality of candidate.

It’s just like the news media broadcasting all this doom and gloom, with a ray of hope included; it keeps people in a state of apathy and complacency; hoping that their vote will make a difference. But, as Patrick Henry said in 1775: …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.

I don’t know if the story I’m about to relate is true, or not, yet the analogy, (just like the analogy of a frog in a pot of water) is still an accurate description of what has happened in this country. The story revolves around a young man in a college class who asked his professor if he was aware of how to capture wild pigs. He then went on to say that you put out some food for the pigs. The pigs come and begin eating the offering. Then, you erect a wall alongside where you put the food. The pigs may notice the wall, but eventually return for the free food. Once they’ve become accustomed to the one wall, you build another. The pigs may again be hesitant, but eventually become accustomed to that wall. Then you build another. The process repeats itself, and the pigs come back. Finally, you erect the final wall, with a gate; and when the pigs enter to eat, you close the gate upon them; trapping them inside the cage you have erected.

That is how government has successfully enslaved us; by promising us all these goodies, while at the same time erecting walls, or restrictions, upon our rights and liberty. We were too happy to accept the free stuff, (which isn’t actually free; it comes at the expense of your tax dollars or the debt your government has accumulated on your behalf), while it has slowly, but surely, taken away almost all your rights and liberty. As we speak, those in power are erecting the final wall, the one with the gate, that will enslave you, and your posterity, forever.

Have you ever been bitten by a fire ant? It may hurt, but you can easily brush it off and stomp on it. Have you ever been swarmed by fire ants? It’s not so easy to brush them off when there are thousands of them crawling over your skin. Jesus used to use parables in his preaching, and would often say: He who hath ears, let him hear. So, for lack of a better description, let us call this, Neal’s parable of the fire ants.

Your liberty is the person whose skin a fire ant crawls upon. The fire ants themselves are the many laws and taxes imposed upon you by government. The ant colony is government itself. One single law, or tax, is not sufficient enough for you to panic; although it may prove uncomfortable. Yet our rights and liberty are being swarmed, and have been, for generations now by a multitude of laws and taxes that are slowly, but surely, depriving us of the freedom that government is supposed to secure for the governed.

According to some sources, depending upon the health of the victim, anywhere from 80-100 fire ant bites is sufficient to cause death in the victim. The question is, as I’m using fire ants as a parable, how many bites/laws/taxes can liberty endure before dying forever?

We believe that government serves us, and that it is only because what the ‘other’ party is doing that we have so many problems in America today. That hope that we can make things better by voting, is their most powerful tool; aside from the fear they use against us. The truth is, no matter whom we elect, government does what it was designed to do; what Samuel Bryan warned us about over 200 years ago; it serves the wealthy aristocracy; business and banking interests.

Much, if not all of our foreign policy is based upon the dictates/needs of the military industrial complex. The FDA is the partner to the big drug companies who push their poisons upon us. The bankers control our money; devaluing it at will by their constant printing of new currency; without any tangible backing, such as gold or silver. Our news media is owned and operated by these same people, and our schools, therefore what we learn about government, is determined by government itself. Finally, as I mentioned earlier, the Supreme Court gets to decide what powers the government shall be permitted to exercise.

This Covid scandemic is the final wall which will trap us into a cage we cannot escape. What began as 14 days to flatten the curve has been extended now to, take the vaccine or you won’t be able to participate in life itself. Due to Covid, many small businesses have not recovered from the forced lockdowns. I have a website bookmarked that shows a state-by-state breakdown of what percentage of small businesses have not recovered from the lockdowns. California, my home state, has seen 39.1% loss; with those businesses closing their doors forever.

To compound matters, the government has been handing out subsidies to those who have stayed home out of fear over Covid; making it hard for many businesses to find workers to staff their operations. This, in some instances, is leading to backlogs and shortages in the food supply chain; which creates an even bigger dependency upon government services for people’s survival.

It was our fear that caused us to obey these mandates and these lockdowns; and government took full advantage of Rahm Emmanuel’s statement of not letting a good crisis go to waste. If they are successful in forcing the vaccine upon those who do not want it, or depriving them of their ability to shop, attend events, or travel, the final wall of our cage will be erected; and the few stragglers who aren’t inside the cage can easily be dealt with by those who enforce the laws these tyrants impose upon us.

The sad thing about it is, those of us whom they will come after are not just defending our freedom, we’re defending yours too; even though you are too blind and ignorant to see it. Once we’re gone, there will be nothing standing in the way of government doing whatever it wants to you. As Pastor Martin Niemöller said during the reign of the Nazi’s in World War II Germany: First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

The problem with society today is that they believe that people like me are their enemy. That is due to their conditioning at the hands of the state run and operated school systems and media. People such as myself seek to deprive you of nothing that is rightfully yours; we only seek to defend what is rightfully ours. Unfortunately, you have been taught that our rights, our liberty, our income, our property is subject to the will of the majority, and that anyone who seeks to defend those things is an enemy of the state.

Rights, liberty and property are individual qualities; they do not belong to the majority, they belong to the individual, and it is the individuals right to defend them against all attacks: 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, 1772)

What people support and believe today goes against the Law of Nature; that the rights and property of the individual are subject to the will of the majority, enforced by law passed by a government whose purpose is clearly stated in the Declaration of Independence. Yet due to people’s ignorance, and compounded by their unwillingness to stand up to tyrants, government has pushed us to the point where freedom no longer exists in America.

This Covid crisis is the end game; they began by saying that 14 days would flatten the curve and then we could go back to normal. Those 14 days became a year. Now we’re told that we have to take the vaccine and all can return to normal. Normal is a carrot dangling upon a stick; while they are sitting upon the horse and the stick keeps moving further and further down the pathway to tyranny. The only way we can prevent what’s coming is to stop chasing the carrot. That’ won’t undo the damage that has been done, but it will stave off what’s coming if we don’t.

Liberty is ours for the taking; if we only had the courage to reach out for it. We are millions in number, while those who seek to enslave us are few in number. They derive their power by your consent. Take away your consent and they are just men and women with an appetite for power and no ability to impose it upon you.

I do not see the former land of the free surviving this; I truly don’t. There are too many who support this system as it exists today; too many who are willing to give up their freedom for the promises of comfort and security; and we all know what Ben Franklin had to say about that: Those who would surrender essential liberty for a little temporary comfort and security will deserve neither and lose both.

I do know one thing though; once the reality of what is coming finally hits you square in your face, there won’t be anyone left to save you, (see the Martin Niemöller quote). If freedom means anything to you, then you better stand up in its defense NOW; before it’s too late. For, as Edmund Burke once said: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. And, as Etienne de la Boetie wrote in 1576: Let us therefore learn while there is yet time, let us learn to do good. Let us raise our eyes to Heaven for the sake of our honor, for the very love of virtue, or, to speak wisely, for the love and praise of God Almighty, who is the infallible witness of our deeds and the just judge of our faults. As for me, I truly believe I am right, since there is nothing so contrary to a generous and loving God as tyranny — I believe He has reserved, in a separate spot in Hell, some very special punishment for tyrants and their accomplices.

And make no mistake about it, if you do nothing to support and defend liberty, or you actively support those who take it from others, you are an accomplice, and will be treated as such when they come after those who do have the courage to make their final stand.

Once, after a particularly vivid dream, I did a bit of research as to what dreams are; what causes your mind to create such realistic, and often bizarre, images while you sleep. I can’t recall who said it, but in one of the articles I read, the author proposed the premise that a person would go insane if they did not dream every night. I don’t know about that; I’ve often wondered if people don’t go temporarily insane while they sleep; which is what causes them to have such bizarre dreams.

Whatever the case may be, this morning I awoke rather abruptly from a dream I was having, and before the memory of it faded off into the recesses of my mind, I scribbled down a bunch of short notes to help me remember the gist of it later. While the dream has faded, like so much fog on a warm spring day, my notes will help me recreated the gist of what I dreamt. Of course, I’ll have to take a certain amount of creative license with the details, but since it was my dream, I don’t foresee any legal problems with that.

It’s kind of funny that my dream began with me asleep in bed; being awakened by a sea of flashing red and blue lights in front of my house, and an army of law enforcement officers standing around in riot gear with automatic weapons drawn. (This is the dream now, not reality) A few of the officers approached my front door, about a dozen or so, with a battering ram. I knew what that meant and I pondered making a final stand, or just going with the flow to see how it all ended.

I chose the latter option; not because I lacked the courage to go out in a blaze of glory, rather more out of curiosity over how things would play out. So, as they approached my front door, I calmly sat on the couch, turned on the TV, and waited for my door to come crashing off its hinges.

It didn’t take long, and soon I was staring down the barrel of a dozen or so rifles, while the one in front screamed, DON’T MOVE! I was zip tied and escorted outside and placed in the back seat of a police cruiser, while I watched with detached amazement as they went straight for my garage.

I knew what they’d find in there; prepper shit, a gun case with all sorts of rifles, and a heavy-duty tote; packed to the gills with marijuana. (Remember, this is just a dream, so don’t think about breaking into my garage, looking for guns and drugs; you won’t find any and you’ll probably get shot) Apparently, that was what they came for, because the guy who’d screamed for me not to move came back out, read me my rights, and told them to take me to the station and put me into an interrogation room.

Eventually, possibly an hour or two later, (remember, this is dream time, and things happen much faster in dreams), two plains clothed detectives came in and sat down opposite me. They seemed quite polite in comparison to the savagery I’d just witnessed by the jack-booted thugs who’d broken down my door and held me at gunpoint. One of them asked me if I’d been read my rights, and I responded in the affirmative. He then asked if I wanted a lawyer present, to which I responded: That won’t be necessary as I do not intend to answer any of your questions. You may as well book me, lock me away, and prepare your case against me. I’ll be representing myself, and I’ll see y’all in court.

The other guy then chimed in, saying: You do realize the seriousness of the position you find yourself in, don’t you? I said, I most certainly did; the question was, did they. That left them with a puzzled look on their faces, but seeing as how I did not respond to any more of their questions, I was booked and placed into a holding cell to await my arraignment.

(Now this is where dreams can get a bit bizarre. I don’t recall my time in the holding cell, nor my arraignment; that period of time is as if it never existed. The next thing I know I’m in the courtroom and the prosecuting attorney is finishing up his closing argument. Once he finishes, the judge asks me if I have anything to say in my defense; which is where the dream picks up again)

I rise slowly, with a sense of calm, and slowly turn and take in the entire courtroom as if I were searing it into my memory. I then turn to the jury and look each of them in the eyes. Some of them look away, as if they were gazing into the eyes of the devil himself, others look at me to try and see if they can read anything into my expression. Once I have made eye contact with each of them, I begin to speak:

Ladies and gentleman of the jury, everything the prosecution has told you is true. The police did enter into my home and find large quantities of marijuana, rifles, and ammunition. Those items were mine; I won’t deny that fact. Apparently, the possession of those items is against the law; the law I’ve been charged with violating.

I realize that y’all are not allowed to ask questions of me, or the prosecution, but when you begin your deliberations, I would ask that you ask the court to provide you with any records they may have as to past criminal activity on my part. It may come as a surprise to you that, aside from a couple of minor traffic violations, I have led a crime free life; and I believe the charges for which I’m now standing trial are a farce, and a threat to, not only my rights, but each of yours as well.

I would like for each of you to now ask yourself what you consider a crime. I believe that most of you will probably think that murder, assault, theft, and rape are all crimes; and you’re right, they are. I now ask you to think about what it is that constitutes a crime. For a crime to have happened, two things are necessary; a victim and a perpetrator.

According to the law I’m accused of violating, I am the perpetrator. But I ask, where is my victim; who have I killed, harmed, or stolen from? The rifles and the marijuana the police found at my home were mine, as I’ve said; they were for my own personal use. I doubt that he’ll deem to reply, but I would ask the prosecutor to name one crime I have committed with those rifles; other than the mere fact that their possession is considered a crime by the law.

So, I would like to ask you, what is the law; what purpose should it serve? I know this isn’t France, but in 1850 a Frenchman by the name of Frederic Bastiat wrote: 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.

Then of course, there was the esteemed Founding Father, Samuel Adams, who said: 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.

I know that is a lot to remember, and if you wish, I can have copies of those printed out for you to re-read while you deliberate my fate.

Were the rifles I had in my possession hurting anyone? Was the marijuana? If not, then what crime have I committed. Would it not have been within my rights, according to the definition given by Bastiat, to use force to protect my property; and make no mistake about it, those rifles and that marijuana was my property! It did not belong to any of you, did it? It did not belong to the officers who arrested me, or the judge presiding over my case. No, it was mine, and according to those men, would I not have been within my rights to defend them against confiscation; especially considering that they had not been used in the commission of a crime?

I did not do so for the same reason I refused to answer the questions of the detectives who interrogated me after my arrest; I wanted to plead my case to a jury of my peers; for they are not part of the system; a system that no longer serves the function of protecting and defending both the people AND THEIR RIGHTS! I wanted to appeal to your sensibilities rather than give the system valid justification for accusing me of an actual crime by assaulting the officers who uphold the laws this system enacts.

I do not know whether or not any of you have read our Constitution, or the Bill of Rights for that matter. This may come as a shock to you, but I believe the document to be worthless; aside from creating an entity that has ultimately led to me standing here before you, charged with a crime without any victim.

Nevertheless, we are told that each of the 3 branches of our government is delegated with certain powers and specific functions; that there are supposedly checks and balances placed upon each branch so that they cannot infringe upon the powers held by the others. Congress is the branch of government that has been delegated with the power of writing our laws. Of course, the president may either concur or veto them, and the Supreme Court may hold them unconstitutional; yet neither of those two branches can write a law; that power rests solely with the Congress.

The powers given Congress are found in Article 1, Section 8, and they are much fewer than you’d imagine. Nowhere among the powers listed in Article 1, Section 8, does it give Congress, or the Executive for that matter, the authority to make it a crime to own, or use drugs – of any kind.

Are you aware that alcohol is a drug? Are you also aware that it took a Constitutional Amendment to make the sale and transportation of alcoholic beverages illegal? It was the 18th Amendment that did so, which was then codified with the passage of the Volstead Act by Congress. I’m almost certain that you weren’t aware that the Volstead Act was vetoed by President Woodrow Wilson; although his veto was overridden by both houses of Congress; making it the law of the land.

Regardless, it took a Constitutional Amendment to give Congress the authority to make alcohol illegal; and look at the crime wave that happened once they did so. Organized crime, bootleggers, and violence in the streets came about as the result of their effort to prohibit the consumption of alcohol. Eventually, after it became apparent that the people were not going to stop drinking, and in conjunction with the rise in crime, the 21st Amendment was ratified; repealing Prohibition.

No such amendment, criminalizing the possession or use of marijuana, has ever been ratified; therefore, the Congress has no legal authority to make it a crime for me to own, and use the marijuana presented to you as evidence of my guilt.

You may not like the fact that I smoke marijuana, but as long as I bring no harm to others, I am perfectly within my rights to do so. I don’t particularly care for the fact that some people listen to rap music, or eat certain foods; that does not justify me pushing to make it a crime for others to do so. That principle lies at the very foundation of liberty; what this country supposedly stood for…at one point in its history, anyways.

I grow and smoke that marijuana for my own use; it helps me relax and sleep and night, and it helps me appreciate music a bit more. But sir, you say, you were found in possession of over 4 lbs of it! You’re right. Tell me, if you were a rancher and you craved a steak, would you slaughter a cow and throw away the rest of the meat? Yes, I had 4 lbs of it, but that was only because that is how much my plant produced last year. I have no intention of selling it; in fact I probably won’t need to grow it for a great many years; that’s assuming I don’t spend the remainder of my life in prison on the charges that have been brought against me.

As for my guns; well let’s look at what the 2nd Amendment says. The pertinent part reads: … the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Tell me jurors, do you understand the meaning of the word infringe? Infringe means to encroach upon; to limit or restrict. Is not the law I am accused of violating an encroachment upon my right to keep and bear arms?

Now you may be thinking that at the time the 2nd Amendment was written, the weapons I was arrested for possessing were not in use at that period of our history; therefore, they are not covered by the 2nd Amendment. Let me ask you something, do you believe that you have freedom of speech? Do you believe that right includes your right to speak your mind in chat rooms or on the telephone? Why, those implements did not exist at the time the First Amendment was written, so why does your right apply, and mine does not?

The 2nd Amendment does not say what kind of arms I have the right to keep and bear, only that I have that right. Every gun law that tells me what kinds of guns I CANNOT own is an infringement upon that right. In the past the courts have ruled in support of that belief; that is before they were overrun with progressive judges who do not understand, or care, about preserving the rights of the people.

For instance, in 1846 a Georgia court 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.

Then, in 1878, an Arkansas court held: To prohibit a citizen from wearing or carrying a war arm . . . is an unwarranted restriction upon the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of constitutional privilege. If you’ll take note, in this ruling the court held that it was the right of a citizen to carry a war arm; or what you would call today, an assault rifle.

This right, these rights, may not concern you. You may not own guns, or smoke marijuana; and that is your choice – but you’re free to make that choice, while the law says I am not. The problem, and history proves this, is once a government begins to infringe upon the rights of certain people, it eventually gets around to infringing upon, or denying the rights of all the people. If you won’t stand up for my rights now, who will stand up for your rights if they impose mandatory military service, or make it a crime to watch professional sports, or eat certain foods.

In the beginning of my statement, I called these proceedings a farce; and now I’d like to tell you why I said that. If you were to visit the office of the prosecuting attorney, I’m pretty sure they have a room filled with legal volumes. Those books go by the name of American Jurisprudence; the codification/encyclopedia of law in this country. If you were to ask him to show you what it says in 16 Am Jur 2nd Section 177, if he was willing to show you, you would find: Since an unconstitutional law is void, the general principles follow that it imposes no duties, confers no rights, creates no office, bestows no power or authority on anyone, affords no protection and justifies no acts performed under it. No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it.

I believe that the laws I’m guilty of violating are unconstitutional. Therefore, the officers who arrested me acted without authority, and the judge presiding over this case is presiding over a farce; a circus; a travesty of justice. Since 16 American Jurisprudence says that no one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law, I chose to ignore the laws that say I cannot keep 4 lbs of marijuana, or own the weapons found in my possession.

We are told that the Constitution was written to secure our rights. If that is so, then aren’t we the ones who know best when those rights are being violated; not the jack-booted thugs posing as law enforcement officers. During the American Revolution the Redcoats were King George’s law enforcement officers; yet the patriots fought them when their rights were being violated. Hitler had his own law enforcement as well; it went by the name, Gestapo. Putting a uniform and a badge on does not give one unlimited power to enforce any law that our elected representatives enact; they too swear an oath; meaning they are obligated to protect the rights of those they serve, not subjugate them by enforcing laws that are blatantly unconstitutional.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, in 1789, Thomas Jefferson, the author of our Declaration of Independence, wrote: I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution. Why would he say such a thing about the power you now hold in your hands?
The question is simple, and eloquent. As all political power is derived from the people, those who serve as jurors are the final check upon a system that may, or may not, become abusive. You, as jurors, although I’m certain that the judge and prosecuting attorney won’t inform you of this, have the right to nullify a jury…

(At with point in my dream the prosecuting attorney screams, I OBJECT, and the judge bangs his gavel, telling me to go no further or he’ll charge me with contempt)

I stop my oration and face the judge. I then say: Your honor, I hold you, and the system that has placed me in the position where I must defend my rights in a court of law in contempt. No sir, I will not be quiet, it is you sir who must sit the fuck down and shut the hell up!

It is your right, even though I am guilty of doing the things I am accused of doing, things I freely admit to have done, to find me not guilty nonetheless; based upon the fact that you find the law itself repugnant. In 1972 the D.C. Court of Appeals heard the case of U.S. v. Dougherty. In their decision they held: The jury has an unreviewable and irreversible power… to acquit in disregard of the instructions on the law given by the trial judge… The pages of history shine on instances of the jury’s exercise of its prerogative to disregard uncontradicted evidence and instructions of the judge; for example, acquittals under the fugitive slave law.

Although the court held that it is your right to disregard that law I am accused of violating, they also held that the judge, (pointing towards the judge presiding over my case), is under no obligation to inform you of your rights as jurors.

If the tables were turned, and it was one of you standing here fighting to stay out of prison, and I was in the jury box and found out that the prosecution and the judge had not made me aware of my rights as a juror, I would be furious.

I ask you to look deep within your hearts when deliberating my fate. You do not have to like me, or the things I’m accused of doing, but the very basis of liberty is to live and let live. I have done no harm to no one; I have neither assaulted, stolen from, or killed anyone. Therefore, in all fairness, I have committed no crime. I humbly ask that I be allowed to leave this courtroom a free man. I now rest my fate in your hands; and know this, it only takes one juror with the courage to do what’s right to set me free.

Thank you for your time and patience.

(The sad thing is, I woke up before I found out how the jury ruled…) In any case, these are the kinds of dreams I have. So now you have a glimpse into my subconscious; what makes me tick. I hope I haven’t frightened you too badly…

“These wretches have no wealth, no kin, nor wife nor children.
not even life itself that they can call their own.”
~Etienne de la Boetie~
(The Politics of Obedience)

Years ago, I read an article about how we take our vision for granted. In the article the author described how difficult it is to describe things to people who had been born blind. As an example, he talked about how hard it would be to describe something as simple as a cloud to someone who had never seen one. Imagine how difficult it would be to explain a cloud to someone who had never experienced color; only darkness.

For some reason, that article stuck in the back of my mind somewhere; until a day or two ago when I began to think about how it correlates with how I feel sometimes when I try to explain rightful liberty to people. It has been my experience that most people cannot grasp the concept of rightful liberty; possibly due to the fact that they’ve never experienced it.

In his book, The Politics of Obedience, Etienne de la Boetie writes: One never pines for what he has never known; longing comes only after enjoyment and constitutes, amidst the experience of sorrow, the memory of past joy. It is truly the nature of man to be free and to wish to be so, yet his character is such that he instinctively follows the tendencies that his training gives him. A few paragraphs later, he writes: There are always a few, better endowed than others, who feel the weight of the yoke and cannot restrain themselves from attempting to shake it off … These are the ones who, having good minds of their own, have further trained them by study and learning. Even if liberty had entirely perished from the earth, such men would invent it. For them, slavery has no satisfactions, no matter how well disguised.

How would you react if I were to tell you that the purpose of government is not to create jobs or provide you with anything; the purpose of government is to secure your rights and liberty against attack from others? I think the very thought of a government like that scares the hell out of most people; they cannot conceive of having to accept complete and total responsibility for all their wants and needs. Yet I could prove that statement; if only people would forget about what they’d been taught and open their minds to the truth.

I’ve heard it said that the Independence Day holiday celebrates the birth of America. If that be the case, then an argument could be made that the Declaration of Independence is America’s birth certificate. Yet that document does not establish any system of government; it merely outlines the principles they believed were ‘self-evident’, and the reasons why they felt it necessary to sever the political bands that had tied them to Great Britain. Those beliefs are found in the following passage from the Declaration of Independence:

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 whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Does that passage say anything at all about creating jobs, stimulating the economy, providing you with benefits or subsidies, or funding any of the other programs people today take for granted as part of the function of government? If so, I’d like for you to explain where exactly it says so.

Thomas Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, and when he was elected to the presidency in 1800 he delivered an inaugural address in which he said: Still one thing more, fellow-citizens — a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

Would you vote for a candidate for president who made such a comment?

James Madison, also known as the Father of our Constitution, followed Jefferson as president. While serving in the House of Representatives, Madison argued against passage of a subsidy bill for Cod Fisheries, stating: If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, everything, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress… Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America. (February 3, 1792)

Both those men played significant roles in the drafting of two of our country’s most important documents; the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Therefore, if anyone understood the intent of those documents, it would be them.

So, do what either of them said conform to your beliefs as to the function of government? If not, then may I ask you to kindly reconsider your beliefs, because you’re reciting what you’ve been taught in school, or heard on the news; not what those who established this country believed.

I know this will seem like I’m backtracking somewhat, but I feel it is important that I discuss this so that you’ll get a better understanding of what the Declaration of Independence means. The history of our Declaration of Independence is fascinating; at least it is to me.

First of all, the Declaration of Independence was not the actual resolution presented to the Continental Congress seeking to sever the bands that tied them to England; it was the Lee Resolution, presented by Richard Henry Lee that did that. The Lee Resolution was presented on June 7, 1776, and came in three parts. It was the first of them though that discussed independence: Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

As the delegates to the 2nd Continental Congress were acting on behalf of their respective Colonies, they had not been given the authority to vote in support of such a measure; which is why nearly a month passed before they voted to support it. During that time, it was suggested that a committee be formed to draft a more formal declaration, should the vote upon Lee’s resolution be in the affirmative. That motion was approved, and Thomas Jefferson was tasked with drafting that formal document. When Jefferson asked why him, John Adams replied: Reason first—You are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second—I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third—You can write ten times better than I can.

I love to write, there’s no denying that. Yet I don’t know if I would want to be shouldered with the responsibility of writing a document of such importance; as Jefferson was when he was asked to write a document that would change the course of his country’s history. Regardless, aside from the speeches of Patrick Henry, I think Jefferson’s prose in the Declaration of Independence rates among the most eloquent things I’ve ever read.

While the wording of the Declaration of Independence was, for the most part, Jefferson’s, the ideas expressed in it came from a multitude of sources. Jefferson was an avid reader, and one of the books that influenced him was Locke’s Second Treatise. I’ve often wondered why Jefferson did not paraphrase Locke when referring to our rights – Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Locke always referred to Life, Liberty and Property; so, it surprised me when Jefferson traded property for the pursuit of Happiness.

I’ve heard it said that Jefferson derived his inspiration from George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, which states: That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

Yet, even Mason included acquiring and possessing property in his Declaration of Rights; so why Jefferson left property out remains a mystery. I have heard that he chose not to include ‘possessing property’ in his wording due to the fact that he opposed slavery, and slaves were treated as property; but that’s something I’ve been unable to disprove or confirm.

Yet four years before Jefferson was tasked with writing our country’s most important document, Samuel Adams wrote: 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.

Therefore, regardless of whether or not Jefferson chose to include property in his list of rights, the fact that it was considered a right is well established by other Founders. Even after the Constitution had been written and ratified, James Madison would state: It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.

So far, none of the passages I’ve presented refer to any kind of benefits or subsidies to aid the people in their ‘pursuit of happiness’; merely that it is the function of government to protect our rights from infringement. The problem is, whenever there is a system that gives men the power to enact law, it will attract those who seek control and dominion over those the system governs; it is a historically proven fact that this is the case. To think that our system was created so perfectly that this could not happen shows how naïve and gullible people can be.

For most of my adult life I have watched as your government, (I no longer claim it as my own), has grown more powerful, and in the process of gaining that power I have watched as my rights have increasingly come under attack. I have watched with both horror and a growing sense of anger as the public has supported measures that deprive me of my unalienable rights and liberty.

I don’t know whether people do not know the meaning of the words inherent and unalienable, or if they don’t care, but nonetheless they mean that my rights are mine, and that nobody; not the public sentiment, not a gaggle of politicians, or nine black robed bandits calling themselves Justices, can infringe upon them!

In 1792 James Madison wrote an essay discussing property; defining it as: that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual. However, it is something else that Madison included among the things a man can call his ‘property’ that I would like to draw your attention to: He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.

In his Second Treatise, Locke speaks frequently about the state of nature; which is: a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man. That sounds strikingly similar to what Jefferson would write over 100 years later: Liberty then I would say that, in the whole plenitude of it’s extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will: but rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’; because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.

So, if liberty means that ability of an individual to dispose of their person and their possessions according to their will, without being dependent upon the will of others, then how in God’s name can you justify denying a person the right to hold down a job, allow them entry into a business, or the ability to travel, unless they first submit to having something put into their body against their will?

If we cannot call our bodies our own, then we must accept the fact that we are slaves; for what is slavery but one person owning another in all regards? I do not care that the Supreme Court has held that it is permissible for government to mandate mass vaccination; they are part of the government, and the government is supposed to secure liberty, not annihilate it! I don’t care if a business requires the vaccine because the government says it is necessary; they should be more concerned with defending the liberty of their employees than they are upholding the mandate of some tyrant!

But Neal, Covid is a serious threat. You think Covid is a threat? You ought to start asking yourself what life will be like when the government gains complete and total control over your body. It is your fear, combined with your ignorance regarding the function of government, that allows government to grow, while your rights and liberty diminish; and I, for one, have had about all I can stand of it!

Our Founders spoke often about those who would give up their rights, or liberty, for the promises of comfort and security. Here are a few of their thoughts:

– I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Jan 30, 1787

-Those who would surrender essential liberty for a little temporary comfort and security will deserve neither and lose both. Ben Franklin

-If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

And finally, one of my favorites, from Thomas Paine: When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.

I don’t care what you think if you cannot support your opinion with historical fact; and I’m talking about history from the period that saw America become and independent country, not what some ass clown president said two days ago. If you want to live in chains, cower in fear over every real, and imagined crisis, be my guest – just don’t ask me to join you.

As I said, I have watched with growing horror, and anger, as my rights and liberty have come under attack over and over again by the entity created to secure them. I have also grown weary of trying to open the eyes of people who, quite honestly, aren’t fit to call themselves my countrymen.

There are some who are as angry over this whole vaccine mandate thing as I am. The problem is, they see this as an isolated incident, while I see it as another in a long train of abuses designed to reduce us under absolute despotism. Hopefully these people will see government for what it is supposed to be, not what it has become. The question is; will it be too little, too late; is the damage that has been done to our rights and liberty irrevocable, or is there still a chance that we can regain what we have allowed to be taken from us?

Only time will tell. Just know this; as Popeye used to say: I’ve had all that I can stands, and I can’t stands no more.

When I was young, you used to be able to buy firecrackers at any fireworks stand. That was before some busybody politicians decided to make them safe and sane; taking the fun out of fireworks entirely if you ask me. Although I never counted how many firecrackers I had set off, I’d venture to guess that the number was in the thousands. After all, what young boy doesn’t like things that go BANG? And, I’m pretty sure that I was not alone when I decided to cut into one of them to see what was inside; what made it go BANG when you lit it.

There is not much powder inside a firecracker; so, what causes them to explode with such force when you light one of them? The explanation is simple, and can be explained in one word – pressure. If you were to take that small amount of powder and place it on the ground, then light it, it would fizzle away without any explosion at all. However, if you take that same amount of powder and wrap it tightly in paper, the gas created by the lit power builds up until it becomes enough to overcome the pressure placed upon it by the wrapping; resulting in that satisfying BANG.

You may not realize it, but pressure is all around us. It is the pressure created by your beating heart that causes the blood to flow through your veins. When you get into your automobile, it is the pressure created by exploding gasoline, or diesel, that is transformed into energy; propelling your vehicle down the road. When you heat water for your coffee it is the heated water overcoming atmospheric pressure that causes the water to boil; which is why if you enclose that water in a pressure cooker you can heat it to a much higher temperature; allowing you to cook food much faster.

As you can see, pressure can be useful, however, it can also be destructive. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are both examples of how pressure can bring about disastrous results. Yet there is another kind of pressure can also be harmful; that being the kind that is produced by anger and stress.

People deal with the pressures of life in different ways. Some find hobbies that take their minds of the stress of day to day living; such as gardening. Others find relief through the use of mind-altering substances; such as alcohol or drugs. Then there are those who relieve the pressure of life by going to the gym; lifting weights or punching it out of their system on a heavy bag. The point is, life induces a certain amount of emotional pressure upon us, and if we don’t find a way of relieving it, we snap; often violently.

My concern is that, sometimes people have no means of escaping the source of their pressure, or a means of relieving the stress it causes them. For instance, when one enlists in the military, they become government property; that their ass belongs to Uncle Sam 24/7. When I was making my way through basic training, I saw a full-grown man begin weeping like a baby when our Drill Instructor told him he was so stupid he couldn’t lace his shoes properly.

My wife and I are polar opposites in regards to how we handle certain types of pressure. My wife blows her top frequently; lashing out at any, and all, around her. However, she quickly recovers and goes back to being her cheerful self. I, on the other hand, hold things in until I explode; which from what I hear, is not healthy. While I was stationed in Spain I had one of my blowups; when the pressure inside me could no longer be contained and I snapped. When I finally blew, my supervisor sent my friend, (who happened to be a 4th degree black belt), to try to calm me down. My friend later told me that he’d never felt fear for his life until he saw the look in my eyes that day.

The point I’m getting at is, pressure exists, and each of us deal with it differently. The reason I bring pressure up is because there are times when government is the cause of pressure, or stress, and when it reaches a boiling point, violent change occurs. For cryin’ out loud, the American Revolution was one such example; if you’d just put your mind to use and think about it!

Read, and I mean think about what the words say when you read them, what the Declaration of Independence says: But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Isn’t that what I have been describing; a long train of abuses that create a form of pressure that needs to be relieved? Do you think the signers of the Declaration of Independence wanted a war; that they wanted to kill others to achieve their goal of having a country they could call their own? I could be wrong, but I think they would have preferred that the British government would recognize the legitimacy of their claim and let them become independent without having to resort to violence to obtain it. Yet they were also willing to resort to arms, or give up their lives, in defense of their cause.

Years later, in arguing against religious assessments, James Madison wrote: Because it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. Thinking back to how I described how my wife and I deal with pressure differently; I would think that Madison’s words are more along the line of how my wife deals with pressure; she reacts to each instance immediately; while I let things build up until I erupt.

I don’t know how people, acting individually, react to pressure; I do know that from where I sit, it seems that many allow their government to get away with doing things they don’t like; hoping that the next election can bring them some form of relief. While that may provide some temporary relief, the source of their stress – government – still exists; meaning that whatever temporary relief they may feel they’ve obtained is based upon which political party holds power.

Unfortunately, there is a flaw in that way of thinking. What typically happens is that, from people’s perspective, things stop getting worse; but they don’t get any better either. Although it may happen, typically whatever laws the other party passed, the ones you disliked so much, never go away; they remain in place. What that means is that the stress caused by those laws also remains; building and building until eventually it will reach a breaking point.

Maybe a few quick examples will aid in showing you what I mean by that. The Affordable Care Act was singed into law during the presidency of Barack Obama. Did Donald Trump repeal it? No, so it is still there; festering away and violating our right to choose for ourselves whether or not to purchase health insurance. Then there are the laws enacted following 9/11; the Patriot Act, the establishment of the Dept. of Homeland Security, the increased surveillance of the American people. Has any President, or Congress, repealed any of those laws; curtailed any of the right and liberty infringing programs they established?

Of course not. So, these could be considered a long train of abuses; could they not? Thomas Jefferson once wrote: Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (administrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery. Can you not see that we have been sitting idly by while a ‘series of oppressions’ have been forced upon us; that these oppressions have but one goal in mind; to reduce us to slavery?

In the film V for Vendetta, there is a scene where the character V addresses the people of London via their televisions. In his address he states: I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you… Yet if we, the people alive today, were of the same mold as our ancestors were, we would not let fear deprive us of our rights and liberty. At Jefferson liked to say: I prefer dangerous liberty to peaceful slavery. Hell, the state motto of New Hampshire is: Life free or die. Then of course, there was Patrick Henry, who said: Give me liberty or give me death.

What happened to this country where people of such character have become an endangered species; where they are insulted by the majority; who prefer peaceful servitude over the animating contest for liberty?

Part of the problem is that nobody alive today has ever really experienced rightful liberty; they were born into a world where almost every aspect of their existence has some rule, or law, governing it. Another part of the problem is that the government run schools do not teach our children what rightful liberty is; that it is the duty of each individual to resist invasions upon it. Then there is this; the fact that people have lost the desire to be self-sufficient; they have become dependent upon the benefits and services government provides them. When that happens, people are highly unlikely to resist the authority of government in other aspects of their lives when it might threaten them with the loss of their benefits; the old, you don’t bite the hand that feeds you conundrum.

When you combine all three of the above, you have the perfect recipe for the enslavement of an entire country by its system of government. For years I wondered why it was that there were some who saw what was happening, while so many others could not. Then I was introduced to a book by a friend of mine; The Politics of Obedience, by Etienne de la Boetie. In that book I found a partial answer: There are always a few, better endowed than others, who feel the weight of the yoke and cannot restrain themselves from attempting to shake it off: these are the men who never become tamed under subjection and who always — like Ulysses on land and sea, constantly seeking the smoke of his chimney — cannot prevent themselves from peering about for their natural privileges and from remembering their ancestors and their former ways. These are in fact the men who, possessed of clear minds and far-sighted spirit, are not satisfied, like the brutish mass, to see only what is at their feet, but rather look about them, behind and before, and even recall the things of the past in order to judge those of the future, and compare both with their present condition.

These are the ones who, having good minds of their own, have further trained them by study and learning. Even if liberty had entirely perished from the earth, such men would invent it. For them, slavery has no satisfactions, no matter how well disguised.

What I find truly interesting, or saddening, depending upon how you look at it, is how little people understand their system of government. Take for example the presidential elections; people get all excited about who will become the next president; yet the president has very few actual powers; or at least they are supposed to have very few powers. It is Congress that makes the laws; the president can only reject them, or sign them; making sure they are faithfully executed.

Since people get so worked up over presidential elections, I’m assuming they think that the Executive Branch is the most powerful of the 3 branches. In my opinion, the Judicial Branch is the most powerful. While the Supreme Court, and all the inferior courts, do not wield any direct power over you, they do get to decide what the law means, or even the extent of governments power.

As the Judicial Branch is ‘part’ of the government created by the Constitution, isn’t giving that branch the authority to determine the powers held by the other branches similar to letting the fox guard the henhouse? In 1823 Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter expressing his fear over the powers given the Judiciary: At the establishment of our Constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions nevertheless become law by precedent, sapping by little and little the foundations of the Constitution and working its change by construction before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life if secured against all liability to account.

If government, any government, truly derives its authority from the consent of the governed, it should be the right of the governed to decide which laws the government enacts are constitutional, and which aren’t; not a branch of that government, as is the case with the Supreme Court. When they hand down one of their decisions, it is final; as if it were written in stone by the hand of God himself.

Let me ask you something. If the Justices on the Supreme Court are unbiased and impartial, why is there such a fuss as to whether replacements are chosen by a Republican President or a President who is a Democrat? It shouldn’t make any difference if they are unbiased, should it? Let me ask you another question. Do you know that, over the course of its history, the Supreme Court has overturned its own decisions over 200 times? Aside from the times they have done so due to an amendment to the Constitution, that begs the question as to which of their rulings was constitutional; the original ruling, or the ruling that overturned it? Could it possibly be neither; that both rulings were based upon the existing sentiments of either the Justices, or the American people?

Why do I bring this up when I began by talking about pressure? Well, I believe that we are at a point in our country’s history where people are going to have to choose, as Washington told his men before the Battle of New York: …whether Americans are to be free men or slaves. Due to our, (and I’m speaking in general terms), refusal to stand up to the increasing tyranny of our government, we are now at a point where almost all of our rights have been severely curtailed, and liberty is all but non-existent.

Yet for all of that, we could still go to work, (if we chose work over government subsidies), and we could still travel, go shopping, and attend events for our entertainment. Covid, and how governments have responded to it, changed all that; our very right to exist is now being threatened by the laws and mandates coming from government. We are at a point where, if we do not stand up for our liberty now, we will lose whatever vestige of freedom we may have had. If you can’t work without taking the vaccine, if you can’t go shopping without providing proof you’re vaccinated, if you cannot access your money without a vaccine passport, (something I think is on the way), then you are not free – YOU’RE A SLAVE!

Yet people think this is all something new; something that has happened due to Covid. While the extreme measures undertaken by government in response to Covid is new, the groundwork for it was laid nearly a century ago – you guessed it, by the Supreme Court!

In 1902 Massachusetts was one of 11 States that had mandatory vaccination laws. So, when an outbreak of Smallpox occurred, Massachusetts required that everyone be vaccinated for it, or pay a $5 fine. A Massachusetts pastor by the name of Henning Jacobson refused to take it, and his case ended up being heard by the Supreme Court. In their decision, the court held: …the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand.

I do not know how many of my readers are familiar with the legal term precedent, so I’d like to take a moment to discuss what a precedent is. Basically, a precedent is an act that can be used as an example to justify other things later on down the line. Therefore, you might say, since the Court held that mandatory vaccinations were not a violation of our rights and liberty in 1905, they aren’t now. If only we could pay a $5 fine to avoid them; but precedents are much worse than that; they also act as building blocks for further enlargements of the power held by our government.

Allow me now to introduce you to the case of Buck v. Bell, 1927. Before I go into the specifics of the case, let me share with you a part of the Court’s decision. In their ruling they cited Jacobson v Massachusetts as a ‘precedent’, stating: The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. Now to the specifics of the case.

Buck v Bell was a case in which the Supreme Court upheld the right of the government to forcefully sterilize anyone it deemed unfit, or feeble. Included in their definition of unfit were those we might call learning disabled, or mentally retarded, as well as those suffering from epilepsy. All the state, meaning government, had to do is declare you to be unfit, and they could sterilize you; deprive you of your right to have children.

If they could do that back in 1927, then what makes you thing that something like that, or far worse, could not happen today; perhaps to those of us who choose to resist being forced into taking the Covid vaccine. Could we not be deemed unfit, or dangers to society, and have our remaining freedom stripped away from us because the general public feared people who had the courage to be free; to resist laws that violated their rights and liberty?

I may not think you are making the wisest decision in the world if you choose to take the vaccine, but I don’t care if you do or if you don’t; it’s your body, your choice. Just don’t force me to do it due to your fear! When you threaten me with the deprivation of my ability to work, or to go to the store and buy the essentials necessary for survival; or worse, have me locked away in a Covid quarantine camp, you’ve crossed the line, and that pressure I was talking about earlier; well, you’re going to find out what happens when I explode.

If I might add something, specifically targeting my Republican friends, if you think this is all Biden’s fault, you’re wrong. It was the Republican President, George W. Bush who signed the PREP Act into law. The PREP Act authorizes the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to issue a declaration; this declaration does many things. For one, it provides immunity to vaccine manufacturers for any side effects caused by their vaccines; you can’t sue them if you get really sick, or die from it!

Remember, that was signed into law by a REPUBLICAN president. It was Donald Trump that gave us Operation Warp Speed, saying he would use the military to distribute this vaccine. That wasn’t Biden, it was Trump, who also stated: When somebody is president of the United States, that authority is total. And that’s the way it’s got to be. The governors know this. It’s total, it’s total. (April 13, 2020) Seems more like the words of a dictator, not a president limited in his authority by a constitution.

So, my Republican friends, do not blame this crisis we find ourselves in upon Biden. While he certainly isn’t alleviating things, he is no worse or better than anyone who came before him. Furthermore, he is only utilizing the system, and the precedents it has established, to do what government ALWAYS does; expand its own power while depriving us of more of our freedom. Biden just happens to be the one in power while we face the most serious threat to our freedom we’ve ever known.

I think this country is at a tipping point; a point where we have reached critical mass. I think that if they really push this thing to the inevitable end, they are going to experience a backlash the likes of which this country has not seen since the Civil War. Only this time it won’t be North vs South, it will be neighbor vs neighbor; as people all across the country fight those they used to work, and be friends with, over whether or not they will live as free men, or die trying.

Of course, all that could be avoided if people would BACK THE FUCK OFF – RIGHT NOW! I don’t see that happening though; people have been apathetic and complacent for far too long, and those in power have grown confident; cocky even. They think we no longer haver the spirit our ancestors had in 1776; the spirit to stand up to tyrants.

Believe me when I say this, if they keep pushing, they’re going to find out how seriously mistaken they were…

I’ll never hear your answers, but what do you consider to be your primary duties, or obligations as an American? Unless people deem to respond, I can only guess as to how they might answer that question, but I’m betting some will say; obey the law, pay their taxes, vote, or support the government, the troops, or law enforcement; you know, the typical answers you get from a thoroughly indoctrinated, dyed in the wool statist.

Since I’m asking questions, allow me to ask one more. I know people probably have a favorite person from the Founding Era, but could they name 3 key figures from that era; people who played extremely important roles in the events that transpired? I would have to say that they were, Patrick Henry; who gave us the immortal words, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Next would be Thomas Jefferson, who gave us the Declaration of Independence. Then there would be James Madison, whose efforts culminated in the drafting of the Constitution.

You might have others, but I chose those 3 specifically; aside from the fact that they all played pivotal roles in the Founding Era. Each of those 3 men, although they may have worded it differently, all described your role as a citizen. Allow me to present what they said to you; in order of appearance of course.

First, here is what Patrick Henry said: Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force: Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.

Next, we have the words of Thomas Jefferson: The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.

Rounding things up, the thoughts of James Madison: Because it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entagled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. (My emphasis)

There you have it, 3 key figures from the Founding Era, and they are all telling you what? They are telling you that it is your duty to guard with jealous attention the public liberty; that it is your duty to resist government; that it is your duty to take alarm at experiments upon your liberty. Not a one of them said, “Gee, maybe we better vote these people out of office and vote some better ones in to replace them with.” They said resist, and Patrick Henry went so far as to say that nothing could preserve our liberty but force against those who try to take it from us.

There is a saying that states: Actions speak louder than words. Those from our Founding Era were eloquent, and some were quite prolific; there is no denying that. However, they were also men of action when action was called for. They dumped the East India Company’s tea into Boston Harbor, they destroyed the offices of tax collectors; while tarring and feathering others, and they chased the governor of Massachusetts out of his home, then proceeded to loot and ransack it…not to mention the fact that they turned their weapons upon law enforcement at Lexington and Concord.

Do they sound like the kind of law-abiding citizens that you believe it is your duty to be? It is a sad testimony as to how far this country has fallen, that if I and my friends were to do any of the things the Son’s of Liberty did, you’d call us domestic terrorists. Hell, if Samuel Adams were alive today, and he and his friends did any of the things they did during the Revolutionary Era, you would call them domestic terrorists!

I can understand why people would say obeying the law is their duty; it keeps the peace and maintains order in society. However, did you know that Thomas Jefferson also said: Law is often but the tyrants will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. The purpose of the law is to better secure our rights, and when those in power, use that power to pervert that function, it becomes our duty to resist! End of story, no further questions…

How many of you have heard of 10 USC, Section 892, Article 92? That particular section of the United States Code deals with dereliction of duty; a criminal offense punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The penalty for dereliction of duty can range from a simple reprimand on your record to forfeiture of all pay and allowances, to dishonorable discharge, to confinement for up to two years; including all the aforementioned penalties.

Have you ever asked yourself what the duty of the military is; I mean its primary function? I’ll bet that a bunch of you immediately thought…defend the country against its enemies. Close, but no; wrong answer. All one has to do is read the oath of enlistment a soldier, sailor, airman, marine takes to see what exactly their duty is: I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Now I could be reading things into this that aren’t actually there, but to me that sounds like their DUTY is to the Constitution, not the country. Their DUTY is to defend the entity created by that Constitution; the government. Their DUTY is to obey the orders of the head of that government; the President; and that failure to do that DUTY is punishable under the UCMJ.

I believe it was in the film World War Z, starring Brad Pitt, but in one apocalyptic movie, during a disaster, they show the key figures from our government being evacuated first, along with key documents; such as the Constitution. The people, as I recall, were left on their own to fend for themselves. Come to think of it, similar scenes play out in almost every movie that talks about an end of the world scenario; get the important members of government to safety, while leaving the people to deal with whatever is coming. I don’t know if they are providing you with clues to their game plan should the shit ever hit the fan, or if they are conditioning you into believing that their lives are more important than yours. If it is the latter; whatever happened to ‘all men are created equal?’

As some of y’all know, I served in the military; 3 enlistments in fact. Every year the Air Force told us that we had to go to the hospital and get our flu shots. I think I took it twice, maybe three times; times there was no way of getting out of it. Each time I took it, I got sick as a dog. Each year I avoided it I did not get so much as a runny nose.

All that time I served, wore the uniform of a U.S. serviceman, I thought I was defending freedom, only to find out I was serving tyrants who were intent upon depriving me, and my countrymen of the freedom I thought I had been defending. So, in a way, I feel kind of good about the fact that, even back then, I had a little bit of rebel blood in me; that I exercised my spirit of resistance every flu season.

Are you aware that the Pentagon released a directive stating that all U.S. fighting forces MUST be vaccinated for Covid, or face disciplinary action? According to Pentagon sources, upwards of 70% of the military have been vaccinated at this point, and that there still remain a few who are hesitant about, or flat out resisting taking the vaccine.

There are those who say that once you enlist in the military, your ass belongs to the government for the duration of your enlistment; and sometimes beyond. I used to think like that – back when I was a stupid fuck; and yes, for most of my life I WAS a stupid fuck! Now I believe, with every ounce of my being, that my rights, my liberty, my BODY, belongs to me; that there is not a law written by man that can make me do anything that deprives me of those rights, or forces me to put anything into my body I don’t want put into it; including their mandatory vaccine!

I know for a fact that if I were still on active duty, I’d be facing disciplinary action; for I would not allow them to inject that vaccine into me. There is a movie, some of you may have seen it, called Hacksaw Ridge. The movie centers around one Desmond Doss, a deeply religious individual who wants to serve in the armed forces, but refuses to carry a firearm; for Doss is a conscientious objector. During the film, Doss finds himself facing a choice; does he surrender his beliefs and submit to the Army’s demand that he carry a weapon, or does he stand for his beliefs. Luckily, Doss is saved by a letter stating that his right to go into combat without a weapon is protected by the Constitution. Doss then goes on to win the Congressional Medal of Honor by saving 75 men as an Army Medic during the invasion of Okinawa.

I derive a great deal of inspiration from that film; for unlike Saving Private Ryan, Hacksaw Ridge is based upon real life people and true events. I didn’t bring it up though to talk about what inspires me, or rave about how great the film was. The reason I bring it up is because I was wondering what percentage of those 70% who’ve already been vaccinated sacrificed/surrendered their beliefs to avoid facing disciplinary action? I’ll never know, and neither will you for that matter; yet it is a question I’ve been pondering for a few days now.

Let’s, for the sake of argument, say that I was still in the military, and my commander told me that I had to go to the hospital to take the Covid vaccine. Would I have the courage of a Desmond Doss and stand for what I believed in? I can’t be certain, but I think that I probably would; for on two separate instances I received letters of reprimand due to the fact that I did not go get my flu shot.

You see, I would just be one guy, disobeying orders to go take the Covid vaccine. Now, for the sake of continuing this train of thought, let’s say a few hundred flat out refused to take the Covid vaccine. With a total of around 1.3 million active-duty servicemen; not including reservists, a few hundred people refusing to take the vaccine would barely cause a hiccup. Let’s say a few thousand, or a hundred thousand refused to take it. If that were to happen, the military might begin to get concerned; it would be hard for them to perform as expected if they had to lock a hundred thousand active-duty service members in the brig; wouldn’t you think?

What if every single active-duty servicemen put down their guns, refused to report for duty, and stayed at home, or in the barracks, until the Pentagon rescinded the order that they take the vaccine? Imagine the panic among the Joint Chiefs if the military just stopped – dead in its tracks – all because those doing the work and the dying refused to take the Covid vaccine.

Honestly, if that were to happen, I think my heart couldn’t take it; it would burst in my chest out of sheer joy. At the minimum, I’d stand upon my roof and repeat the words of Samuel Adams: What a glorious day for America. You see, if that had happened, instead of 70% caving and taking the vaccine, it would have shown me that the spirit of resistance spoken of by our Founders was still alive and well. Sadly, that isn’t what happened.

Yet still, my fictional scenario gives you a glimpse into what could happen if enough people rose up and said: NO MORE. WE WILL NO LONGER COMPLY WITH THIS BULLSHIT! If one person did it, they could arrest them, or gun them down if they resist. If a hundred people were to do it, they could do the same. But if hundreds of thousands, or millions even, began saying one simple word, NO, they’d go into an apoplectic fit.

They derive their power through your consent; it’s that simple. You stop consenting and they lose their power. Think about it; if you were to take this government and transport it to an isolated tropical island, who could they exercise their authority upon? They need people to govern, and so long as YOU obey, they retain their power. If you stop obeying, at least those laws that violate your rights and liberty, then what could they do to punish 328 million people?

The simple fact is, they need us far more than we need them; and this becomes even truer the closer one gets to becoming totally self-reliant for all their wants and needs. The less we depend upon them for anything, the easier it becomes to say no to them; and vice versa; the more we depend upon them, the harder it becomes to say no to them.

Just remember, it is your duty to say no when the laws they enact violate your rights, or infringe upon your liberty. Our rights do not come from government; they come from our Creator. I cannot believe that such a precious gift would not come with a sacred obligation to defend it against any, and all who would try to take it from us.

There may not be a tribunal on earth to prosecute us for neglecting our duty, but we will be held accountable for our actions during our lives when we stand before our Creator. Every one of Christ’s disciples gave up their lives standing up for what they believed in. They will be rewarded for remaining loyal and true to their beliefs.

Can the same be said of you? The time is drawing near where you will be faced with making a decision. I see a time, not far off in the future, where you will be told that if you do not take the vaccine, you will not be able to shop for food, obtain medical services, or even access and spend the money you earn.

We could avoid that before it happens if we all stood together and said NO MORE, right now; but I don’t see it happening. The question you must, therefore, ask yourself is; when that time comes, when they leave you with that choice, will you have the courage to stand up and say: Give me liberty or give me death.

All I know is, if you answered yes, I’ll see you on the battle lines…

Governor Newsom,

I hope that by the time you get this you will have become plain old Mr. Newsom, not Governor Newsom. I would prefer that you become inmate Newsom; as your management of this state has not only been reprehensible, it has been treasonable against the people of California.

I was born in this state sixty-three years ago, and over the course of those sixty-three years I have watched this state go from one of the best in the country, to the laughingstock of the country. All that is due to the ridiculous laws coming out of Sacramento. You are certainly not to blame for all of them, but you have put the welfare of others over those who work; and pay your salary I might add.

For instance, back in July you issued an invitation for all the world’s homeless to come to this state to, how did you put it, enjoy the California Dream? What kind of nonsense is that? We have enough of a homeless problem and you invite them from around the world to come live here? Then of course there was your idea of setting the homeless up in free housing during the initial outbreak of Covid; while people who actually held down jobs and paid rent were struggling to make ends meet; largely in part to the high cost of living and the crippling taxes this state imposes upon its citizens.

Over the past week or so the number of advertisements on the television regarding this recall election has intensified, with many promoting the idea that it is a Trump based recall. No, sir, it isn’t. This recall is due to the fact that you have, and the other scumbags in the Legislature, have run this state into the ground. However, since you’re the top dog, the big cheese, the head honcho, the buck stops with you; and you’ve got to go!

I would like to thank you for one thing though; forcing me to break a vow I made in 2001; to never vote in an election again. After I had voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 Presidential Election, then saw what his administration did to my rights and liberty after 9/11, I came to the conclusion that the Republicans stunk just as bad as the Democrats, and I decided that I would never again vote to elect anyone to office. I may vote to try and defeat ballot or bond measures, but as far as choosing which tyrant will lord over me…I WAS DONE WITH PUTTING MY TRUST IN THE ELECTION PROCESS.

You sir have forced me to break that vow. While I did not choose who your replacement might be, I did cast a vote to recall you. Here are a few of the reasons I did so, and just to let you know, I did not vote for, neither did I support Donald Trump; my decision to vote for your recall was based solely upon how poorly you have managed this state.

Unlike many of my fellow Californians, my memory extends beyond what I had for breakfast this morning, so I remember how, back in 2019, you boasted of our record budget surplus; what your plans were. Where has that surplus gone? In just two short years your management of this state has seen us go from having a record surplus to a deficit. Of course, you cut some programs, and raised a few taxes to diminish the damage done; nevertheless, your policies have cost us much and given us very little in return.

Then there is the treasonable way in which our water storage facilities have been managed. That water belongs to the people of California, entrusted to you for our use. I do not know whether this is true, but I was told by some folks at a local bait and tackle shop that when our lakes and reservoirs are full, they hold a 5-year supply of water in case of drought. In March of 2019 Lake Oroville sat at 801 ft, with a projected inflow that would raise it to 830 ft by March 10. Now it is a mud puddle!

It is not just Lake Oroville either; all our lakes and reservoirs are sitting at dangerously low levels. Where has all OUR water gone? Either you, or the California Department of Water Resources, are inept, or you have done as I’ve heard rumors; sold our water off to others to fund programs in this state; selling off our future and our ability to grow the crops that are the backbone of our economy, while providing families the water they need to survive.

That right there, sir, is my biggest complaint against you; it is not only ineffective management, it is criminal, and you should be made to pay for it! Unfortunately, there’s more…

Your handling of this Covid scandemic was deplorable. While things have loosened up a bit, California’s economy has still not recovered, (and never will), from the steps you took to slow the spread of Covid. I personally know dozens of people who either lost their jobs permanently, or whose businesses have gone under because of the shutdowns you imposed upon the people of this state.

I was fortunate enough to be at the age where I could apply for retirement; having reached 62 years of age when the mask mandate was rolled out. Although I took a substantial cut in what I could have earned had I retired at 65, I jumped at the chance to retire early; BECAUSE I REFUSE TO WEAR A STUPID DAMNED FACE MASK FOR A VIRUS THAT KILLS LESS THAN 1% OF THOSE IT INFECTS!

Since retiring I have not curtailed my lifestyle; I still go shopping, and to the home improvement stores to purchase materials for projects around the house – NEVER WEARING A MASK. Yet I have not even gotten a sniffle; although I’ve certainly come into contact with those, so-called, asymptomatic people infected with the Covid virus.

We are constantly told to trust the science being presented to us by the ‘officials.’ Yet the media, and those officials for that matter, refuse to allow those who disagree, or have science of their own, to voice their opinions; for it contradicts the narrative of Dr. Fauci and the pharmaceutical companies that are telling us the ONLY way out of this is to take an experimental vaccine. Across the country the screws are being tightened; imposing tighter restrictions upon who can obtain services if they are unvaccinated. As it stands now, if I were to need a major medical procedure, I could not obtain it unless I submit and take the vaccine. Isn’t that a violation of the Hippocratic Oath; to deny medical care to a person because they have refused to have something put into their bodies just because some government flunky says it is necessary?

Then there is your position on our unalienable right to keep and bear arms; which requires little input on my part – your record on that speaks for itself!

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention your stance on illegal immigration. I have no qualms with anyone, from any country, coming to this country to work or live – just do it legally! Back in 2018, while you were still Lt. Governor, you declared that California would remain a sanctuary state; a safe harbor for those who have entered this country illegally.

I will not deny that many of these ‘illegals’ do work that regular folks won’t; the backbreaking labor involved in harvesting all the produce California produces. Yet along with those people come an influx of people who either become burdens upon society, or bring violent crime with them. Your open-ended support for these people, placing their welfare above the welfare of those who work and pay taxes, is a disgrace. You, sir, do not represent the people of Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, or any of the other country’s south of the border, YOU REPRESENT THE PEOPLE OF CALIFORNIA.

People tell me all the time that I’m an angry old man. Why shouldn’t I be? I spent nearly ¼ century in the service of my country; as a member of our armed forces, and as a contractor working side by side with our armed forces. Yet I am governed at the state level by a full-blown socialist, and at the federal level I am governed by an imbecile that can barely finish a sentence, and who has one foot in the funny farm and the other in an assisted living facility. What’s there to be angry about?

All the time I served my country I did so with pride; thinking I was defending freedom. The only thing is, I was seeing that freedom that I thought I’d been defending being taken from me by the very government/s which were supposed to be protecting it.

I do not know if this recall effort will be successful; I certainly hope it will be. I also do not know who will replace you if it is; and I don’t honestly care; we could vote in Porky Pig and he’d do a better job than you have!

“Every nation gets the government it deserves.”
~Joseph de Maistre~

On January 19, 1979 I raised my right hand and swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I did so twice more, serving 3 enlistments before separating honorably in 1991. I then went on to work another decade in the machine that is the military industrial complex; helping build and maintain the generator systems that powered the shelters where the images caught by the U-2 spylane were processed. In total, I spent close to 25 years in the service of my country.

I did not do so in order to watch as my government, and the people who claim to support the troops, fucked me out of the freedom I was supposedly defending. In fact, had I known that they were going to do so, I’d have told that Air Force recruiter to go fuck himself. I may have returned later that evening and firebombed his office…had I known I was going to be fucked out of the very thing that made this country a becaon for the rest of the world – liberty.

My oath to serve this country, and it’s government, expired on Halloween Day, 1991, and I’m here to tell you, that which I once served has become my sworn enemy, and will remain so until they restore EVERY SINGLE right, and all the liberty they’ve taken from me!

I did not swear an oath to defend this country so that I could come home and have:

-My freedom of speech taken away because what I say is deemed offensive

-Images from our past torn down because they offend others; others who don’t understand what those images represent

-My right to defend myself, my property, my rights treated as if it were a crime, and every manner of law enacted to limit how, when, and where I can exercise that right.

-My tax dollars spent on things I find both disagreeable and morally reprehensible; including spending them on aid to countries that would prefer to see the U.S. blown off the map.

-Me be told I cannot travel, enter certain facilities, or obtain medical services unless I cover my face with a diaper or take an experimental vaccine to prevent the spread of a virus that has well over a 99% survival rate.

There are more, but those are a few of the things that anger me; things that make me sad to the bones that I ever chose to serve a country, and it’s people, when this is how I am paid for my service.
I love this country, or at least I used to when it stood for individual liberty. Now I am treated like I’m the enemy, by people younger than I; people who were sitting at home watching cartoons and sucking on their mamma’s tit while I was halfway across the globe defending the freedom these people would grow up to take away from me.

The people of this country deserve what’s coming. When you show people how tyrannical their government has become; show them irrefutable facts, yet they still grovel at the feet of the monster that enslaves them, they deserve the fate that is coming.

Freedom is NOT free; it comes with a price. That price is eternal vigilence, and the willingess to fight anyone who tries to take it from you. In the Bible there is a passage where, after Jesus restores a man’s sight, the man says: I was blind but now I see. That was me for a good portion of my life; I was blind to the truth that my government, and a good number of the people inhabiting this country, had designs upon the rights and liberty our Founders believed were unalienable.

I awokened from that blindness because I was willing to accept the truth when it was presented to me; while most people today still believe that we are the greatest country in the world, with the greatest system of government in the world. The Star Spangled Banner begins with the words, Oh, say can you see… I would ask you that myself, can you not see what is happening?

It’s both ironic and sad that while serving my country I was given a gun to defend myself from attack by my countries enemies, yet as a civilian I am denied the use of that same gun when it is needed most to defend it from the enemies within. You see, that oath I took also said domestic enemies, and our nation’s capital is a cesspool of those enemies; while the people aid them by voting them into office and complying with the tyrannical laws they enact.

It is expected that government will seek more power for itself, at the cost of the rights and liberty of those it governs. What is not expected is to see the people bend over and take it up the ass with nary a whimper of protest.

To steal something from my friend Mike Gaddy: To paraphrase T.S. Eliot: “This is the way Freedom ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.”

Well done America, well-Fucking-Done!

American journalist H.L. Mencken once said: Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. I believe that what Mencken was referring to is the fact that everyone has a breaking point; a point where stress becomes intolerable, and when they reach that point any further stress causes them to snap – often violently.

Have you noticed how TV shows and movies often deal with this subject in their plots? Take for instance, the popular TV show, Criminal Minds; fictional stories about the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. Their job is to solve crimes by getting into the heads of those committing them; finding out what drives them to do the things they do. In nearly every episode they look for a ‘stressor’, a key event that pushed that person over the edge and caused them to snap.

Then, of course, there was the origin film, Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix, that shows how a man, Arthur Fleck, descends into madness and eventually snaps when he learns that he’d been adopted AND physically abused by the woman he had believed was his biological mother. While people may have been shocked by the violence, many felt sympathy for Fleck, and some actually cheered him on as he transformed into the Joker character.

When I was a kid, we used to play a game called Straw That Broke the Camel’s back. It was a simple game, involving a plastic camel on wheels with two side pouches. Each player was given different colored plastic straws, and we then took turns putting a straw into one of the pouches. The camel was designed to carry only so much weight in straws before it’s back would ‘break’, spilling the straws all over the table. The person whose straw broke the camel’s back, lost the game.

There is one more example I’d like to provide, and it comes not from a child’s game or a work of fiction on the big screen; it can be found in a study of the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence tells us that governments long established should not be change for light and transient causes, but ‘when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.’

The study of the Revolution, the key figures, the political climate, and the events themselves, is fascinating to me. Three decades after the Revolution ended, John Adams wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson in which he said: As to the history of the revolution, my ideas may be peculiar, perhaps singular. What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected … before a drop of blood was shed.

Every person may feel differently as to when the Revolution began, but I believe it began in 1765 when Parliament passed the Stamp Act; imposing the first direct tax upon the Colonists. There were some who sought relief from, what they viewed as a violation of their rights and liberty, through diplomatic channels; petitioning the King to have the taxes removed. Then there were others who took a more direct approach. Mobs formed, protests were held, and, often fueled by alcohol, tax collection offices and the homes of government officials were ransacked and destroyed. Hell, the townspeople of Boston even threatened the lives of those responsible for enforcing the Stamp Act.

The Stamp Act was repealed, only to be replaced by further insult, further injury to the rights and liberty of the Colonists; yet it was not the diplomatic efforts that led to the repealing of the Stamp Act, it was the anger of the mob that led to it being repealed. Had the mob not been there, the King could very well have ignored the diplomatic cries for relief; telling the Colonies to ‘suck it up’, ‘pay their fair share.’ It was the angry mob that led to the Stamp Act being repealed; yet it was that same angry mob that led to the Townshend Acts.

In my opinion, this was the beginning, or the genesis of the American Revolution. It had been brewing for all this time, and the ‘stressor’ that turned things truly violent came on April 19, 1775 when the King’s men sought to take away the people’s arms at Lexington and Concord; where the first shot of the ‘WAR’ was fired.

I’m going to go off on a side shoot here, but an idea just came to me that I felt needed to be included in my discussion. Every year, on July 4, the people of this country celebrate Independence Day. Although the move to declare their independence was approved on July 2, when the delegates of the Second Continental Congress voted on the Lee Resolution, we celebrate Independence Day on July 4th in homage to the Document written that explains what, and why we were declaring said independence.

Do people actually think that’s all there was to it; that 56 men signed a piece of paper and then it was over; they’d become free and independent? Another question. What is it people think the Declaration of Independence did? Sure, it declared our independence; but from whom or what? When those 56 men signed that document, they were effectively telling their King, their government, to take a hike…to go fuck itself…that they no longer wanted to be subject to its jurisdiction and authority.

Prior to the drafting of our constitution, a group of men in Massachusetts, led by Daniel Shays, led an uprising over the issue of taxes being collected to pay the war debt; although it would take an article in and of itself to explain why that rebellion occurred. The point is, it was the fear the other such rebellions might happen that led some to support the move for a much stronger, more centralized form of government.

Although he was serving in France as our ambassador, Thomas Jefferson had been keeping abreast of events in the States, and when he heard about Shay’s Rebellion, he wrote a letter to Abigail Adams, stating: The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere.

You may not have recognized it, but Jefferson was hinting towards the fear that people would become apathetic, complacent, and even tolerant of abuses of power by their systems of government. He felt that to preserve their rights and liberty the people should always be on guard, or as Patrick Henry said: Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force: Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.

So, in actuality, we are not celebrating independence on July 4th, we are celebrating the courage of those who stood up and resisted the authority of their government to pass laws, and impose taxes, that violated their rights and liberty. Independence was a means to an end, that’s all; the only course left open to them after their government had shown them that it intended to reduce them under absolute despotism.

Before I move on to the real controversial part of this essay, allow me to ask one simple question of people: Where is YOUR spirit of resistance to government? Or, have you become apathetic, complacent, obedient little sheep to be herded around by those holding political office?

As far as loss of life goes, the American Revolution places relatively low on the list of life’s lost; with only 4,435 having lost their life on the battlefield. Of course, that does not take into account the roughly 16,000 who lost their lives to illness during the war; so, there is that to take into consideration as well. Still, in comparison to other wars, the numbers are still relatively minor. For instance, 116,000 died during World War I, 405,000 died during World War II, and well over 600,000 died during the misnamed Civil War; which was actually America’s Second War for Independence.

Except for when George Washington led a force of almost 17,000 into Pennsylvania to put down a tax revolt, I can’t think of one instance that a politician, or elected official, has put their life on the line to enforce the law; and even then, Washington’s life was in no real danger. The simple fact is, government writes laws, they don’t have the spine to go out and enforce them; they make others do that for them.

Now if you think about the American Revolution, and I mean really think about it, England already had control over the Colonies, so she hadn’t technically declared war upon them. Therefore, those British soldiers, or Redcoats were here in the capacity of law enforcers; to make sure the Acts of Parliament were obeyed by the Colonists; that order was upheld. Hmm, law and order; where have I heard that term before?

Some of you may not see it, some of you may not agree with me, but we’re way beyond the few grievances that led the Colonies to go to war against their government in 1776. Our Founders, and those who gave their lives for this country’s independence, must be rolling over in their graves; wondering what the hell are we waiting for; it’s time to shake off the shackles of tyranny and regain our rights and liberty.

Those who fought for this country’s independence did so in the middle of an outbreak of smallpox for crying out loud; which killed 130,000 people while they were fighting for that independence. Yet here we are today, surrendering all the freedom they fought for over a virus that is far less deadly; and not only do people do so willingly, they have the audacity to denigrate those who have the courage to resist these violations upon our liberty.

Like I asked before, where is YOUR spirit of liberty; I certainly do not see it in abundance!

It is a sad fact that whenever there is a conflict of any sorts, there will be casualties. Whether it be a war, an uprising, people usually end up dying. Rarely though do you see those who started these wars, or causing these uprisings, lose their lives; it is those who do the actual fighting that do the dying.

Although it has happened, and I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t happen again, the military is not used that frequently to enforce the law; such as how the Redcoats were used to enforce the laws of the British government. So, if it is not the military that enforce the law, who is it? Ah yes, it is law enforcement; the people we all support when we fly our Thin Blue Line Flags. They are the enforcing arm of government…end of story. So, if those laws be good, they deserve your support, BUT, if those laws are bad, if they deprive you of your rights and liberty, they DO NOT deserve your support; and you certainly shouldn’t spill any tears when they meet with those who are willing to use force to defend their individual rights and liberty!

The reason I bring this up is because of something I read the other night. In the very beginning of the book, Unintended Consequences, by John Ross, (no relation to me), there is a passage that goes: The widows will never understand that their husbands died because the government got a little too-heavy handed…. As I brought up at the very beginning of this essay, we all have our breaking points, and for some of us we are at the end of our rope; we’ve been pushed, and pushed, and pushed some more; until we refuse to be pushed any further. If we snap, there will be bloodshed; you can almost count on it. But if we die, it won’t be just our deaths that you’ll be reading about, it will be those who work for tyrants, those who enforce the very laws that forces us to snap in the first place.

Each of those in the uniform of a law enforcement officer has a choice; they can defend the rights and liberty of the people by refusing to enforce laws that violate their rights, or they can choose to serve their masters; the politicians who pay them. You may not agree with me on this, but the natural state of things is for the people to be at war against their government. It may not be a war of bullets and bombs, but it is a war nonetheless; a war in which it is OUR duty as patriots to resist EVERY SINGLE ENCROACHMENT UPON OUR RIGHTS AND LIBERTY!

James Madison said as much in his Memorial and Remonstrance: Because it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. So, while we the people have been asleep at the wheel, government has been advancing on all fronts; to the point where they can tell us we must shut down our lives, and the people obey.

There are some of us who have had enough. We see this Covid scandemic, and the push to force a vaccination upon us against our will as our line in the sand…and we will not back up any further. You cross that line, and you will have fired the first shot of America’s Third War for Independence.

It does not have to come to that if people would just back off and leave us, and our freedom, alone. If more folks had that spirit of resistance to government, we wouldn’t find ourselves where we are today. Unfortunately, people are more concerned with which brand of tyrants get to run our government, (Republicans or Democrats), rather than the simple fact that they are ALL tyrants. So, here we are, where those who retain that spirit of resistance to government are becoming an endangered species; treated as enemies and second-class citizens by our countrymen.

So, I will ask you one more time, before it is too late: Where is YOUR spirit of resistance to government? You better find it soon, for if we’re not already there, we’re rapidly approaching the point where the mantra of the Borg will become the reality you face – RESISTANCE IS FUTILE…

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this in previous essays, but I consider life to be a journey that begins the day we’re born, and ends the day we pass on. While we may not have any say regarding the date of our birth or death, we have plenty of say regarding what happens in between those two dates. Therefore, the argument could be made that, when we reach the end of our journey, who and what we are is the sum total of every choice we’ve ever made.

Before I continue with that train of thought I’d like to speak, for a few moments, about this mistaken belief that social justice warriors have; that we’re all entitled to equality in life…in all things. I don’t know where they get that ridiculous idea; unless they are misinterpreting what the Declaration of Independence means when it says that all men are created equal.

If we are all created equal, in all things, then how come some people grow up to be short while others grow up to be tall? How is it that some are capable of incredible feats of strength, or skill, while others can’t even climb a flight of stairs without running out of breath? If you, or I for that matter, are as equal as people say, why can’t we run a four-minute mile, or bench press twice our body weight? If we’re all equal, why aren’t we fluent in four languages, or capable of solving complex mathematical equations?

I think that many want equal results without having to expend an equal amount of effort to attain those results. A perfect example of this is how people are paid in a work environment where a union exists. I worked in a union plant for 16 years, and I was getting the same pay as was some newly hired person; sometimes doing twice…three times as much work as they did. They wanted the same pay I was getting, and would have screamed bloody hell if they didn’t get it, but they weren’t willing to put forth the same amount of effort to earn that pay.

I accept the fact that the body I was given has certain limitations; that I’ll never have the skill to play tennis as good as those on the pro tour, or that I’ll never play a musical instrument with the same degree of proficiency as Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page. Does this upset me, do I clamor for the same pay as those who can? No, I do the best with what I’ve been given, and accept the path my life has taken.

Getting back to where I started, I believe that I am who I am, with whatever limitations and skills I may possess; and I don’t believe that I’m entitled to anything that I haven’t earned on my own. I believe that the equality that is referred to in the Declaration of Independence is the ability to choose for myself the path my life will take. Who and what I am at the time of my death is going to be the result of the choices I have made, and I alone will be responsible for who that person is.

If you are not free to make your own choices in life, if those choices are made for you by others, how can you truly claim that you are free? It is that ability to choose for ourselves that makes life worth living, isn’t it? Yet, there are those who do not believe that as we are free to choose for ourselves, we must also be shouldered with the responsibility of accepting the consequences when we choose unwisely. In Season 1 of the TV series Westworld, there is a scene when the creator of Westworld, played by Anthony Hopkins, tells Bernard: Evolution forged the entirety of sentient life on this planet using only one tool – mistakes.

If you take away our ability to choose for ourselves, and learn from the mistakes we make, then not only have you enslaved us, you have stagnated our learning; our progression as a species. Allow me to provide an analogy to explain what I mean by that. Let’s say a child is born in a lab setting somewhere, and throughout that child’s early life they are brought pre-prepared meals to eat and their every need is taken care of by those working in the laboratory. Then, upon reaching adulthood, that child is released into the world to fend for itself.

Could that individual cook for them self? Could it find a job, wash their own clothes? It may learn to do those things, but it would be a traumatic experience nonetheless; all because it had never been taught how to accept responsibility for its own wants and needs; how to learn from mistakes it might make. What had happened is that this child had become dependent upon those who provided for its wants and needs; much as we today have become dependent upon government to provide for our wants and needs when we fail to do so, or are unwilling to do so for ourselves.

People talk about freedom a lot, but they are repeating what they’ve been taught without ever actually knowing what true freedom is. In fact, most people today would not be able to survive in an environment where true freedom existed; they need the safety net that society/government provides them should they fail, or make bad choices in life.

Thomas Jefferson spoke of that when he wrote: Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. I hate to come across as condescending, but I often wonder if people understand the meaning of some of the words found in the quotes I use; which is why I often provide the definition for them. Subservience, or to be subservient, is one such word. To be subservient means to be useful in a lower capacity, to be submissive to someone in a position of authority; to be subordinate.

So, when Jefferson says that dependence begets subservience, he is saying that when you become dependent upon something, you become the servant of those who provide for whatever benefit/service that entity provides you; which goes against all we are taught about how government exists to SERVE us. Noted statesman Daniel Webster once described that phenomenon as follows: There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.

Whenever you give up the ability to choose for yourself, or expect others to make those choices for you so that you don’t, you give up your freedom; or as I prefer to call it, liberty. We Americans, and this is speaking in general terms, have been conditioned to accept this state of existence; told that it is normal; when the truth is, it is far from normal.

In Chapter II of his Second Treatise, John Locke describes the ‘natural’ state of man as being: a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.

I have been told that to hope for such a condition is futile; that it will never exist. Possibly, but the closer to that state of existence we are, the better off we would be; at least that’s how I see things. I tend to see things from an anarchist point of view. Now I know that a lot of people confuse anarchy with chaos, and that’s understandable; it’s what you’ve been taught. But true anarchy simply means to be without leaders; responsible for your own wants/needs, while being respectful of the rights and property of others.

Unfortunately, we keep moving farther and farther away from that, becoming more dependent, more subservient, with each passing day. Again, quoting from Jefferson: The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. It has gotten to the point that people today fear the idea of being free, and those who seek freedom are deemed as a threat.

It’s funny how books and movies are often years ahead in warning us of the dangers we face. Look at Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four; he tried to warn us of the dangers of an all-powerful Big Brother type government; yet we ‘chose’ to let it happen anyway. Then there was the 1969 film Easy Rider, that portrayed two bikers who tried to find the freedom this country was supposed to represent. There is one scene in particular from that movie that gets me every time I watch it. The scene occurs as Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, and Dennis Hopper are sitting around a campfire, and goes as follows:

Nicholson: Oh no. What you represent to them is freedom.

Hopper: What the hell’s wrong with freedom, man? That’s what it’s all about.

Nicholson: Oh yeah, that’s right, that’s what it’s all about, all right. But talkin’ about it and bein’ it – that’s two different things. I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. ‘Course, don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free ’cause then they’re gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they’re gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom, but they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ’em.

Hopper: Mmmm, well, that don’t make ’em runnin’ scared.

Nicholson: No, it makes ’em dangerous.

In 1944 noted Judge, Billings Learned Hand, delivered a speech in New York in which he said: I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.

People fear liberty for any number of reasons. They fear it because it takes away the comfort of having to not earn that which they need to sustain their existence. They fear it because it imposes upon them the responsibility of defending themselves. Therefore, those who seek a life in which they can exercise their rightful liberty pose a threat to them, and when those who crave subservience become the majority, those who seek liberty are always, and I repeat, ALWAYS the objects of persecution.

People today vote, without knowing the true purpose their government should serve; that being the preservation of their rights and liberty. They hope/expect that those they elect will do what is best for them, but they rarely take the time to pay any attention to what these elected officials are doing, and how what they do restricts the rights and liberty of everyone under their jurisdiction. Then, to make matters worse, they idolize and support those who enforce the laws that deprive them of their unalienable right to be free from unjust authority.

It is a universal paradox that government exists to secure the rights and liberty of the governed, yet as long as government exists, those rights and that liberty is in peril. Allow me to explain that. If our rights and liberty are in constant peril, precipitating the need for a government to secure them, where does the danger to them come from? The answer, other people. Yet, what is government if it is not a group of people who have been given power to enact laws that the governed must obey. So, if our rights and liberty are in peril from other people, the solution is to give other people power, and expect that they will not succumb to its allure and abuse that power and deny or restrict the very things they were given power to secure.

I think Thomas Jefferson understood this, which is why he said: The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.

We cannot eliminate the threat to our rights and liberty; not without killing off every human being beside ourselves. So, the only way to preserve our them is to resist all encroachments upon them. James Madison, the so-called Father of our Constitution, declared this to be the ‘first duty’ of every citizen. In his Memorial and Remonstrance, Madison put it this way: Because it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entagled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle.

Patrick Henry was a bit more direct: Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force: Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.

This Covid thing has shown many how power hungry their elected officials have become; especially those at the state level in states like California and Washington. Currently, Gavin Newsom is fighting the fight of his life to hold on to his job, as a recall election is scheduled for just over a week from now; with a plethora of candidates seeking his seat in Sacramento. Only a couple of them, though, do not support the Draconian steps undertaken to wage war against the Covid virus; meaning that even if Newsom is tossed out on his ass, there’s a chance that we won’t see the restrictions upon our lives and liberty lessen any.

What people fail to realize is that it wasn’t Newsom, or even the mayors of each city, that made life a living hell here. Sure, they may have decreed that you wear a mask, that you shut down your business, that you stay inside your homes, but it was THE PEOPLE who obeyed those mandates, AND, for the most part, it was law enforcement that made sure those who disobeyed were punished.

It’s not just this Covid thing, any law enacted by any body of men calling themselves a government, needs an enforcing arm; some group of people to make sure that others obey the laws they pass. Without LAW ENFORCEMENT, the laws they enact amount to nothing better than suggestions. Try carrying a gun openly in public without a permit, if you don’t believe me; even though permits are not required to exercise unalienable rights. Do that and see how quickly before these LAW ENFORCERS descend upon you like a swarm of ants attracted to the scent of honey. It matters little how hard you argue that it is your right, and that rights do not require permission to exercise, to them you are breaking THE LAW, and it is their duty to uphold THAT LAW; even though, by doing so they become tyrants as well.

That is the case with every law, every ordinance, every written; it needs an enforcement mechanism to make sure the governed obey. However, this Covid thing has taken it to a whole new level; a level that concerns me, and causes me to doubt that there is any hope for our future. If this Covid scandemic has shown me anything, it has shown me three things:

-How far government (state & federal) is willing to go to deprive us of our rights…

-How easily people can be manipulated by fear…

-How quickly people will turn against those who do not obey the dictates of those they trust to eliminate the cause of their fear…

In short, it has shown me who my enemies are. I gotta say this for it though, if the shit ever hits the fan and blood starts flowing in the streets, our enemies will be easy to spot; they’ll either be wearing a uniform or a face mask.

Although I don’t see it happening, not with the massive compliance to authority that people have shown so far, but we could turn the tide if there was a monumental shift in the attitudes of people; if they simply began disobeying the laws that violated their rights, and the rights of those they disagree with. Like I said, it could happen, but I don’t see it happening; the odds of that level of civil disobedience are astronomical. In fact, you probably have a much better chance of winning the lottery every week for the rest of your life; people are too conditioned to obey, even if it means that by doing so they are accepting the fact that their rights and liberty can be taken from them by the decree of other men; which is admitting that they have no rights and liberty they can call their own; which is the status of a slave!

We, and I’m referring now to those who love and cherish their liberty, are an endangered species. There are those who may not like many of the things their government (state & federal) does, but they are unwilling to admit that it is not political parties, it is government itself that is the source of their woes. They may resist certain intrusions upon their freedom; as long as it comes from the other party; but when their party is in control they turn a blind eye to its incursions upon their rights; proving to me that the preservation of the rights and liberty of everyone is not their primary concern when voting.

If you recall, a few moments ago I provided that Jefferson quote about dependence begetting subservience; well, I’d like to leave you with a final quote along those same lines. This particular quote comes from the Scottish jurist Alexander Fraser Tytler, and states: Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.

I fear we are in the final stage of that progression, and that soon we will return to a state in which we have no rights and freedom at all unless we comply with every rule handed down to us by those who are supposed to be our public servants. Those of us who only seek liberty for ourselves are slowly being squeezed out of our ability to exist by all the vaccine mandates. In some instances, we cannot work if we are not fully vaccinated. In other instances, we cannot obtain medical attention without being vaccinated. Soon, I fear, we won’t be allowed to leave our homes without our vaccine papers. The sad thing is, those of you who support these restrictions will say it is for the public good that we be imprisoned in our own homes. That is the saddest thing of all, for it provides the answer to a question Thomas Jefferson once asked: Can it be believed that a grateful people will suffer [individuals] to be consigned to execution, whose sole crime has been the developing and asserting their rights?

Congratulations America, you’ve taken the liberty bequeathed to us by our ancestors and taken us right back into the cesspool of tyranny and oppression. You may fear me, and people like me, but we despise you for what you’ve allowed to happen. And, if there is any justice, either in this life or the one that follows, it will not be us who are punished for allowing God’s gift of liberty to be taken away without a fight. Your argument that it was all for the overall public good will hold no water when you are found to have bequeathed slavery onto your posterity.

Ponder that!